Whispers ran thick through Hogwarts and dogged Harry’s heels. By Monday morning, all of Hogwarts knew that Professor Prince was Professor Snape and that somehow Harry was his father. The details were a little fuzzy, Dean had asked if Harry had really gone back in time on a giant Golden Snitch, but everyone could be found telling the story mostly coherently by the time Harry had to go to class.

A thick cloud of dread followed him around as he shuffled his way from Transfiguration to Potions, and he waited for Snape to swoop down on him, drag him off, and demand an explanation. Even the Professors watched him strangely. Professor Switch sent him looks of disbelieving pity as he struggled to turn his ballet slipper into a music box, and hadn’t even marked him down because he couldn’t get the ballerina to twirl with the music. In desperation, he had nudged her with his wand, and he could have sworn that he had heard her huff at him and fidget.

Harry looked up to see Belby glowering at him apprehensively. Startled, Harry wondered if his professor were worried that Snape’s cruelty and sarcasm would manifest itself in Harry because Harry had somehow managed to produce him. Harry turned his own sour look to his dried bat guano and ground it more assiduously as his temper frayed. If he managed to get his hands on the nosy gossiping gits who had spread his secret around school, they wouldn’t make it to the Easter holidays in one piece.

At last, he couldn’t pretend his guano was anything other than a fine powder. He stirred the eel’s blood into his cauldron, watching Hermione carefully and hating the fact that he couldn’t just follow what she was doing, because he was supposed to be inventing. He didn’t feel very inventive at all. Nott’s cauldron smoked ominously, and Harry wondered glumly when his would follow suit.

In the end, the murky multicolored concoctions the class bottled for the professor didn’t resemble limb regenerating tonic very well at all, and Harry wished they would soon be over the potion invention part of the term soon. He handed his own in with relief, that it hadn’t blown up, and trepidation. Belby’s advice didn’t make any sense. Even Hermione squinted at him as he spoke.

He almost wished Snape would hurry up, because then it would at least be over with. At least if Snape yelled at him, he could yell back, and he might stop feeling sick to his stomach every time he left his dormitory.

~*~

Severus gnashed his teeth as a pair of Ravenclaw second years panicked as his gaze passed over them as they ate. The entire student body seemed to be staring at him and then at Potter and then at him again. The food on his plate congealed as he pushed around his stewed carrots and mashed potatoes. His fork bounced off the gravy.

Filius eyed him oddly. “It’s nice to know you weren’t scared off by the flocks of owls, Severus,” he squeaked. “I always thought you were made of sterner stuff.”

Severus quietly calculated whether or not it was worth trying to be polite since everyone knew who he was. “Obviously I was ‘scared’ enough to go into hiding,” he snarled, stabbing a carrot with his fork and trying to shake it off again.

He swept the hand Filius had rested comfortingly on his arm away as the tiny professor answered. “But you did stay!”

He glanced back at him irritably. “In whatever altered state, yes.” He gave up on the carrot lodged on his fork and let it clatter to his plate.

“Not so altered,” Filius beamed, but then thankfully turned to speak to Pomona, and Severus stopped listening. He turned his attention to Potter, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes to glower at the boy, who periodically looked up from his food and scowled back at him. He sat in semi exile at the end of the Gryffindor table closest to the door, a few awed first years clustered around him. As time wore on, Potter returned his determined stare more and more frequently, until he too simply glared at him without eating. Slowly, the students who finished their own meals didn’t leave but instead stayed to watch the two lock eyes and snarl. When at last Severus couldn’t stand to sit there sneering at the boy, he rose and pushed away his plate. He strode purposefully between the tables to the door, his black teaching robes billowing behind him, and stopped behind Potter’s seat. “Detention,” he hissed into the boy’s ear.

The boy sputtered, accidentally knocking his goblet of pumpkin juice over. A thin rivulet trickled onto his lap, soaking into his school robe. “What for?” he demanded.

