Eight months after Voldemort’s defeat.

Albus Dumbledore hummed cheerfully to himself as he pottered around his office preparing for the new school year. And why shouldn’t he? This year would be very different to last year, this year would be the first year in some time not to be overshadowed by fear and death. Last October Voldemort had been defeated (by a baby, no less!) and last month the last of the Death Eater trials had been concluded. It might be, as Albus strongly suspected, that Voldemort would return, not truly destroyed despite Harry and Lily’s remarkable work, but that was for the future. It could be that an entire generation would grow up without knowing the taint of the man who sought to escape death and impose his will upon the entire world.

With a sigh of satisfaction, Albus took out the Hogwarts Scroll and sat down as he unrolled it, looking over with a paternal eye the names of the children who might now grow up safe and happy. Children were the most precious treasure in any society and that the children destined to attend Hogwarts would be allowed to keep their innocence was a joy and a delight. Albus smiled, feeling a deep contentment with the world.

Until, that was, he noticed that one name had been crossed out by the magic of the scroll that registered the appearance of magical children, a line ruled neatly through it. It was almost unheard of that a name should be crossed out, for once magic had begun to exert its influence over a child’s body it was almost impossible to suppress or remove. The name that had been crossed out wasn’t just any name, either, but one the whole wizarding world would recognise: Harry James Potter.

Albus frowned. Harry was magical, there could be no doubt of that. Not only had his name appeared on the scroll the moment he was born, but he had (with his mother’s help) defeated Voldemort.

His frown cleared. Ah, of course, it must have been something to do with Voldemort’s attack that had caused this anomaly. Perhaps the magic of Lily’s sacrifice, Old Magic, strange magic, was interfering with the scroll’s ability to register Harry’s magical signature. That was easily fixed. Pulling out his phoenix quill, kindly donated by Fawkes some years ago and used only for the most important of purposes, Albus’s narrow, looping writing added a new name to the foot of the scroll. The name, having been manually added, couldn’t be removed by the scroll’s magic.

“There,” Albus said aloud, perfectly satisfied, and put the scroll away with a sense of having justly carried out his duties. How terrible if Harry had somehow been missed when it came his turn to be invited to Hogwarts! It was good he had caught the mistake.

The scroll, being an inanimate object, couldn’t complain. It would have, though, if it could.

--

Nearly ten years after Voldemort’s defeat.

Albus thought no more of the strange matter of Harry’s name being removed from the scroll. After all, he’d dealt with the problem and it was no longer a problem. Why would he think about it? But Harry Potter presented him, nine years later, with a new problem. Having pushed the earlier incident from his mind, Albus didn’t connect this problem with the old one. Instead he frowned at the piece of Muggle stationery that had arrived in the school’s Muggle post, maintained for the benefit of the Muggleborns.

Dear Hogwarts, it read in careful but untidy child’s writing. Thank you for your offer but I’m going to another school.

Yours sincerely,

Harry Potter

Albus read the missive three times as if it would suddenly change its meaning. Then he put it down on the desk and gave a firm nod. He had not become one of the wizarding world’s acknowledged greats by refusing to deal with problems; this might be a kink in his plans to help Harry save the world but that was all right, he wouldn’t be put off. It was too important that Harry be given the tools he needed to help him in the task Albus knew would fall to him. Harry would come to Hogwarts.

Albus would make sure of it.

A summons to Albus’s office never boded well. Severus threw down his quill and nodded to the house elf who had delivered the message. It vanished from his office with a pop, leaving him to take a moment for mental cursing before reluctantly standing. Invitations for tea, while irritating, were delivered in person and meant nothing more dangerous than idle, irritating conversation about subjects Albus thought Severus only pretended to disdain. A summons, however, meant Albus had a problem. And, Severus being what he was, he never got the nice, simple problems, only the difficult, messy problems with difficult, messy solutions.

Snarling the password at the griffin outside Albus’s office, Severus wrapped his robes around him for a comforting moment of self-defence as the stairs carried him upwards. So fortified, he knocked on Albus’s door.

“Come in, come in,” Albus called genially.

Severus rolled his eyes heavenward in a plea for strength and opened the door. It wasn’t that he disliked Albus precisely, he even mostly respected the man. It was just that try as he might he couldn’t bring himself to like him. They were just too dissimilar. Albus always saw the best in people and gave them second chances they didn’t deserve when Severus knew perfectly well that most people were blithering idiots and giving them a first chance to betray you was a foolish idea. Albus believed in things like the sanctity of childhood and that really everyone was a good person deep down, while Severus knew from personal experience that some people weren’t allowed childhoods and some people were scum no matter how deep you dug. And while Severus had no problem with people being happy and was quite fond of a bit of happiness himself every now and then, Albus’s persistent in-your-face cheerfulness got on his nerves something awful.

“Ah, Severus, do come in.” Albus beamed at him in greeting and Severus tried not to sigh; cheerfulness was all very well in its place but surely a sane person could not be that cheery all the time? “Do sit down, have a seat. Sherbet lemon?”

Severus took the seat but not the sweet. Albus knew very well he had no taste for sweet things but, as in so many things, seemed to think that if he just persisted he could change Severus’s mind. It was as if who Severus was wasn’t acceptable to Albus’s happy little world so he had to change him into something that was. Severus was quite content as he was and didn’t want to be changed, thank you very much. Unruffled by the curt refusal (Severus had tried politeness to begin with but soon gave up), Albus gave a knowing smile that said ‘Ah, but I know one day you will let down your defences and show that you are really a sweet person’. Severus managed, with great effort, not to glower.

There then followed the obligatory small talk (time wasting, Severus called it). How was he, what had he been up to today, how were his lesson plans coming, did he still plan to be at Hogwarts until the end of the week or would he be finished up earlier than that...

“Enough, Albus,” he said finally when his patience started wearing dangerously thin. “What is it you want of me?”

Albus looked faintly hurt. Severus, with great heroism, refrained from rolling his eyes. The man did so love to come at things indirectly, dancing around the point for hours rather than cutting straight to the heart of the matter. Maybe it was an age thing: he’d seen so many hours he didn’t mind wasting a few of someone else’s. Or maybe it was just an Albus thing: he loved his games and his carefully laid plans all unfolding quietly to a neat and complete whole so that he could look over the outcome with a benevolent twinkle and think how wonderful he was. (And yes, Severus was cynical and paranoid – and proud of it – but that didn’t mean he was wrong.)

“Ah, always down to business, aren’t you, Severus? Perhaps when you are older you will learn to take the time to enjoy some of the small pleasures in life.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Albus, I have a great deal of work waiting for me in my office and I don’t intend to spend another two weeks working on it. Especially not when the Brewers’ Conference starts next week. If you have something to say to me then just say it.”

Albus sighed reproachfully (Severus refused to feel reproached) and handed him a sheet of cheap paper over the desk. “I have received this.”

Severus read it with a raised eyebrow and managed not to start dancing on the desk in joy. “So? The boy has the right to refuse tuition here if he wishes.” And Severus would be delighted if it came to pass, since the anticipation of having to cope with James Potter’s son in his classes made him look forward to the new school year with even less enthusiasm than usual. Unfortunately, he knew Albus too well.

“He is Harry Potter.”

“Thank you for stating the obvious,” Severus muttered, then fell silent when Albus aimed a look at him over his spectacles.

“He must come to Hogwarts. If he goes untrained in magic then upon Voldemort’s return he will be defenceless. And neither Voldemort nor the Death Eaters will offer him any mercy for lacking the ability to defend himself.” Severus hated it when Albus managed to make a rational argument (by sheer coincidence, as far as Severus was concerned, rather than because he was thinking rationally; Albus, like most wizards, had a poor grasp of logic). “I want you to go to him and convince him and his family of the importance of his attending Hogwarts.”

“What!” Severus rose out of his chair in shock. Even for Albus this was going too far.

“Severus, it is time for you to put aside this childish rivalry and focus on the greater good.”

Severus bit his tongue so hard in his attempt not to explode that he drew blood. Attempted murder and persistent bullying that in adults would have resulted in a jail sentence for assault was always in Albus’s mind just high-spirited behaviour that Severus should be able to get over. The blinkers that man wore! Aware that there was nothing he could do to change Albus’s mind, Severus managed to choke down his anger lest he bring forth a gentle and long-winded lecture on the benefits of forgiveness and moving on. “And if I will not?”

“Please, Severus. Who better than you to impress upon him the very real danger posed to him if Voldemort does return, as we both know he will, and seeks him out?”

“I’m sure Minerva would be more than pleased to—”

“She is busy with the other first years. There is no one else I can trust to make the boy understand the importance of this. He must come to Hogwarts, Severus.”

“Fine.” He turned and walked out of the office without bothering with further conversation, waiting until he was safely in his portrait-, ghost-, and house elf-free chambers before letting out the snarl. You always find the way to twist the knife a little deeper, don’t you, Albus? Not only was he expected to accept James Potter’s son in the school but now he had to convince the brat to even come.

-

Number 4 Privet Drive was a patterncard of respectability in a street of identical, monotonous, upper middle class snobbery. Severus squashed his sneer and rang the doorbell. The woman who opened the door bore little resemblance to Lily but the faint hum of wards on his skin assured Severus he had the right house. “Mrs Dursley?” he enquired politely (contrary to popular belief, he did have perfectly good manners, he just didn’t bother using them most of the time).

“Yes,” she admitted suspiciously.

“My name is Severus Snape. I’m here to talk with Mr Potter about a letter he sent to Hogwarts.”

A look of distaste flickered across her face and she darted a look over his shoulder as if worried someone would hear him. “I suppose you’d better come in then,” she said reluctantly, stepping back. She closed the door behind him and ushered him down the hall into the sitting room. “At least you know how to dress like a normal person,” she said with grudging approval, looking him over. “Wait here, I’ll get the boy.”

Severus sat on the too-clean couch, wrinkling his nose fastidiously at the persistent smell of cleaning products and rapping his fingers impatiently on the armrest.

“There’s someone to see you,” Mrs Dursley’s slightly shrill voice came in through the open window. A murmur even Severus’s sharp ears couldn’t catch. “About that Hogwarts nonsense. Go wash your hands.”

“Nonsense?” Severus repeated to himself in a dangerous murmur.

A minute later a small boy walked in, rubbing still damp hands on his shirt, to stare at Severus. Severus frowned back, unimpressed. Harry Potter was a miniature version of his father, the same messy hair, the same shaped face. His eyes were Lily’s, though, and the glasses he favoured, rectangular rather than round, changed the shape of his face enough that he didn’t look exactly like James. Severus chose to ignore this, instead focussing on the similarities, noting the disobedient set of the shoulders, eyeing with distaste the dirt stains on the boy’s shorts and knees.

“I’m a bit grubby, sorry. I was weeding. Aunt Petunia said you wanted to speak to me?”

Mrs Dursley came in and frowned at Severus. “And?”

And people thought he had no manners. “Mr Potter, is it true you don’t wish to attend Hogwarts?”

“Um, yes.” Potter glanced at his aunt and then met Severus’s eyes. “We decided I didn’t need to.”

Severus proceeded to explain, eloquently and in great detail, just how wrong they were. Potter sat on the edge of his seat, wilting noticeably and shooting helpless looks at his aunt while Mrs Dursley’s lips grew thinner and thinner.

“This Voldemort man won’t come after us,” she informed him primly when he’d finished. “We have nothing to do with your world.”

“He doesn’t care about whether you have magic or not,” Severus told her with forced patience. He had just said this. “He will come and if Mr Potter doesn’t learn magic to defend himself—”

“But the boy doesn’t have any magic! He never did any of the freak things Lily used to do.”

Merlin save him from morons wizarding and Muggle. “If he received a Hogwarts letter he has magic,” Severus bit out. He turned away without waiting to see the effect of this and glared at Potter. “You will come to Hogwarts if I have to drag you there myself. Am I understood?”

The boy looked white but said steadily, if quietly, “Yes, sir.”

“Then I shall see you on September the first. Be there, Potter; if I have to come and get you I will not be pleased.”

Scowling, he stalked out of the house and apparated away at the first concealed spot he found. Joy of joys, he had managed to convince the brat to come and plague him at Hogwarts. Albus owed him for this.

It wasn’t until he was back in the castle with his interrupted paperwork that it occurred to him Mrs Dursley had said something odd; a strange word she’d used, wasn’t it? Severus couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was and since he didn’t really care he gave it up and forgot about it.

Unfortunately he couldn’t forget about Potter, a wizard child in that very Muggle house surrounded by what were, if Mrs Dursley was any example, very Muggle people. The brat – curse him for putting Severus to all this trouble – needed to go on the Muggleborn orientation. Sighing, Severus heaved himself out of his chair and went in search of Albus. At which point he hit an unexpected roadblock.

“Is that really necessary, Severus?” Albus asked. For Albus that was practically a flat-out ‘no’. “He’s hardly a Muggleborn.”

Severus tried to recover from the shock of finding Albus wasn’t prepared to do everything possible to pamper his little Golden Hero. “Raised by Muggles? He’s as good as.”

Albus peered at him over his spectacles. Severus radiated immobility on the point. “Very well, Severus, as you wish.” This was accompanied by a gentle sigh and in a tone supposed to inspire immediate contrition, not to mention a retraction of the request.

Severus felt immediate irritation. “I do wish.”

Dear Merlin, what are you trying to do, kill the boy? A Muggle-raised child thrust into the heart of Hogwarts without any sort of guidance would be at the mercy of all those around him; a Muggle-raised hero would be even worse. And whatever else Potter might be, he was a student. He deserved protection.

-

“Neville!” Gran’s voice was sharp. “Don’t wander off!”

“I wasn’t, I was just—”

“Come along, come along. You don’t want to get lost again.”

Neville sighed and trailed after Gran through the bustling crowds that filled Diagon Alley. He’d only ever gotten lost once and that had been scary, sure, but he’d only been three. He wasn’t three any more and sometimes he thought he’d really really like to get lost again. Only this time he wouldn’t let himself be found.

“I think we’ve got everything on your Hogwarts list now... And no, we’re not going near a Quidditch shop,” Gran said swiftly, even though Neville hadn’t said anything and had barely even let himself glance longingly in that direction. “First years aren’t allowed brooms. We’ll see about next year.” Yes, Neville could imagine: the oldest, slowest, and above all safest broom she could find. “Your father was such an excellent chaser,” she continued with the faint smile, the most smile she ever gave, that only memories of his father could summon up.

Then she glanced at Neville and the smile faded. He could almost see the thought ‘But of course we can’t expect that from you, can we?’ He looked away so he could scowl without being told off and kicked at a cobblestone. It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t his dad! He was sure he could be good at things too if she’d only give him a chance. But no one ever gave him a chance, everyone had forgotten he wasn’t five years old any more. If the Hogwarts letter hadn’t come Neville was pretty sure his entire family would have happily gone on believing he was five until he reached fifty and died from boredom.

“Oh, look, there’s Minerva. She must be showing some Muggleborns around.” Neville obediently looked, staring glumly at the boy and girl trailing in Professor McGonagall’s wake as she pointed something out. He wondered if they had parents, real parents who hugged them and were proud of them and didn’t live in a hospital. Parents who knew who they were. He wondered if people treated them like five-year-olds or if they had the kind of parents he’d read about in books, who let their children grow up. He wondered if they had any friends and if they’d mind being friends with him. He didn’t have any friends.

“Neville! Neville! Stop dawdling, I want to get this shopping done before Elvira arrives!”

Neville sighed and hurried after Gran. Maybe going to Hogwarts would change his life. But in his short eleven years Neville had learned that no matter how much the scenery and the people changed, he was still just clumsy, foolish Neville. No friends, no parents. Just him.

He enviously glanced back at the two Muggleborns, now following Professor McGonagall into Ollivanders. That reminded him of something important and he tugged on Gran’s sleeve. “Gran? What about a wand? Don’t I need a wand too?”

-

It was the last week before term began and all the teachers had returned to school; most were in a huge rush with last minute arrangements for their classes and Severus felt righteously smug. He hadn’t rushed off immediately to take a holiday, he had got on with his work even though it meant spending a few extra weeks at Hogwarts. And now he was calmly going about the last of his arrangements with easy languor, enjoying being one of the few not rushed off his feet. Taking his final class lists to Minerva, Severus strolled through the Charms corridor at nonchalant, unhurried speed, just to annoy Filius, who glanced up at the sound of footsteps outside his office, looking harassed, before hurriedly burying himself (almost literally) in his last minute paperwork. Severus smiled and walked on.

He didn’t get very far, though. The familiar tingle of magic on his arm made Severus drop his pile of parchment in shock. Not because it hurt, which it didn’t, but because it had been nearly ten years since he last felt that tug, ten years of longing for it and hoping it would never come. Oblivious to the scattered papers at his feet, he pulled up his sleeve and stared at the tattoo etched on his left arm. The Dark Mark, people had called it, despite the fact it had initially been a mark of love. Gingerly, uncertainly, not knowing whether the predominant emotion in him was joy or despair, Severus touched the Mark with a shaking finger and instantly knew the location he was being called to. It was a request, not a summons, the way it had always been; never the demand of a leader, but the asking of a—

Severus swallowed hard and headed for the stairs, abandoning his forgotten papers. He had to get out of the anti-apparation wards, he had to answer the call. He had to know.

Apparation took him to a place he’d never been before, some nondescript forest, probably somewhere in the midlands by the trees, and Severus looked around. Had it been some kind of joke? Had he imagined it? Where was—?

“Severus. It has been too long.”

He spun. A man stood behind him, clothed in simple brown robes but wearing the familiar face with its warmly intelligent blue eyes under neat black hair. He wasn’t dead! He wasn’t gone! Severus didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, he just fell on his knees. “My Lord,” he whispered.

Hands pulled him up, gentle and strong as they had always been, setting him firmly on his feet. “No, Severus. I told you, never you. Don’t kneel to me.” Voldemort smiled. “I’ve missed you, little brother.”

Severus walked in the past, a place he hated to visit.

He’d been a halfblood in Slytherin. Not a rare thing, though in the last century or two Slytherin had become the province of purebloods and bare of Muggleborns, but halfbloods sorted there learned swiftly that in their house they were second-class citizens. In the wider world it might not be so, but here it was all too true.

But Severus was a potions genius, his potential obvious even by his second year, and that made him useful without – and this was important – without making him a threat. To the traditionalist purebloods with delusions of grandeur, potion brewing was a necessity but not something a person indulged in unless they had to. Only the lower classes, the lesser beings, sullied their hands on it without good cause; certainly no proper person enjoyed potions. But for a halfblood it was perfectly acceptable, even laudable.

Some of the older Slytherins therefore gave him patronage and Severus survived on that. It wasn’t enough to protect him from Potter’s gang of bullies, of course, because Potter and Black were purebloods, regardless of affiliation, and the Slytherin purebloods gave them leeway because of that. Any major transgression was naturally revenged because it affected the reputation of Slytherin, but his housemates mainly turned a blind eye to anything done to Severus as long as it didn’t affect his value as a commodity. Since the teachers wouldn’t act against Potter because they didn’t believe Severus and his parents didn’t care enough to notice, he accepted that small measure of protection as the best he would get.

Then Lucius Malfoy, hoping to find favour by obtaining a potion maker, took him to Voldemort.

To the charismatic man who spoke with such eloquent, enthusiastic clarity about the decay of their world, about the potential for a new world order, about a need to tear down the old ways so they could build their society up again better and stronger than it had ever been. Just the words to appeal to youngsters ready to make their mark on the world but chafing at the restrictions and rules of their elders who still saw them as children. He offered to help them learn the knowledge that over-cautious adults said would be too dangerous for them to study. He told them the world was ruled by doddering old fools and it was up to the young, the courageous, to take control and make it all the way it should be. And they listened. Oh how they listened.

To a generation of youths Voldemort was a hero, the man who would lead them into a brighter world where they could right all the wrongs, real and imagined, they’d ever seen. They loved him, believed him, believed in him. There were whispers that he was the Heir of Slytherin – even that he was Salazar Slytherin reborn – and everyone believed it. He was great, he was wonderful, he was powerful. He was theirs.

Severus was no more immune than any of his fellows and he clung to the edge of the group of followers, knowing he could never be a serious part of the revolution, knowing that whatever Voldemort’s bright new world would involve it was unlikely to bring anything good for him, but desperate for at least a glimpse, even if he couldn’t touch it. Even if this world wasn’t for him, he wanted to know it would exist. That was the magic in Voldemort’s words; he made you want his dream, he made you dream his dream.

And then one day Voldemort himself came to Severus as he stood on the edges. Voldemort came to him and took him aside, walked with him, talked to him as an equal as if he was genuinely interested in what Severus had to say. Severus hated the thought of the look on Voldemort’s face when he realised just what he was talking to, but he couldn’t stand the thought of this man going on talking to someone like him and he couldn’t bear the waiting for the man to realise what he was.

“Lord, I have to... My Lord, I’m a halfblood!” he burst out, and waited for the blow to fall. He stood there, trembling, a gangly fifteen-year-old waiting for his god to dismiss him, unaware of the fear and longing on his face as he looked up at his leader.

Voldemort smiled. “I know, Severus.” His smile deepened at Severus’s shock. “Did you think I wouldn’t? Of course I know. I make it my business to know all about all those who would choose to follow me – especially those with so much potential.” His blue eyes smiled down at Severus, deep satisfaction in his face. “And yet you dared to tell me yourself. Such courage,” he purred. “I covet courage in my closest allies. They say it’s a Gryffindor trait. Who knows? All I know is I need those with courage, for only those with courage can change the world.” He looked at Severus, knowing what he was, and he smiled. Severus had been willing to die for him from the moment he first heard the man speak; now he would willingly immolate his soul.

