Spiral of Trust by Henna Hypsch
Summary: The summer Harry turns eighteen he sleeps alone in a shed at the Burrow. Will he be fit to return to Hogwarts for a seventh year of education? What does a last year at Hogwarts have to offer in the aftermaths of Voldemort’s demise? And how will Harry cope with the Headmaster in office?
Categories: Healer Snape, Teacher Snape > Professor Snape Main Characters: .Snape and Harry (required), Ginny, Hermione
Snape Flavour: None
Genres: Action/Adventure, Angst, General
Media Type: None
Tags: None
Takes Place: 7th Year
Warnings: Romance/Het, Romance/Slash, Self-harm, Suicide Themes
Challenges: None
Series: Spiral
Chapters: 47 Completed: Yes Word count: 259426 Read: 180117 Published: 11 Nov 2014 Updated: 24 Nov 2015
Chapter 23 Which father? by Henna Hypsch

 

A couple of turbulent weeks followed. Every day new slants of the story were added to the general picture in the Daily Prophet. There was an article based on an interview with an old Professor of Magical History who made parallels to cases in the past where fights within families of Dark Wizards were not uncommon, nor patricide or infanticide.

Different opinions as to the awareness of the existing relationships were given room for in the newspaper. Did Voldemort know that Harry Potter was his grand-son or did he act instinctively when he decided to kill the baby? Was Severus Snape aware of the relation between his mother and Voldemort? Was he sure about the fatherhood of Harry Potter? Did Harry Potter know whose son he was and most important of all, did he know that he was related to Voldemort? Because, argued the reporter, the answer to all those questions determined the attitude and the incitement of each of the principal characters in this drama. Voldemort, the reporter said, must have had some foreboding knowledge, as he was so adamant from the beginning to kill Harry even as a baby.

The correspondence between Eileen Prince and her school friend was published. The meaning of the letter was not very explicit, Hermione told Harry at the breakfast table, but Snape’s mother undoubtedly praised Tom Riddle and it could be interpreted as if she meant to see him again.

“Which is far from saying they were actually having an affair,” concluded Ron dryly.

The malignant atmosphere and the savage feelings prevalent at the start of term towards Snape flared up again and Hogwarts boiled with rumours and opinions. Harry cast Muffliato spells on himself whenever he moved about in the corridors, but he could not escape the looks his fellow pupils cast on him, which showed everything from curiosity to loathing and fear.

One particular journalist at the Daily Prophet took upon himself to go to the bottom with the paternity of James Potter. The article stated that James’ mother, Hydrea Hombard, was one of five sisters upon whom a terrible curse had fallen. All of the sisters had only given birth to male descendants and every single one of the children had died of different incurable diseases - until James was born when his parents were quite old already. James, strangely, lived on. As to James’ father, Stuart Potter, he was the only son of an eccentric American wizard whose ancestors had emigrated from Britain two hundreds years ago to establish a renowned dynasty in the United States which, however, was on its way to extinction and where Stuart Potter had been the last in his generation. Was Hydrea Hombard reliable ever to have met Voldemort, the reporter asked? James’ wealthy parents had travelled widely and broadly the years before James was born and this coincided with the time when Voldemort, too, was gone from Britain. Therefore a meeting between the concerned parties was possible, although not very probable, conceded the reporter. However, the fact that James lived on from infancy seemed to imply that some extraordinary magic had been involved to be able to counteract the strong curse on the sisters of the Hombard family.

Harry listened to Hermione’s tale with some interest, although furious with the implications of James as Voldemort’s son. He wondered whether any of James’ aunts were still alive. If that was the case, wouldn’t they have endeavoured to contact him by now - especially if he was the last in the line of both the Hombards and the Potters? He put the question out of his mind eventually.

Next thing to appear in the newspaper was the official registry of Grief Swallowers in Britain. Rita Skeeter wrote a long article about the amazing fact that both Severus Snape and Harry Potter possessed the same rare skill. She practically implied a proven father and son relationship and only at the very end of the article was it stated that there was no proof of genetic influence when it came to the skills of Grief Swallowers. Hermione snorted.

“Doesn’t help much. How many people read down to the bottom line of an article?”

“You and three others,” Ron said mockingly.

