"You know, Ron is still worried about you."

Harry hugged her tighter. She was sitting sideways on his lap with her head on his shoulder, his arms wrapped tightly around her on the couch in the far corner of the common room. Ron studied on the other side with Hermione, trying to figure out a tough Transfiguration assignment. Almost as if he knew he was being talked about, he glanced up at them, and then his eyes flitted back down to his work as if he hadn't noticed them at all.

"Why is that?" Harry asked softly, reveling in her fresh strawberry scented hair.

"I think he's worried Professor Snape will have a bad influence on you. I heard him telling our dad so, begging him to do something about it since he works at the Ministry."

"And?"

"Dad didn't put much stock in it. Ron sulked all Christmas."

"Well I haven't done anything to prove those suspicions true have I? Aren't I still the same old Harry?" He grinned as she leaned back, a smile on her face as well.

"Better."

"Oh yeah?"

"Well the old Harry dumped me and then didn't speak to me all summer... the new Harry seems to have come to his senses. Maybe that logical thinking your father has has just worn off on you." She giggled.

"I'll give him that... it's all logical with him... except the mystery, wrapped in a riddle part."

"An enigma?" She giggled again. They had talked about how mysterious Harry felt his father to be sometimes. Just when Harry thought he had a handle on the man and his emotions and history, he was surprised each time to find out he was mistaken. Ginny had suggested that he was an enigma: a mystery wrapped in a riddle that was meant for Harry to figure out.

"Maybe this is supposed to be fun for you, figuring out who he is."

"Maybe he's supposed to just be a normal person. Do you know what he asked me the other day? Asked me if you and I were using protection!"

Ginny giggled. "Protection? Harry, are you afraid to say condom? That is what it's called."

"I'm just telling you what he said," Harry told her, turning a little red. "And... I didn't know wizards had condoms."

"It's a spell... not like those balloon things the Muggles use, but mostly the same concept. Mum told me and Hermione ages ago when she thought that Ron and her might be... you know. They weren't, or Hermione would have told me."

"Yeah, well it's not really any of his business if you and I are doing things is it? He's so weird sometimes. It's like, sometimes he's just old Snape, who's just my professor who ignores me, and then other times out of nowhere he just has these urges to know all about my personal life and inject himself into it where he thinks I ought to have help."

"Isn't that what parent's do?"

"Is it?" Harry felt a little naïve in this area, really having no experience with parents or with being a loved child, aside from what he'd had with the Weasley's. That brought on a new thought... did Snape love him? Did Harry love Snape? Harry had really only known two kinds of love... the love he had for Ginny, which was deep and unending, and which he felt could conquer all, and the brotherly type love he felt for Ron and Hermione, which sometimes faltered and somehow seemed to shine through in the end, despite arguments and broken noses.

"So thoughtful?"

Harry came back to reality. "Just wondering..." he trailed off.

"Hm?"

"Just wondering if Snape... if my dad... you know."

"I don't speak teenage boy fluently Harry, you have to speak English for me."

He rolled his eyes and then let out a short laugh, knowing he wasn't being all that coherent. "I just wondered if he loved me is all."

"Oh."

"How do you know? How do you know your parents love you?"

"I don't know," she said. "I just know they always have. They do things for me they wouldn't have to if they weren't my parents, and they watch out for me and stand up for me. They're always there when I need them to be, and they always try to understand what I'm going through."

"And..." he fidgeted for a second with his fingers, "how do you know you love them?"

She gave him an appraising look, realizing yet again that he was still searching to find himself somewhere in all this mess. It was a realization she had made a few times and sometimes forgot that Harry had not always grown up with what she had often taken for granted.

At her thoughtfulness, Harry said, "I love you, I know what that feels like, but I don't feel that for him. And I love Ron and Hermione... and maybe even Draco like siblings, but I don't feel that for him. I don't know how to feel like I'm supposed to towards a parent. Sometimes he's a pain in my side, and other times we have these perfect moments that don't feel all awkward and needlessly annoying."

"Maybe start looking in those perfect moments. I guess I feel gratitude for my parents when I realize how they're there for me. And I know I could do worse for parents. I'm sorry if I'm not being much help... it's something I don't really think about."

Harry gave her a warm smile anyhow. "You're lots of help Ginny. More than you know."

* * *

Severus watched with angst every time Harry looped and dove, speeding recklessly around the Quidditch pitch after the tiny golden ball, weaving in and out of hard black balls and other players. Was this how he was supposed to feel? All tied up in knots every time his son got hit with a Bludger or nearly died leaping off his broom after the Snitch, grabbing onto the handle of a teammates broom at the last second to keep himself from plummeting to certain death? If it was, he didn't think he liked it very much, or at all.

"What's with him?" Minerva whispered to Albus, as a cheer rose up from the Slytherins and all Severus did was gasp as Harry was knocked in the stomach with a Bludger.

The man turned his eyes towards his Potion's Master and let a smile cross his face.

"I believe he is worried over his son."

Minerva gave her superior a calculating look. "Have you been feeling well Albus? I thought I heard you say he was worried over his son."

He smiled kindly at her. "Quite well, thank you for your concern Minerva. I was referring to your star Seeker. And no," he held up a hand to her as she went to protest, "I do not need to see Madam Pomfrey."