After that Severus was no longer the tolerated halfblood on the edges of Voldemort’s councils, no longer despised by his pureblood ‘betters’. He was Voldemort’s favourite and no one could shift him from that position (and they tried, oh how they tried). But Severus didn’t care about the people who looked at him with envious eyes and he certainly didn’t care about the people who tried to curry his favour so he’d carry a good word to Voldemort, he only cared about Voldemort. Voldemort, who actually cared about him as no one else ever had, who was genuinely interested in his problems and his hopes, who gave him advice, who guided his steps into adulthood.

Until Voldemort was no longer the leader of his adolescent fantasies, but simply the only person who’d ever cared. The father figure his own father had refused to be, the friend his Hogwarts fellows had denied him for reasons of blood or house. Voldemort, who called him ‘little brother’ with warmth in his eyes and teased him and taught him and looked after him. No one had ever cared about Severus before, cared about him because he was Severus. Not because he was under his protection or because he was obliged to, but just because he liked Severus.

Severus was the only one who was told that Voldemort truly was Slytherin’s Heir. The only one told the truth of the man’s parentage – that, despite the purebloods flocking to his banner, his father was as Muggle as Severus’s (and as cruel). “See, Severus?” he’d said. “We are brothers. So alike.” How could Severus not love him as his brother with all the love of a heart that had never been allowed to love anyone before?

For two short years he was happier than he had ever been.

Those memories should have been wonderful, the memories of a person who finally cared about him. But they were poisoned, like every good thing in Severus’s life. Poisoned because of what was to follow.

Because he was kept close to Voldemort, protected by his brother’s care, Severus didn’t realise that Voldemort’s followers were changing. He didn’t realise the group meant to change the world for the better had turned into the public’s monsters, didn’t realise that their determination to save the world had turned into a rash of fear and death cast across the country. When he wasn’t at Voldemort’s home he was at Hogwarts and Hogwarts was isolated from the rest of wizarding society so even when he heard the rumours Severus could easily ignore them. His brother wouldn’t do that. His brother wasn’t like that.

Voldemort had never asked him to do any of what he called ‘field work’, Severus’s contribution to the cause had always been his beloved potions (only asked of him because he insisted on helping; Voldemort would happily have asked nothing of him), executed to the best of his remarkable ability because here was a way he could help change the world – here was a way he could help his brother. While the revolution crossed Britain, leaving a trail of pain and hate behind it, Severus thrived happily under the watchful eye of the only person who’d ever loved him.

But in the end even Severus had to see what was happening.

When he finally had to realise that his comrades were killers, that his brother was being named Dark Lord, Severus didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t a bully, he certainly couldn’t kill. Some victims gladly turn on other victims in their turn, perpetuating a cycle of pain, but Severus could only hate those who’d earned it, he couldn’t hurt strangers. He’d been the victim too long to be able to do anything but empathise. Hurt, he wouldn’t turn on others, for his hurt turned inward, not outward. Which meant he could never become one of the so-called ‘Death Eaters’ hiding behind their masks and their robes.

But where could he turn? Voldemort was the only person in his life who’d loved him, but his brother had gone down a path Severus couldn’t follow. There was the enemy, of course, but he’d spent nearly seven years at Hogwarts and he didn’t trust Dumbledore. And if he couldn’t trust the leader of the Light and his own beloved brother led the Dark, where was he to turn?

At that point, as he floundered alone in a morass of confusion, he was offered a way out. It was Voldemort who asked him to become a spy for both sides, who (having had his own experiences with the man) taught him to fool Dumbledore, and Severus took up a position as assistant professor at Hogwarts with relief. Spying was better than trying to figure out where he stood on the issue, because as a spy he stood on both sides. So both sides considered him their spy and both sides distrusted him – except for their leaders, both of whom trusted him completely.

But not even Severus knew where his allegiance truly lay.

-

Neville arrived on Platform 9¾ early, of course. Gran would never be late for anything. Even the train itself was just pulling in to the platform when they stepped through the wall. At least this way he’d get to choose a compartment for himself and wouldn’t have to try sitting with anyone. It would be awful to have to ask and get turned down.

Gran didn’t wait. She gave him last night’s advice lecture again, appropriately abbreviated, and said “I expect you’ll go very well at Hogwarts” in a tone almost friendly. Then she hesitated, looking down at him as if there was something important to tell him. But all she said was, “Goodbye, Neville. I shall see you at the end of term. Remember to give my regards to Professor McGonagall.”

“Yes, Gran. Goodbye.”

He swallowed hard, watching her sail majestically across the platform under her vulture hat and suddenly feeling very alone. Grabbing his trunk, made feather light by magic so commonplace Neville never even noticed it, he got on the train and reminded himself he was too old to cry.

Inside his chosen compartment he let Trevor out of his carry case, glad he had someone with him. The toad looked around with ponderous curiosity. “It’s going to be okay, Trevor,” Neville said, trying to reassure himself. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Trevor gulped at him and walked sideways a little, apparently curious at the feel of the seat under his feet. If he’d had a choice in his pet Neville would have liked a cat, something he could hold and pat, but he liked Trevor. Trevor never looked at him disapprovingly and he radiated a placid contentment that always made Neville feel better.

But he could also move unexpectedly quickly and while Neville was distracted looking out onto the platform, now getting crowded, Trevor disappeared. No amount of calling made him reappear and even though Neville looked in every single nook and cranny in the compartment he’d vanished completely.

Oh no.

Neville sat down heavily and looked uncertainly out the door at the kids rushing noisily through the corridor. He didn’t know how Trevor could have possibly gotten out but if he wasn’t in here then he was out there. And Neville had to go looking. Trevor was his responsibility and he couldn’t abandon him. He swallowed hard, feeling even shakier than when Gran had left him. Neville hadn’t had a lot to do with people outside of his family and he was nervous around strangers.

But worry for Trevor overcame his fear of going to ask all those strangers and he got up... just as a girl knocked on the door and put her head into the compartment. Neville stared at her in surprise; she was the girl he’d seen with Professor McGonagall in Diagon Alley. What did she want with him?

“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “Can I sit here? Would you mind?”

“S-sure,” he said, hating himself for stuttering. But he’d expected to be ignored by everyone so it was a shock to have someone smiling at him and wanting to sit with him.

“Thanks.” She dragged her trunk in. “I’m Hermione. What’s your name?”

“N-Neville.”

“Hi, Neville.” He helped her with her trunk, earning another bright smile. “What’s wrong? You look worried.”

“I can’t find Trevor!” he burst out like an idiot.

She didn’t seem to mind. “I’ll help you look, then. What does he look like?”

She did help, too, and she didn’t laugh at him for having a toad though even Neville knew they weren’t cool pets, and she seemed to like him. Neville had never been so grateful to anyone in his life.

They’d just found Trevor hiding in the next compartment and come back in triumph when a boy knocked on the door. The boy he’d seen with Hermione and Professor McGonagall, actually. Neville felt a surge of jealousy because Hermione smiled at the newcomer and said “Hello, Harry!”

But the boy grinned at Neville too and said, “Hi, I’m Harry. Do you mind if I sit with you?”

And suddenly Neville, who’d never had any friends, had two friends.

Hermione interrupted their chatter when the train started moving to dash to the window and wave vigorously to someone outside, but Neville didn’t have anyone to wave to and it didn’t seem like Harry did either since the other boy just shifted out of the way of Hermione’s eager hand and kept talking to Neville. When Hermione at last sat down again she looked a little teary and Neville shifted uncomfortably in his seat, shooting a nervous look at Harry and hoping he knew how to deal with a weeping girl. Neville had never had to and didn’t really want to have to start now.

“Hey, Hermione,” Harry said, “I don’t know if you got my last letter before you left, but thanks for those chapters, they really helped.”

Neville wasn’t sure if it had been meant to, but the change of subject cheered Hermione up immediately. “I did get your letter and you really don’t need to thank me any more than you already did.” There was laughter in her voice. “See I told you it was a good idea to buy so many books. I’m glad you found them useful.”

Seeing Neville’s confusion, Harry said, “She photocopied some bits from books so I could read them.”

Half an hour was then spent in trying to explain what ‘photocopy’ meant. At the end Neville wasn’t entirely sure he understood properly. It sounded an awful lot like Muggles had magic, but Muggles didn’t have magic. That was why they were Muggles. Then he thought to ask what Hermione had been photocopying.

“Chapters about me,” Harry said glumly. Hermione patted his shoulder sympathetically but Neville was confused again.

“Why would you be in a book?” he asked curiously.

That made Harry laugh. “That’s exactly what me and Hermione said to Professor McGonagall!”

Hermione took pity on him. “Harry didn’t know about him and Voldemort.”

Neville stared at her. Then he stared at Harry. Hermione leaned into her friend and brushed aside his fringe so Neville could see the scar he’d heard about a million times.

“You’re—you’re Harry Potter!” Harry winced and Neville hastily shut up. He knew all about people assuming they knew all about him. “I’m sorry,” he said in a small voice. “I didn’t mean to—It was just a shock, is all.”

“That’s okay,” Harry said with resignation. “I guess you had bedtime stories about me too.”

Not that anyone had ever told him bedtime stories, but close enough. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Gosh, I’m glad I didn’t know who you were when I first met you, I’d have been too nervous to talk to you! I thought you must be—”

“Six feet tall and able to slay dragons with a single blow?”

Neville laughed. “Yeah.” He studied Harry. “But you’re just a kid. Just like me.”

“Yup.” Harry looked uncertain for a moment, nothing like a big brave hero. “So... we still...?”

“Yes!” As if he wouldn’t want to be friends with Harry! “But wait, I saw you at Diagon Alley with Professor McGonagall. Why’d you go on the Muggleborn orientation if you’re not Muggleborn?”

“Because I’m Muggle-raised. I didn’t know any more about this stuff than Hermione.” He smiled at her. “Actually, I still don’t.”

Hermione elbowed him. “Professor McGonagall was very helpful,” she said primly. An eager look jumped into her eyes. “Have you done any spells? That’s the problem with being Muggleborn, there’s no one around to ask questions of and it’s so hard to know if I’m doing things properly. I think they all worked how they were supposed to.”

“Gran wouldn’t let me try. She said I had to wait until my teachers showed me.” He looked at her enviously, wishing he had already done magic. Then he looked at Harry. “What about you?”

“I didn’t get to practise any magic.” His eyes danced away from Neville for a second. “My relatives didn’t want anyone to see me do it.”

“Harry.” Hermione’s voice held a mild scold.

Harry rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay. My relatives hate magic. I didn’t even know there was magic until my Hogwarts letter came, let alone all this hero stuff.”

“You didn’t know who you are?” Neville had grown up knowing all about the Boy Who Lived and it was hard to believe the Boy Who Lived hadn’t known any of it.

“I knew who I was. I just didn’t know who everyone else thought I was.”

Neville winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Nah, it’s okay. I didn’t meant to snap.”

Hermione bounced on her seat. “Do you want to try now?” she asked excitedly.

They tried a colour charm spell, trying to turn Neville’s wooden pencil box red. It worked for Hermione and after a couple of tries Neville managed to get the box pink. Harry didn’t manage to get any colour at all but if it bothered him he didn’t show it. Instead he studied Neville’s wand. “Yours looks older than ours,” he said.

“It was my dad’s wand so Gran gave it to me.”

His new friends exchanged puzzled looks. “I don’t mean to be rude,” Harry said carefully, “but that doesn’t sound right.”

“Mr Ollivander said the wand chooses the wizard,” Hermione agreed, “that sometimes a wand can stay in his shop for ages before the right person comes along. Just because it worked for your dad doesn’t mean it’ll work right for you, because you’re not your dad. You’re you. And a wand’s important, so if you don’t have the right wand for you...” She glanced at Harry.

“Why don’t you try ours out?” Harry suggested. “Maybe one of them will work better for you?”

Neville winced a little. Using another person’s wand was like eating off another person’s plate – you only did it with family and close friends. But they were Muggle-raised, so they wouldn’t know that. And if Hermione was right (and Neville was already pretty sure she was always right) then maybe it wasn’t his fault his spell was so pathetic. It was that hope more than anything that made him agree.

Hermione’s wand didn’t like him at all. He could feel it the moment he touched it, without even needing to try the spell. He did anyway, but nothing happened. Harry’s wand, though, sent warmth shooting up his arm. Neville jumped and nearly dropped it. Harry smiled eagerly, leaning forward, and Neville smiled and cast the spell: the pencil box turned bright red. Hermione clapped her hands enthusiastically and Harry laughed. “Well done!” he said.

But no wand would work for Harry. Hermione frowned, looking irritated at her own inability to change things. Neville felt awful for Harry but Harry didn’t look like it bothered him. “Hey, Neville, you know about magic, what do you know about the houses at Hogwarts? Are they really so important as people seem to think?”

“Important?” Neville didn’t understand what he meant.

“Well, it just seemed like everyone cares what house you were in at school. Even when you’re old.”

“My parents didn’t like that idea,” Hermione agreed.

Neville shrugged. The houses were just the houses.

“It’s sort of like, at least as far as I can figure out,” Harry said, “Gryffindor’s supposed to be for the good guys, Slytherin is evil, and the other two are just there to be slaughtered in the battle between the other two. No one cares about the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, no one remembers them.”

“Great-Uncle Christopher said Hufflepuff’s for duffers,” Neville said glumly. He was sure he’d end up there and that would give Gran another thing to frown about. At least he wouldn’t be there to see it this time. He brightened slightly at the thought. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Gran, because he did, it was just... She needed his dad back. Not him.

Harry looked interested and exchanged a look with Hermione. “I think I want to be in Hufflepuff, then.”

“You do?” Neville said in surprise.

“Definitely. It sounds better than all that stuff about bravery and ambition. I don’t want people looking at me and thinking they know all about me because they know about my house. They already do that because of my scar.” He folded his arms, lifting his chin defiantly. “I don’t want people judging me.”

“Mum said the houses foster prejudice,” Hermione agreed thoughtfully. “I think you’re right, Harry. At least if people are going to be judging us they’ll be underestimating us. Let’s try for Hufflepuff.”

“Can we do that?” Neville asked.

“We?” Harry asked.

“Yes?” he said uncertainly. Would they mind him tagging along? But they grinned at him and Neville didn’t care what Gran would say, he wanted to be in Hufflepuff.

“Besides,” Harry said, “then when we do something great we can bring Hufflepuff back to light.”

Hermione stuck her hand out palm down. Laughing, Harry put his hand on top of hers. Neville was confused. “You put your hand on top and we make a pact,” Hermione said. “It’s a Muggle thing.”

Neville put his hand uncertainly on top.

“We three solemnly swear,” Hermione said, “that we’ll do our best to get into Hufflepuff because then people won’t be judging us according to our house but their own silliness and if we do anything great it’ll be because we’re us.”

“Amen,” Harry added mock-solemnly, and they laughed.

-

“Ah, they’ve arrived,” Albus said cheerfully, looking up at the ceiling of the Great Hall.

No one bothered asking how he knew; Albus liked sounding omnipotent but the castle talked to the Headmaster and the teachers all knew it. Minerva had been beguiling the tedium by transfiguring her nails into claws a sabretooth would have envied, making Filius next to her shift uneasily, and colouring them with stripes of purple and orange. At Albus’s announcement, though, she sighed and stood up, tapping her hand with her wand to undo the enchantments and heading off to wait for the first years.

Severus tapped his fingers impatiently on the teachers’ table and glowered across the empty house tables, refusing to join in the chatter of the other teachers as they waited for the students to arrive and thinking his own thoughts. He hadn’t told anyone Voldemort had returned. For now his brother was doing nothing and Severus didn’t want to admit his presence to anyone. Probably that was very wrong of him, but Severus didn’t care. He didn’t want to go back to spying. Besides, he didn’t want to tell Albus. Albus had never believed that Severus had never been an actual Death Eater.

The children piled noisily into the Hall for the welcoming feast and Severus scowled blackly, putting aside future problems in favour of current ones. Oh wonderful, a new school year. Then the first years came in and joy of joys Potter had turned up as ordered. Severus’s scowl deepened further as whispers sprang up around the house tables, pointing out a little boy with no distinguishing features. Potter had already picked up a pair of tagalongs, a bright-eyed girl with bushy hair and a round-faced boy who looked vaguely familiar, while the Malfoy scion (unmistakeable) was watching him with slightly scornful interest. Let the games begin.

The girl was the first of the Potter trio to be called up. She was a Ravenclaw if Severus ever saw one, but apparently the hat didn’t agree because after a long debate during which people started whispering curiously while her hands gripped desperately at the stool, the hat finally yelled “HUFFLEPUFF!” sounding unusually annoyed. For a moment there was surprised silence as people realised the wait was over before they remembered to clap. Minerva exchanged a perplexed look with Severus and called out the next name.

The other minion turned out to be the Longbottom boy. Severus winced a little at the open nervousness on the boy’s face as he stepped forward in response to his name; he knew where Longbottom’s parents were. His was another long sorting; probably he was arguing for Gryffindor if Severus knew anything about Augusta Longbottom. “HUFFLEPUFF!” the hat yelled, sounding definitely irritated now. To Severus’s surprise the boy beamed in delight, shooting a triumphant look at Potter as he snatched the hat off his head and handed it, grinning, to a startled Minerva before running to sit beside the non-Ravenclaw girl, whose name Severus hadn’t caught.

Severus was rather curious about Potter now, and considering the show his friends had put on it came as no surprise when his too was a lengthy sorting. Quite long enough to give the students time to whisper and stare as if the boy was an animal in the zoo while the teachers frowned for quite a different reason. Three lengthy sortings, all clearly involving determined arguments with the hat, was something almost unheard of in a single year. After all this time the sorting hat knew its job very well and rarely had to ponder a child for more than a couple of minutes. Ten minutes later, as the students got tired of staring and started grumbling, Potter sat up straighter.

“Fine!” the hat grumped finally, now completely exasperated and not caring who knew it. “But I hope you’re the last one. I’m supposed to do the sorting here! HUFFLEPUFF!”

Minerva’s half-hidden disappointment faded as Potter smiled at her and bowed slightly as he carefully handed the hat back; to Severus’s surprise she smiled faintly at him and gave him a nod.

Thankfully, the rest of the sorting went a lot more smoothly.

Having finished his meal (unlike the students he had had a satisfactory meal at midday and didn’t need to stuff his face now) but unable to leave until the feast was over, Severus glowered along the house tables, studying the students he already knew and marking the new ones. Several students winced when they caught his gaze, but he passed Hufflepuff just as Potter looked up, meeting his eyes, and to his surprise the boy offered him a bright, friendly smile.

As Potter looked back to his friends Severus contemplated him. He’d been prepared to despise the boy, but in fact he didn’t. At the moment, he decided, prodding delicately at the tangled coil of emotions inside him, he was cautiously neutral. A Gryffindor Potter, the expected outcome, would have been James Potter reborn and Severus would naturally have loathed him. But he wasn’t a Gryffindor. The hero Potter, raised by adoring Muggles delighted to have a wizard in their midst, would have needed his arrogance squashing to prevent him becoming an identical copy of his father. But a hero didn’t do weeding and didn’t turn down Hogwarts. And there was something just not quite right about him, some clue Severus had seen to the truth of Harry Potter but that he hadn’t registered. He scowled at his empty plate and tried to ignore the nagging feeling he’d forgotten something important.

As soon as they’d dealt with their houses (which didn’t take too long, since trying to talk to full and tired children was a terrible idea and any real talking would be done in the morning), Severus and Minerva converged on Albus’s office. Not so much because they expected he’d give them explanations (Albus was notorious for giving the sort of explanation that sounded perfectly reasonable until you left his office, at which point you suddenly realised you’d been handed a handful of moonshine – pretty but insubstantial) but because that was where the sorting hat was and the sorting hat, if not Albus, might offer some sort of explanation.

“The hat has never made an uproar like that before,” Minerva said immediately on entering the office, Severus at her heels.

“Good evening to you too, Minerva,” Albus replied. The hat was on his desk and Albus was sitting back in his chair. He had been looking at it pensively but turned to Minerva and Severus as they came in.

She pressed her lips together a moment. “Good evening, Albus,” she said impatiently. “Well?”

“We were just discussing the matter.”

“And?” Severus prodded.

The hat was looking as sulky as a piece of fabric possibly could. “Why a Ravenclaw, a Gryffindor, and a Slytherin want to be in Hufflepuff is beyond me,” it grumbled.

“An interesting choice,” Albus said mildly.

So mildly, in fact, Severus wanted to hit him. Naturally, he restrained the urge. Wait, a Slytherin? “Which one is the Slytherin?” he demanded.

The hat turned to look at him, an impressive feat for something lacking in eyes. “Which do you think?” it retorted.

Potter. A Potter in Slytherin. It must be joking.

Minerva frowned. “Does that mean Neville – Longbottom – is the Gryffindor?”

“Could have done well there, too,” the hat said indignantly, “but no. These children all think they know best.”

“I’d better tell Augusta that,” she murmured to herself. Catching Severus’s look, she said, “To Augusta anything but Gryffindor would be a crime for that poor boy. If I tell her that the hat wanted to put him in Gryffindor but he chose Hufflepuff for the sake of his friends...” She considered her own words then nodded, “Yes, that would be best.”

“Best for whom?” Severus asked snidely.

Minerva just looked at him. “For Neville.”

He looked away. “Well, this is all very interesting but it doesn’t answer the most important question: Why are those three in Hufflepuff?”

“Because that’s where they were determined to go,” the hat said. It would have rolled its eyes if that were possible.

“And why,” Severus said, trying not to sound quite as impatient as he felt, “did they want to go into Hufflepuff?”

The hat sat smugly silent.

Whatever reasons the Potter trio had, it wasn’t going to tell.

Severus sighed. It was going to be one of those years, he could tell.

Severus honestly wasn’t sure how he felt about Potter. A Hufflepuff Potter wasn’t the offence a Gryffindor Potter would have been. A Hufflepuff Potter who should have been in Slytherin was intriguing. Severus’s curiosity had always gotten him into trouble, but knowing that never stopped him from letting it lead him into further trouble. This Potter, apparently unlike his arrogant, bullying father, was unexpected. And despite himself Severus was very very curious.

