As the last of the students trooped into Hogsmeade to catch the school train, Severus hefted a stack of notebooks and parchment into his arms, a small bottle in his pocket and wound his way through the empty corridors to the gargoyle entrance to Minerva’s office. He gave the password to the gargoyle (Maine Coon) and mounted the stairwell, and at the top, rapped his knuckles against her office door. A shuffling from within heralded the headmistress’ rise and walk to the door just before it opened. “Was there something you wanted to see me about, Severus?” She asked him, and he steeled himself.

“I have some highly interesting information for you regarding the fraud and intellectual theft of one of the professors of this school,” he informed her primly, suppressing the urge to rub his hands together with glee.

She blinked. “Which professor?”

“Damocles Belby.”

Minerva didn’t bother raising an eyebrow, or telling him that those were serious allegations. “I never knew you were so possessive of your former post.”

Severus’ eyebrows however, did rise, and then knitted together low over his eyes. “Hardly,” he hissed, handing her the notebooks. “I recognized something of my own after that Corner boy disintegrated half of the classroom.” He set his own leather bound notebook on her desk triumphantly.

She flipped through the notebook, glancing at the dates at the top of each page. “You recognized this particular notebook through a hole in a filing cabinet after nearly twenty years?”

“Oh yes.” There hadn’t been holes in the filing cabinet. There had been gaping metallic wounds. “I hadn’t been precisely thrilled to lose two years worth of notes!” Whatever reluctance he had harbored previously about turning Belby in evaporated. With his cover already blown and the whole castle whispering his secrets to each other, he barely noticed whatever wriggling Belby still managed to produce in his anxiety over the discovery of his fraud by an unknown silent party, and if revealing the man’s theft caused another scandal for the students and the papers to feast on, so much the better.

“You’re only coming forward with this now?” she almost sounded suspicious, but not quite.

“There is no risk anymore.”

Minerva sighed deeply. “I suppose I’ll need to be looking for a new Potions Master.” Severus’ face twisted smugly as he propped the stack of notebooks and parchment on her desk. Her eyes continued to flicker over his notes until she stopped suddenly. “Wolfsbane Potion?” she breathed.

“I would appreciate it of you would keep that out of the papers,” he said tartly.

Her smile was sharp and catlike, “Afraid of a little glory, Severus?” No doubt she could ascertain is motives for creating the potion in the first place, as unflattering as they were. “None of this will be in the papers.”

“What!” he squawked irately.

“Think, Severus!” If I go to the press, or even to the Ministry, with your word alone that none of these documents have been tampered with, and the press still crucifying you however they can, do you think I will be believed?”

“I only retrieved ten years of notes. There were plenty of others.”

She waved aside his assertion. “He’s almost certainly destroyed them by now.”

“He Obliviated me and stole two years of my work!” he snarled. “I want some retribution!”

“It will have to wait, Severus,” Minerva patted his arm gently. “We’ll both we watching him; he has to slip up some time.” Severus glowered, nodded curtly, and turned to leave. “It will be enough of a challenge getting rid of Damocles quietly," she muttered as he pulled her office door closed behind him.

~*~

Harry settled against the cushions and gazed out the window while Hermione and Ron bickered reassuringly near the compartment door. A faint drizzle pittered onto the train windows and collected into rivulets as fields the train began to move out of the station and under the open sky. He glanced nervously at the pile of unwrapped presents sitting next to him that he’d picked up the week before in Hogsmeade. Hermione spotted the direction of his gaze and stopped arguing with Ron. “Honestly Harry, he’s a year old. If it’s toy shaped, he’ll like it, and if he doesn’t, he won’t hold it against you.”

“Hmm,” Harry replied and Hermione snorted, opening her Herbology notes. Ron read a Quidditch magazine and Harry listened absentmindedly to the sounds of the train filling up and the rustling of students finding compartments. The door slid open and Harry wrinkled his nose as Malfoy peered inside. Ron, Hermione, and Harry leapt to their feet, their wands raised at the intruder.

Malfoy’s gaze fell on the egg shaped rattle and the tiger pillow growling softly next to Harry. “Regressing back to infancy, Potter?” he drawled casually.

