Severus glared at the gold and red bottle on the table next to him. What did Potter want him to see so much that he would actually confront him to give it to him? Most of him wanted to pour the contents into the lake, just to spite Potter.

However, the rest of him acknowledged that he was far too curious to do such a thing. So instead of destroying the memories or viewing them, he lay in bed glaring at them instead.

He flicked his wand, sending his own memories back into his mind. The pensieve stood empty and inviting as he pushed the red and gold bottle under the hospital wing bed. For a brief moment he had to fight the impulse to shatter the bowl, recognizing it as Dumbledore’s. There was something spiteful in that boy that no one else seemed to see.

He would view the memories as soon as he could hobble his way out of the hospital wing. He would see what Potter had to show him and laugh at whatever petty idiocy the boy had concocted.

The pensieve crouched balefully on the table. He sneered at it. It wasn’t the man it had belonged to and he didn’t have to respect it. He didn’t have to respect the boy who had brought it. With that immensely comforting thought, he closed his eyes again.

~*~

The Fat Lady muttered darkly as Harry told her the new password (“Widdershins”). ”You couldn’t have come a few hours earlier when I was awake?” She thundered.

“You were awake, I just saw Violet run out of your portrait.”

She muttered even more darkly after that. As he closed the portrait, he caught “still a wretched hour…” He grinned tiredly.

As he turned around, a raucous applause filled his ears. His eyes stretched out of their puffy daze. Ron grabbed his arm and pulled him into the center of the common room. “We’re holding the victory party tonight,” he whispered in Harry’s ear.

Harry grinned wider. “Oh, good then.” Ron chuckled and someone threw a Hogwarts banner around both their shoulders. Hermione sat near the fire. Even had there been classes the next morning, she couldn’t have gotten too worked up about that victory party.

Ron grabbed a chocolate éclair and a butterbeer and dropped down next to her. Her hand ran though his hair and Harry snorted, leaving them alone. Neville waved him over and handed him a glass. Harry drank it in one gulp. It turned out to be firewhiskey and it sent him sputtering and choking. “Warn me next time!” Neville just patted him firmly on the back.

Four or five hands offered him cups of water, but he batted them away. Neville shrugged and smiled at him. “Want more?” Harry snorted again and ambled off to fetch a butterbeer.

A tap on his shoulder whiled him around and Ginny smirked at him. “Weren’t you at least going to say hello?”

“Hello Ginny.” Any lingering tiredness faded from thought. Laughter and voices pounded all around them as she leaned in to kiss his cheek. Something twisted again in his gut, but he didn’t push her away.

His arms closed awkwardly around her and she kissed him deeper. “I hope Ron sees this,” she whispered into his ear. He snickered, but he tried to do it kindly.

Voices boomed and laughed around them. There were even a few outbursts of musicless dancing, and it was during one of those that Ron saw them, but he didn’t seem to mind with his arm wrapped around Hermione’s waist. The party roared on into the night, and Harry suspected they might all be as tired tomorrow morning as they had been after the battle itself. Yet no one came to break it up. Down in the teacher’s lounge, the professors were busy holding their own unexpectedly raucous celebration.

~*~

When Madam Pomfrey could no longer justify holding him for anything other than observation, (“I am perfectly competent to brew and remember to take my own blood replenishing solutions, Poppy!”) she released him, as she put it, on his own recognizance. As he bypassed his old classroom dungeon in which the Malfoys excepting Draco were being held awaiting trial, he decided her choice of words weren’t amusing.

He twisted the doorknob of his office, across from his old classroom and felt it turn warm in his hand as it swung open. In his absence, his office had been emptied of any trace of Amycus Carrow. Boxes of parchments and books crowded the floor. He supposed that returning his positions from the headmistress’ office to his old office was her way of telling him she wanted him to stay.