He still could have hated the boy, not for his father (which, let’s be fair, was hardly something the boy could control – Severus’s own father had been worthless), but for the fact that Potter was the Boy Who Lived. For most people this made him a hero. For Death Eaters it made him the man who destroyed their Lord. For Severus, it made him the boy who’d gotten rid of his brother. But Voldemort had attacked Potter, not the other way around. Potter had been a baby. Besides, Voldemort wasn’t really dead. Severus had known that all along for he’d only had to look at his arm and the darkness of the tattoo there to tell that.

The Death Eaters had called it the Dark Mark and showed it off proudly in their circle. Severus couldn’t think of it as a Dark Mark and he’d never shown it to anyone, not even Albus, because his had been the first and his was different to the others. The magic was very different and even the look of it was different. Like Voldemort’s own Mark and unlike any others, Severus’s skull wore a crown. It was the brother of the Mark on Voldemort’s arm; it was the sign of the brothers. Blood brothers.

It was old magic, pre-Founders, even pre-Rome. Magic from a darker, more bloodthirsty time, where symbols and signs hadn’t meant the same as they did now. The skull symbolised a union even death couldn’t break, a bond that ran deeper than flesh. The snake was the emblem of eternity. Brothers forever.

It was only after he and Severus became blood brothers that Voldemort came up with the idea of the Dark Mark for communicating with his followers and the Dark Mark was a modified, greatly watered-down version of the blood brother bond, lesser in every way.

None of which, of course, told Severus how he felt about the Potter boy.

He still hadn’t figured it out by his first class with the first year Hufflepuffs. The Potter Three, as observed at meals and in the corridors, was already obviously a group. Unsurprisingly they took up positions at a single table, pulling out their books and looking around with interest. As he went about his lesson and then watched over the children’s first attempts at brewing (and why could these brats not follow simple instructions?), Severus kept an eye on the so-called hero. Potter, and Severus had definitely observed him closely over the last few days, was normally surprisingly graceful for a boy but now in class, despite his attempts to hide it, he was suddenly awkward. Mostly, Severus’s sharp eyes noticed, when he was reaching across the table to pick up a quill or drop something in his cauldron. Severus’s hands curled into fists and he turned, snarling, on a Ravenclaw girl who despite repeated warnings managed to completely disobey every instruction and make her cauldron overflow dangerously. And all the while he was trying not to think about Potter. He knew certain signs. He knew them too well.

“Potter!” he barked as the children began hastily throwing their things into their bags. “Stay behind!” And then, when all three of them waited, he glowered at Longbottom and Granger. “Not you, just Potter.”

“Go on, guys,” Potter said.

“A-are you sure?” Longbottom asked, made nervous by Severus’s scowling presence but still standing his ground; maybe he was a born Gryffindor after all, Severus acknowledged with a grudging respect.

Potter laughed; Severus was impressed by how natural the sound was. “Professor Snape’s not going to eat me.” He darted a slightly challenging look at Severus. “Are you, Professor?” Granger hissed his name worriedly.

“No,” Severus said blandly. “You’re far too skinny, Potter, and I like some meat on my meals. Mr Longbottom, Miss Granger, go! before I start issuing detentions.”

Granger smiled a farewell at Potter before pushing Longbottom out the door. Apparently the boy was too stunned by Severus making a joke to remember how to control his legs.

As the door closed behind them Potter looked at Severus, his face now perfectly serious. “I saw you watching me.”

“And? Are you going to let me see or am I going to take you to the hospital wing?”

The boy winced. “I don’t s’pose you’d believe me if I said I didn’t know what you’re talking about?”

“No.”

“Because really I don’t need—”

“Me or the hospital wing, Mister Potter. Your decision.”

“Why should I trust you?” he asked sharply.

Severus opened his mouth to order respect, then shut his mouth again, forcing himself to admit that it wasn’t an attempt to be obnoxious. He’d been that boy, he’d been unsure who to trust, how to trust. “If you require it I will swear on my magic that I mean you no harm.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if I harm you I would lose my magic. Forever.”

“And you would do that?” Potter checked.

“I would.”

Behind the glasses a child’s eyes studied him with cold calculation, assessing his sincerity. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Then you will let me examine you?”

Cold calculation fled, replaced by fear. “Will you... Do you need to tell anyone?”

Severus hesitated. But he never lied to his students. “If this was a Muggle school I would be legally obliged to report any signs of abuse I see on my students. Unfortunately, the wizarding world is backwards in many ways.”

Potter relaxed. “If I cooperate, will you promise not to tell?”

“Why should I? Why should either of us protect anyone willing to attack a child?”

“It’s not that I want to protect... them, exactly.” Potter looked at him earnestly. “But I’m not stupid, Professor. I’ve read the books about me, I’ve seen the way people around here look at me. They think I’m a hero and they think I’m going to be a hero again, and if this got out... Do you think they wouldn’t find out? Do you think I wouldn’t have everyone pointing and whispering twice as much as they already do? Wanting to know everything about me and not caring about me.”

“Hufflepuff,” Severus said in sudden understanding. Potter was hiding. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

The boy chuckled, sounding genuinely delighted. “You’re the first one to figure that out. We wanted somewhere where people wouldn’t have expectations of us. Where we could be ourselves.” Despite everything there was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “And no one suspects the Hufflepuff.”

“You are definitely a Slytherin,” Severus told him. “Now cease in these efforts at distracting me, they won’t work.” Fear flashed a moment in the boy’s eyes. “I agree to your terms.” And that was relief. “No one will learn of this from me without your permission. But you will cooperate fully.”

Potter’s fists clenched at his sides for a moment, then he forced himself to relax. “I don’t—” He lost his ability to look Severus in the eye.

“It is nothing to be ashamed of Potter. The shame belongs to the one who did it, not the one it was done to. No shame, no stigma, no disgrace, is attached to you.”

With a great effort, his hands shaking, Potter pulled his robes over his head. He wore Muggle clothes underneath, shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t undo the buttons on his shirt.

“Let me,” Severus said softly, brushing the small hands away so he could gently undo the buttons.

Potter swallowed hastily several times, blinking fiercely. Was this the real Potter, hidden down below that boy who had laughed so very recently? Or were they both the real Potter and this boy had managed to compartmentalise his life the way Severus had learned to do as a spy? “I don’t—I can’t—”

“I just want to see exactly what’s wrong,” he said, trying to make his voice brisk and matter of fact when he was reliving a similar, oh-so-similar scene. Voldemort had done this same thing with him, Voldemort had found out—

“Sir...” Potter pleaded.

“I won’t harm you, Potter,” he said, his voice rough. “I promise.” Steeling himself, he slipped the shirt off the small shoulders, trying to ignore the flinch, and turned the boy around.

It looked like he’d been whipped, long thin strips of welted skin running across the boy’s back at varying angles. Severus didn’t ask for details: Potter didn’t want to tell him – and Severus didn’t want to know. Though they weren’t fresh, the wounds had started weeping during the morning and had clung to the shirt when Severus pulled it away, which explained the flinch more clearly than he would have liked. He didn’t ask why the wounds hadn’t been dressed. Potter didn’t want anyone knowing about this and it was hard to dress wounds on one’s own back. Severus had tried.

“You showed no signs of this earlier in the week,” he said, his voice remarkably level despite the little boy inside raging angrily in remembered, empathetic pain.

Potter didn’t look at him, just stood there, staring at the floor and shivering. Severus absentmindedly cast a warming spell on him. “At Diagon Alley I asked Professor McGonagall if I could try some magic painkillers. I told her I get really bad headaches sometimes and wanted to compare magical stuff with Muggle stuff and she showed me what to buy. It was really good, it stopped my back hurting at all, but I’ve run out now.” Running out of words as well, he wound down like a clockwork toy.

Severus tried to remember how to talk. “Who did this?” No reply. “Potter, the deal was full cooperation. Who did this?”

Two small hands clenched into desperate fists. “My uncle,” he whispered. “When you told them I had magic they were scared. They’d decided I didn’t have any so that made me acceptable but when they learned I did... Uncle Vernon said he was going to beat the magic out of me. I’d always been caned, of course, when I was bad, but that’s just a few strokes on the hand, this was—” Much unsaid in that pause was understood.

“How many times did he do this?” Severus asked quietly. When Potter was silent, he prodded, “Please, Mr Potter. How many times?”

“F-four. The last time – he made me bleed and Aunt Petunia came along. She didn’t know he was... She made him stop. She said if I’d had magic it would have acted by then to protect me. She was mad with him for doing it because if I had had magic it would have hurt him. I don’t know if I ever had magic but if I did Uncle Vernon got rid of it.”

“Of course he didn’t, Potter. You can’t get rid of magic no matter how hard you hit.” Severus managed to regain sarcasm with relief; he knew how to be sarcastic, he wasn’t sure he could cope with being sympathetic. This cut a little to close to the bone.

“Could you—Could you please give me some more painkiller?” Potter looked back at him cautiously. “I can pay for it.”

“I could,” Severus acknowledged, not even bothering to argue with the idiotic ‘pay for it’ business, “but if I did I couldn’t heal it. The painkiller would interfere with the healing salve. I think you would be better off if I healed this.” If he didn’t look too closely at the wounds, if he just called them ‘this’, he might just get through this.

The boy half turned to him. “You would do that? For me?” The surprise in his voice told Severus more than he’d wanted to know.

“I will do it. Immediately, in fact. Wait here.” He marched out the door and into his private storeroom, glad this had been the last class of the day, and not only gathered healing salves but summoned his camera. Returning to the classroom where Potter was waiting hopefully for him but not quite believing he’d do what he’d said, Severus put the things he’d gathered down on the nearest desk. “Hold still a moment, I want to take some readings and some photos.”

Potter reached hastily for his shirt, betrayal writ in his eyes. “Why?”

“Because, you ungrateful brat,” Severus said without heat, “one day you might change your mind about making this public and giving your uncle the justice he so richly deserves. And on that day you will want proof.”

Eyeing him warily, Potter nevertheless let Severus take the shirt from him and stood still while Severus took medical readings and recorded them on parchment, followed by photographs. “I will keep these safe for you, Potter,” he said. “And should you choose to take the alternative route all you have to do is ask me for them.”

“Couldn’t I—?”

“Keep them yourself? I doubt you have the security in place to keep your nosey housemates from discovering them. Besides, Mr Potter, I’m not stupid either. If I give them to you you’ll destroy them. Now hold still. This won’t hurt as much as when you got these wounds but it isn’t going to be fun.”

Although he flinched and tears came to his eyes, Potter made no sound as Severus carefully and as gently as possible smeared the salves onto the boy’s wounds. The relieved sobbing breath the boy took when he announced he was done did nothing to make Severus feel better about it.

“Unfortunately, Potter, that was only round one.” The boy rubbed at the tears in his eyes and looked up at him questioningly. “Another application is necessary if you want to avoid scarring, but that needs to wait for fifteen minutes. In the meantime, I have some questions.”

“Of course you do,” Potter said tiredly. “Okay, sir. I guess I owe you.”

“No,” Severus said sharply. The boy flinched and stared at him in wide-eyed surprise. “This... You don’t ‘owe’ me for this, Potter. This is the least any adult can do for a child in your position. This isn’t a favour I’m conferring on you, it is something you deserve, something you should be able to take for granted. And that you don’t believe that tells me more about your home life than you want me to know.”

“Uncle Vernon never did this before my Hogwarts letter!”

“There are more kinds of abuse than beatings,” Severus told him. “There is emotional abuse.” ‘Freak’, he remembered suddenly. That was the word Mrs Dursley had used for magic. Dear Merlin. “There is neglect. And caning, despite your casual reference to it, is no longer considered acceptable by the majority even in the magical world.”

“It’s not like that,” Potter said desperately. “Really!”

“That is what they all say.” Severus frowned at him. He’d been intrigued by Slytherin-Hufflepuff Potter but he hadn’t expected this.

“It’s true!” The boy threw his head up defiantly. “They never liked me,” he said, and no eleven-year-old should be able to say that so simply, so without pain, “and they certainly never loved me. But they never hated me until you came!”

It took a moment for Severus to find his voice. “Are you saying this is my fault?”

“No!” Potter said, startled, and in that moment of being startled lost his momentum. “I didn’t mean—I just—” He wilted, the way Severus remembered him wilting in that pristine sitting room in Privet Drive as he cast what Severus now realised were probably scared looks at his aunt while Severus calmly forced them to accept that he was what his relatives feared.

“I’m surprised you don’t hate me.” The words came out of him unbidden.

“I did.” At Severus’s start of surprise Potter actually smiled faintly. “But I had a lot of time to think. Lying on my tummy, because my back hurt. And I thought at first it was all your fault because none of it had ever happened before you came, so I hated you. But then I started thinking that I didn’t know Uncle Vernon would react like that. And if I didn’t know, why should you? So it wasn’t your fault, you never told him to do it, it was Uncle Vernon’s fault. So I don’t hate you.”

“Just like that?” Severus asked weakly.

He laughed just like an ordinary boy who’d been told a joke. “No way. It took a lot of thinking to get there.”

Severus shivered. “You were hurt because of me.” He went over his visit in his mind. Surely he should have seen the signs. Could he have done something to prevent it? Was it his negligence that had caused this?

“Yes,” Potter said, “but it’s okay.”

“How is it okay?”

“Because you didn’t mean to.”

“I still should have—”

“And because I forgive you. That makes everything okay,” the boy assured him with a sort of fractured innocence that made Severus wince.

“Potter—”

“You need to forgive yourself, I think.”

He’d been there. He should have seen—

“You weren’t looking for it,” Potter said in uncanny echo of his thoughts. “Why would you see anything?” He shivered, but not from cold, and wrapped his arms around himself. “There wasn’t anything to see then anyway.”

Silence stretched out, long and hurting.

“I want to help you,” Severus broke it.

The boy’s eyes lifted to his in startled wariness. “You can’t,” he said sharply. “No one—” He shut his mouth with a snap.

“Not even your friends?”

The sudden warm affection that breathed over the child’s face was like spring’s return after a long, hard winter. “I’ll protect them. Even from me.”

“And if they don’t want protecting?”

Potter’s eyes narrowed. “You won’t tell them! You won’t!”

“Not without your permission,” Severus agreed silkily.

“I won’t give it. Ever.”

Severus offered a silence of appropriate scorn.

“Hermione was the first person to ever care about me,” he disclosed in a rush, as if it was too wondrous, too marvellous a secret to keep to himself. Somebody cares about me!

Severus wondered if the girl had any idea just how much loyalty she’d earned herself by a simple act that most people took for granted. “Then I am glad she found you.” Before the boy could regret his impulsive confidence, Severus said blandly, “Now please turn around so I can finish with your back.”

The wounds were already healing and Severus made a noise of satisfaction in the back of his throat. “Your back will be fully healed by morning, Mr Potter, and you will have no scars. I do suggest that you not shower until morning, however.” Putting on the second application was a much more pleasant experience than the first, for this time he was causing no pain.

Then he helped Potter back into his clothes and sent him away. The boy paused at the door and looked back. “Thank you,” he said, and surprised lurked in his voice, hand in hand with awe. Why would anyone help me? that surprise asked. Why not demand payment? Severus nodded curtly, unable to trust his voice. “And... and I’m sorry for what it is about me that hurts you.”

And he was gone. Which was lucky because Severus had no idea how he wanted to react to that.

The door closed, gently.

Severus sat down, suddenly shaking.

That had come too close to memories he didn’t want to recall, dredged up feelings he didn’t want to have.

Grateful that had been his last class for the day, he stood and gathered himself together for one last burst of control that got him to his quarters unnoticed. The big bad potions professor falling apart in the hallways would not be a good idea. He managed to hold it together until he was in private and there was no one to see how his hands trembled so much he poured as much firewhiskey on the table as in the glass.

Gulping it down, Severus stared blankly at the wall and finally let himself feel. Let himself remember the thin back lined with red marks. The glass shattered.

Four times.

How dare he! How dare that man raise his hand to a child! Severus had had too many beatings to keep track of, but because of that he would not suffer any child to be struck with intent to injure.

And worse, the blows to the boy’s mind! Potter’s surprised ‘thank you’, his expectation that he should have to pay for even a small bit of aid... Hermione was the first person to ever care about me. Severus Reparoed the glass so he could hurl it against the wall. They never liked me... but at least they never hated me.

Severus’s father had hated him but at least he’d acknowledged him. His mother’s indifference had hurt more. Sometimes he hadn’t even been sure she’d known he existed. That had left deeper scars than his father’s beatings, the knowledge that he wasn’t even worth hating.

That Potter was as normal as he was was a miracle.

Even if Potter had given him permission Severus would never have gone to Albus with this story. He knew already there was no point. Not Albus, full of second chances and completely lacking any understanding of the dark underbelly of life. Albus had never gone hungry for food or affection, Albus had never had to deal with anything but obvious evils. Albus might be the leader of the Light and the greatest wizard of his time... but he was a fool when it came to real life.

Dealing with this was up to Severus.

He summoned another glass and poured himself fresh shot of firewhiskey.

Potter was edgy around Severus after that. He tried to hide it but Severus saw it. It was the uncertainty of an animal that knew he could be very dangerous but wasn’t sure if he was going to be. Maybe Severus should have made that vow of no harm after all.

Wouldn’t have helped, whispered an echo of the boy he’d once been, and Severus knew it was true. People who meant you no harm could still hurt you as much as those who did. Look at Albus.

There were still those who did mean the boy harm, of course.

“Longbottom’s family’s all right but he’s nothing more than a squib,” he heard as he strode through the corridors, bringing him to a stop. It took no intelligence to know it was Draco Malfoy or that he must be talking to Potter. “And Granger doesn’t have a family. They’re not the sort you should be hanging around with.”

“They’re my friends,” Potter said flatly, and there was seething anger under that false calm. When a boy has finally found acceptable he will not gladly accept criticism of those who give it to him; Severus knew that from personal experience. His first friends would be defended with the ferocity of a mother wolf.

“My father says—”

“Malfoy,” Potter said, and his voice was pitying, “just because the grown ups say it doesn’t make it true.”

Children should not have learnt so young to dismiss adults so easily. Everything Severus observed about Potter only made him more furious with the boy’s relatives. Judging it time to interfere, he swept around the corner. The young Malfoy shut his mouth with a snap, glared at Potter, and stalked off. Potter watched Severus cautiously.

“Do you trust anyone, Potter?” he asked finally.

Potter tilted his head to one side. “Hermione. She tells me the truth even when she thinks I won’t like it.”

And how had a boy worked out that was a good reason to trust someone?

This was the son of the boy who’d done his best to make Severus’s school life a living hell, the son of the boy who’d demanded all the attention when Severus would have been happy with just a few scraps. This was the boy who had destroyed his brother for ten years (and whatever he’d done, Voldemort was still his brother). This was the boy who made Severus feel uncomfortably like he was looking in a mirror through time.

He watched the boy trot off down the hall and slowly resumed his own travels. He still didn’t know how he felt about Potter, but now it was more because he didn’t dare investigate his feelings. He didn’t want to know what he might find there.

-

The school year got under way. Every weekend Severus left the castle for a few hours, saying nothing to anyone about where he was going, and found himself somewhere new, somewhere where his brother waited for him. His meetings with Voldemort followed no script usually used by a Dark Lord reunited with his most faithful servant. There was no talk of revenge, no anger, no tests of loyalty. Because they weren’t lord and slave, they were brothers.

In fact, they hadn’t ever spoken about what had happened that October night when they’d been separated. Sometimes Severus wasn’t even sure Voldemort remembered (and he tried not to think about why Voldemort had been almost killed, because he couldn’t believe his brother had killed two people and tried to kill a baby). Instead they talked about the things family normally talk about, as if they held a family reunion every weekend.

So Voldemort asked eager questions about Severus’s life: was he still at Hogwarts? was teaching any better now he’d been doing it for years? had Dumbledore become more or less annoying over time? what was his latest research? had he holidayed anywhere interesting? what was the conference like? In short, what had he been doing for ten years?

And, like any family, they reminisced. “Do you remember your first polyjuice potion?” Voldemort would ask. “How it was contaminated by dog hair without you realising? I thought I’d never stop laughing!”

“I hoped you’d choke,” Severus said sourly, for he certainly hadn’t forgotten and to this day suspected Voldemort had tampered with his potion just to annoy him, but his brother’s amusement made him smile too. “Did I ever thank you for fixing it or was I too annoyed with you?”

“Oh no, you did thank me. Through gritted teeth and sounding more like you were cursing me, but the thought was there.” Voldemort reconsidered this. “Perhaps not the thought. The words were there.”

“I am grateful,” Severus said suddenly. “For everything. You gave me so much, helped me—”

“Don’t be a fool, Severus,” Voldemort cut him off hastily. “It was all perfectly selfish. I couldn’t have my little brother running around looking like a mutant dog-human hybrid, could I?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know.” Voldemort sighed and refused to meet his eyes. “Don’t thank me, Severus. I don’t deserve it.” And he swiftly changed the subject.

-

Neville sat in the library with his friends (he had friends! him!), chattering and laughing quietly. They’d started out doing homework, but Hermione had been successfully distracted by questions about Muggle life. Not that Neville’s interest was feigned, because Muggles sounded so remarkable. All the things they could do even though they didn’t have any magic! He’d never known they were so clever.

When Hermione and Harry got into a debate over exactly how a telly worked, though, Neville laughed to himself and drifted off in thought. He liked Hogwarts. He liked being with his friends and he liked doing magic and he liked that no one was comparing him to anyone and he was allowed to succeed or fail on his own merits.