After that, they wrote about the Chamber of Secrets. It had been opened five years ago when Harry was in second year at school. It had also been opened fifty years earlier, when Tom Riddle attended Hogwarts. The timing in itself, argued the reporter, was a noteworthy fact. A former student of Hogwarts, who had been in sixth year when it was opened the last time, was interviewed by a reporter and described the fear that had grasped the school at the time and testified as to the suspicions that had fallen on Harry Potter especially since he had proven to be a Parselmouth. The same historian who had been interviewed about patricides and infanticides throughout the history of Dark Arts now wrote about the Slytherin dynasty and the known Parselmouths through all times.  There was no evidence, Rita Skeeter wrote in the following edition, that Severus Snape was a Parselmouth, although the condition was known to skip generations. Rita Skeeter also questioned the unravelling of the incident of the Chamber of Secrets, which officially asserted the splendid qualities of Harry Potter who had received an award for special services to the school when he vanquished the Basilisk that had lurked deep down in the plumbing of Hogwarts.

Rita Skeeter implied that Dumbledore would have concealed parts of the story. There was a diary involved, she wrote, supposedly with instructions from Voldemort to his heir how to open the Chamber. Who else but Harry Potter, who spoke the language of snakes, could that be? Moreover, Tom Riddle had in his time been awarded for special services to the school as he had denounced the person they at the time accused of promoting the attacks - which, absurd as it seemed now, had been Hagrid, a fourteen-year-old school boy at the time, now the keeper at Hogwarts. It had proven to be false - Hagrid had been Tom Riddle’s scapegoat - and who could say that the story Dumbledore and Harry Potter had presented to the world would not be proven likewise false? Dumbledore, Rita Skeeter reminded her readers, had been fascinated by the murky ideas of the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in his youth - a fact that she had revealed in her last book. Dumbledore might have wanted to promote Harry Potter and Severus Snape for reasons of his own.

Harry grunted irritably when Hermione summarised the articles for him.

“It’s really likely, isn’t it, that Dumbledore, who did nothing but good in the greater part of his life, who banned Dark Arts from Hogwarts and was the sworn enemy of Voldemort, was in reality a supporter of his supposed heirs!” Harry’s voice dripped of irony.

“She does have a kind of answer to that as well,” Hermione said hesitantly. “It’s twisted. Dumbledore allegedly meant that, according to the rules of Ancient Magic, only a descendant of Voldemort could defeat him. Dumbledore wanted to use you to kill Voldemort and influence you at the same time in favour of his own views of things. Moreover, he thought you would die in the process, or so Rita Skeeter says.”

“He wasn’t sure - he thought there was a chance I would survive,” Harry whispered in a shaky voice before he took a grip on himself and changed subjects. “Interesting that she mentioned Tom Riddle’s diary, don’t you think?” he said.

“Why’s that interesting?” asked Ginny sharply. “The whole story revolved around that note book.” The Chamber of secrets was a sensitive subject with Ginny as it was through the same diary that Tom Riddle had possessed her, in her first year at Hogwarts, and used her as a vessel to let the Basilisk out to petrify pupils.

“Of course, but I don’t think that Dumbledore told anyone about it. He kept it a secret,” answered Harry.

If Harry, in his Muffliato bubble, apparently bore with the attention, the spite and the taunts from his surroundings with the serene calm of a stunned sphinx, Snape, on the contrary, seemed incapable of contending with the same treatment without exploding at regular intervals. He had eruptions of fury in classes and repeatedly made half the students in sixth year cry during his lessons. Between his outbreaks, he looked gloomier than ever. There was no resilience left in his steps and he dragged himself around, turning around jerkily as if constantly expecting an ambush. Harry grew good at detecting, at an early point of time, the stiffness that seized his fellow pupils’ features when Snape approached. He literally ducked out of Snape’s way as soon as he perceived his presence. Harry managed to attend classes, though, since Snape ignored him, as if he was air in the back of the classroom.

Draco Malfoy, on the contrary, seemed to thrive and enjoy the writings in the newspaper. He had regained his superciliousness towards Harry. He had not addressed Harry by a single word during the whole autumn, but now he began to sneer at him with malicious delight and launched comments after him.