By mutual agreement, when he had taken the Defense Against the Dark Arts post and Slughorn had come to teach potions, he kept his old office in the dungeons and Slughorn had taken the office and rooms traditionally reserved for the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. He was fond of his old quarters, and he dreaded finding out what Amycus had done to them in his brief tenure as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

A finger brushed the empty bookcase across from the desk. It slid away under its own power, as if the bookcase were on wheels. Invisible behind the bookcase, there was a tapestry of Aoife the armless (who had wielded her wand with her tongue) battling goblins. Severus whispered his password (“foxglove”) to it. Aoife winked slyly at him and a seam appeared in the tapestry and the rock behind it, and they swished open like curtains on a rod. When he passed through them, they closed up behind him, the stone moving like cloth until it sealed.

The students of Hogwarts imagined lavish quarters for their teachers. In his youth, he had assumed that the professors of Hogwarts lived in opulent, suites, and had some small pleasure dreaming up such extravagant surroundings. The tapestry door however opened on a small room with a curtained four-poster identical to the students’ beds only hung with grey pushed against the opposite wall, a threadbare carpet and nightstand beside it. Through a door near the tapestry door was a shower, sink, and toilet. Next to that door was a chest of drawers and a closet. He couldn’t have imagined it when he attended classes in the same halls in which he later taught.

Fetching his own empty pensieve from a drawer in the nightstand next to the bed, he poured the memories Potter had left him in the red and gold bottle into it. His feet brushed through the grey carpet. When he first began teaching, he had transfigured it from a ridiculous pink flowered comforter that hadn’t looked remotely like anything else his parents had owned. He still wondered why he found it with his mother’s personal possessions after her death. He set it back down on the nightstand, and hesitated only for a moment before diving in.

~*~

He landed in his own living room, sitting next to Potter, and facing his mother. He marveled, seeing her young, likely newly out of Hogwarts that he almost ignored Potter’s presence. Her wand pointed between Potter’s eyes, and he couldn’t help a measure of satisfaction rising up in his chest.

“How far back did you come?” she asked, relaxing her stance and smiling complacently.

Potter smiled back tentatively. “I don’t know what year it is, much less anything else.”

“January 9th, 1959.” Severus froze on the so familiar uncomfortable couch. The date she told him stood exactly one year from his birthday, and he suddenly wished to leave the memory, but he couldn’t summon the presence of mind to make his way out.

“1959!”

“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

The living room and its inhabitants dissolved around him. It reformed with Potter again on the couch and Severus’ mother in the armchair, a book and letter on her lap.

“Aren’t you afraid your neighbors will see you using an owl to deliver mail?” Potter queried, but she shook her head.

“They already think I’m eccentric. It won’t make any difference.”

“You are eccentric.”

To Severus’ amazement, she blushed. “You really think so?” He found himself focusing on her, wondering at her simple presence, focusing on her every action, even small ones, like hooking her hair behind her ears. “You realize that if you stay here, you’re going to have to work? I can’t afford to feed you otherwise.”

Potter fidgeted. “What do you want me to do?”

“How good are you at potions?” Little that he liked the way these memories were going, he had to snort at the panic on Potter’s face.

The scene spun again, and he found himself outside his mother’s door as Potter stood staring at it uncertainly. He heard shouting inside. “Go away, Snape, and don’t you dare call that singing.”

“Aw, Eileen, won’ you come down ‘ere and kish me?” It echoed strangely, as if he weren’t inside the room.

“Tobias Snape, you’re drunk, go home to your ma!” The words hit him like a fist, and a worm of suspicion grew in his chest. Had Potter, who had inexplicably traveled several dozen years into the past decided to use the memories as revenge for his insults to James Potter? Had he meant to show him that his father wasn’t a paragon either?

“Won’ you take me home?” he crooned. “Ma’s not ‘alf as pretty as you.”

“Get out of here, you idiot!” she screeched, and he heard breaking glass and then a window slamming. “I know you’re out there Potter.”

Potter flushed and pushed open the door. “Sorry, I thought you were in trouble or something.”

”No more than normal, I just wish I could hex him.”

“Oh, well. Good night then.”

The scene reformed around him Potter stood on a foot stool in the living room, cleaning the books by hand, and Severus’ mother watched contentedly. The couch had been transfigured into a ridiculous bed. His stomach churned, seeing one of the comforters atop it.