But he missed his parents. He’d visited them every week for as long as he could remember and now he’d gone four whole weeks without seeing them. Even if they weren’t real parents and didn’t even know his name, they were his parents. Who was going to brush his mum’s hair just the way she liked? Who was going to fly wooden Quidditch figures around with his dad? Who was his mum going to give bubblegum wrappers to? Would the nurses remember his dad didn’t like malt biscuits if Neville wasn’t around to remind them? He hoped they were okay. Gran said they were okay when she wrote, but Gran would.

Neville shook off the despondent thoughts. If only he could have visited his parents he’d love Hogwarts more than anything and never want to leave. Even if most of the other kids looked at him kind of weirdly.

He’d quickly realised on coming to Hogwarts that he wasn’t normal. Since he’d been left to his own devices most of the time at home he’d had to amuse himself. And it happened that the Longbottoms had been collecting books for quite some years and had amassed a remarkable collection. So Neville had lived in the library. Books didn’t treat you like a baby or try to hide their disappointment in you only to make it glaringly obvious. Books didn’t seal themselves shut because they didn’t like you. Books were faithful friends, Neville’s only friends.

It wasn’t until he came to Hogwarts that he realised he wasn’t like other kids his age. He’d been treated like he was five so he’d had to bring himself up, but he’d only ever interacted with adults and it showed. His reading comprehension, for example, was far in advance of his classmates’ – but his social skills were non-existent. Once he would have hated being so different but now he didn’t mind it because he had friends. And no one in their right mind would call Neville’s friends normal.

Hermione had surprised her parents when she, aged two, corrected her mother’s reading aloud of the wrong word in a new storybook. The Grangers had fostered their daughter’s remarkable intelligence and inquiring spirit, letting her grow and blossom. By the time she was three she could read fluently and discovered algebra. At five she found calculus and started learning French for fun. All her life she had used her brilliant brain as a lever to unlock the secrets of the world. By the time her Hogwarts letter reached her she was steaming her way through high school with her eyes firmly fixed on university, set to get her PhD and a ‘doctor’ in front of her name before she was old enough to vote.

Then came Hogwarts. Hermione couldn’t have turned down Hogwarts, not when she’d discovered a whole new world to explore. And, as she pointed out to her parents, she could still go to university afterwards, at the same age as normal people would; attending Hogwarts wouldn’t limit her education, only broaden it. So here she was. But Hermione was used to relating to older people, adults and teenagers. Her parents had treated her as an intellectual equal and her peers at high school had been at least four years older than her, a great age difference in children. So she was about as capable as Neville of interacting with her own age group.

Harry, of course, was Harry Potter, which made him different to everyone else immediately. But Harry hadn’t known that. When his relatives had decided, when he was five, that he didn’t have magic they’d given up their campaign of suppression (though no amount of questioning would get him to admit what relevance a cupboard had to this). Instead he’d been treated as a slightly unwelcome boarder. By doing chores he’d earned money and that money had been used to pay for his food, clothes, toys, and school supplies. Harry was used to acting as an adult in the adult world; he understood finance and weighing words and acting independently, relying on himself because he’d never had anyone else to rely on. Scholarly achievement was not fostered in the Dursley household, but his aunt and uncle hadn’t cared what he did as long as it was quiet and unobtrusive and he didn’t turn Dudley into a nancy boy. So Harry had buried himself in his schoolwork and books – for much, Neville suspected, the same reasons Neville had.

Not that it was easy to drag this much information out of Harry. He was used to telling lies to prevent people wondering about his home life, which was a little weird for Neville, who’d been brought up to tell the truth no matter how painful. He was getting used to it now though, and had adopted Hermione’s habit of, if Harry said anything about his family, nodding and then saying and “And really?” so he would tell the truth. It was just automatic for Harry to lie the first time.

Neville grinned to himself. Yup, his friends were definitely not normal. Still, he wouldn’t change them for anything. Around them Neville had no chance to believe himself clumsy and forgetful because they refused to believe it and when he was trying to keep up he forgot that was how he really was. And he was their source of magical society knowledge; it was funny how much Muggleborns just didn’t know (Neville thought Muggleborns must be so very brave to come a world they didn’t know anything about). But what he found really strange was the things Harry and Hermione pulled faces at. They didn’t like things like halfbreed laws or house rivalries and hereditary Wizengamot seats and other things Neville found perfectly normal. Azkaban appalled them, and was roundly denounced as state-sanctioned torture. As for house elves... Hermione had just about had a fit; Neville was pretty sure that before she’d left Hogwarts she would have found a way to free all house elves.

“Neville? Neville!” Harry poked him in the arm. “You still with us?”

He blinked. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“You sure? You looked like you were away with the fairies.”

Neville frowned, trying to figure out why anyone would want to hang around with fairies; they were pretty and all but they weren’t interesting.

Hermione laughed. “Not real fairies. It’s a Muggle expression.”

“Oh!” he said in understanding.

“I can’t believe you just said ‘real fairies’ and meant it,” Harry grinned. “I think our lives have gotten really weird in these last few months.”

Hermione elbowed him, laughing too, as Neville shook his head. “It must be so weird not knowing magic exists,” he said.

“Not,” Harry told him firmly while Hermione nodded, “as weird as knowing it does.”

-

A normal school year was muddled enough. A school year starring Harry Potter with Draco Malfoy and Voldemort as co-stars was so tangled up Severus was seriously considering laying in a direct line of Firewhiskey into his quarters from the manufacturers. Potter hadn’t responded well to Malfoy’s clumsy overtures of friendship because Malfoy, as trained by his father, couldn’t understand Potter’s friendships. Spurned, Malfoy had begun what would have been a bitter rivalry if Potter had cared. Since Potter didn’t care about the other boy (which probably didn’t help Malfoy’s enmity in the least) it was a very one sided rivalry.

Unfortunately, Severus got caught up in it. He was stalking through the corridors during the lunch hour when Malfoy snuck up behind the Potter and Granger and cast a tripping jinx on an unsuspecting third year. It was done to look like it came from one of the Hufflepuffs, but with just enough openness that Severus couldn’t help but notice it was Malfoy. Severus sighed. It was a test, of course. Lucius Malfoy had never been particularly subtle and Severus had dealt with far more devious people (Albus, for example, even if Albus would be hurt to hear him say it), so it was an obvious test and therefore easy to pass.

“Potter, Granger, detention! No magic in the corridors.”

Malfoy grinned triumphantly and dashed off. Severus rolled his eyes. The pair followed him obediently.

When they were alone, Potter said casually, “It was Malfoy really.”

“I am aware of that, thank you, Mr Potter. However, it is better if I allow certain elements to think I’m sympathetic to their cause.”

“Death Eaters,” Granger suggested. Severus gave her a sharp look. They were strange, these two, for children. They saw too far.

He made a non-committal noise. “Come and see me at seven.”

When they’d gone he headed for the dungeons to prepare for his next class, wishing absently that he could send Lucius a note telling him he was an idiot. Slytherin stock had grown of poorer and poorer quality in later years, though perhaps that was because the intelligent ones who could have gone there, like Potter, had found ways of never being there in the first place. A true Slytherin wouldn’t want people knowing he was a Slytherin, especially not in the current political climate. To be in Slytherin was to mark oneself with expectations and assumptions, to be judged by reputation and not on one’s own merits.

In fact the whole house system, in Severus’s private opinion, had outlived its usefulness and was an outmoded and dangerous creation. The Founders had used it to decide which student would be better placed under which of the four teachers. It had been intended as a means to place a student in the situation where he or she would best learn, not as a tool to divide up students in ways that had become, a thousand years on, entirely arbitrary.

Unfortunately, the wizarding world was founded on tradition and a tradition of a thousand years had no hope of being dismantled now. Severus’s scowl was still so black by the time his next class arrived that one boy almost had a nervous fit.

Then he had the blasted detention to turn up for. To his surprise, he opened the door to find three students waiting for him, not two.

“Can I come too?” Longbottom pleaded before Severus could comment.

“To detention?” He’d never had anyone ask for a detention before. Longbottom looked at him pleadingly. “All right, Mr Longbottom, if it means that much to you.” His voice gentled as the boy came into the room. “You’re a good friend.” Longbottom flashed him a nervous but grateful smile. “Now, wands to me, please. On the desk. No talking. Then you can clean those cauldrons, they need a rinse.”

Having obediently placed their wands on the desk, the children turned to stare at the four small, mug-sized cauldrons waiting for them. They were specialty cauldrons, each made of a certain metal, and seldom used, which meant that they sat in the store room and, since house elves weren’t allowed in there for fear their magic would upset the more delicate ingredients, got dusty. Potter smiled suddenly and stepped forward. His friends followed, looking confused, though a growing suspicion was dawning on Granger’s face.

When they’d rinsed the cauldrons and dried them off (taking a whole five minutes only because they were being careful), Severus said, “Much better, thank you.” And, just in case someone hadn’t figured it, added, “Now if anyone asks you can say that for your detention you had to hand over your wands and clean cauldrons by hand. Not even a truth spell would detect it as a lie.”

“It isn’t a lie,” Granger pointed out cheerfully.

“True,” he acknowledged. “But few wizards would ever think to question it. Once a truth spell or a dose of veritaserum proved you were telling the truth they would assume you spent a couple of hours scrubbing the dirtiest cauldrons I could find.”

“An interesting lesson,” Potter said contemplatively.

“Wizards aren’t much interested in logic, are they?” Granger asked.

Severus smiled thinly at her. “Miss Granger, I have yet to be convinced wizards know what logic is.” Maybe it was something to do with the fact that magic could do just about anything without worrying about rhyme or reason. Maybe magic and logic just weren’t compatible.

Longbottom looked thoughtful. Severus collected up the wands and handed them back. But he paused after handing back Granger and Longbottom’s, studying Potter’s. Potter’s wand was old, with the scratches that even a carefully tended wand couldn’t help picking up over the years. Using his rare gift of logic, Severus knew that made no sense. “This cannot be your wand,” he said flatly.

“I swapped wands with Neville. Mine works better for him than this one and wands don’t work at all for me so it doesn’t matter what one I have.”

Severus eyed him suspiciously. “Wands don’t work for you,” he repeated.

“I told you, remember? Uncle Vernon got rid of my magic.”

Severus stared at him. He knew better now than to believe Potter was telling anything but the truth as he saw it and not trying to gain sympathy or manipulate anyone. “Are you trying to tell me you can’t do magic? Any magic?”

“Not a bit,” Potter said cheerfully.

Severus sank down onto the nearest stool. If the year kept doing this to him he wasn’t sure he was going to survive until Christmas.

“So let me get this straight: Wands don’t work for you. You can’t do magic.” Severus’s voice was without emotion because he was feeling too many.

“Nope. I think I must be a squib.”

“And you don’t care?”

Potter looked genuinely confused. “My relatives would stop hating me. And Hermione and Neville would still be my friends. I wouldn’t lose anything by not having magic.”

You might even gain something by it, Severus thought, watching him.

“He grew up not knowing about magic,” Granger elaborated, “and he’s never been able to do it. It would hurt me to give it up, but...”

“How can you miss what you never had and what only brought you pain?” Potter asked simply. “Magic killed my parents. Magic’s why they hate me.” He shrugged. “Besides, if I can’t do it, I can’t do it. There’s no point in worrying about stuff I can’t change.”

Every time Severus learnt something new about Potter it meant more work. “Very well, show me.”

Unfortunately, the children hadn’t been mistaken. Potter could do no magic. At all.

“How has no one noticed?” he asked incredulously. They were all sitting down, Potter and friends on one side of the bench and Severus on the other (trying not to put his head in his hands). “Surely one of your teachers must have realised you’re incapable of casting a spell!”

“We do spells for him sometimes,” Longbottom said.

“They think I’m slow,” Potter said, smiling as if that was a great joke, “but they haven’t noticed I just can’t.”

“You do spells for him,” Severus repeated slowly. “How can you do that without someone seeing?”

All three children just shrugged. “It’s not so hard,” Granger said. “We learn the spells beforehand and then if we do it right Neville or I can cast the spell so it looks like Harry’s doing it. Neville’s better at it than me, I’m not sneaky enough. Potions is easy, of course. Harry’s good at prep so he mostly does that and Neville or I can do the parts that need magical infusion.”

Severus blinked, but managed to keep his surprise from his face. The magical component of true potion brewing wasn’t even mentioned until second year when (theoretically) students had learned enough basic brewing skills not to make magically-infused potions (so much more dangerous) explode, not to mention when they actually had some manner of control over their magic. But he shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. Not by these three. Normal rules clearly did not apply.

He abandoned that line of thought for another: “Why did you tell no one?”

Granger met his eyes calmly. “You don’t tell teachers about problems.”

That would have flummoxed most of the teachers; a teacher learnt to quickly size up children and Granger already had a reputation for following the rules and respecting adults. But Severus nodded. He remembered that. Never tell the teachers about bullies, never tell the teachers about the things that are really wrong, because that never helps. It usually just makes things worse.

“Very well. Let me think about this.”

The children sat in silence, respecting his mood of abstraction. He couldn’t let Potter be sent away from Hogwarts for the very same reasons he had already had to convince the boy to come. If he had no magic then he would need the protection even more. Voldemort was back and Severus knew very well the threat the Dark Lord posed, even if he couldn’t reconcile it with the brother he knew so well. To Severus there were two Voldemorts, the one feared by even his own followers and the brother who had only ever healed his hurts; in Severus’s head the two just did not match up, as if they were separate, unrelated entities.

So Potter had to stay, that was inarguable. But if Albus found out he might search for a new hero or he might send Potter back to Muggle society with the idea of trotting him back out at need; Severus didn’t know exactly what was going on in Albus’s head but he did know Albus expected Potter to be a hero in the future.

If Albus was to learn his Golden Boy had no magic, had no ability to be the hero he was intended to be... Even Severus, who had spent two decades trapped in the man’s orbit, had no idea how Albus would react. But whether his decision was made for the greater good or for what he saw to be Potter’s best interests, Severus had no doubt the man would make the wrong choice. Especially for this boy who was nothing Albus could possibly comprehend.

“Very well,” he said abruptly into the silence, making Longbottom jump. “I will help you and I will tell no one. Does that suit?”

Longbottom gaped at him; Granger surveyed him with approval. Potter looked at him speculatively, then glanced at his friends. The three of them shared looks, and then Potter nodded slowly. Granger said, “Yes, Professor, that would suit us. But...”

He almost smiled. “Why?” All three nodded. “You seem quite capable of dealing with this matter. Why should I upset your plans? But I offer my assistance. For example, I can provide you with timed spells to aid in your deception.” He respected their decision to make their own way in the world; he respected the way they were working together. Unlike Albus, he was content to let children find their own limits without forcing them to conform to his expectations.

Granger’s eyes lit up. “That would be very helpful! I haven’t quite managed to get the hang of those yet.”

“Considering that it is NEWT-level magic, that is hardly surprising,” Severus said dryly.

“Yes, but—”

“Hermione,” Potter said, rolling his eyes, “you’ve got to learn to walk before you can run.”

“And crawl before you can walk,” Longbottom added. Apparently this wasn’t a new complaint of hers.

“Are we agreed?” Severus forestalled any response on her part. “I will allow you to determine your own course of action in this matter, but you will allow me to assist.”

“Why would you help us?” Potter asked, still wary. Adults weren’t, in his world, prone to assistance. Severus realised he’d have to be a bit more open.

“You remember the reasons I gave you that made your presence at Hogwarts necessary.”

“Yes.”

“They remain, whether you have magic or not. And should it become publicly known that you have none...”

“They wouldn’t want me here any more.”

“No. I cannot allow that. You must be kept safe.”

Potter frowned. “Why do you care?” It was a genuine, confused question.

“Because I am an adult and I am supposed to protect you. Because I have no desire to see someone harmed when I could prevent it.” Potter was still looking at him. “Because, Potter, having you around is proving far more interesting than I anticipated.”

Potter laughed.

-

It wasn’t so bad having Snape know about Harry’s magic. Neville had thought having an adult know would be bad, that was why they’d worked so hard to make sure no one found out, but Snape wasn’t like a normal adult. And he helped them, just like he said he would. It was lots easier for Harry to pretend he had magic when Snape had put a spell on his wand so that at the right word it would release a stored spell.

Neville thought that Harry might even win the bet. They’d taken bets on how long it would take for teachers to figure out Harry couldn’t do magic (Snape didn’t count, because they’d told him). Neville had said everyone would know before the end of the first term, but he was starting to think he’d been wrong. Hermione had decided they could probably hide Harry’s magiclessness until Christmas, but not long after that. Harry had declared that no one would guess there was a problem until the end of the year at the exams (though now Snape was involved maybe they could even fake the exams? that would be funny).

Mostly it was because Neville didn’t want Harry to leave Hogwarts that he’d been so sure they shouldn’t tell anyone. Harry was his friend and it was way better to have his friends nearby, Neville had decided. And it was kind of like a game, to see how well they could trick the teachers and whether anyone would ever catch on. It was fun to giggle together after class at the comments the teachers had made.

“Acceptable, Mr Potter,” Harry would mimic Flitwick, “but you need to sharpen up your flick.” And they’d all fall about laughing because it was so silly that Harry had been corrected for magic he hadn’t even done.

Snape’s involvement didn’t change that at all, to Neville’s surprise, it just made things easier. Harry and Hermione had decided Snape was probably trustworthy – Neville even thought Harry almost liked him – so they didn’t mind him knowing. Neville actually was a bit scared of Snape, because he wasn’t used to scary people, but Snape was never actually mean to him and Neville thought he could like the man too.

After all, there were nastier people at Hogwarts.

-

“Potter! Hey, don’t you walk away from me!” The angry voice echoing through the corridors snapped Severus into a run. “My mother’s in prison because of you and the vermin you protected!”

He whipped around the corner, wand raised, to see a Ravenclaw sixth year send an ugly purple curse at Potter and Granger. His shield spell was too late to stop it, but Granger’s Protego was up in time and flared angrily as she and Potter tumbled to the floor in their attempt to escape. The spell dissipated on the shield and before the Ravenclaw girl could follow up on it Severus had her wand from her hand with a silent Expelliarmus and bound her with magical rope. When she began a stream of vitriol he absentmindedly Silencioed her before turning worriedly to the children she’d attacked.

Longbottom came running up, shoving his way through the shocked and staring crowd to throw himself to his knees beside his friends. “Are you okay? Hermione? Harry?”

“Fine,” Potter said as he and Granger disentangled themselves.

“We’re fine,” Hermione agreed, sounding a little shaken.

“Nice shield, Hermione,” Potter added as Longbottom helped them to their feet.

Severus in fact had his own thoughts about that shield, but that could wait. Assured the girl’s victims were none the worse for wear (save possibly a few bruises), he turned his attention to the Ravenclaw. Despite her righteous fury she shrank under the force of his glare.

“What’s her problem, sir?” Potter asked quietly, coming to stand at his elbow. The girl struggled, glaring viciously at Potter. The boy met her eyes unflinchingly then turned away, as untroubled by her malice as by Malfoy’s attempts at rivalry, and looked up at Severus as his friends flanked him.

Ignoring them, Severus frowned ominously at the Ravenclaw. “Miss Ashby,” he said, and his voice was arctic, “I would be very interested to know why you felt it necessary to attempt to murder your fellow students.” Gasps sounded in the watching crowd, for few students would have recognised the deadly nature of that curse. But Severus did. No more deaths, not on his watch.

“Ashby,” Longbottom said quietly. “Her mum was a Death Eater.”

Severus remembered the Silencio and took it off, but Ashby stayed obstinately silent. “I am waiting, Miss Ashby.”

“He killed the Dark Lord! He put my mother in Azkaban! He deserves to die, the little—” A prudent Silencio left her to rant in silence.

“For attempted murder, Miss Ashby,” he said coldly, “you will be lucky not to join your mother. Come with me. And you three,” he added in an undertone to Potter’s group, “will see me this evening at seven.”

-

Potter and friends turned up promptly as ordered, which was frankly the one thing to go exactly as it should since he’d left them. Ashby had been expelled, but only because Severus had fought for it. Minerva and Filius had backed him up, appalled at a murder attempt in Hogwarts’ halls, but Albus had been difficult to convince and in the end they had failed to make him understand their position, they’d only worn him down to agreeing to their terms. Albus wanted to keep her at Hogwarts and give her a second chance. Between sherbet lemons and kindly grandfatherly talks, his eyes said, surely we can convince her not to follow her mother’s path.

But Severus had seen the murder in her eyes as she fired that spell. Possibly had she been raised in a different household the girl could have been a fine and upstanding citizen... but she hadn’t been. She had been raised in a pureblood household by people who supported the Dark Lord’s ideals and Severus was not giving her a second chance to kill Potter. Albus’s attempts to convince him a second chance was proper made him feel sick; it was Black’s attempt to sic Lupin on him all over again. It was being half dead from shock, trying to recover from the horror of nearly dying, and then seeing the boy who’d tried to get him killed let off with a month’s detentions. Not this time. Never again. Ashby had tried to kill an eleven-year-old boy and she would pay for that.

Severus thought she should go to Azkaban, but without Albus’s support that would mean dragging Potter into the courts and he was loathe to do that. And there was no chance of Albus’s support. The only way they’d managed to convince him to even expel the girl was by Severus announcing that if Ashby stayed at Hogwarts he would personally go to the Daily Prophet with the story. Boy Who Lived Attacked! That would be a huge story that they’d gladly take up, and Albus would be forced by public opinion to pillory Ashby.

As he’d known it would, that finally wrung grudging acceptance from Albus. The man’s clear disappointment in him was a small price to pay. Frankly, Severus was starting to forget why he’d ever thought the man worth any sort of reluctant respect. On their way out Minerva gave him a quiet “Well done, Severus” that meant far more than any praise of Albus’s could and far outweighed all of Albus’s disappointed looks that he’d get over the next few weeks.