One day after DADA class, when Snape had disappeared from the room as soon as the class was over and before the students had even started to leave the classroom, a girl from Slytherin looked with curiosity at Harry, who had not yet had time to cast a Muffliato spell on himself, and asked him whether he still was in procession of Voldemort’s diary and what else did it say beside how you opened the Chamber of Secrets? Harry gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the question, but Malfoy answered her in his place.

“It’s wasted on Potter. I’ve been trying to tell them. Even if he was the heir of Voldemort, he’s so above things that he won’t own it to himself even if presented with blood evidence,” said Malfoy.

“That’s right, Malfoy, I’m my own man and I don’t care what you or others are trying to imply,” replied Harry, wondering who ‘they’ were that Malfoy referred to. He assembled his things with studied calm and made to leave with Ginny. Ron and Hermione had already moved on.

“Now, I wonder from which of your two fathers you got your insupportable and almighty goodness?” Malfoy launched after him.

Harry paused and turned around with clenched jaws.

“I wouldn’t vote for Snape in that case, would you?” taunted Malfoy.

“What if I was to tell Professor Snape who Rita Skeeter’s source is?” retorted Harry. Malfoy’s supercilious smile died down and he narrowed his eyes.

“What proof do you have?” he spat. “It could be anyone.” 

“Who knew that Snape was offered a place among the Death Eaters but declined it when he was only sixteen years old?” asked Harry silkily. “And most importantly: Who knew about Tom Riddle’s diary, except the person who planted it on Ginny Weasley before our second year at Hogwarts? The very same person who had received it by Voldemort’s own hands to keep it safe. What if I told Snape that your father, his old buddy, is trying to destroy him behind his back?”

“You’d go tittle-tattling to daddy Snape, would you? Changed your mind quite drastically about him, haven’t you?” spat Malfoy. ”I’ve seen you talk to him, all eager to please, all ingratiating. Disgusting! Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, the poor little orphan! Honestly, are you so desperate for a father, that you’d even have Snape as yours?”

Harry was barely aware of what he was doing when he drew his wand. He was blinded by rage. But as the curse left his wand, he felt himself being pushed backwards by a shield that dressed itself between Malfoy and him. He was so intent on hurting Malfoy, however, that he urged his curse on anyhow and to his satisfaction he managed to crack through the shield and part of his curse made Malfoy stagger and give a cry of pain. Harry received a hard invisible punch in his chest, stumbled backwards and his spell broke.

Only then did he become aware of the fact that Snape had appeared out of nowhere and was positioned between Malfoy and Harry with his wand drawn. Snape was as white with anger as Harry was boiling red.

“Back off, both of you,” Snape hissed at them.

Harry fought to regain control, lowering his wand and closing his eyes for a moment. Get a grip, don’t lose it, he told himself.

“No more fighting, or you’ll be expelled from school both of you.” Snape’s voice was so tight that the words came out in a whisper. It was scary. Had the professor heard everything Malfoy and he had said to each other? Harry jerked his head as a sign that he had understood. Malfoy only glared at Snape over the hand that was clutched over his swollen mouth where Harry’s curse had hit him. “Go straight back to your houses and stay there!” hissed Snape.

Harry had recovered enough to answer “Yes, Sir,” in a stifled voice. He turned and hurried out through the door. The girl from Slytherin leered at him in the corridor.

“Yes, Father,” she mimicked him. A new surge of anger seized Harry and he Langlocked the girl with great force, wanting her to shut up forever and wanting it to hurt in her mouth as the tongue glued to her palate. She started to whimper and Harry stopped himself. He looked behind him to see if Snape had noticed what had happened, but the professor was out of sight. Malfoy stooped over the Slytherin girl whereas Ginny tucked Harry away and guided him back to the Gryffindor tower.

It took Harry a long time to calm down. After dinner, during which Snape was conspicuous by his absence, Harry went to the library to distract his thoughts with work, staying until closure. As he made his way back to Gryffindor, passing through the empty Entrance Hall, he heard the door open behind him and was held back by Mrs Steadfast’s voice of steel.

“Stop, Mr Potter, I want a word with you. Come here.” He turned around to face an angry Mrs Steadfast beside an inscrutable Professor Snape. They wore travel coats and Snape looked a bit knocked about as there was a rift in the tissue of his coat, an open wound over his left eyebrow and he walked with a limp. Harry eyed him with surprise, but Mrs Steadfast attacked Harry without beating about the bush.