“Do you like watching me clean your house?”

“I can’t deny I feel some satisfaction at watching anyone other than me clean this place, but there are other reasons to watch you.” Severus’ eyes grew as wide as he could get them.

Potter stumbled with surprise, and she winked at him. “Are you flirting with me Eileen?”

“Why ever would you think that?”

“You winked at me,” Potter smiled at her. “I’m surprised at you.”

“Why Harry? I’m not much older than you are.” Potter laughed. Severus cringed.

When the scene resolved itself, he stood along the river. His mother and Potter walked together holding hands. “Your hands are cold, Harry,” She told him.

“So are yours.”

“Yes.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like winter much”

“I don’t mind it.”

She ran a hand up his arm and he son felt as if his blood had been left overnight in the freezer and his stomach in the oven. “I’d like it better if we were sitting in front of the fireplace with hot tea.”

“I wouldn’t mind that either.” Potter paused in thought. “It’s not really winter anymore, it’s March.” He draped an arm around her, and she kissed him. A sudden traitorous thought to the purpose of the memories consumed him. He found himself hoping Potter had only given him the memories to torture him with visions of Potter with Severus’ mother.

A small voice reminded him that had not been his own intent when he had given Potter his memories.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped.

“No, no, it’s okay”

Again, he was in the kitchen, Potter casting scorgify over dishes. His mother stepped over to him and smiled. “Come up with me?”

When Potter just gaped at her, she looked down. “I mean…” As she looked up at him, her eyes grew wide.

“Yes!”

“Oh, good.” Brief relief disappeared. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“It’s alright, I know what you meant.” Potter grinned triumphantly, and Severus wanted to vomit.

Her lips twisted up smugly as they drifted up the stairs, Severus stumbling behind in a sort of horrified stupor.

“I hope you know I’ve never done this before Eileen,”

“Don’t worry,” she laughed, “neither have I.” As she closed the door, the world spun again.

The room was dark, Potter’s eyes half closed as Severus’ mother leaned over him, a hand resting against the scars on his chest. Whatever they had done was over, and all Severus had to witness was the aftermath. She traced the scars with a finger. “Gryffindors,” she told him, “wear their scars on their skin and forget about other sorts.”

Potter gazed at her sleepily. “Maybe.”

The room reformed, sunlit in the early morning. His mother was running a hand against Potter’s face. “Good morning.”

“Morning, Harry.” As he smiled back, a terrible possibility flitted across her features. She snatched her wand from the bedside table, and Severus knew with awful certainty what was about to happen. She pointed the wand at herself and mumbled, “ostendo parvulus.” A ribbon of light spilled from her wand and connected to her, lighting her too.

Potter’s face held an expression of terrible comprehension. “I know why I was supposed to come!”

“What are you talking about, I am pregnant and you tell me you know why you came?” Severus wished he could choke the memory Potter as his mother’s eyes .filled with tears.

Potter’s hand plucked hers from the bed sheet. “I had to come to father this child.”

Her eyes stretched unnaturally wide. “What do you know about this child?”

“He… will be important.” He smiled at her halfheartedly. “His name’s Severus Snape.” Potter’s words produced a sense of finality to the conclusions he had come to.

“Snape!” He remembered abruptly her distaste of Tobias Snape, suddenly not his father.

“He was one of my professors at Hogwarts; he went to school with my father, he’s saved my life.” A still functioning corner of Severus’ mind admitted that was truth if only a piece of it.

“You’re going back now, aren’t you?” she snarled. Potter could only nod, so she spat, “Then go, get out of my house!”

Potter rested a hand over the place where Severus knew he grew, but his mother stayed still, letting him. Potter whispered so softly Severus had to lean in to hear him, “occulto verum” He spoke it again, louder, “occulto verum.” He yelled it, “occulto verum!”

Severus knew the glamour. As a potions master, he had little use for them, but he knew them well enough. A shock traveled though him. Underneath it, he must look a great deal like Potter, and trough him, James Potter. The possibility almost seemed more terrible tan the idea of the younger Potter as his father.