The children were waiting for him outside his office when he arrived. He nodded a greeting and unlocked the door, ushering them in. “Do you know why I wanted to speak with you?” he asked after relating Ashby’s fate (Granger was disgusted she’d gotten off so lightly).

Longbottom and Potter shook their heads, but Granger bit her lip. “Because of my shield?” she asked.

“What was wrong with your shield?” Longbottom asked in surprise.

“It was far too powerful a spell for a first year to cast.”

“Hermione’s pretty clever,” Potter pointed out.

“Mental ability and scholastic attainment have no bearing on the matter. I will concede Miss Granger is a prodigy, but no matter how mentally remarkable she might be, her magical power is limited by her physical development and cannot be any more than that of a child.”

“Oh.” The boys looked at Granger. “Then what...?”

Severus looked at her as well. “How did you do it?”

“I don’t know!” Wringing her hands nervously, she shot a look at Potter. “I don’t—I think Harry gave it to me. The power, I mean.”

“But I don’t have any magic,” Potter pointed out slowly.

“I know. That’s why I didn’t say anything. But... it wasn’t me. I know what it feels like to use my magic to do a spell and that wasn’t it. But it was my spell. So I don’t—” She looked at Severus. They all three looked at Severus.

He sighed. “Did I say having you around was interesting, Potter?” he asked. “I must have meant exasperating.” Potter laughed. “Very well, let’s have a look at you. Drop your wand and anything else you might have that’s magic on the table and stand over there. You two, stay seated.”

Granger and Longbottom twisted around in their seats to watch as Severus subjected Potter to an extensive battery of spells designed to test magical levels and pathways, stopping every now and then to consult yet another book to look up a poorly-remembered test. This kind of magic wasn’t Severus’s forte, but he was an intelligent man and he could see the signs.

Sitting down behind his desk again as Potter retrieved his things, Severus sighed heavily and ran his hand over his face. “Potter, you have a remarkable ability to complicate things,” he said without rancour. The boy just grinned, but Granger looked like she was about to explode with questions. “The main difference between wizards and Muggles,” he explained, “is not the presence of magic within them, but pathways that allow them to access that magic. Potter has no magical pathways. This means he can’t access his natural magic and therefore he can’t cast spells. But he has far more magic than any Muggle would be capable of containing. Frankly, he has far more magic than any child should be capable of containing. And yet he must have provided you with power, Miss Granger, because I can detect the traces of the magic on his skin. I just don’t know how it got there.”

Potter didn’t have magic, he just had power. He was a well with no bucket, a reservoir with no outlet, a pipe blocked at both ends. By himself Harry Potter was about as magical as an electric torch, as Muggle as his relatives. Except...

“Can we test it?” Granger asked eagerly. “If we can recreate the circumstances perhaps we can do it again.”

“What circumstances?” Longbottom asked. “Someone trying to kill you?”

“I think one murder attempt a day is quite enough, thank you,” Severus said hastily. “Do you have any idea what might have allowed the power flow?”

“Don’t look at me,” Potter denied. “I didn’t even know I’d done anything!”

“Maybe... We were touching,” Granger said thoughtfully. “And we were probably thinking the same sort of thing.”

“What, like help?” Potter asked.

“And it probably helps that Harry trusts me. I mean, if it had been Malfoy or someone you wouldn’t expect it to work.” She frowned. “But we’d have to test that, that’s just an assumption based on some of the books I’ve been reading.”

“I hope you’re right,” Severus said, frowning in turn. The idea that Potter could be used to boost anyone’s spells whether he wanted to or not wasn’t appealing.

“Me too,” Potter said with feeling. “So how can we test it?”

Since the pair couldn’t remember having done anything special they decided to work with the assumption that it was skin contact that had allowed the power transfer and see what happened. If it didn’t work they’d have difficulties, but one hypothesis at a time.

Since Granger was the one to have successfully borrowed Potter’s power, she stood with him in the middle of Severus’s office, wand in hand. Potter let her take his hand and watched her raise her wand. “Protego.” (Severus was interested to note that unlike most children under fifteen, Granger seemed to have worked out that shouting didn’t increase the power of your spells.)

The shield spell flared around the two children, so brightly white that for a moment they were hidden by it and definitely too strong for a child. Potter’s eyes were wide when it faded away. “It was me!” he said in shock. “I didn’t know magic felt like that. It was just... Last time I didn’t expect the shield but I wanted Hermione to be safe. This time I knew there was supposed to be a shield so I was thinking about it and... and I felt it. Like a shiver through my bones.”

Severus cocked an eyebrow at him thoughtfully. “Miss Granger, try a spell without letting us know what you’re going to do. Mr Potter, see if you can still boost her power.”

She aimed her wand at the chair she’d been sitting in and, to Severus’s mild surprise, transfigured it into a rocking chair. Potter shook his head as she said, “No, Harry didn’t do anything that time.”

“Interesting. That would suggest you can only amplify a spell if you know in advance what you’re assisting with or if you’re hoping for a similar outcome. We shall, of course, have to test this.” Granger nodded emphatically. Longbottom looked a little surprised, but as a pureblood he wouldn’t have been trained to test hypotheses. “Mr Potter, would you be willing to see if this ability can be used with people other than Miss Granger?”

Potter nodded. “Okay, sir.”

“It would interesting to know comparative benefits as well. If we were all to try the same spell, something simple like Wingardium leviosa. Do you know it?” he asked Longbottom and Granger. The latter, unsurprisingly, nodded.

“I—I don’t,” Longbottom said.

“You will,” Granger said, unconcerned. Severus stood back to let the children handle it. It was an illuminating experience. Granger was the one with the knowledge, but it was Potter, even unable to do the spell, who had the ability to translate her instructions and teach it.

Severus was the first to try, awkwardly taking Potter’s small hand in his and casting the spell on a quill placed on his desk. He felt the power flow into him from the boy, a truly startling amount of power that sent the quill shooting up into the air like a rocket. “Impressive,” he said in understatement, letting go of Potter’s hand and directing the quill back onto the desk. “Thank you, Mr Potter, that was most educational.” Potter offered him a smile.

Longbottom wasn’t too comfortable with taking Potter’s hand and he definitely wasn’t comfortable casting a spell while people watched on, but Granger and Potter’s unwavering certainty in his ability had remarkable effect and despite his nervousness he cast the newly learnt spell with skill. His efforts didn’t result in the quill producing quite the rocket effect of Severus’s spell, but Potter’s assistance definitely loaned him power. Severus watched Potter’s face thoughtfully.

Granger, her face alive with interest, bounced forward to try her turn. “Gently,” Severus warned. She nodded and cast the spell. The quill tried to embed itself in the stone ceiling and fluttered back down, crushed, when she dropped the spell in shock. They stared at the mutilated quill.

“Fascinating,” Severus said dryly.

Granger stared at it. “But I only gave it a tiny bit of power.”

“It may be that your magics are more compatible than ours with Mr Potter’s.” Or it could even be something to do with the degree of trust he felt with the person he was giving the power to. Who knew? Severus had never encountered anything like this before.

Over the next few days they played around with this strange magic, trying to understand it. Experiment determined that Severus and Longbottom got about the same amount of boost, though Severus’s superior skill meant he gained more apparent power. Granger got by far the biggest boost, putting her, even untrained, easily on a par with Albus despite the fact that Albus’s reputation for power wasn’t unearned. One point Severus noted was that Granger not only gained more power, but the strain on Potter was noticeably less. The power sharing took its toll on the boy just as any magic did on a magic user.

It was just that his magic wasn’t like anything Severus had ever seen before. Because Potter was a Muggle, there was no doubt about it, he just had this additional ability that Severus couldn’t find mentioned in any book he searched through (and he searched through a lot).

A conduit, that was the word. He had no ability to do magic, he only channelled it into those who did. Severus had never heard of magic acting like this before. But then no one had ever survived the Avada Kedavra curse before either.

Albus of course noticed Potter and company were spending a lot of evenings under Severus’s watchful eye but, because he wasn’t as omnipotent and omniscient as the world believed, misconstrued events entirely. “Come now, Severus,” he said jovially, “aren’t all these detentions a little extreme?”

Severus didn’t have to act to summon up a glare, for he particularly disliked Albus’s jolly-him-along routine. “Potter needs to learn not to do magic in the halls.”

“I’m sure he’s learnt his lesson, Severus.”

Severus hated the way Albus said his name, as if it belonged to him, as if saying it gave him power over Severus. He glowered uncommunicatively and walked away.

If Potter had been the boy Severus had been expecting, the arrogant hero with no thought for anything but his own pleasure, Albus would have given the brat free reign and let him get away with anything. But children needed discipline. They needed to learn about rules and limits and taking responsibility for their own actions, otherwise they grew up to be Lucius. To spoil a child was the greatest unkindness an adult could do, children needed to learn self-control and self-discipline, they needed to learn that their actions had consequences. And it wasn’t Albus’s fault Potter already understood these things, Albus would gladly have indulged the boy and taught him to be self-centred and arrogant.

Albus wasn’t getting his hands on Potter if Severus could possibly help it. Not this strangely adult Potter who was so fiercely devoted to his few friends, who was surprised when people were kind, who... Who couldn’t do magic.

This secret was too big for him. Severus was too full of secrets, jammed in on top of each other until he thought he would explode. Still, he would have forced himself to deal with it if not for one other factor: he knew someone who knew a lot more than he about magical theory. And, honestly, he just didn’t want to have to deal with training up Albus’s precious hero in secret all by himself. It would be nice not to be the only adult.

“You want to tell Professor McGonagall Harry doesn’t have magic?” Granger repeated in surprise.

“Only if the idea is acceptable to you. I believe she could be useful.”

“You trust her?” Potter checked.

“I would hardly have suggested this if I didn’t, Mr Potter.”

Considering his private opinions of Albus, it might have surprised someone resident in his head that he could so certainly trust the woman commonly supposed to be Albus’s right hand. But Severus knew as few did that Albus didn’t have right hand men or women. Albus was Albus, keeping his own council, making his own decisions, relying on other people only for mundane business.

“Besides which,” he added, “I intended, should you agree to tell her, to require a secrecy vow of her before informing her of anything.”

“What’s that?” Potter inquired.

“A lesser class of Unbreakable Vow, where she would swear on her magic not to reveal what we tell her.”

The children looked at each other. “And you think this will help?” Potter asked.

“I do.”

Another exchange of glances. “Okay,” Granger said finally, speaking for all of them. “You can tell her.” Her eyes turned fierce and she added, speaking for herself, “But if she does anything to hurt Harry we’re gone. My parents may be Muggles but we can protect him.”

“That won’t be necessary, Miss Granger.”

At least, Severus severely hoped so.

-

It wasn’t too hard to track down Minerva and ask for a private word without anyone getting nosey. It was more difficult to broach the subject he really wanted to talk about. Severus sighed and poured her a cup of tea. Minerva accepted it with a quiet word of thanks and sat back in her chair, watching him. They were in his chambers, sitting in his living room. Despite his reputation among the students as an antisocial old bat, it wasn’t uncommon for one of the more intelligent teachers to visit him for a chat. Normally, that was Minerva.

He actually liked Minerva. She had an astringent quality lacking in his other colleagues and could match him for sarcasm. Plus, of all the teachers of his school years she was the only one who’d ever stuck up for him as even his own Head of House hadn’t, the only one who’d tried to curb Potter and friends. She hadn’t been Head of Gryffindor then, or Deputy Head, so her efforts hadn’t been especially successful, nor had she realised the full extent of their iniquities, but she’d tried. It was more than just about anybody else in his entire life had bothered to do.

Later, she’d never pitied him or feared him or given him sidelong looks as the untrustworthy spy. She’d never tried to make him into something he wasn’t, either. She just accepted him as he was. Which did mean they sometimes had terrible rows, since they were both stubborn people and when they were alone neither of them bothered with the polite lies used on strangers. But a good row could be cathartic if raged against someone who would take it in the right manner and not resent him for it the rest of his life.

“I want to tell you about something Albus knows nothing about,” he blurted.

Minerva sipped her tea. “But?”

“I need to ask you to take a secrecy vow.”

That did surprise her, her eyebrows lifting slightly, but then she sighed. “Very well. What’s one more vow?”

“Not here,” he said hastily when she lifted her wand. “There are others involved.”

When he led her into his office to find Potter, Granger, and Longbottom waiting for them she was definitely surprised but nevertheless made the vow, Granger watching with bright-eyed interest.

Three quarters of an hour later, though, surprised was no longer the word. Astounded might be more accurate. Severus, at least, had been able to work up to this one strange fact at a time, rather than having all of it dumped on him.

While Minerva tried to assimilate everything she’d been told, staring at the three children as if they’d suddenly become ghosts, Severus remembered something she’d said earlier. “What did you mean, ‘what’s one more vow’?”

She gave him a look of mocking. “You don’t think you’re the first person to demand assurance of me, do you?”

“Surely Albus wouldn’t need more than one vow.”

“That’s not—” Her voice went silent and she snapped her mouth shut, swallowed hard, and sighed. “Damn secrecy vows.” She said a spell Severus didn’t recognise and for a moment she glowed all over with yellow strands of light that entangled her like a kitten that had gotten itself caught up in a skein of yarn.

“What was that?” he asked sharply while the children exchanged startled looks.

“Those,” Minerva said, once again her prosaic and unglowing self, “were the secrecy vows.”

“So many?”

“Minerva, my dear,” she said in uncanny imitation of Albus’s accents, “I’m afraid this information is too sensitive to risk anyone finding out about it. Would you be so kind as to consent... By the time I’d realised it was going to get this bad it was too late to worry about it.”

“Dear Merlin,” Severus murmured. He’d known Albus was a bit off his rocker, but he hadn’t known he was paranoid too. Severus himself had only two secrecy vows from Albus, but then he’d had to be able to act as a spy and drip feed information to the Dark Lord. Voldemort had never asked for a secrecy vow.

“One day,” Minerva said, “it will be impossible to reconcile all the vows and my magic will be gone.” Longbottom went white and she smiled. “Oh no, it’s not so bad. I wouldn’t mind having no magic, I think. No more secrets, no more wars... And it’s not so terrible a thing to be Muggle, just ask your friends.”

Said friends had been conferring. “We think we can break the vows,” Hermione said when Harry nudged her.

The three magicborn stared at her and she flinched but didn’t back down. “They’re called unbreakables for a reason, Miss Granger,” Severus said sharply. This first year, this child, thought she could do the impossible? Ludicrous!

“There’s no such thing as perfect security,” Potter spoke up.

“It’s an unbreakable vow, Harry,” Longbottom said, sounding as if he thought his friend was mad. Severus agreed with him there.

“Maybe if there was only one,” Granger told him, though she obviously didn’t believe it. “But you saw them. Professor McGonagall’s got so many they’re all tangled up in each other and all we have to do is pull them the right way and they’ll all fall apart.”

“And you truly believe you can do this?” Severus asked incredulously.

Potter tilted his chin up in unconscious determination. “Yes.”

“We’ve been... playing,” Granger said. “Magic’s a bit like a computer program: if you can corrupt part of the program then the whole thing fails.”

“Miss Granger,” Minerva recovered her voice, “if you believe there’s even a chance you can pull this off then I for one am willing to try.”

Potter and Granger glanced at each other, then Granger nodded. “Okay, Professor. Um... this might hurt a bit, I don’t know what breaking the magic will do to you.”

“Understood.”

“Right.” Granger took a deep breath and said, “So if you’ll just...” Potter dragged a chair out into the centre of the office, away from the desk. “Um, yes, sit there. And we’ll...” The pair pulled aside for a brief whispered conversation while Minerva took the offered seat, looking a trifle nervous but also eager.

Granger gave Potter a sharp look wrapped in reassurance, a contradiction that made Severus blink, and the pair came to stand in front of Minerva. Granger took a deep, slightly shaky breath, and drew her wand. “Professor, please don’t move. Stay as still as you can.” She glanced over her shoulder to where Longbottom and Severus sat watching. “Neville, could you...?”

Longbottom nodded and carefully, slowly, but competently began conjuring cushions onto the floor behind the other children. Granger and Potter clasped hands, standing sturdily with feet shoulder-width apart and shoulders against each other as if for support, and Granger lifted her wand. From this angle Severus could just see Potter close his eyes, concentrating, as the girl beside him grimly drew glyphs in the air.

There weren’t fireworks. There was no flashy magic, no dramatic flourishes, just two children propping each other up and silent wandwork. But suddenly Minerva gasped as if stung and then Potter and Granger fell back, despite their attempts to catch themselves, onto the cushions Longbottom had conjured.

Severus and Longbottom stood swiftly and went to them. Minerva was sagging back in her chair and the two children just lay there sprawled across the cushions. All three looked exhausted, as if they’d just spent the entire day casting heavy duty spells.

“Are you all right?” Severus asked.

Potter waved a hand in silent assent; Granger murmured something that might have been a “Yes, sir”. But Minerva shakily pushed herself upright, her eyes wide with amazement. “Minerva?” he asked uncertainly, forgetting the children in the room. He’d never seen her so shaken.

“Albus Dumbledore’s private library is on the third floor behind the statue of Sir Tristam the Tired!” she declared.

“Um?” Longbottom said from where he was kneeling by his friends. Severus very nearly echoed him.

Minerva’s eyes focussed on Severus, burning brightly with joy. “They’re gone! All of them, they’re gone!” In her enthusiasm she tried to stand up, only for her knees to give way beneath her. Severus managed to catch her before she could fall on top of Granger, and set her back in the chair.

“I take it that means the operation was a success,” he said dryly, studying the three exhausted participants. “Mr Longbottom, if I give them a dose of Pepper-up Potion do you think you’ll be able to get those two back to your commonroom before it wears off?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He glanced at Minerva, almost punch-drunk on a combination of joy and tiredness, and bit back a smile. “In that case I shall entrust them into your capable hands while I attempt to return Professor McGonagall to her quarters.”

Longbottom darted a look at Minerva, then smiled up at Severus. “Good luck, sir,” he dared to say.

Severus did smile then. “Thank you, Mr Longbottom. I may need it.” Retrieving Pepper-Up Potion from the office cupboard (sometimes students refused to go to Poppy so Severus found it easier to always have some on hand), he dosed the three with it and watched Longbottom lead Potter and Granger’s slightly wobbly steps out into the corridor before turning to Minerva.

“Severus,” she said, smiling at him. “Severus, they’re gone. I can say things without having to worry about whether something will happen to me.”

“That’s very good, Minerva. But can you walk?”

“I can say anything,” she told him.

“That wasn’t the question,” he pointed out, trying not to laugh. He’d never seen Minerva in a state so resembling tipsy, but if she remembered this later (and didn’t die of embarrassment) and also remembered him laughing he wouldn’t have to worry about Albus ever again because Albus would be busy planning his funeral.

Dear Merlin, Albus planning his funeral. What a terrible thought. Sappyness and he-was-really-a-good-man and... He shuddered. Severus immediately resolved to outlive the man. That or add a codicil to his will firmly stating that Albus not be allowed anywhere near the arrangements.

“Anything,” Minerva repeated happily.

He did snort faintly, but managed not to laugh. “Come on, Minerva,” he said. “Let’s get you home.”

-

The next day happened to be Saturday and Minerva didn’t turn up at breakfast, so Severus knocked on her door after he’d eaten. Minerva was by nature a night owl and not a morning person, but during term she made a point of always being up at seven. There was no answer to his knock and he hesitated. It was possible she’d just decided to skip breakfast... He snorted at the thought. Minerva, miss a meal? She considered it her duty to be visible at every meal and the only times he could remember her not turning up were when she’d been so sick she’d been confined to the hospital wing. He knocked again.

The door opened a crack and one eye peered at him. “Oh, it’s you.” The door opened to let him in.

“Thank you for that enthusiastic welcome,” Severus said sarcastically, closing the door behind him.

Minerva waved a hand at him, half in apology, half brushing him off. Though she was dressed her hair hadn’t been put up in its customary bun and she yawned widely as she sat down on her couch. Severus sat opposite her; on the coffeetable between them a steaming pot of tea sat amongst a trio of tea cups like a bustling mother hen with her chicks. Apparently he’d interrupted her before she could have her first cup, for she pounced on the full cup and lifted it to her lips.

Severus smiled to himself and watched her. “Pukka Khyber?” he asked as she drained the cup, already looking more awake.

Minerva poured herself another cup. “The reason the British don’t need coffee,” she agreed. She sipped at her drink, then sighed and looked at him. “I still cannot believe what those children managed to accomplish.”

“At this point,” Severus said, “I find it easier not to worry about what might be plausible or not.”

Minerva shook her head in agreement. “No magic. That boy has been in my classes for over a month and I didn’t even realise it. In fact, I can clearly remember him casting spells in front of me.” Severus just shrugged. “And while the teacher in me is appalled that you have all elected to keep it a secret, I personally cannot fault you, Severus. If it should become public knowledge that the Boy Who Lived is a squib...”

“I know.” It was a great relief to be able to talk this over with someone. Somehow holding these sort of conversations in his head just didn’t have the same effect. “But people have expectations of him. They will expect further heroics of him, whether he has magic or not. And his friends are prepared to support him.” He hesitated, then asked the question he’d been struggling with for some time now. “How much should we tell them?”

“Everything,” she said immediately, then smiled darkly at his stunned expression. “Oh, I don’t mean you should tell them the details of the things that haunt your nightmares, but everything useful.”

“They’re only children.” It was a stupid thing to say, but he was surprised. He hadn’t expected that answer.

“That’s Albus’s excuse. And his method, doling out only such information as he thinks is needed. Do you trust your own judgement so much?”

“No.”

“Albus wants Harry – you have no idea how much of a relief it is to be able to actually say that. Albus wants Harry to play the hero, to fulfil his plans. And those two friends of his are going to stick with the boy, you can see that as well as I. So the question is, will we help them or hinder them. I’m not Albus. I would rather give them the means to help themselves.”