Severus stood mute for a moment, searching his mind for a suitable offence that he could use as a pretext. “Befouling the castle,” he retorted as the juice dripped to the floor. The boy had the ill grace to look triumphant.

~*~

Before Harry had even crossed the threshold into Snape’s office, the man started snarling. “You gave us both away, Potter.”

Harry let the door swing shut behind him with a bang. “No more than you did.”

“The whole school knows, Potter, obviously someone told them! What, did you get tired of keeping the secret, did you think it would be amusing to let everyone know? Did your friends get a good laugh out of it?”

“No.”

“Really, Potter? I suppose you think this hurts me more than it hurts you and so it’s worth it.” Severus remembered the victorious expression on the boy’s face when he assigned the detention and his knuckles turned white as the blood fled them and his fists clenched.

Harry didn’t mention the third years and fifth years he had only vaguely recognized who had overheard his quarrel. “I didn’t ask my girlfriend to shout it all over the common room, did I?” He crossed his arms across his chest defiantly and he could hear Snape’s teeth grind together from where he stood.

“But you told her Potter, did you think she wouldn’t start shouting?”

“I DIDN’T TELL HER!” he roared, and glass in the windows rattled. He noticed the open window and stomped across the room to it and locked it, shoving the latch into place hard enough to almost snap it off. “She was spying on us! I didn’t even know she knew until she started screaming at me!”

“Spying,” Snape repeated incredulously, “spying.”

“Dangling extendable ears from the window above!” Harry pointed to the formerly slightly ajar window. “This isn’t my fault,” he said resentfully.

Why exactly was she spying on you?” Snape’s expression changed into a strangely accusatory smile. “Were you acting suspicious? Are you an idiot who can’t keep a secret for more than a few months at a time?”

“It was your office she was spying on,” Harry pointed out with his own cold smile. Actually, managing to keep a secret for more than a few days at a time was an impressive feat in Hogwarts, but he doubted Snape would agree if he said so.

“Yes, but it was you she was spying on!” Harry could see the vein in Snape’s forehead jumping away from his skull with every syllable.

“No it wasn’t!” Harry shouted back. “Hermione told her there was something not right about you before she figured out who you were! Ginny just didn’t back off when Hermione told her too.”

Snape sneered at him. “Did you expect her to? I knew you were an imbecile, but surely not even you-“

“I didn’t know Hermione told her,” Harry insisted. “I didn’t know about any of this. It isn’t my fault,” he repeated, “it isn’t.” He hunched his shoulders sulkily and glared at Snape from under his eyebrows. They watched each other for a moment, eyes level, Harry leaning against the wall with the windows. At last, Snape cleared his throat, but Harry cut him off. “You should check the windows in your classroom too,” he mumbled, rushing out past Snape and yanking the door open.

Severus snatched for his arm, but when it slipped through his hand, he decided to let it go. He had no wish to spend time with the boy anyway.

~*~

Ginny wouldn’t talk to Harry, which was alright, because he wouldn’t talk to her either. As the week dragged on and Hermione hissed into his ears that he should at least apologize to Ginny for his part every time his ears were close enough for her to do so, and Ron flitted back and forth between Harry and Ginny, hinting as subtly as he knew how about talking again, Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to them either.

During Quidditch practice, Harry and Ginny avoided each other’s eyes, and if Ginny had to refer to him, she called him the Captain. Harry didn’t refer to her at all. Ron muttered as they showered that the two should work out something for Quidditch’s sake if not for anything else, but Harry steadfastly pretended he hadn’t said anything. Harry had been ignoring a lot of what Ron said.

“I’m not going to apologize to Ginny!” Harry shouted in the middle of the packed common room when Hermione told him he should be the bigger person. “Until she apologizes to me!” Silence greeted his pronouncement as his housemates turned their eyes to him and stared. Harry flopped chagrinned back into his seat as he looked around at the gazes of all of his fellows. “I won’t.”