"Then what on earth are you on about?"

He motioned for her to watch what Snape in relation to Harry looping about. Harry nearly had a head on collision with Ronald Weasley as the orange haired boy swooped out of nowhere to stop the incoming Quaffle. Severus rose partway from his seat and noticeable stiffened at the near miss.

"I don't understand Albus. Just a few months ago he was dragging the boy into my office, telling me he was going to insist he be expelled. Now he's... concerned?"

Albus was just about to say something when Severus leapt off his seat as the crowd gasped and pointed. Harry had been knocked off his broom by a Bludger to the head, and was falling, falling. He lay motionless on the ground.

Before Minerva could register what had happened, Severus had bolted from the staff seats high above the turf, and was hurtling down the stairs and out of sight.

Albus raced off too, and a minute later Minerva saw he and Severus running across the field, Severus falling to his knees and lifting Harry's head up as he lay on his back, eyes closed.

Still confused and feeling fuzzy on the details, she watched as Albus did something with his wand, and when Harry didn't wake Severus picked the lifeless Gryffindor up and ran off towards the castle with the Headmaster. Was he dead? Why hadn't Severus levitated him to the castle? Was he truly as Albus had said? No, she told herself, almost chuckling amidst her worry for Harry... it just wasn't possible... was it?

* * *

"Is he dead?"

"Is he ok?"

"Is he breathing?"

"Tell us something!"

Draco and Ron's shouts were demanding to be answered as they flew to the castle and landed beside Dumbledore and Snape as they rushed inside.

"He is not breathing," Dumbledore shouted back, waving for them to stay put and not to follow.

Ron and Draco shared a look that spoke volumes to the other about how much they both cared. It scared Draco, because he had never had anything in common with somebody like Weasley, and because he had never before cared so much about anybody's well being but his own.

"Madam Pomfrey will revive him," Draco said, trying to feel certain but not quite managing. Ron thought the Slytherin's voice sounded a little desperate, and was caught off guard.

"You think?"

Draco nodded. "She's Madam Pomfrey... she can do anything."

* * *

Severus paced back and forth, ignoring the stares from Minerva as she sat on a chair in the darkened hospital wing a short distance from his son's bed. How could he have let this happen? He should have insisted that the boy give up Quidditch immediately after finding out that he was his own. He never understood in the first place how any parent in their right mind would let their child play such a dangerous game. True, no student at Hogwarts had died from it in 200 years, but he could have gotten a serious injury... brain damage even.

Madam Pomfrey's assurances that he would be fine did not help to sooth Severus, even though Severus knew what the potions he had brewed earlier in the year were meant to do. Madam Pomfrey kept them on hand just for accidents like this, and insisted that at least one student a year was brought in not breathing, and that this wasn't Harry's first time in this situation. After they'd found him with the Sorcerer's stone in his pocket, he was blue and cold, and even then Severus had thought him surely dead, his promise to Lily failed.

"Will you wear a hole in the floor over one of my students?" Minerva's voice drifted over from the corner where he had nearly forgotten she was sitting.

He shot her a look at her curious tone and ran his hands through his hair. "It's my business... let it be."

"I noticed how anxious you were in the stands over him... and then Albus said something strange."

Severus tilted his head back and rolled his eyes, thoughts all dripping with sarcasm too much to let loose.

"Yes, of course, it figures he would tell someone..."

"You can't possibly expect me to believe this... joke? Lily and James are-"

"Not his parents Minerva. Lily and I are."

"But he looks so much like-"

"Me," Severus finished for her again. "He looks like me, with his black hair and the shape of his eyes, and if my nose hadn't been broken three times by James and Sirius in our school days I expect our noses would look alike too."

She was quiet as she considered what he had said, taking in for the first time the similarities between them.

"But how? She married James. And then they had Harry."

"Don't be daft woman. Lily and I dated through school. She was the only Gryffindor I could stand. We were engaged the day after we graduated. We bought a house and lived together for two years before she ran off and married James. But not before telling her sister that Harry was mine."

He paused in thought. "That woman... she always did get on my nerves. And then she went and blurted out Lily's secret to Harry before he came back here."

"That's why he was in so much trouble? Because he found out and you didn't want him to?"

Severus rolled his eyes again. "Really? You think I'm that heartless to let my child live with the likes of those Muggles? If I had known he was mine I would have taken him away from that place... those people. I didn't find out until a little while after the start of the new term when Harry broke down in my office and showed me through Legillimency skills that nobody knew he had."

"He's a Legillimens?" This revelation took her back some. "Then surely you are his father? This is not some fabrication by Albus to get back at me for the prank this summer?"

"If it were a fabrication I would not nearly have died of heart failure this afternoon."

"Well I'll be." She put her hands on her hips. "I thought something was strange when Harry said he was going home with his family for Christmas. And he was so excited when he put his name on that list last minute..."

Severus looked up. Harry had been excited to spend time with him? He hadn't shown it when he turned up to Snape's office looking sulky. The revelation was enough to finalize his decision... a son who wanted to spend time with him... his son who had almost died. He had to protect him better, no matter what Harry thought of him after that.