“I admit I didn’t expect that of you.”

“Those children rid me of a lifetime’s collection of secrecy vows. Only minor unbreakables, Severus, but unbreakables. And they are only eleven. If allowed to grow, if fostered without being checked, what do you think they might be capable of? The problem I see is that they will need everything of which they are capable. On his return Voldemort will surely want revenge on the boy who dealt him such a major setback, child or no. And Albus...” She grimaced. “Well, you know Albus. He means so well, he has only the best interests of the wizarding world in mind, but he forgets the individual. And frankly, his impression of the world is not always quite in alignment with reality.”

Severus smiled grimly. “It is a relief to hear those thoughts from someone not myself.”

“It is a relief to be able to speak them without fear of horrified looks,” she retorted.

“So... We help them. Three eleven-year-olds.”

“Children or not, they have enemies. They will need our help.”

“Very well. We aid.”

Minerva’s eyes met his. “We aid.”

Which was why Severus found himself several days later once again in conference with Minerva and Potter’s trio while Minerva outlined what she knew of Albus’s plans regarding Harry and his future as hero of the wizarding world. But only that which regarded Harry, since even without secrecy vows Minerva was hardly the sort to betray people’s secrets. Initially Minerva kept stopping automatically when she started on a previously forbidden subject; that would take her a while to recover from.

Not that she really knew many of Albus’s secrets. Albus subscribed to the theory that a secret shared was no longer a secret, and besides, if people knew all the details of his plans they wouldn’t be heart-warmingly amazed when everything miraculously fell into place just as he’d predicted. Albus did so like amazing people.

“There’s a prophecy,” Minerva said. “I never learnt the exact details, but Albus said Harry was the one who would defeat Voldemort with a ‘power Voldemort knows not’. Albus,” she added dryly, “believes the power is love.”

Severus rolled his eyes at the typical Albus sentiment and the children all screwed up their faces. “How can love defeat anyone?” Granger asked. “What does he think Harry’s going to do, go up to him and give him a hug and Voldemort’ll just melt?” Severus flinched while Longbottom gave a nervous giggle.

“Knowing Albus,” Minerva said with a long-suffering sigh, “it wouldn’t entirely surprise me.”

“Hang on,” Potter said suddenly. “If he knows all this why isn’t he telling me any of it? Shouldn’t I know this stuff if he – like everyone else in the world – thinks I’m going to have to play the big hero? Shouldn’t I be preparing for it?”

“Albus,” Severus said, “likes children to be children and not worry their little heads about such things. He probably has a few tests in mind that will guide you into thinking heroically but he won’t tell you about adult business until he absolutely has to.” Longbottom looked unexpectedly annoyed by this.

“So I’m supposed to save the world but I won’t even get any actual training? And people think this guy is important?”

“They’re wizards, Mr Potter,” Severus told him. “They don’t do logical.”

“You’re not kidding.” Potter looked at him. “Do you think love could be the power he knows not? Because if it is we’re probably in trouble. No one ever—” He broke off hastily and refused to finish the sentence.

“Even if you were the most loved child in the world it wouldn’t help,” Severus said. That got everybody’s attention.

“Why not?” Minerva asked sharply.

“Voldemort knows love,” he said through suddenly dry lips. They all looked at him, questioning and curious. “He’s my brother.” Funny, he’d always thought the world would end if he ever admitted that aloud. Since it didn’t, he repeated it. “He’s my brother. By choice, not by blood. He knows love.”

“I’m so sorry,” Potter said softly, eyes wide with pain. And was that understanding there? Surely he was too young? How could it be that they one with the least experience of love was the one best able to understand Severus’s torn soul?

Severus swallowed convulsively and tried to pretend he’d admitted nothing. “Prophecies are bunkum anyway,” he said with a fair assumption of his usual bite. “The only reason they can be said to come true is because they’re so vague you can read anything into them and people who believe them make them self-fulfilling.”

“But Albus believes it,” Minerva said. “And so does Voldemort, judging by his attack on the Potters.”

“Then we have to act. If he is believed to be the one stated, Potter will be used.” Severus looked at the boy. “The prophecy may not rule your life, but other people’s belief in it will.”

Potter’s face took on an unexpectedly mulish look. “They can try.”

Minerva laughed suddenly. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Potter, I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just that your expression was almost identical to one your mother used to get and I hadn’t expected to see it on you.”

Potter’s eyes lit up. “You knew my mum?”

“And your father. We both did,” she added, gesturing to Severus.

“Could you... could you maybe tell me about them sometimes? Aunt Petunia wouldn’t ever talk about them.”

Severus hesitated. “You may not like all you have to hear.”

“Worse than ‘useless vagabonds who got themselves killed in a drunken car crash’?” Potter enquired. “That’s all I ever got told about them when I was little but now I know at least half of that’s not true.”

Minerva looked appalled. Severus just nodded. “Then yes, Mr Potter, I will tell you about them.”

“So will I.” Minerva looked to Longbottom. “And Mr Longbottom, if you ever want to hear about your parents from a perspective not your grandmother’s...”

“Yes please!” he said eagerly.

“But what are we going to do about Harry?” Granger returned them to topic. “He needs training even if the Headmaster won’t give it to him. And...” She scowled. “We’ve been searching the library but we can’t find any reference to anyone who has his amplification skill without being able to do magic.”

“My own efforts have done no better, Miss Granger,” Severus told her.

Minerva frowned thoughtfully. “Though I’ve had little chance to do any research myself, I have to admit I’ve never heard of such a thing. If you would be amenable, Mr Potter, I should like to have a look at your magic.” Potter nodded. “Though there’s something I forgot to mention earlier. You recall I mentioned your mother’s self-sacrifice gave you protection against Voldemort’s attack?” They all nodded. “Albus said that that protection powered blood wards at the Dursleys.” She looked at Potter. “As long as you call home the place where your mother’s blood dwells, he said, her sacrifice protects you.”

“But?” Severus demanded.

“Since you broke my secrecy vows I’ve been to Privet Drive to study the wards. I couldn’t have done so before, because the Headmaster made me vow not to return without his permission, knowing I didn’t like the Dursleys and afraid that the temptation might be too much. But when you broke those vows you also ruptured other bindings. It’s probably a good thing I’m not married; it might have been difficult to explain to my husband why I was no longer married to him in the eyes of magic.”

The children winced. “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Granger said in self-condemnation. “We shouldn’t have done it straight off, we should have practised it first. I’m so sorry, Professor.”

“If you’d waited I probably wouldn’t have let you do it once I’d had had time to think. Don’t be sorry, Miss Granger, I’ve lost nothing I’m not glad to lose.” She paused. “Where was I?”

“Studying the wards,” Severus supplied.

“Oh, yes, those wretched wards.” She looked frustrated. “If I hadn’t known Albus for decades I would believe he was going senile! What is it about magic that makes even the most intelligent people completely illogical? He knew what should happen and so he didn’t bother actually checking that it had happened. But I have checked. The wards are there, yes, but there’s nothing special about them. They might be about any well-protected wizarding home. Yet he is relying on these wards to keep you untouchable, Mr Potter.”

“Um?” Granger said suddenly. Everyone looked at her. “Oh, sorry. But why is the Headmaster in charge of where Harry goes? Shouldn’t there be a Child Services section of the Ministry dealing with this?”

“You’re thinking logically, Miss Granger,” Minerva said kindly. “This is the wizarding world. Albus Dumbledore is Albus Dumbledore therefore whatever he wants is appropriate.”

Granger and Potter were looking equally unimpressed. “I think I’m going to start wishing I was back in the normal world soon,” the former said with a sigh.

It was Minerva’s turn to subject Potter to a battery of tests and measurements, doing a much more thorough job than Severus had. Severus, as a potions’ maker, had only basic need for magical theory, but Minerva, focussing on Transfiguration, needed a far greater understanding. Granger looked over her shoulder and asked a few questions, clearly bursting with more but trying to restrain herself. Minerva’s answers were absent-minded as she focussed on deciphering her results.

“Albus is an idiot,” she announced suddenly, making the rest of them jump, then looked up and realised she’d just said that in front of students.

“Don’t mind us,” Potter said cheerfully. “We don’t mind. Insult him as much as you want. We can help if you want.”

Minerva smiled despite herself, a faint flush darkening her cheeks. “He was right in theory but wrong in practice,” she said, not taking Potter up on his offer. Severus felt this was a pity. “The magic of Lily’s sacrifice is grounded in Harry since it was cast on him and the power of it is welling up out of him to charge the blood wards – in theory. So far as that is concerned, the magic is acting as expected. But Professor Dumbledore failed to take into account the effect of the Avada Kedavra.”

“Effect?” Severus said snidely. “It had no effect. The damned thing was supposed to kill him! Sorry, Potter.”

“No problem, Professor.”

Minerva rolled her eyes at them. “I know it was supposed to kill him, Professor Snape. However, it didn’t. Therefore it was generally assumed that for some reason it had had no effect. Which makes no sense. The laws of thermodynamics do apply to magic, even if few wizards are aware of them. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. Therefore the power of the Killing Curse did not simply vanish, it turned into something else. Nobody, however, has bothered to ask what.”

“It wasn’t dissipated, I take it,” Severus said.

“Not if I’m reading these results correctly.”

“Then what?” Granger asked, jigging up and down impatiently.

Minerva hesitated, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. “Essentially, it seems to have dammed up the Blood Magic power of Lily’s sacrifice. All that power is trapped in Mr Potter, pooling in him with nowhere to go. In effect, he is the place he calls home, the place where his mother’s blood dwells. The protection lies upon him directly, not upon the Dursleys’ house, and as long as he is living in his body it will always be there.”

“I trust you realise how ridiculous that sounds,” Severus said slowly.

“Oh yes.”

He sighed. “Then, since this is Potter, I’ll accept it.”

She tossed him a look and looked at Harry. “I’m afraid, Mr Potter, that I have to confirm that you are now a squib. You weren’t born as such, but from what I can tell all your native magic was burned up in the war between the Blood Magic and the Killing Curse. Had you had none of your own that battle would have killed you before the two reached a balance, but now none of the magic within you is actually yours.”

“How come he got a wand?” Granger burst out.

Minerva smiled. “An excellent question, Miss Granger. The wand responded to the magic within him, even though it isn’t his. It recognised Voldemort’s signature on the Killing Curse and it recognised the power of the Blood Magic. Therefore it accepted him as a magical being with the ability as well as the power to do magic. A Muggle has no magical signature because a Muggle can do no active magic.”

“Why can he share it, though?” Longbottom piped up.

“Blood magic is meant to be used. It’s meant to be active and the power within Mr Potter is actively striving to get out. However, without any magic of his own, he has no pathways to allow it to escape. But you or I, Mr Longbottom, do have those pathways.”

“But Harry needs to know what the power’s going to be used for before someone else can use it,” Granger pointed out.

“That is why magic is seldom stored in living things,” Severus told her. “All magic, even passive magic, has a component of intent within it. A non-living container, with no intent of its own, can store magic and release it without causing problems. Living containers, however, are extremely tricky.”

Minerva nodded. “Magical Theory states—”

“Magical Theory is a load of bosh,” Granger interrupted with annoyance. “It’s based on a lot of unproven assumptions, half of which contradict the other half and all of which are only believed because people have believed them for a thousand years! You can’t call it a theory. A theory is something that can be tried and tested, altered bit by bit so that all the time it’s changing to better fit the facts. A theory can never be proved, you’re always trying to disprove it. That,” she continued disgustedly, “isn’t a theory at all. Everyone just blindly accepts it as God-given truth because some ancient writer decided it was how the world should be and since he’s ancient apparently he knows better than anyone else. No genuine scientist would accept it as a theory for an instant. It’s not even a decent hypothesis! It’s only a ‘theory’ in the popular –and inaccurate – sense of the word and it’s ridiculous to base the entire teachings of magic on it!” Suddenly realising everyone was staring at her, she shut up abruptly.

Potter smiled at her. “Child of science,” he accused cheerfully. Then he looked at the adults, both equally stunned. “You should listen to her,” he said. “She’s been working on a framework that’ll allow the nature of magic to be tested properly so she can set up a true, logical Magical Theory.”

She blushed. “With Mum and Dad and Harry’s help!”

Severus shook his head, smiling faintly because this whole year was turning out to be so ridiculous. “When you three have done with it,” he said, “the magical world is going to look very different.”

-

Most of Neville’s out-of-class time was spent in a disused classroom that Professors Snape and McGonagall had authorised them to use. It was a room free of portraits, something the professors had warned them about; the Headmaster could easily learn anything the portraits saw, so if you didn’t want him to know, better not let a portrait see. This classroom was where Neville, Harry, and Hermione practised magic. They practised way more than the teachers realised, honing this strange skill of Harry’s. And not just in pairs either, with Harry boosting Neville or Hermione’s spells, but with all three of them working together. It had been really hard at first, trying to balance three lots of magic, but they were getting better at it now.

But they did more than just practice. The classroom had seen hundreds of books in the short time Neville had been at Hogwarts, because the three of them were also researching with intense concentration. Another three children, perhaps, couldn’t have done it all. But Harry and Hermione were trained to work had and well, the one by his relatives, the other by her need to understand the world around her, and Neville, appreciated for his own self at last, would have willingly done much harder tasks for the gift of friendship he had been given.

The teachers were no more aware of their research than their practising; the three of them hadn’t talked about keeping it secret, it had just happened. If the professors were like the rest of the adults in Neville’s experience then they wouldn’t like the nature of that research. On the other hand, Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall didn’t act like any adults Neville had ever met. So maybe they wouldn’t mind. Still, it was safer not to tell.

Hermione had organised it, of course. Hermione was the one who understood research. She’d shown them how to use the library properly and then assigned duties. “Neville,” she’d said, “you look for clues about Tom Riddle. Anything we can use to find out who he is, what he’s likely to do, what he did between school and coming out as Voldemort.” Neville sighed in relief at that, too relieved to even flinch at the name. He’d been afraid he’d have to read about his parents and Bellatrix Lestrange. “Harry, you’re good at piecing things together, you do the history of the ‘war’, tactics and people and everything. Not that they should call it a war,” she grumbled in an aside. “Guerrilla warfare maybe, but that wasn’t a real war. More like terrorism.” Harry and Neville exchanged grins; Hermione got annoyed at wizards a lot because she liked logic and they didn’t know what logic was. “Anyway, you do that, Harry, and I...” Staring at the pile of books she gave a sigh half happy and half resigned. “I’ll do magical theory.”

This research wasn’t the scrappy, assignment-done-the-day-before-it-was-due sort of research commonly done by children. It was all done methodically and with meticulous note-taking, because Hermione really was a child of science. Neville learned how to form and test a hypothesis, about the scientific method, how to begin building a theory that had stood rigorous testing.

And he learned more about magic after a couple of weeks with Hermione than he had in a whole lifetime surrounded by it. The three of them got together every couple of days to report on what they’d discovered and talk it over. Neville felt a little stupid and knew he rambled but the other two listened anyway with genuine interest so that he was starting to feel more confident. Harry, on the other hand, spoke clearly and concisely without any wasted words, because he wasn’t used to small talk. Hermione talked a lot in great excitement, not always quite on topic. Neville and Harry would just grin at each other and listen anyway. Hermione didn’t tell you things to show off how much she knew, she told you things because she found them so interesting she just had to share them.

Before Hogwarts Neville had never really known he was lonely. His life had been all he’d known and it was hard to miss something you’d never had and didn’t understand. But if he’d had to go back, knowing what he knew now, then he would be horribly, horribly lonely. An “Excellent work, Mr Longbottom” from Professor Snape or Professor McGonagall made his day, but it was with Hermione and Harry that Neville knew true delight. When Hermione hugged him in exuberant triumph or Harry grinned at him in shared success, Neville thought that he could live on these memories for happiness for the rest of his life. They were as delighted by his successes as by their own, they treated him as if he was just as clever and worth having around as they were, and they never ever looked at him with disappointment.

-

“Neville,” Hermione asked, looking up from the dusty tome she was buried in. “Neville!”

He pulled himself out of his own book to look along the desk. “Hmm?”

Harry looked up as well. The three of them were researching as a way to get their breath back after a particularly gruelling practice session.

Hermione was frowning thoughtfully. “What are the things you need to cast a spell?”

“Wand, will, and intent,” he said automatically. Every wizarding child knew that from before they knew they knew anything.

Hermione tapped the open page in front of her. “The books all say that too. They say these three things are important... It’s the one thing they all agree on. And not a single one of them stop to think that even more important is intention.”

“Isn’t intent the same as intention?” Harry asked. Neville had wanted to ask but had felt stupid.

“No, look.” Hermione drew figures on the desk with her finger. “You’ve got your wand, which channels the magic and transforms it into a useful form. Then there’s will, which is really a combination of willpower and magical power, though no one explicitly states it. Intent, which is what you want to do, usually with spoken words because that makes it easier to focus. But then there’s also intention.”

Harry and Neville exchanged puzzled looks and focussed on Hermione. Her face was alight with the glow that the search for true knowledge brought out in her. Not just to know what, but to know how and why as well.

“Look at it this way,” she explained. “If you cast a levitation spell on someone you can do it for a good purpose, a bad purpose, or a neutral purpose. Neutral would be stuff like lifting a couch to clean under it. But the good and bad... You could cast the spell to save someone from falling off a cliff, right? But you could also cast it to make them fall. Wand, will, and intent are all the same, but the intention is different. That means it’s both a Dark and a Light spell, it depends on how you use it. And no one seems to realise that magic actually cares. That’s why there’re Dark Arts.”

“What are you saying, Hermione?” Harry asked.

“If you cast a spell intending to kill someone, even if it’s for the best of reasons, then that’s Dark Arts. It doesn’t matter what the spell is. And the magic cares about it, so the feedback you get from the spell is the bad kind.”

“So you’d go Dark even if you never used a Dark Arts spell?” Neville asked in surprise.

“Exactly! But if you use the right intention, even with an unusual spell...”

“You’re thinking about Voldemort,” Harry said.

“Revenge won’t work. Hating him won’t work. It’ll just hurt us. Dark thoughts just lead to Dark magic. We don’t want to destroy him, we want him to stop hurting people. That’s a difference. So repentance, forgiveness, that’s the sort of thing we need. Restorative emotions for restorative magic. Justice should work too, but it has to be pure justice without emotions and I don’t think we can do that.”

There was silence as they digested this.

“Hermione...” Harry began. “Are you sure about this.”

“No!” she said with frustration. “All I have are thoughts and hypotheses! I’m trying to get closer to a working theory but there’s so much rubbish that’s been written. This is impossible!”

“Don’t be silly,” Harry told her. “You’ve only just started working on it, you can’t expect to figure it all out in a few months.”

“Crawl before walk, remember?” Neville added.

She smiled. “Okay, okay, you’re right, both of you. Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Harry asked with a smile. “For being a genius?”

Neville smiled too. “You can’t help it if it makes you a little crazy sometimes. Geniuses are like that.”

She laughed. “Watch it. I know more hexes than either of you.”

“We know,” Harry said promptly.

“That’s why we’re glad you’re on our side,” Neville agreed.

“Severus!” Voldemort greeted with the genuine delight that made it so hard to believe he was in his other life a feared Dark Lord. Severus could know it in his head but he couldn’t feel it. It just made no sense.

“You sound as if you haven’t seen me in a year,” he said dryly, taking a seat on a mossy log (Voldemort’s meeting places tended to be out in the wilderness). “It’s been only a week.”

“I’m allowed to be happy to see my little brother,” Voldemort dismissed. “And look, Severus, an old friend has found her way back to me.” He hissed in parseltongue.

The twelve foot snake that slithered out of the bushes would have made most people look around for an escape route. Severus jumped to his feet, but he smiled. “Nagini!” he said with almost the exact same tone Voldemort had greeted him.

The snake lifted her head, scenting the air, swaying back and forth slightly. Then, assured it was him she came speeding towards him like a dog racing to greet an old friend. Despite knowing very well that the oncoming snake would hit like a battering ram if she chose to attack, Severus stood his ground and laughed, letting her wrap her coils around him in a snake hug, keeping one arm free so he could scratch her head. “I’m glad to see she’s all right,” he said to his brother. “I tried to find her after you – disappeared, but...”

“I appreciate that. But Nagini has a mind of her own, as you well know. And she is quite capable of looking after herself.”

“Of that I had no doubt.” Twelve foot snakes with hugs that could crush a car were seldom argued with.

For Severus it was a good way to spend an afternoon, talking with his brother and Nagini. On coming back to Hogwarts, though, it felt almost like a dream. The Dark Lord was out there in England, doing who knew what... and Severus had just spoken to him. Severus had told no one. He should tell someone. He should tell Minerva at least; he should probably tell Albus. The Dark Lord was back and someone should know so people could start preparing. But... But it was his brother. His brother, who was just waiting, as far as Severus could tell. Not waiting for anything in particular, just waiting. Not doing anything, not trying to hurt anyone.

He didn’t know what to do. He just didn’t know what to do.

That was why he barked “What?” at Granger when she knocked on his door. Then he took a deep breath. “My apologies, Miss Granger. What did you want?”

“I can come back if it’s more convenient—”

“No, please. Ask your question.” It would, of course, be a question. It always was with the girl. She had a thirst for knowledge Severus hadn’t encountered before.

She hesitated, then burst out, “I need to learn about Dark magic. Not how to do it,” she added impatiently at his startled look. “But I need to know how it works. Professor McGonagall said you might know someone who could explain it.”

Had she chosen those words on purpose? Albus... Albus would have asked, gently but implacably, that he tell the girl all she needed to know, and Severus would have refused. To Albus he was a Slytherin who had had the ear of Voldemort, therefore he must have been a Death Eater. And a Death Eater naturally knew much about Dark magic, because otherwise he wouldn’t be a Death Eater.