“It’s for my godson, Malfoy.” Harry shifted his weight, ready to spring at Malfoy if he came through the compartment door, but Malfoy, for all his bluster, didn’t quite dare.

“Who in their right mind would make you a godfather?” he sneered, and Harry gripped his wand a little tighter.

“That’s none of your concern,” Hermione told him tartly. “Now get out.”

Malfoy waved his arms arms at the doorway. “I already am out.”

“Good,” Harry flicked his wand and the compartment door slammed closed. The three could hear loud indignant shuffles from the other side. Hermione’s head bowed to her notes without comment.

Harry flipped idly through his Charms book, but he didn’t actually read. The drizzle turned into a gentle rain, and then into a heavy rain, and then into a full storm, the clouds darkening into black, as the train sped southwards. At last, as they neared London, the clouds blew away and the sun peeked out.

Harry could see Andromeda Tonks and Teddy, his canary yellow hair curling beneath his miniature fisherman’s hat. He waved at them, but her expression didn’t change, and he didn’t think she saw. The three pressed into the crush of students trying to get onto the platform. As soon as they could get through, Hermione ran out to her parents and Ron spotted Mrs. Weasley. Harry nodded at her, and Ron tugged his sleeve. When he walked towards her, Harry followed.

“Hi Mrs. Weasley,” Harry said timidly.

She smiled at him frostily. “Hello Harry.”

Harry ducked his head and supposed he couldn’t blame her for being mad at him. He hear Ginny step up behind him. “I have to er, find Mrs. Tonks,” he mumbled. “Bye then.” He glanced back at Ginny as he walked away, but the expression on her face was inscrutable.

Andromeda Tonks waved him over and he wheeled his handcart over to her. “Hi Mrs. Tonks.”

“Call me Andromeda, Harry,” she said with a smile. Harry smiled back, and some of the tension in his shoulders lifted. With a rustle of feathers, Bodmin hooted irritably. Teddy laughed, showing his first few teeth, reaching for the cage. Andromeda turned to the side to snatch his hand back. “You don’t want that Teddy,” she told him, handing him a stuffed dog. He grasped it and looked at it suspiciously for a moment before turning back to Bodmin. “That’s a handsome owl you have.”

“Thanks, but she’s mean.” Harry laughed and Teddy looked at him curiously. “How do you get him through the Muggle world without anyone noticing?” he asked as Teddy’s eyes became as round as Bodmin’s and just as orange.

“I have to Apparate to and from the platform. I’d forgotten how hard this was; I just hope he’s a little more circumspect when he’s older than Dora.” She shook her head, “Do you remember what the back garden looks like?”

“Er, I think so.”

“We’ll Apparate to there then.” With a crack, she disappeared with her grandson and Harry followed. He landed with a squelch in the mud beside the pond in Andromeda’s back garden. “You wouldn’t mind taking your shoes off when you come inside, would you?” she asked from the doorway.

~*~

Later that evening after Teddy had been put to bed, Harry sat across from Andromeda on the sofa in the sitting room. She poured him a cup of tea, and he spooned four mounds of sugar into it. “It amazes me how much of a boy you really are,” she laughed, nodding at his cup. He added another spoonful just for show, and she laughed harder.

Fiddling with his cup, Harry watched her apprehensively. “Ron puts in more sugar than tea.”

“So did Dora,” Andromeda told him with a faraway look. “And then she’d spill it on the carpet.” Harry made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat and Andromeda shook her head. “I hope you like it here.”

“It’s much nicer than Number Twelve Grimmauld place.”

She snorted into her cup. “I hope so!” Her mouth twitched and then twisted. “Please tell me you weren’t expecting my home to be anything like-“

Harry rushed to reassure her. “No, it’s just I mean; I’d probably be staying there for the Holidays if you hadn’t invited me.”

Her grimace deepened. “I’m glad I invited you then. That place will need quite a bit of renovation if you intend to live in it.”

“I don’t,” he said shortly.

“Pity,” she responded blandly, a strange look in her eyes that might have been suppressed laughter or might have been a flicker of rage.