“Oh Harry,” Hermione began exasperated, “you’re acting like a little boy!”

“She spied on me!” he shot back more quietly. “I’m not the one who needs to apologize.”

“Yeah, well you shagged another girl,” Ron said bluntly, his voice barely above a whisper, “an ugly girl.”

Harry flushed. “She wasn’t ugly. Ron snorted, and Harry felt compelled to defend his erstwhile lover. “She was pretty when she was smiling.” He remembered Snape’s memories and continued, “And when she was young.”

Ron leveled him with a frank stare, amused and revolted at the wistful expression on his friend’s face. “That’s the thing, Harry; you don’t feel sorry about it at all.”

“If you don’t apologize to her, you’re never going to get back together,” Hermione chimed in briskly.

Harry bristled, “Yeah, well, I don’t want to get back together with her.”

“Harry,” Hermione pleaded, attempting to sound sensible, “you really are being very childish.”

His color deepened again. “I’m the one being childish?” he demanded furiously.

“Yes, well,” Hermione began matter-of-factly, “it isn’t mutually exclusive after all. You and Ginny are both acting childish.”

Harry brushed her off. “And you, Ron, you think I’m acting childishly too?” Ron nodded slowly with a sidelong glance at Hermione.

“If I’m being so childish,” he stood up and crammed his parchment back into his bag. “You can go talk to Ginny instead. I’m sure you think she’s acting her age.”

“Harry,” Ron called hesitantly.

“Go on, talk to your sister then.” He stomped off, his eyes straight ahead.

~*~

Almost as soon as Harry had let the portrait slam shut behind him, he contemplated opening it again and rushing back inside. He had whispered the first syllable of the password to the fat lady, who muttered darkly at him for letting her picture slam, before he turned around and decided to walk away. He didn’t know what to say anyway.

He ran his hand along the wall as he meandered his way though the castle corridors, not sure where he was going. As he came to a gap in the wall, his fingers passed over something that wasn’t stone and wasn’t air. He stopped. Luna vaguely batted his hand way from her face and examined his fingers. Her eyes fixed on a scrape across the tops of his knuckles, ”You have finndersnicks.”

“What?”

“They live in ink bottles and crawl out while you’re writing to eat the skin off your hands.” Her enormous eyes turned to his face with a look of immense pity.

“Oh.”

“Spring begins in nineteen days,” she said dreamily, “You must be happy.”

“Er…”

“It’s when the grimble gums come out of their nests,” She said definitively. “Their mating calls repel finndersnicks.”

“Do, er, grumble gims always come out on the first day of spring?”

”Grimble gums,” she reminded him mistily. “Yes, they can tell.”

“Luna,” he asked quietly, “Have you ever heard a grimble gum?”

“No,” she said smiling. “Their voices are too high for us to hear.

Harry nodded. “So, Luna, how, er, how have you been?”

“I’ve been well,” she said, flattening a piece of air on his head. He stood still, afraid he’d startle her if he moved. “It’s been quiet. None of my friends have come to talk to me.”

Guilt pooled in the bottom of his stomach and he remembered the picture in her house of Dumbedore’s army and the caption beneath it. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she told him wide eyed. “I knew there were other things going on.”

The way she said it, as if she were just stating an observation and not condemning him or reassuring him made him feel even worse. “I should have come to talk to you.”

“If you wanted to.” She picked at a piece of invisible lint on her sleeve.

“I wanted to,” he lied, his face hot. “I just…” But she ignored his denials with an absent smile. “I should have come to talk to you,” he repeated lamely.

“I knew you were busy with Professor Snape,” she murmured. Harry mused that he would rather have spent time with Luna, who was at least nice. “It’s a bit unusual to find out you have a child older than you are.”

“You knew about that?” Harry asked startled.