“Did you reveal that you suspect Lucius Malfoy of being Rita Skeeter’s source earlier today?” she said. Harry was taken aback.

“Yes, I...” he started to say, but Mrs Steadfast interrupted him.

“You should take such allegations straight to me,” she said furiously. “You must see the danger of revealing such a thing to Professor Snape.”

“But I didn’t...” Harry tried to say, but was interrupted again.

“Lucius Malfoy is at St Mungo’s for severe injuries and Professor Snape is saddled with another charge. As if he did not already have enough to deal with,” spat Mrs Steadfast.

Snape made a gesture as if to object.

“Oh yes, you’ll be charged for that attack on Lucius Malfoy, don’t kid yourself.” Mrs Steadfast hissed at him.

“It was a fair duel,” Snape said dismissively. Somehow, he seemed calmer and more content than he had been for a long time.

At that moment, Mme Pomfrey turned up on top of the eastern stairs and looked down on them.

“Mr Potter, I’ve been looking for you.” She sounded as angry as Mrs Steadfast. “Will you please come with me to the hospital wing and sort out that Langlock spell you cast on that poor girl. I’ve been working on it for hours now, trying to lift the curse away and Professor Snape’s not in... oh, there you are, Headmaster. Mr Potter has hurt a student with Dark Magic and...”

“What’s the meaning of this?” Mrs Steadfast riveted her eyes on Harry, lips pressed together. “Do you think, Mr Potter, that it’s the right moment to start using Dark Magic at school, with all that they write about you in the papers?” She spoke in a dangerous tone of voice.

To make things even worse, Professor McGonagall, no doubt alerted by the upset voices, showed up on top of the western stairs. She looked aghast when she heard Mrs Steadfast mention Dark Magic. Aware of the fact that his head of house on top of everything was informed of his involuntary predilection for snakes, Harry blushed.

“I didn’t use Dark Magic,” he protested.

“What did you do, then?” asked Mme Pomfrey. “The Tie-tongue won’t come off. If you put a permanent stick on that spell, it’s sure to be classified as Dark Magic.”

“I just modified the spell… a bit… in the heat of the moment. That girl said... she said some awful things to me… It’s not like I used anything from a Dark Arts book or anything.” Harry tried to defend himself.

“This is not the moment to start experimenting with Dark Arts, Potter!” Professor McGonagall was livid with rage and spoke warningly. The others looked surprised at her, as she was usually more lenient towards Harry.

“You’re as bad the one as the other,” snorted Mrs Steadfast. “Let’s mount to the hospital wing. Professor Snape needs treatment, Mme Pomfrey. Nails in his leg. There you can speak of Dark Magic. Lucius Malfoy knows some stuff, too.” They set off, Mrs Steadfast driving Snape and Harry in front of her.

Soon Harry sat on a chair in front of one whimpering Slytherin girl on a bedside. He had a bad conscience. If she was absolutely still, she seemed to be okay, but since she could not prevent herself from fretting all the time, she was in constant pain. He had tried to reverse the spell in different ways, but failed hitherto. Mme Pomfrey worked on Snape’s leg, extracting nails from his flesh with her wand and muttering to herself. She went off to look for a magical salve to apply to the multiple small but deep wounds. Mrs Steadfast was talking to one of her senior Aurors in a corner of the ward, Soundy, whom Harry had not seen for a long time, as he was not part of the guard team at Hogwarts. Harry sighed deeply, lowered his head and tried to think. How exactly had he modified that spell?

“You probably need to do a time-breaking incantation to start with and put in first a tongue-relaxing spell before the loosening and peeling spells. Then the counter curse and finally a healing incantation,” muttered Snape in a low voice from the edge of the bed where he was seated.

Harry startled. He glanced at Snape who was staring at the floor. When following Snape’s advice, Harry managed to undo the modified Langlock spell to his relief. The girl stood up, cast Harry and Snape a look filled with spite and fear and darted off. Mme Pomfrey and Mrs Steadfast approached again.

“You managed then, thank you, Harry,” said Mme Pomfrey in a milder tone than before. “It’s always easier for the person who cast the spell to reverse it, as they know what they did from the start.”

Harry muttered something inaudible and Mme Pomfrey disappeared into her office after having given Snape his salve.