Potter paled as the magic left him, turning the color of curdled milk. “I hate to do this to you.”

“Oh I bet you do.”

“If you marry Tobias Snape-“ her hand slashed though the air, but Potter ignored it. “If you marry Tobias Snape and name this boy Severus, I can promise that he will die a hero.” It felt strange, strange as sharing blood with the Potters that the younger Potter knew how to tell deceptive half truths.

Her eyes narrowed and blazed. “Get out of my house!” As she shouted, Severus fell to his own chamber floor and onto the carpet that had once been a pink rose covered comforter. He stayed seated on it, gasping.

~*~

The morning dawned hot and wet, a rotten day for a funeral. None of the students had slept the night before. Even the Slytherins who were less than thrilled at the way the war had transpired had not had enough stone walls between them and the other of the members of their house who were throwing their on noisy victory party. Harry realized vaguely that he was a bit hung over, and the pounding in his head and roiling in his stomach might have more to do with that than with the number of dead.

The tired students had only just dropped into beds (or armchairs) before the red eyed and puffy professors were rousing them to troop down to Hogsmeade and its cemetery. The corpses of the dead floated along between the students, who moved among them. Professor McGonagall strode in front, her wand pointed discreetly behind her back, keeping the dead afloat. The families of the students and the dead and the fighters who remained followed her, ahead of the students. Behind the students and the dead marched the rest of the professors, Hagrid towering above all the rest, his brother left behind in the Forbidden Forest.

It wasn’t raining. The morning dawned hot and sunny, the air damp. Harry and the other students wore their school robes buttoned up regardless of the heat. Ron nudged him. “Mum and Dad are taking Fred home to be buried with Mum’s brothers.” With the funeral upon them, Ron had sunk into silence. Harry realized he had three months away from the deaths, when he didn’t have to face that when he came back, Fred and Tonks and Lupin wouldn’t be there. Dennis Creevy stayed at his brother’s side. Even Colin, though he had always thought his fellow Gryffindor was annoying, hurt. He wondered if Colin would have snuck in if he hadn’t hero worshiped him.

When he had snuck down the main street of Hogsmeade in his invisibility cloak in third year, he had seen the village as the epitome of freedom, full of the same mystery as Hogwarts, but without the teachers and homework. As he trudged though the cobblestone lane, the village looked instead as battered as the school.

There was one professor missing, and his absence didn’t go unnoticed. Professor Snape had pled ill health, but most of the students thought he was hiding. No one who had watched Voldemort die could have failed to witness him tell Voldemort the truth about Dumbledore’s death, and the ministry under Kingsley Shacklebolt had declined to press charges. There was no team of Aurors to arrest him if he stuck his nose out of his office.

Yet he had not stuck his nose out of his office since he had left the hospital wing. In his defense, it was only the night before that he had left. Unconsciously, Harry wondered if he had seen the memories yet, and if he didn’t want to face him.

The bodies floated eerily into waiting caskets as the cemetery doors glided open. The procession swelled with the residents of Hogsmeade, and the living rivaled the village cemetery’s other denizens. One coffin remained empty except for a mirror, a Gryffindor banner, and two newspaper clippings. There was no body of Sirius black to bury, and though it was two years late, this was to be his funeral as well. Harry peered at the clippings. One told the story of his escape from Azkaban, and the other came from the year before, proclaiming his innocence and his death.

Professor McGonagall’s eulogy was mercifully brief, and Harry heard none of it, his eyes boring their ay into the head stones reading the names. The carved headstones and coffins shattered the unreality of death, and made him feel it as even dead bodies never could. The hot debilitating grief that had engulfed him after the Department of Mysteries returned full force seeing his friends’ names written in stone.

Tears didn’t come for Harry; his eyes were too scratched and dry from the pain for them to come. His fellow students more than made up for his lack of tears though. There wasn’t a house in the school that hadn’t lost a member. Voldemort’s supporters among the students gazed on, some shamefaced and some defiant, but by and large completely ignored.