“Of course,” she replied, and Harry wondered if she really had, or if she had retroactively decided she must have known, because it was simply the sort of impossible thing she always knew. “I’ve been trying to figure out what I should call him,” she began after a long pause. “He isn’t really a Snape, is he?”

“I suppose not,” said Harry uncertainly. He hadn’t really thought about it, except to remind Snape that technically speaking, he was as much a Potter as Harry.

“And Prince isn’t his real name.”

“Not really,” Harry shifted his feet awkwardly and the sound of them rustling against the stone seemed embarrassingly loud in the silent hallway. “But, er, it was his mum’s.”

“I don’t think he would like it much if I called him Professor Potter.”

“Definitely not,” he said, stopping himself from backing up quickly.

“I’ll probably have to call him ‘Severus’.” He would have liked to watch her call him that in class. Shivering, he thought about calling Snape that himself at some point.

“Er, it might be best just to call him ‘Sir’.”

She twirled one of the quills stuck into her rather lumpy braid, her eyes on the ceiling. “Yes, but I want something to call him in my head when I think about him.”

“Don’t,” Harry advised succinctly. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to think about Snape. He did his best to avoid it.

She nodded, pale eyes wide and unfocused. “What do you call him?”

When he opened his mouth, he almost told her he called him a git. “Professor Snape,” he said at last, a small part of him feeling a bit ashamed and the rest of him ignoring it.

“You should call him by his name,” she told him, and he grimaced. “People like to hear their names.”

Harry thought Luna had very strange ideas about what Snape would have liked to hear, but he kept the thought to himself, “maybe.”

“You are fighting with Ginny Weasley,” she said, her eyes focusing on his face, and he flinched back. She cocked her head.

“You shouldn’t be,” she said frankly, “you both like each other.”

It took a moment for Harry to stop himself from telling her that he didn’t like Ginny very much at all right then. “Yeah, but she spied on me, and then shouted things she wasn’t supposed to know about anyway to the whole school!” Even if she had only shouted about it in front of her brother, Hermione, and a few stray Gryffindors, she had let the whole school know.

“Yes,” she breathed, “but secrets aren’t ever really secret for long.”

Luna wasn’t the most objective person to talk about privacy with, he supposed. She didn’t think much of people who tried to keep knowledge hidden. Harry folded his arms. “That doesn’t mean she had to make it not a secret,” he returned resentfully. Luna nodded, and Harry continued. “I mean, if she just acknowledged that she did something wrong, it would be better, but she just thinks that what she did is alright.”

Luna nodded again and Harry wondered if she ever fought with anyone about anything. Slights and cruelty slid off her so easily. “We all like to think that we did the right thing,” she said dreamily and traced a vein in the rock wall with her nail. “Sometimes people want it so much they make themselves think it.”

Harry blushed badly, but Luna seemed not to notice and kept gazing at him intently. “And everyone’s trying to get me to apologize to her, and I should, but if I do, she’ll just think I’m saying that she’s right, I’m wrong.” He leaned against the wall, hands behind his head, his elbows spread out to the sides. “She’ll think it’s over, and think everything’s alright again.” Or worse, Harry thought, she’d tell him his apology wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t going to make her apologize to him as well.

“If it’s the right think to do,” Luna started, tapping the stone wall with her fist. Harry wondered what sort of strange magical creature she was looking for and if she was going to tell him. She pressed her ear flat against the wall for a moment before she continued, and when she did, she spoke as if she hadn’t just paused in the middle of speaking to examine the masonry. “You should do it no matter how she reacts.” Harry decided that this was what got Luna into trouble.

She tapped another stone and listened patiently, and slowly moved her way down the wall until she had her ear to the baseboard. Harry found he couldn’t think of a reply because he was too busy watching her. “Thanks, Luna,” he said at last, stepping away from the wall.

“Hush,” she told him as severely as Luna ever managed. “I think there are pandycats in the rocks.” Harry thought about the Basilisk and grimaced.