But Severus had never been a Death Eater and as it happened he didn’t know about Dark magic. But Minerva was right: he knew someone who did. Which was why he spent his Sunday afternoon escorting Miss Granger to visit Anscom Aldridge. He was a scholar, very old, older even than Albus, frail and bent but infinitely sharp of mind. He’d never been a part of the war, but Voldemort had respected his knowledge and introduced Severus to him. And he owed Severus a favour. Many people did; Severus made sure of it. A favour could be a very useful thing.

Aldridge had delved deeply into Dark magic but was one of the few who hadn’t succumbed to its lure, protected because his interest was purely intellectual. The most ardent Light supporter couldn’t condemn this man; his soul wasn’t blackened, at worst it was tarnished. But more probably just very very dusty, like his house.

Granger didn’t seem to mind. She’d come clutching a scroll full of questions and plied Aldridge with them. Severus was soon out of his depth. Though he knew the basics of Magical Theory (because his brother disliked ignorance and because it was useful for potions) he’d never delved very deep. But this girl who’d known of magic for half a year had already gone far deeper, so that she was actually arguing with Aldridge, getting him so worked up he was almost shouting in his thin, cracked voice.

And then they weren’t arguing, they were debating, changing each other’s ideas and whittling away differences of opinion as they tried to find a compromise. Severus sat back and watched them, the girl, young and energetic, gesturing with her hands while the old man drew out book after book to show her specific passages, shaking his head at her foolishness before suddenly listening intently and looking thoughtful. All the while the girl’s eyes were growing wider and wider, drinking it in, fitting the pieces together in her head.

They were almost like a painting, old winter and youthful spring, working together to understand the turnings of the year.

-

Around Neville’s bed, on the other side of the drawn curtains, the noisy chatter of his dormmates about the day’s Quidditch match began to peter out. Neville sighed in relief; it was hard to go to sleep with that noise going on but if he cast a spell to block them out they got offended. He hadn’t gone to the match they were talking about so eagerly; he and Harry and Hermione had been practising instead. None of the three were interested in Quidditch for its own sake, and though Harry loved flying (and was amazing at it, despite not actually being magic – Neville wasn’t sure how that worked) he wasn’t interested in watching other people do it.

As for the house and Quidditch cups, Neville and his friends cared even less for them. House rivalries meant nothing to them because they knew they should all three have been in different houses, and as for winning the cup... Well, they had more important things to worry about it. Even Neville knew it, felt it under the light-heartedness of their day’s work.

Something big was building, something more important than school competitions. And though their practice and their research could feel as much a game as anything their housemates got up to, Neville was coming to realise that it was no game. They were really truly trying to find a way to get rid of Voldemort, trying to do something that all the adults couldn’t do in the last “war”. If it hadn’t been for Harry Voldemort (Neville almost didn’t shudder at the name now) could have taken over all of Britain. And they thought three kids could do something about him if he came back? Maybe Harry could, Harry already had. And Hermione was brilliant, so she probably could too. But Neville sometimes wondered what he was doing here. This really wasn’t a game. This was real life, the real life he’d never really had a chance to be a part of... And it terrified him. Maybe he wasn’t five anymore like his relatives thought, but he was still just a kid. He wasn’t Harry, he couldn’t move in the adults’ world.

But he would, because it was for Harry, who was going to be used as a chess piece. Neville wasn’t going to let anyone treat Harry like that so he was going to help him as much as possible. He and Hermione had promised it silently in looks and glances: if Harry had to be part of the adult world, part of all this tangled fear, then they would be there too.

Neville would, he knew as sleep slowly reached out for him, do anything for his friends.

-

Severus, as well as classes, detentions, weekly visits to his brother, and sundry other duties, had regular meetings with Potter. Ostensibly (to Albus’s self-congratulatory delight) these were to share stories about the boy’s parents but in truth they spoke of many things (though to satisfy any truth spells that might happen along, James and Lily Potter were always mentioned). Potter wanted to understand the world that expected him to save it and the main personalities who would order his destiny as it pleased them. A lot of the time it was small things they spoke of, but Severus was intrigued by this boy-man. He was young, of course, with much much to learn... but he was no fool and he would learn. Was learning, in fact, already. And there was an interesting quickness there; Potter saw patterns where other people saw random movement. Sometimes he added them up to a wrong conclusion, but he saw them. Most people, in Severus’s biased and almost misanthropic opinion, went through life completely blind. The boy awakened his interest, made him think that here was not only an intellect worth fostering but also a spirit worth guiding.

And for the first time he understood, even if only dimly, just why Voldemort had spent so much time teaching a halfblood child with no wealth or political clout to offer his cause.

Potter intrigued him. And although half a year ago he could never have believed it possible if James Potter’s son was involved, Severus grudged no time spent with the boy. Potter was not in fact the clone of his father Severus had made himself see initially. He had Lily’s determined chin and Lily’s eyes. But more importantly, he had a manner of his own; self-possessed by in a quiet fashion, confident without being cocky. There was none of James’s bravado or posturing, instead there was a maturity, even at eleven, that James had never had. These days Severus found it hard to look at Harry and see any resemblance to his father.

Not that he showed any of this, of course. To Potter he was biting in the way that could make the right child think if he wasn’t fool enough to cower, and Potter was no fool.

Most surprisingly, though – and this had nothing to do with his father and everything to do with his upbringing and his age – it no longer seemed strange or unbelievable that Potter was the one ‘destined’ to save the world. Despite having no more magical ability than a teapot Potter could somehow make him forget to disbelieve in prophecies. If Albus wanted a hero then this boy was capable of being that hero. But not in the way Albus meant, not with a big sword and a foolish charge on a million to one chance. Potter would be a hero in the way that seldom made it into books, through hard work, determination... and a strong sense of responsibility.

He’d developed a strangely unchildlike ethos founded on two points. One was “Even if it’s not your fault it’s your responsibility” and the other was “Someone has to, why not you?” Severus was making dark plans to rid him of these beliefs, however, because he could easily see the boy being imposed upon by the pathetic mass of humanity that refused to take responsibility for their own stupidity.

He wondered if any of the teachers had realised the vast potential sitting inside that child. Granger’s potential everyone had noticed, because she couldn’t help but show her brilliance, but Potter was quieter. And yet he was the leader of his little trio. It was Potter who drove them, who kept them at their work, who guided their steps, lifted their spirits, kept them buoyed. At a casual glance Granger was the leader, she ordered the other two around unresented and took charge of every day-to-day affair... but when there was a difficult question or a crisis it was Potter the others turned to and he shouldered their need as if he’d been born to it. Granger might take charge, but Potter was in charge.

Severus realised his year was getting even crazier than he’d thought possible when he discovered he himself might be willing to let an eleven-year-old lead him if it came to it.

-

Neville wasn’t surprised when Hermione announced, excited but solemn, that she thought she knew how to defeat Voldemort if or when he came back. When she outlined her plan, though, he was surprised to find he had a part in it.

“You want my help?” he asked doubtfully. Of course Harry and Hermione could fight Voldemort, they were like that. Neville wasn’t. They were smarter than he was, and braver, and they could move in the adults’ world without any trouble. He was just glad they let him hang round with them. But even if they’d let him help out and everything, he wasn’t on their level. Neville knew that. His dad – his dad would have fit in; but Neville wasn’t his dad.

“We need your help,” Harry corrected.

“M-me? But I’m not—”

“You’re more capable than you think,” Hermione told him briskly. She pressed her lips together as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t think how to say it, then she let it go. “And we do need your help,” she said more gently. “You can link with Harry too, and he trusts you.”

Neville stared at her. Surely they shouldn’t let him be a part of it. He’d just mess everything up! “But—you’re so much stronger. Can’t you do it without me?”

“No,” Harry said simply.

“Harry can provide the power,” Hermione explained, “and I’ll guide it, but we need you to ground up both. It’s like... like a tripod. Steadier and stronger with three legs, not two. We aren’t a pair, Neville, we’re a trio. You’re one of us and we need you.”

Neville stared at her.

Harry tilted his head to the side and Neville couldn’t meet that clear, assessing gaze. “We aren’t your friends because we feel sorry for you, you know. We’re your friends because we like you.”

Neville forced himself to meet Harry’s eyes. There was no deception there, only honesty. Harry and Hermione weren’t like Gran, they weren’t always comparing him to someone else. They accepted him as he was. He stood up straighter, unaware that his Gran’s disappointed looks would have little power to wound him ever again. Hermione and Harry liked him. At that moment Neville would cheerfully have gone to face Voldemort all by himself if they’d asked it of him. “I’ll help you,” he vowed.

Harry smiled. “We know.” And he patted Neville on the back even though Harry never instigated physical contact except for magic. Hermione threw her arms around them in a burst of delight, tears sparkling in her eyes. Neville and Harry exchanged looks through her hair, but hugged her back anyway. It was just Hermione.

“Come on,” Harry said, disengaging himself. “Let’s go practise. You never know when we might need to be able to do this.” He thought of something. “Hermione?”

“Yes?”

“You do know you’re brilliant, right? This plan is amazing.”

“Yeah,” Neville agreed fervently.

She assumed a mock pompous look. “Of course I know,” she said airily, parading around the room.

Harry and Neville automatically reached out to grab hands so that Harry could give Neville the power to easily conjure a couple of pillows and they chased after her, pummelling her until she produced a pillow of her own and it became a three-way pillow fight.

-

“Hello, Severus,” Voldemort greeted, looking up from his newspaper as Severus approached. He’d conjured up an armchair that looked completely out of place in a forest, made even stranger by the long snake draped over the back of the armchair and reading the newspaper with him. Voldemort waved the paper at him, making Nagini hiss irritatedly. “I see the All Blacks are beating us again,” he said as he repositioned the paper for the snake. Severus wasn’t quite sure how to reply to that, so didn’t. “Not interested? Rugby never interested me either, I have to admit, but people seem to enjoy it. And when you’ve read the rest of the paper there’s only the sports news left. Nagini brings me papers,” he added.

Severus eyed the front page. “Muggle papers?” he guessed, judging by the unfamiliar masthead and the static photo.

“They’re more common so it’s easier to get hold of an abandoned copy. She does find the occasional Prophet as well. But honestly, Severus, that paper has never been reliable and it doesn’t seem to have improved since I remember it.”

“No,” Severus agreed sourly. “It hasn’t.”

Folding up the paper, heedless this time of Nagini’s annoyance, Voldemort stood. “Severus... I have considered the matter. It seems probably Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts.”

Severus froze. Voldemort had never made the slightest sign he even knew the boy existed and now this. “Yes,” he admitted.

“Then I have a request of you, little brother. I need you to bring him to me.”

Well, bollocks.

-

Even after two days of serious thought in which he only absently responded to conversation (causing several teachers to suggest he could be sickening for something) and taught classes completely on automatic, Severus didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t take Potter to Voldemort, he knew that. But how could he refuse his brother anything? Voldemort had given him everything. But Potter trusted him and the Dark Lord had already tried to kill the boy once. He couldn’t do it. But he had to do something.

Catching sight of Longbottom in the hall ahead, he snapped the boy’s name. Longbottom obediently trotted over to him. “Yes, sir?”

“Tell Potter I need to talk to him,” he ordered.

“Okay, sir.” Longbottom turned away then turned back, looking up at Severus. “Um, sir? I – I know this hasn’t exactly been easy for you, all this stuff. So, well, thanks for helping Harry.”

He scampered off without waiting for an answer, which was lucky because the only thing Severus could think to say was “Longbottom, I’ve just spent two days trying to decide whether to hand him over to the Dark Lord!”

Yet of all the things to say and all the people to say it to! Severus frankly had never paid a lot of attention to Longbottom. Potter was the hero, Granger was the brain, and Longbottom was the tagalong. But as Potter’s first memory was green light and pain, Longbottom’s could very well be the screams of his tortured parents. Severus, called in sometimes to consult on difficult cases at Saint Mungo’s, knew the boy regularly visited the shattered husks that had once held his parents’ souls.

He frowned, briefly diverted from his agony of tangled loyalties. Perhaps Longbottom would be worth keeping an eye on as well.

Then Potter appeared at his office as ordered and Severus was plunged into the heart of indecision again. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Yes. Shut the door.” The boy did as ordered and took a seat.

Severus frowned at him across the desk. “I have never, to the best of my knowledge, lied to you, Potter.”

“No, sir.”

“But I haven’t been entirely honest with you.” He took a deep breath. “I am in contact with Voldemort. I have been since before the start of the school year.”

If he’d been waiting for stunned horror he was destined to be disappointed. Potter just shrugged. “I wondered if you might be.”

Had Potter been upset Severus would have felt no need to explain himself, but that calm acceptance made him uncomfortable. “I know I should have told someone,” he began defensively.

“You don’t owe me any explanations, Professor.”

“I think perhaps I do,” Severus said slowly. “But they will have to wait. Until this point he has shown no interest in his previous attempts to take over the country. But in my last meeting with him he specifically asked for me to bring you to him.”

“And are you going to?”

Severus put his face in his hands. “Merlin, Potter, I don’t know what I’m going to do. He’s my brother but I can’t take you to—” He couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t say ‘die’.

“If... If you asked me to, I might let you take me to him.” Severus’s head jerked up and he stared at him. “I don’t know for sure, but I think I would.”

“Potter—”

“He’s your brother! I never had a family that acted like a family, I never had people who loved me! I just don’t—If you have it you shouldn’t give it up!”

Staring into those urgent, honest eyes Severus felt something inside him ease. A pain he’d felt for over ten years, so that he’d even forgotten it was there, was gone. “Not even when your brother is wrong and you know it?” The decision he’d never been able to make was made, simply because a boy was willing to die. “I loved him. I mourn for what he was. But my brother has become a murderer and that is wrong. He is wrong. I will not take you to him and I will not help him. And if you’re forced to face him, if you get the chance to destroy him – don’t hesitate, Harry. Promise me you won’t.”

Potter’s smile was without humour. “In that case I really do need you to take me to him.”

-

Chapter Nine: Forgive

“I arranged it,” Harry announced, walking into their private classroom and carefully closing the door behind him. “Professor Snape will take us to Voldemort.”

Neville flinched into his chair. It was really going to happen. They were really going to try this. It was crazy to think three kids could do anything against the baddest bad guy ever, but it was up to them. They’d worked out what the adults couldn’t and they knew how to do what the adults wouldn’t. They knew what to do.

“Harry?” Hermione’s worried voice interrupted his thoughts and Neville looked up again. Harry was standing there in front of the door, his fists clenched. His friends stood worriedly. “Harry?” Hermione repeated gently.

“I don’t know if I can do it.” Harry tried to keep his voice steady but it wobbled like he was trying not to cry.

“You have to,” Hermione said gently, and Neville was desperately glad she said something because he didn’t know what to say. He stared helplessly at Harry. “You know you do.”

“He killed my parents!” Harry wailed abruptly and if Hermione hadn’t jumped forward he would have collapsed onto the floor. Hermione wrapped him in a hug and crooned nonsense while Neville bit his lip. It was the first time he’d seen Harry really act like a kid. “I don’t want to face him, I don’t want to—I can’t!”

Neville stepped forward as if being nearer would help. He felt so stupid and helpless. Harry’s despair was almost thickening the air, making it hard to breathe.

“You can, Harry,” Hermione murmured, rubbing his back reassuringly.

“I’m not strong enough.”

“You are.” Neville jumped at the sound of his own voice, but continued on. “You are, Harry, you’re so strong. You’re amazing, you... I think you’re the bravest person I ever met, even braver than my mum and dad.”

“I’m not,” Harry choked. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not. I’m scared. And I can’t do it, I don’t want to do it. Why should I?”

“If not us,” Hermione asked quietly, “then who?” Harry shuddered in her arms.

“We have to do it, Harry,” Neville said, his own voice wobbling. His parents were stuck in that hospital, stuck in their own heads. “Otherwise he’ll just do it all over again. We can stop him now. We can. He t-took my parents too but we have to do it.”

Harry lifted his head from Hermione’s shoulder to look at him. “Okay,” he said in a small voice. “Okay.”

Hermione held out an arm to Neville, her face as white and scared as Neville’s felt. He took the necessary steps to let her pull him into the hug, three children joined in a moment of terror as they faced the truth of what they were about to accomplish.

-

Severus couldn’t believe he’d agree to do this. He was seriously considering taking three children to the man who’d held all of Britain in thrall and might have taken over had Potter not stopped him.

But the really annoying thing was the part of him that kept insisting his brother would like Potter.

He scowled at the path ahead that led to the nearest apparation point on Hogwarts grounds.

“I’d say to be careful your face doesn’t freeze like that,” Minerva commented, “but I think it already has.” The children all giggled. Severus glared at her, but didn’t mean it.

They’d had to bring Minerva with them on this insane expedition, not just because she refused to be left behind but because Potter insisted all three children needed to go and Severus couldn’t side-along three at once. Given a choice in the matter Severus would have preferred to take no one with him, but Potter had suddenly admitted he was in charge.

“And you can’t interfere,” Potter had told Severus and Minerva seriously. “If you have to stay then stay, but you can’t interfere. We know what to do.” His eyes blazed with conviction and confidence.

“Couldn’t you—” Minerva began.

“Teach you? No. It has to be us because we know what to do and because it can be us.”

“At least tell us what you’re intending,” Severus demanded.

“No,” Potter said simply but firmly.

“Why not?” Minerva asked.

He smiled suddenly, mischievously. “Because you wouldn’t let us do it.”

“All right, that’s enough of this nonsense,” she said sharply. “I’m putting a stop to this.”

“No!” The smile dropped off Potter’s face. “We know what we’re doing, honest! It’s better if we do it now. Or would you rather wait for Dumbledore to decide an ‘appropriate’ time for me to be a hero? We can do this right now, before anyone gets hurt. Before anything happens to Professor Snape.”

Severus opened his mouth then shut it again. His brother would never hurt him, he knew that. He just wasn’t quite sure what the Dark Lord would do. Exchanging a helpless look with Minerva, Severus accepted that he was actually thinking about agreeing with this.

Which was why he was now walking beside Minerva, following three children to the apparation point.

They stopped there and Granger looked seriously at the boys. “Remember, we have to mean it. The magic’ll know if we don’t. So if you don’t think you can mean it we need to know now.”

There was a pause as the children exchanged solemn looks and Minerva and Severus exchanged resignedly puzzled looks.

“We can do it,” Potter said. He held out his hand, palm down. Granger and Longbottom laughed and put their hands on his.

“We three solemnly swear,” Granger said, “that we can do this.”

“Amen,” Potter and Longbottom chorused, and all three of them laughed. It was genuine laughter, but there was a little bit of an edge to it. We who don’t know if we are about to die salute you.

Potter and Longbottom gripped Severus’s robes and he held them close to his sides, an arm around each small set of shoulders. Double side-alongs weren’t common, but they were doable. He nodded to Minerva, holding onto Granger, and disapparated.

Then the five of them stood before Voldemort. Severus, still gripping Potter, felt the remarkable surge of magic building up and sent it out with an “Expellliarmus!” as planned. Potter, who carried no wand of his own, caught Voldemort’s wand and gripped it tightly; the other four already had their wands at the ready should Voldemort have any tricks that didn’t require a wand. As planned.

That was about the point things stopped going as anyone had expected.

“A deputation,” Voldemort observed with mild surprise, not seemed to notice his missing wand and looking them over. “Minerva, what an unexpected pleasure.”

“Tom,” she acknowledged.

This was strange enough that Severus and the children stared between the pair. “We went to school together,” Minerva explained coolly. “Tom was a year ahead of me.”

“We even dated for nearly my entire fifth year,” Voldemort agreed, as if they were at a tea party.

“Really?” Longbottom squeaked in disbelief, then flinched as this drew attention from Voldemort.

Even Severus was diverted from the more important issues at hand. “A Slytherin and a Gryffindor dating?” he asked in amazement. A couple of hundred years ago, maybe, but not fifty.

Minerva smiled thinly. “Actually, at school I was in Ravenclaw.”

“Really?” Granger echoed Longbottom’s earlier squeak.

“Albus wanted a Head of House for Gryffindor who was... Frankly, he wanted one who was under his control.”

Voldemort laughed without humour. “That sounds very like him. This is a curious deputation you have brought me, Severus,” he added. “Dumbledore’s trusted friend who apparently doesn’t trust him. And three children, not one. Presumably the dark one is the Potter boy? Which would make you...” Longbottom’s chin rose under the scrutiny. “You have the look of a Longbottom.” He studied Granger. “You I cannot place,” he said with interest.

Despite Voldemort’s calm Severus’s nerves were on edge, waiting for the explosion. After all, it was obvious this wasn’t a simply handover – and he knew very well that Voldemort couldn’t handle betrayal. Couldn’t forgive. He kept one hand gripping Potter’s, knew Granger had the boy’s other hand, both of them ready to produce shields at the first sign of trouble.

His brother saw his fear and smiled. “No, little brother, this isn’t betrayal. I set it up, I knew this was the only choice you could make. I arranged it. Why would I be angry with you?”

“You – You wanted me to turn on you?”

“I wanted you to be safe. Why do you think I made you my spy? Once I finally realised just what I was becoming I knew I had to protect you, even from myself. You were always more suited to them than what I became. It was the only way I could protect you from both sides, the only way I could protect you from what your fellows had become. A spy couldn’t be expected to carry out atrocities and keep his cover. For my sake I knew you would have tried to fit in, if only for a little while, but I couldn’t let you.”

Severus stared at him. This was... crazy. And what kept running through his mind was that Albus had never tried to shield him from the need to commit atrocities. The so-called Dark Lord had treated him with better consideration than the leader of the Light.

“Are you Frank and Alice’s son?” Voldemort enquired of Neville, still as if they were at a tea party.

Neville swallowed hard. “Y-yes,” he said with shaky defiance.