“Why?” Harry could only think about how much Sirius had hated his ancestral home, how chill and gloomy and oppressive and miserable the house had been when he had visited.

A wicked grin blossomed across her face. “It’s delightful, isn’t it, the thought of making that dilapidated mess into the happy home of a half-blood and his family? My aunt and uncle, your godfather’s parents that is, would be outright writhing in the family crypt.”

“I suppose that’s true,” a speculative expression fluttered across his face. “But I don’t think the house likes me very much.”

“It’s a bit set in its ways, but it’s only two hundred years old.” Only? thought Harry. “That’s not long enough for too much malice to sink into the walls, even with my family calling it home.”

“Can hatred really become part of the house like that?” Harry asked afraid he sounded stupid.

Andromeda sent him a piercing look. “What do you think?”

Harry flushed.

“Mind, if you intend to live there, you should have the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures go through it.”

“We’ve run into some nasty little-“ Harry stopped himself before he swore in front of his godson’s grandmother, “monsters, but I think I can handle them.”

She laughed, “No, I mean the Spirit Division.”

“Why?” he queried nonplussed.

“Orpheus, the thirteen year old brother of one of my ancestors from the seventeenth century, followed from the old Black residence.”

“I’ve never seen him,” Harry told her.

“You wouldn’t. He doesn’t show himself much except when he’s watching any young women in the house getting dressed.”

“Really?” Harry asked alarmed, making a note to ask Hermione if she had ever had any problems with him.

“Oh yes, he drove Cissy to tears once when she was fourteen and we stayed over for that summer.”

Harry couldn’t make himself feel too sorry that a ghost had ogled a teenaged Mrs. Malfoy’s bits. Actually, he hoped she had been mortified. “I’ll have to get rid of him then.” He wondered if he could convince the Ministry to send him to Malfoy Manor.

“Certainly before you invite any young women over,” she said archly, wiggling her eyebrows. Harry flushed. “Or before you have any daughters.” Harry flushed deeper.

“You really make it sound like a lot of fun to live in a house with...” he trailed of trying to figure out how to say it.

“With moldering works of art, hidden passages, phantasms with sordid habits, and a strange and lingering miasma?”

“Yes, exactly, what am I supposed to-” his head jerked to look at her. “Wait, secret passages?”

She nodded. “A few. Nothing terribly exciting, the sort of thing that my several times great grandparents probably thought they should have to give it the proper feel.

“So what am I supposed to do with it?” Harry plowed on.

“Well,” she smiled, “you could always settle down and write gothic novels.”

~*~

The days passed quietly, and Harry slowly began to dread going back to Hogwarts to face the whispers, the owls, Snape, Ginny, and even just his N.E.W.T.s, which felt so unimportant next to everything else. On the morning of Teddy’s early birthday party, Harry wrapped the tiger pillow and carried it out of the guest room. Guests trickled in at lunch time, and gifts made a heap next to the two birthday cakes, a miniature one for teddy, and a normal sized one of the guests.

As soon as everyone had arrived, Andromeda set the little cake in front of Teddy and the guests crowded around to watch. Harry was trying to figure out what was so exciting about watching a one year old boy eat a cake when Teddy grabbed a fist full of icing. He looked at it with a puzzled expression, and then shook his hand to get it off. When it stuck fast, his face turned red, and Harry thought he was going to start screaming. As quickly as he could, Harry sprinted over to his chair and swiped a finger across the icing. He poked it into Teddy’s open mouth, and as soon as his godson tasted the icing, he sucked happily on the finger until it was gone. Then he looked again at his icing covered hand and shoved the icing into his mouth. His hair turned blue to match the icing and he smiled widely. After that, Teddy slowly demolished the little cake, Andromeda snapping photographs every step of the way.

When Harry had taken the crumb covered plate away from Teddy, he gazed around the room bemusedly. “I didn’t know who to invite,” Andromeda told him. “None of my friends have young children any more.” She sighed. “I invited Bella and Cissy to every one of Dora’s birthday parties, but that’s only because I knew they wouldn’t come.”

“Err…” He played with the collar of his shirt and tried not to look too uncomfortable.