“Now that we’re alone, will you please tell me what you know about Lucius Malfoy?” Mrs Steadfast asked Harry, still seeming cross, but not in a flying temper any longer.

“Just deductions from what the paper said and what people were supposed to know about things,” muttered Harry, starting to resent the unfair accusations. “Mostly the part about the Chamber of secrets and the diary that was mentioned in the Daily Prophet.” He stopped and hesitated. “Does she know or not?” he asked Snape and continued with raising irritation. “Because I think that people seem to take for granted that I know who I’m allowed to speak to or should definitely not speak to or should imperatively speak to, without having informed me of the matter of things. You don’t tell me anything, but expect me to...”

“Mrs Steadfast knows about the horcruxes,” interrupted Snape.

“Well, good to know. It makes sense you should, being Head of the Auror’s Office and everything, but it may not be of importance any longer since they’re all destroyed, so I didn’t know whether Kingsley had bothered to tell you. Anyway, the diary was a horcrux, the first one Voldemort made, splitting his soul after he killed his father. And that’s why Dumbledore kept it a secret. I’m not even sure he showed it to you?” Harry looked inquiringly at Snape who shook his head. “So that’s how I deduced who Rita Skeeter’s source was. Lucius Malfoy was the one who smuggled the book into Hogwarts.“

“You should have come and told me once you had figured it out,” Mrs Steadfast said sternly.

“I didn’t think speaking to the press was a criminal offence,” Harry retorted a bit aggressively. “Therefore I thought there was nothing to be done about it. Lucius Malfoy’s just a deserter, a sneaker and a terrible coward, that’s all. Not worth going to Azkaban for,” Harry suddenly said with a surge of anger in the direction of Snape.

“I’m not going to Azkaban for a duel,” Snape replied stubbornly.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Mrs Steadfast growled at him. “Fighting with your former Death Eater friends does not improve your already blackened image. Just you read the papers tomorrow. With everything else you’re accused of, it might be the last straw and you’ll be beyond salvage.”

Snape looked down, unperturbed, and started to extract a nail in his leg that Mme Pomfrey had missed. He did not seem to find it in the least painful.

“Can I go now?” Harry muttered to Mrs Steadfast. “Please, Ma'am,” he added. She did not look satisfied and knitted her eyebrows, but nodded her assent.

***

Mrs Steadfast was right. The Daily Prophet did not report the hospitalisation of Lucius Malfoy as the result of a duel, but that of an unprovoked attack by Severus Snape. Hermione commented on the fact that the paper nowadays often failed to use Snape’s title as Professor in their articles. It reduced him to the mad and evil wizard Severus Snape, plain and simple. The paper gave free reign to all those who had ever been ill-treated by Snape or disliked him for some reason or other, and let them pour out their pent-up grudges against him. They described him as dangerous, black, malicious, false and treacherous and every invective you could come up with.

There were a few voices who tried to defend him. Someone at the Auror department - not Mrs Steadfast who probably could not afford, politically, to be involved with the press - was interviewed and tried to point out that Lucius Malfoy, a known Death Eater who would face trial for his collaboration with Voldemort, was equally suspected of the use of Dark Magic in the course of the fight with Severus Snape.

A letter to the editor, signed by a number of healers and care-workers at St Mungo’s was published and testified to the fact that Healer Snape was a respected and much appreciated colleague of theirs in the summers, a skilled and accomplished healer. They also emphasised that Snape had never been known to mistreat or to refuse to treat any kind of persons, especially not Muggle-borns, like some other colleagues had been known to do during both reigns of Lord Voldemort.

“That’s a really good point,” said Hermione. Harry agreed and let her read the letter as a whole for him. It was drowned, however, in the ten times more numerous blackening pieces about Snape.

A small, but enlightening notice appeared in the paper about Lucius Malfoy’s wife, Narcissa Malfoy, who was said to distance herself from her husband. She was reported to have visited the hospital only once, and rumours spread that she had moved out of Malfoy manor.

The only gleam of brightness in the sordid, murky drive of the press was that the rumours about his parents’ imminent separation caused Draco Malfoy to relapse into his former sulkiness and abstain from bothering Harry anymore. Other than that, the whole atmosphere at Hogwarts stayed strung and frustrated.

The End.


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