It takes three days after Dumbledore drops his bombshell in their midst before Erasmus finally meets Harry’s eyes.

He thought things would be better if he ever found out who he was. Somehow he thought that would make everything better. Everything would make sense and he wouldn’t be scared any more, he wouldn’t hurt any more, he wouldn’t be angry any more. He would get his memories back and he’d find out it was all imagination, that his mum loved him and people wanted him and he’d never failed at anything. He would go back to his real life and he would be happy.

He should have known it wouldn’t be like that. Not for him. He doesn’t get a happy ending and he should have known.

But he didn’t. And he was wrong. He knows who he is now but he has no answers, only more questions. No memories, only more fears. What was he, what did he do?

How much of this does he deserve?

So he looks up from his lunch and finally meets Harry’s eyes and he asks, “Who am I?”

“You’re Severus Snape.”

“What does that mean?”

Harry thinks about this carefully. “It means you’re a hero.”

It means, Erasmus knows, that he’s a Death Eater vilified by the world he once lived in, but Harry says he's also a hero. Harry likes Snape.

“I don’t know why you hated me so much but saved my life,” Harry says. “I guess I never will. I don’t care. You never betrayed me, you were there when I needed you.”

It means you’re a hero.

It means, Erasmus thinks in amazement, that he’s not a failure.

-

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Harry asks Hermione. Begs Hermione. “He is Snape.”

“Dumbledore said—”

“Dumbledore lies. All the time.”

That is the moment the last stone in Dumbledore’s pedestal crashes to the ground. When Harry says out loud the truth for the first time. It doesn’t matter why, why Dumbledore lies, why Dumbledore does anything. The truth of it is that he lied. There’s no trust left there. Harry feels sick, because Dumbledore was a hero once, Dumbledore was the Defender of Harry’s World, and if there’s no hero left then Harry has to be his own hero and he’s not that strong, he’s not that brave.

But Dumbledore betrayed his trust. And Harry doesn’t have the ability to put that past him. He’s been betrayed too many times.

“He could have made it up. He could have planted all the evidence so we’d come to that conclusion.” Harry’s learnt to question, to wonder, to investigate. To not take anything at face value. Sometimes he feels wearily angry about that. “He could have made it so we thought we had all the clues and we put them together just how he wants.”

Hermione doesn’t try to be rational, she doesn’t ask why Dumbledore would do such a thing. Which is good, because Harry’s in no state to be rational. She just says, “We have our own proof.”

He looks at her. And he starts to smile.

-

“I was never scared of you,” Harry explains it to Erasmus. “I was never scared of your magic. I thought it was just because you’re a kid and it’s the adults who are scary, but Ron’s magic is scary too.” He hates that, being terrified of the boy who’d once been his best friend. So much fear. “But I was never scared of your magic. There’s only one other person like that, and that’s Hermione.”

Blood-binding, Hermione explains. She bound herself to Harry because she didn’t know if it would help but she knew they needed every bit of help they could get and Harry, trusting and unknowing, bound himself back – and then bound himself to Snape, who, for reasons unfathomable, reciprocated.

She doesn’t explain further, doesn’t explain how their magics were for one glorious moment twisted together. That isn’t something to speak of, not yet, and Harry is glad she doesn’t speak of it. One day, he knows, the words will have to be spoken, the secret unwrapped, but not this day. The relief makes him feel kindly towards the world, even Dumbledore, for one shining moment.

“Your magic doesn’t know ours,” Hermione says instead of explaining further. “You got turned back, so it’s not bound to us anymore. But our magic knows yours. That means you’re him.”

“What does that mean?” Erasmus asks, looking between them, a little scared, a little lost, a little joyous in the strange dark way of having a tiny candle suddenly spring to life in a great blackness. Harry knows that joy, knows the clutching at small blessings in a cursed world. Small things become great when there are no great things.

Hermione looks at him thoughtfully. Harry holds his breath. Erasmus’s eyes plead for hope.

“It means,” Hermione says carefully, “that you belong here.”

-

Harry has a scrapbook full of newspaper articles that reference Severus Snape. Even if they’d been about someone else they would have been bad. But when he knows they’re really about him, about who he used to be, Erasmus is terrified. How can a whole world hate him so much? Was he really so terrible, so horrible? The only hint of relief in those articles is the mention of Harry and Dumbledore fighting for him. Even Dumbledore. He hates the man, yes, but if he will fight for Severus then Severus can’t be so terrible.

Mostly, though, it’s Harry’s fight that helps. Harry thinks he’s worth fighting for. Thought, even then, that he was worth fighting for. Erasmus tries to hold onto that thought.

Hermione won’t let him read more than a couple of pages of the scrapbook at a time and even when he scowls at her for it he’s grateful too. He needs to know, but it hurts to read that stuff. He doesn’t even know them, how can they say all those horrible things about him?

In between pages Harry and Hermione tell him about the Severus they knew. Erasmus likes those times because he sits there, Crookshanks on his knee or his chin on his hands, and he watches them talk and their faces light up with memory. Slowly their eyes become wider, they start to look younger. In memory they don’t hurt anymore and the world is still full of wonder as they laugh and toss memories back and forth: “Do you remember? What about the time? Oh, the look on his face!”

And Erasmus listens.