“I wanted to remind them that they had a half-blood niece. After Bella was arrested, I even had the invitations sent to Azkaban, but I don’t know if she ever got any of them.” He nodded in what he hoped was a commiserating manner as a heavily pregnant Fleur sauntered over to stand next to them, a plate with cake on it in one hand.

“When’s the baby due?” Andromeda asked pleasantly.

“In a month, I will be glad when zis is over.” She loaded her fork up with cake and took a bite. “Ze cake is wonderful, Andromeda.”

Andromeda bowed her head in acknowledgement. “I hope it doesn’t spoil your lovely figure,” she teased.

“I am afraid zat zair isn’t much left to spoil,” she laughed, and Harry decided it was time to leave them to their conversation.

A few of Andromeda’s friends had brought their grand children. Teddy looked around and blinked at them uncertainly from his perch next to the table, icing covering his face. Andromeda took one last photograph and then wiped his face and hands off with a damp cloth before lifting him down.

He stood there wobbly for a moment, before he sat down on the floor and she put a present from the table in front of him. He ripped excitedly but ineffectually at it for a few minutes before he managed to pull the paper free from the red rubber ball (which turned out to be a Ritterman’s self catching and retrieving levitation ball) but he seemed to be more interested in the paper. Andromeda popped another present in front of him, and soon there was a sizable pile of paper next to him. The younger children at the party played with the paper and no one had the heart to throw it away quite yet, but sat around eating their cake and talking instead.

A little girl with dark brown hair and a green party dress who looked very alone and grown up compared to the other children at the party tugged on his arm. He looked down at her and she stood on her tiptoes. “It’s my birthday next week,” she told him.

“Really? How old are you going to be?”

“Six,” she told him proudly, “and I want a pink frog.”

Her grandmother, a tall, square faced woman with an under bite, caught up with her and scolded, “Honestly Beatrice, your mother told you, they’ll get you a frog when you start at Hogwarts.” She didn’t look placated, but scampered off to play tag with some of the older children in the garden. Her grandmother looked out at the ground, still soggy from the rain the day before and said confidently, “That dress is going to be absolutely covered in mud in a moment.”

~*~

The Friday before Harry was to leave for Hogwarts, he trekked down to Diagon Ally to buy the parchment, quills, and ink that he had forgotten to buy in Hogsmeade before he left. On his way to the stationary store, he saw a sign for a sale on gobstones in a shop window. Getting an idea, he stepped inside and searched through the gobstones sets until he found a porcelain set with little red foxes glazed on the white spheres. He paid a few sickles for them at the counter and then pocketed them and left. As he turned the clear bag of gobstones over in his hand, one of the foxes gave him a strangely accusatory stare, and he decided they were perfect.

When he returned with his purchases and packed them all way neatly in his trunk, Bodmin hooted at him irritably and he handed her an owl treat. “Don’t worry,” he told her, “We go home on Sunday.”

~*~

The only thing Harry had left to do was scramble around trying to find missing pairs of shoes and his cauldron, which he had taken out to find a clean shirt the week before, and to fish out the assorted toddler toys that had somehow made their way into his trunk over the course of the three weeks he had stayed.

When he came into the kitchen, dragging his trunk behind him, Teddy had his arms wrapped tightly around a squealing racecar that sped away like a rocket as soon as he let it go. He giggled as the car ran in circles around Harry’s feet and then stopped next to him again. With a chubby palmed clap, the car jumped into his lap like a frightened lapdog and squealed and revved to go again.

Andromeda placed two plates of scrambled eggs and toast on the table. As Harry sat down and buttered his toast, he poked the eggs with a fork. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so many scrambled eggs in so short a time as I have while I‘ve been here.”

Her smile didn’t reach their eyes, which had the same faraway look that he had seen in them on his first night with her. “They’re really just about the only thing I can cook, having grown up with house elves. Ted used to cook in self defense.”

“And the cakes?” he queried curiously.

She pinked. “I begged Molly to make them, but she said she didn’t have the time with everyone staying at her house for the holidays, so I had them made at a Muggle bakery.”

“Oh,” he murmured, and then louder, he said, “you used a very good bakery.”