“Interesting. Do you know, Severus, you have brought to me both the boys named in the prophecy? ‘And he shall have a power the Dark Lord knows not’, and it could have been either of these boys. Yes, Minerva,” he added at her startled gasp, “I do know the prophecy. Or rather, the beginning of the prophecy. Dumbledore made sure of it – he would have used Severus to bring it to me but Severus didn’t play along so he had to manipulate another into doing so.”

Potter scowled. “Dumbledore is really starting to irritate me.”

“A much more sensible opinion than mindless worship,” Voldemort complimented him. “And now, Potter, my vanquisher, you have me here at wandpoint. What is your next move?”

Potter let go of Severus’s hand and reached out for Longbottom’s. Longbottom and Granger, working together, cast a glamour-revealing spell. Severus thought they’d gone mad... but though Voldemort didn’t look any different he did shimmer for an instant as his glamour fought the spell.

Voldemort smiled. “I don’t think so, children,” he said kindly. “You will have to be more clever than that.”

Potter smiled back, though his smile was feral. “Maybe we are.”

Longbottom and Granger hissed, casting another spell. In parseltongue. There was no time for anyone to wonder how the hell that had happened, though, because as Voldemort’s mouth opened in shock his glamours fell.

Severus stared. “What—?”

“Oh, Tom,” Minerva said softly.

“You were right, Professor,” Granger told her, a quake in her voice.

“Yes, she was,” Voldemort agreed. “MInerva usually is.” He met Severus’s eyes a second, then looked away. “Yes, Severus,” he said grimly, grimacing down at himself, “this is the truth of what I am.” Instead of the human man Severus had looked up to, loved as a brother, this was a misshapen monster, human still in form but twisted. Hairless, with skin more like scales than skin, a snake’s flattened nose, snake eyes. Nothing human should look like that. “In my foolishness I underwent Dark rituals, for power, for immortality, for the ability to make those changes I so desperately saw needed to be made and then keep them made. But this... this is what they do to you.” Reluctant but resolute, he met Severus’s horrified eyes. And Severus saw shame in that inhuman face. “This is why they are Dark. This is why, even when the others clamoured to follow in my footsteps, I never let you do the same.”

Severus closed his eyes. Then his brother was dead. Lost to the Dark.

“When I’m with you the ‘evil’, for lack of a better word, is silenced. It’s a disease and you, little brother, are the closest thing there is to a cure. But even you can only slow the progress of this. You cannot stop it. You kept me myself for longer than should have been possible but I am lost and the part of me that is your brother will soon be gone. I cannot change what I am, what I have become. Not even if I want to. Not even for you.

“Please understand, this is never what I intended. The Dark Lord moniker, the Death Eaters... it was never meant to turn out this way. I just wanted to protect people like me, people who’d grown up with Muggles. I hated them so much. For how I’d been treated, for my father. My father was Muggle and he killed my mother for being a witch, he drove her out and it killed her. And so many Muggleborn are hurt. I just wanted to protect them.”

“From what?” Granger asked, confused.

“From the Muggles.” Voldemort looked surprised she had to ask, then more surprised that this didn’t explain everything. “Muggles hurt our kind. Just ask Minerva.”

In surprise everyone turned to Minerva; what could she possibly have to do with Voldemort’s anti-Muggle tirades? But there was dawning understanding in her face as she looked at Voldemort. Pulling her eyes away from him, she saw their questioning looks.

“I’m Muggleborn,” she said simply. “My parents were devout churchgoers and as far as they were concerned I wasn’t magical, I was possessed. My mother nearly killed me trying to beat it out of me. My father nearly killed me when he tried to have me exorcised.” She bit her lip. “And I have to admit, mine wasn’t that uncommon a story amongst the Muggleborn of my generation. Some were killed before they ever received their Hogwarts letters because the Bible proscribes magic; magic can come only from consorting with or being possessed by demons. The decline of Christianity in recent years has frankly saved lives among Muggleborn children. Even your grandparents, Mr Potter, had trouble accepting your mother’s talents at first, but Miss Granger’s had no problem. But it’s not like that anymore, Tom,” she added to Voldemort. “And killing them all is not a valid solution.”

“I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” he defended himself. “I just wanted to protect people like me. People like you. I underwent the Dark rituals because I was young and arrogant and I thought that old men had labelled them as Dark because they were cowards, too afraid to risk their lives to earn the power to make everything better. But there are reasons for calling them Dark, reasons that in my hubris I ignored, and the rituals changed me. I became more and more of a beast, I was dragged down into what humans simply call Evil. Severus helped me pull myself back from those changes, gave me the chance to be human again for brief periods. But even Severus cannot stop it, I’ve fallen too far. I am what I am with no hope of return.”

He turned to Potter. “It was not my intention to kill your parents that night. I meant only to attack you so that whatever power the prophecy gave you could activate and destroy me. But your father – I loathed him for what he had done to Severus, to my brother, and the Dark Magic within me would have no rest. That is how he died. Your mother I tried to spare, I tried to send away. But she defied me and the Dark magic will not be denied.” He sighed, looking down at his hands with their inhumanly long fingers. “And in the end I am still here, still alive, kept sane only by the presence of my brother. But I teeter on the edge and soon the Dark Lord will be all I am. Harry Potter, if you know any way of summoning the power you are said to have, I beg of you to kill me.”

Potter nodded solemnly. “We will stop you from hurting anyone else,” he said firmly and Granger and Longbottom raised their wands.

A Petrificus totalus from two eleven-year-olds shouldn’t have stopped a man like Voldemort for more than a few seconds even without a shield, but he went down, immobile. Potter glowered at Severus and Minerva. “You will not interfere,” he ordered.

The children stepped forward to stand at Voldemort’s feet. Severus sank down onto his knees, knowing he was about to watch his brother die, knowing he was about to let those three children become murderers, not knowing how to stop it. Only able to watch. Minerva took a helpless step forward. “Harry—” A sharp look silenced her.

Letting go of his friends’ hands, Potter stepped forward, looking at the supine man. “Tom Riddle, you—” He faltered and the other two stepped forward to join him, one on either side, and gripped his hands again, this time for reassurance. “Tom Riddle, you k-killed my parents.” He took a deep breath. “I forgive you.” As Severus stared at him in shock, the tension drained out of the boy’s body and he went to stand at Voldemort’s head.

Longbottom spoke up. “Tom Riddle, your followers hurt my parents.” His voice wobbled and Hermione gripped his hand. “I – I forgive you.” He went to stand by Voldemort’s left elbow, stepping around the prone figure rather than over him, and Severus saw unexpected peace in the boy’s face.

That left Granger. “Tom Riddle, your ideals threatened my parents.” She looked down into the snakish, inhuman face. “I forgive you.” She went to Voldemort’s right elbow and all three children reached out, holding hands over the man lying at their feet to form a triangle.

What happened then Severus couldn’t follow. There were elements he thought he recognised, some from that afternoon Granger had spent with Aldridge, others Minerva seemed to recognise, but he didn’t understand how they’d been put together or what was happening.

Magic exploded in a silent burst of yellow light that blinded him and filled his nose with an overpowering smell of wet leaf mould. Gagging, he covered his streaming eyes. When he finally could look up again, the magic was gone and there was only the four participants. The children, collapsed against each other in an utter exhaustion not even a Pepper-Up Potion could help, and a man. Not the twisted man Voldemort had become, but the man Severus remembered, except a little younger, about his own age.

Minerva scrambled to her feet and hurried to the children, at which point Severus remembered how to move. Since she was looking after the children, he uncertainly knelt beside Voldemort. His brother looked up at him, looking scared and lost. “Severus... Little brother? I – don’t remember.”

“There’s no more Voldemort,” Harry said weakly. “Only Tom Riddle’s left. Only your brother. We took out the hate.” He scrubbed tiredly at his eyes. “But if you don’t want him to do this all over again, you better teach him how to forgive people. If you ask me, that’s the power he knows not. How to forgive.”

“How did you do that?” Minerva demanded incredulously.

“Hermione’s idea,” Longbottom said, lying back on the ground and sighing deeply.

“We could have killed him,” Granger said, relaxing into the soil as if she never wanted to move again. “We had righteous anger and vengeance. But those are the wrong emotions to use, they would have hurt us too. So we had to forgive him. If we forgave him, really forgave him, the magic would cleanse him. It wouldn’t kill him, we never meant to kill him, but it would set him free. If he’d wanted to stay twisted that would have killed him, but that was his choice. Only he had real remorse in him too, so that saved him. I didn’t expect that.”

Potter let his head flop over so he could look at Severus. “Dumbledore’s sort of right, but not really. You forgive people, yeah, but you have to mean it. I mean really mean it, understanding exactly what they’ve done to you. Not just because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Wand, will, intent,” Granger said, “and—”

“Intention!” the boys said with her and all three started laughing as if it was the greatest joke in the world.

“I think,” Minerva said, “we had better get them to bed.”

Severus nodded, but looked at his brother. “Severus?” Voldemort asked. “Where are we? What’s wrong?”

Happiness, amazement, joy, disbelief... Severus thought he might explode from the emotions filling him. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “Not anymore.” And those three children had just earned his undying gratitude for as long as he lived. Not only had they gotten rid of the Dark Lord, but they’d returned him his brother. “Everything’s perfect.”

Hermione Granger sat at her desk at work, absentmindedly winding a lock of hair around her finger while she frowned at the printout in front of her, trying to find the error in the calculations. On the desk beside hers, currently unoccupied, a magi-PC mumbled softly to itself as it chewed through another set of calculations.

In the office around her magical and Muggle equipment jostled for space on the shelves. Older wizards visiting this, the front research office for Caliburn Inc., tended to eye this conglomeration uneasily, as if afraid the Muggle components would contaminate them somehow or drain them of magic. But if they ventured here once they usually came back.

At thirty, barely more than a child by wizarding standards, Hermione Granger was almost a household name. Certainly every serious scholar of magic knew of her, even if it was only to heap condemnation on her for her new and radical thinking. Not that Hermione cared for their curses any more than she would have cared for their praise: she knew she was, if not right, definitely on the right path. And the people who mattered to her agreed with her.

Suddenly spotting the mistake, Hermione dropped the lock of hair and grabbed a quill to start making notes on the printout. The magi-PC hummed on placidly, while from somewhere in the distance someone said “Rats!” Neither disturbed her.

At her elbow sat what looked like a crystal ball enclosing a living flame that burnt steadily in the confines of the glass. As she paused, reading back over what she’d written, the fire turned green, unnoticed, and there was a low sound like a gong being struck. Hermione looked around to see a face in the flames.

Smiling, she picked up the orb and held it in front of her. “Neville! Oh no, don’t tell me we’re late!”

The flickering image of Neville Longbottom smiled. At thirty he’d lost his puppyfat and gained a quiet but boundless confidence, but there was still in his face a hint of the round-faced boy he’d once been. “I won’t say it if you don’t want me to,” he said cheerfully, “but that won’t make it any less true.”

“Sorry!” Hermione said, hastily tiding up her desk with one hand. “It’s just that we’re making progress on the—”

“Hermione, I don’t care if you’ve discovered the panacea to cure all earthly ills, it’s Thursday and that means it’s our night and—”

“I know, I know. Give us ten minutes, okay?”

“Okay. And don’t worry, whatever you’re working on you can tell us all about over dinner.”

Hermione grinned. “You’ll regret that.”

“Ten minutes, Hermione. Or I’ll send the aurors after you.” His image vanished and the fire returned to its natural colour.

Hermione put the orb down and made a final note on her printout. It was natural that she should have an orb for she was one of its inventors, but a lot of older, more traditional wizards refused to use them since they weren’t a part of traditional wizarding life. Still, the older they got the more likely they were to decide that the orbs weren’t so bad (“I’m far too old to kneel with my head in a fireplace when I want to talk to someone,” Anscom Aldridge had declared, accepting his orb gratefully). The orbs (Hermione had wanted to call them palantirs, in a reference few wizards would have got, but Harry’s name was the one that stuck) used the same principles as floo powder, just modified and enhanced for this specific task with an ingenuity on permitted by the recent total reconstruction of Magical Theory. Fifteen years after its first entry into the magical world the new Theory was still being hotly debated and viciously derided by many; it would take, at Hermione’s estimate, several generations to even begin to be accepted but the few, mostly younger, researchers using it as a basis for their work were already seeing vast potential in it.

Not that Hermione was worried about anything so scholarly at that moment. “Harry!” she called through the recessed lab door. “Harry, we’re late! Hurry up, the Minister’s waiting!”

Harry appeared at the doorway after a moment, taking off his lab coat and hanging it on the wall in the lab before stepping into the recess between the lab and the office and pausing there so that the lab wards could cleanse him of magic and contaminants. “You’re never gonna get tired of saying that, are you?” he asked with a grin.

Hermione laughed. “Not a chance. It sounds far more impressive than ‘Neville’s waiting’, don’t you think?”

Harry swiftly tidied the papers on his desk, checking the progress his magi-PC had made in its work before leaving it to continue overnight. “Actually, I’d be more likely to hurry for Neville than for the Minister,” he said wryly. After the Minister for Magic of his school days, one Cornelius Fudge, had tried to use the Boy Who Lived for his campaigning Harry had conceived a long and unending dislike for the Ministry in general. Despite close links to both the current and the previous Minister.

Hermione just smiled. “Anyway, I like saying Minister Longbottom. Our best friend is the youngest Minister for Magic ever. Isn’t that worth boasting about?” Her smile darkened. “Besides, I still remember Mrs Longbottom’s ‘You think you can be Minister?’ as if it was the most unlikely thing in the world. It’s just lucky we had Neville for most of the year while he was at school and she didn’t have much of a chance to undo our good work. I just wish she’d lived long enough to see that we were right about him all along.”

“She missed her son,” Harry said placatingly as he turned off the lights. They shrugged their coats on as they went outside.

“That’s no excuse for unloading it all on Neville,” Hermione told him, activating the security wards before storing her wand in her wrist holster.

“No, it’s not. But she’s dead now, Hermione, and Neville’s fine. You managed to forgive Tom for being Voldemort, can’t you forgive Mrs Longbottom for being ill-equipped to deal with what happened to her son?”

With a sigh she admitted, “You’re right.”

“I’m always right.” She instantly scoffed, wringing a grin out of him. “No wait, that was you, wasn’t it?”

“Except for when I’m wrong.” She slipped her hand through Harry’s arm and apparated them both to the house in Hogsmeade that would always be for Harry, no matter how far he roamed, Home.

Minerva opened the door before they could know, smiling at them. “Come in, come in, everyone else is already here. Severus says dinner will be about quarter of an hour.”

“He’s not let Neville near it, has he?” Harry asked in concern as he and Hermione shucked off their coats.

Minerva laughed. “I can assure you, Harry, Severus is much too sensible for that.” Neville, despite all his best efforts, simply wasn’t capable of cooking. With tuition from Severus and Tom he’d earned an O on his Potions NEWT but no amount of tuition seemed to help with cooking.

“You can’t laugh,” Harry told Hermione, hanging up their coats. “The best you can do is boil an egg.”

“And potatoes,” she protested, still smiling.

“Well, with eggs and potatoes at least you won’t starve,” Minerva teased.

“Of course I won’t, that’s what Neville and I have Harry for.”

Harry elbowed her as the pair followed Minerva down the hall into the large kitchen-and-dining room, where Severus was busy with multiple pots and pans while Tom and Neville sat at the dining table playing exploding snap. The thaumatelly (another Caliburn Inc. creation) was on but muted and no one was paying it any attention.

All three men looked up at their entrance and uttered a chorus of welcoming greetings. Harry’s eyes twinkled. “I know I’m wonderful,” he declared, “but I still don’t know why everyone’s so happy to see me. I saw all of you last Thursday. That’s only a week ago! And I see Hermione every day because we work together. Neville I see most days because he lives in the same house as us. On... Monday, it was, wasn’t it? Severus was helping us clean the newest lot of researchers off the walls – and how they managed to explode a golf ball I still haven’t figured out – and yesterday Tom stopped by because he was bored—”

“Or because I needed your signature on several contracts,” said Tom sotto voce, who was the CEO of Caliburn Inc.

Harry ignored this. “—and then—” He stopped and adopted a hurt look. “Minerva,” he said, wounded, “don’t you love me any more? You didn’t come to see me this week.”

“When have I ever claimed to love you?” she retorted.

“Well, there was that time after I—”

Since he seemed perfectly willing to start enumerating occasions, Minerva hastily cut him off. “Never mind. Besides, young man, we spent all of Sunday together at that orphanage fundraiser.”

Harry shuddered. “I’d been trying to forget that,” he complained. Though he made good use of his fame to promote worthy causes, Harry had never liked his Boy Who Lived title and although with these few close friends gathered here he was bright and laughing, he still found it difficult to truly trust people. Severus had a couple of times commented that Harry seemed to find it easier to accept hate than adoration; he knew what to do with hate – he ignored it – but had no idea what to do with the latter.

“Oh, sit down and shut up,” Neville told him, laughing.

“Before Severus starts comparing you to your father,” Tom agreed cheerfully.

As Harry hastily obeyed, dragging Hermione down to sit beside him, Severus brought over a bottle of wine and Minerva poured out drinks for them all. “How are your parents?” she asked Hermione as she set the wine bottle down.

“They’re good.” Hermione looked around the table. “You’re still all coming to their anniversary celebration, are you?” She gained a chorus of agreement and smiled. “Good. Thanks,” she added when Minerva passed her a glass of wine.

“A toast!” Tom declared, accepting his glass.

Neville rolled his eyes. “Do we have to have a toast every week?” he asked, grinning.

“You started it,” Harry pointed out.

“Only because Tom got voted in! That was supposed to be a one-time thing!”

“Sorry, Neville,” Minerva smiled, “this isn’t magic. Intention doesn’t count and we can still blame you.”

Severus laughed and lifted his glass. “To magic.”

“To wisdom,” Hermione responded.

“To laughter,” Tom declared.

“To learning,” was Neville’s contribution.

“To family,” Minerva added.

Harry grinned and stood, raising his glass high. “To us!”

“To us!” the others chorused.

What could have been a fine and noble moment of shared camaraderie was interrupted by Severus’s sudden yelp of “Damn, it’s burning!” The others laughed as he jumped up and ran to the stove to snatch the overeager pot off the range. With Harry’s help dinner was soon served (and not, despite Severus’s grumblings, at all blackened). The six of them sat around the table just as they had done for nearly two decades, laughing and talking and arguing merrily as the old family they were.

After Voldemort’s rebirth minus the Dark rituals he had been introduced back into the wizarding world as Thomas Snape, Severus’s long-lost brother, and because of the blood brother’s ritual, the testing spells had agreed with them. Tom was then granted custody of one Harry Potter on the grounds that they were obviously related (actually, it was just his magic on Harry that made the spells think it was so; Muggle scientists would have seen that they weren’t related, but wizards believed in their magic and didn’t question it). Dumbledore would have tried to prevent this happening for Dumbledore-ish reasons, but he’d been let into the secret of Harry’s magiclessness (the group had taken great pleasure in requiring a secrecy vow of him for the information) and been convinced that there was no point in keeping Harry at Hogwarts.

Not that the magical world knew, even nineteen years later, that Harry was a squib; as far as they were concerned, Harry had been taken out of Hogwarts by his guardian so that he could have special training. Harry and Tom had taken a house in Hogsmeade, with Harry given special permission to roam the Hogwarts grounds with the other children. Meanwhile he had been taught both Muggle and magical subjects, taking correspondence courses in the former and having Tom’s tutoring in the latter in between Tom’s work for the Ministry. Back at Hogwarts Hermione had absentmindedly done her school work but, bored, set about rewriting Magical Theory, with help from her parents and the other five.

After Hogwarts Neville had joined Tom at the Ministry but Harry and Hermione had both gone to Muggle university (Hermione, of course, was unable to settle and had managed to acquire three PhDs, but Harry had been more than satisfied with one). While they were there Tom, unable to restrain the quixotic impulses that had led to his descent into Dark magic, found himself as Minister for Magic, putting his charisma and charm to good use this time, changing things from the inside out and paving the way for, after ten years, Neville to succeed him. He’d stepped down happily because Harry and Hermione had become the first wizard scientists and needed someone to take charge of their company, Caliburn Inc., while they did the research. His taking over the day to day running allowed them to focus on revolutionising how magic was understood, taught, and used, while creating marvellous new inventions that the magical world, mired in tradition, had never before considered.

And now here they were. Neville was Minister for Magic, not instigating sweeping reforms but quietly and subtley working to change the very nature of society, quietly doing away with concepts of blood purity, halfbreed racism, and house elf enslavement without people even noticing the changes. It would be at least a hundred years before anyone stopped to realise things were different, but that was fine. Neville wasn’t a loud person who needed the world to cheer him on, he was just happy knowing he was making a difference.

Minerva was Headmistress of Hogwarts in all but name, Dumbledore having become rather feeble over the years, and much beloved by her students, creating a new, united Hogwarts by minimising house rivalries and guiding the students in much the same way as Neville was guiding their world so that changes would come even faster. As Tom had realised in his first, less successful rise to power, it was with the young that changes could be easiest and best made.

Tom was CEO of Caliburn Inc., now a major force in the wizarding world and employing more workers than any other company save the Ministry itself. Under his guidance the company had blossomed and expanded despite a great deal of opposition from the hardline traditionalists, of which there were rather a lot in the magical world. Harry and Hermione were the lead researchers and driving force behind Caliburn Inc., and Severus was cheerfully and bitingly in charge of the Potions Division of Caliburn Inc.

Albus Dumbledore waited patiently for Voldemort’s inevitable return, keeping an eye on Harry to make sure he was primed to become the hero at need. He was still waiting patiently at the hour of his death, and never knew that that charming Thomas Snape was in fact the man he was waiting for.

Harry, Severus, Hermione, Neville, Minerva, and Tom all stayed very close throughout their lives, squabbling and teasing and arguing and supporting just as families should. And, on average, they all lived happily ever after.