No one tries to call him anything but “Erasmus”, even now they know who he is, and that’s fine with him. He’s not Severus. He knows that now. Severus is who he was, but if he no longer remembers that person then he is not him. He is Erasmus. Besides, he’s not sure he wants to be Severus. Harry is kind, and of course Harry likes Severus, but he’s also honest and Erasmus doesn’t like the sound of Severus. Nor does he like those fragments of memory that live in the back of his head and surface in his dreams. Severus was bitter and angry and alone. Erasmus is angry, but he isn’t alone. Even without memories, Erasmus is a better person to be than Severus.

-

Mrs Granger comes into the living room where they’re watching cartoons and Harry and the others look up, startled. “Dumbledore’s coming up the path,” she says grimly. “Do you want to talk to him?”

The way all three of them freeze and stare at her in horror is answer. Her face shutters off and she turns on her heel as the doorbell rings.

“Ah, Mr Granger,” they hear Dumbledore’s genial voice. “Good afternoon.”

Harry closes the door. Firmly, definitely. Wishes there was a lock. Through it they can hear the murmur of voices, Mr and Mrs Granger’s getting louder but Dumbledore’s, as always, calm and quiet.

Crookshanks and Hedwig take up stations at the door, hackles raised. Hedwig clacks her beak loudly, angrily, and Crookshanks’s tail is fluffed out like a bottlebrush and his ears are back. The three children huddle in the corner, the telly nattering on unheeded. They don’t want Dumbledore. Not yet, not when the wounds are still so raw and bleeding. They can’t deal with him. Harry closes his eyes and grips Hermione’s hand and prays that Dumbledore will just go away. He doesn’t want to talk to Dumbledore, however much Dumbledore may want to talk to him.

“After everything you’ve done to them!” Mrs Granger’s voice demands with a sudden jump in volume.

Dumbledore’s calm, reassuring murmur is met with another angry but indistinct outburst from Mrs Granger. Then a twang of magic ripples through them, feeling like the noise of a wooden ruler being slapped against a table, and a smug feeling emanates from the house.

“You damn hypocrite,” Mr Granger says, not so much loud as fierce and carrying. “You may be able to force your way into any other house in Britain but you’re not getting into this one without permission.”

Dumbledore’s murmur again, sounding genuinely apologetic.

“You’re always sorry,” Mrs Granger says straitly. “It doesn’t change anything.”

The front door shuts firmly and definitely.

Harry’s fingers are tight around Hermione’s; he holds his breath.

Mr and Mrs Granger come in alone. Hermione runs into her dad’s arms and he wraps her in a bear hug and lets her sob into his chest. Harry and Erasmus stand very close together, stiff and scared and alone. Then Mrs Granger pulls them into her embrace and holds onto them as if she’ll never let them go.

-

Avoiding Dumbledore helps a little, but not enough. Erasmus is so on edge, waiting for the next blow to fall, waiting for the next thing to go wrong. It hurts, it all hurts so much and he’s so tired of having to deal with it all. Erasmus is a better person to be than Severus, but that’s not saying much. And he doesn’t want to be Erasmus any more. He wants it all to be over,. The pain and the fear and the worry and the crisis on top of crisis. He’d say there wasn’t anything bad left to happen, that surely he’s hit the worst, but he’s too realistic to believe it. It can always get worse and he’s just waiting, waiting, waiting, for that new horror to descend.

He thought things were getting better. He was wrong.

He wants it to stop. He’s too tired to cope anymore. He doesn’t want to cope anymore. And so when he finds himself alone in the kitchen it’s like a godsend, because his gaze falls on the knife block and he knows that if he pulls one out, that big chef’s knife, say, it will glitter and glisten in the afternoon sun, the light will run across the metal in invitation, and it would be so simple, so easy, to run the blade up each wrist, along those pulsing, beating arteries, and…

It would be so easy. And yet he doesn’t move.

He stares at the knives, at the dull matte black of the handles in the wooden block, each ornamented in shining silver just the colour of the hidden blades. And he doesn’t move.

It means you’re a hero.

Heroes don’t try to kill themselves.

He can almost feel the weight of someone’s worried gaze bent down on him and looks around furtively. And then slowly looks up to the wooden-beamed ceiling. Harry loves this house and he gave it life, that’s what Hermione said. The house is watching him, worried.

Harry doesn’t want him to die. Harry thinks he’s a hero.

Erasmus... doesn’t want to die.

He walks away.

-

-

“Potentiam tuam augeo,” Hermione whispered. And under her words Snape’s hoarse voice echoed her, half a syllable behind.

The new scars on his battered hands tingled as power flowed through them. Harry clenched his fists around the itch of power on his palms and – fell.

There were three of them, of course, but somehow the three of them were one as well. He was Hermione’s fear, his own panic, Snape’s bitter guilt. He was Hermione’s determination, his own acceptance of the inevitable, Snape’s willingness to die to end this here and now. His own  persistant doggedness, Hermione’s knowledge, Snape’s determination to never bow to Voldemort again. The magic welled up inside him; their magic was his magic, their strengths added to his strengths and balanced out his weaknesses as he balanced out their weaknesses. For one strange, bewildering, uplifting moment, he lived in three bodies, breathed with three pairs of lungs, saw with three pairs of eyes.

And Harry, who had grown up with no one and nothing to call his own, felt for that wonderful, terrifying moment that he would never be alone again. Then Voldemort moved and the moment was over and Harry knew they were about to die. But the power, the magic, that was still his, three sets of magic joined together in this moment with one shared goal.

-

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