A grin tugged at her lips before it disappeared. “Yes, that’s one thing I do know how to do. I can find the best of anything.”

Teddy abandoned his toy car and crawled over to his grandmother. She didn’t notice him until he tugged at her trouser leg. Looping an arm around his middle and swinging him upside down to her shoulder as he giggled and shrieked, she plopped him down in his high chair, slid his tray in place, and piled it with scrambled eggs and puréed bananas. He poked his finger into the bananas, then in the egg, and then into his mouth, a scowl on his face at being put down. Harry swallowed a forkful of eggs and watched her, and she caught his eye. “He’s really a very easy baby,” she told Harry, patting Teddy’s chubby thigh. “Dora wasn’t. She was colicky, and even after she grew out of that, she was a fussy demanding baby.”

“Really?” it didn’t sound much like adult Tonks at all.

“She didn’t start sleeping through the night until she was almost three.” She shrugged her shoulders eloquently. “Ted and I nearly went spare.” With a splat, Teddy launched some of his banana covered egg onto the floor. “This one’s been sleeping through the night since he was two months old.” She bent over to wipe up the sticky smeared baby food.

In the muted grey light of the early morning, Harry found himself reminded of another bleaker kitchen and a woman who didn’t know she would be pregnant very soon. He sat and gazed at her, a bite of toast still trapped behind his teeth, wondering if Snape had been an easy or colicky baby or somewhere in between. He wondered if Eileen ever told Tobias Snape about magic or if she had allowed him to find out on his own when Snape had started levitating things around the house as a child.

He snapped back to himself and shook his head when Andromeda suggested that he looked like he needed some sleep before Apparating to King’s Cross later that morning. “I don’t know why you were up so early in the first place.”

Teddy spent the rest of breakfast attempting to throw food at Harry, but it landed haphazardly on the side of the table nearest the high chair instead. Only a few sticky pieces actually made it into his stomach. Handing Teddy a bottle full of milk, Andromeda cleaned his hands with a wet towel and wiped away the leftover banana on the high chair. Tears pooled at the corner of her grandson’s eyes as she scrubbed at the childish squiggles of banana used as finger paint. Harry had just enough warning to stick his fingers in his ears before he started screaming.

Flicking Teddy’s wrinkled nose gently, Andromeda pulled the bottle out of his slack fingers and stuck it into his open crying mouth. “There you go,” she cooed as he latched on and started to suck. After one large gulp, he pulled the bottle out of his mouth and banged it on the damp but clean tray, but when Andromeda tried to take it away from him, he pulled it to his chest and quieted.

“I think it’s best if he keeps it,” Harry said nervously. She nodded her agreement.

After breakfast, Harry found himself staring at the ceiling of the guest room and running his fingers over the bag of gobstones absentmindedly. He nibbled on the last of the Easter candy Ron’s mother had sent him and dozed, surprised when he woke an hour later. Supposing he needed sleep more than he thought he had, he turned over and took a nap.

“Harry!” Andromeda called, and he woke with a start. “It’s ten minutes to eleven!” Harry bolted out of bed and raced to the front door. A deafening shriek stopped him short before he Apparated with Andromeda and Teddy, however, and he sprinted back to fetch Bodmin, who nipped at him through the bars of her cage. In the kitchen, Bodmin resting on the counter top, Harry we his fingers at the tap and ran them through his hair, trying to make it look like he hadn’t just popped out of bed, but it didn’t help. Andromeda saw him, and pressed his hair flat before vanishing with Teddy in a large crack. Harry followed a few seconds later.

Teddy shrieked with laughter when he saw Bodmin, who didn’t take well to being Apparated very well at all, puffed with fury. “Give me a kiss,” he said to his godson, who nibbled sloppily on his nose in reply, and Harry figured that was close enough. He pecked Teddy’s cheek, folded his hands and nodded awkwardly to Andromeda, and headed for the train.

His eyes on his feet to make sure that he didn’t step on anyone in the crowded platform, he didn’t notice the figure in front of him moving away from her family. He looked up for a moment, and the figure met his eyes. “Harry!” she called. Ginny Weasley was waiting for him on the platform.