I never really had a dad--I'm pretty much the world's most famous orphan and all. Growing up, I had plenty of father figures, I guess, but they were either distant, or distracted, or irresponsible, or some combination--and nearly all of them were killed. And of course, my uncle--the man whose house I lived in--was not really a father figure at all. He was just someone I tried to avoid as much as possible.

All of this is to say that when Ginny was pregnant, I may have gone off my nut a little bit. We'd been so careful when we were younger, but there we were, at the ages of twenty-three and twenty-four, completely confident that we'd mastered contraceptives.

We were wrong.

The full impact of being a father didn't hit me at first. At first, we had all sorts of practical things to worry about: What about her job? What about my job? Should we get married immediately? Should we get married later? Should we not get married at all? Would her parents freak out? (No, Ginny assured me. She'd done the maths on Bill's birthday, and she said her parents would understand completely.) How long should we wait until we told anyone?

And then we decided to get married, and even though we tried to keep it small, it turned into something much bigger than we'd planned--but at least the press didn't find out about it until it was over. And then I put in for a leave of absence from the Aurors, and she put in for a longer leave of absence from the Harpies, and then we were painting the nursery and I put together a crib, and when I stepped back to look at it all, it led to a fairly major panic attack.

What. The. Fuck. That was the mantra in my head as I stared at the room that would soon belong to my child.

My child.

What. The. Fuck.

What if the kid annoyed me and I smacked it around without a second thought? Or what if I doted on it and gave it thirty-seven presents for its birthday? What if we had another kid and I didn't love him as much and made him make breakfast for everybody and locked him in his room and told him to shut up? How the fuck did anyone let me have children?

God, what if I gave the kid my Invisibility Cloak and Marauders' Map and insisted the kid wonder around Hogwarts, and cause as much trouble as possible? What if I expected the kid to give up his life for the good of the Wizarding world?

What if the kid was normal, and everyone pestered him, all of the time, because of who Gin and I are? What if I couldn't protect the kid from that?

Fuck, what if Sybill Trelawney was making a prophecy right now?

Gin found me, right after I'd vomited all over the new nursery carpet. She Vanished the sick, then performed about six freshening charms, then sighed and clumsily sat down next to me and patted my back. "That's fucking disgusting, you know," she said to me.

"I can't do this," I told her. "I'm sorry."

She sighed again and kept patting my back.

I said, "If you want to leave me, I'll still support you however you want."

She snorted. "You're not getting out of it that easily, Potter."

"I'm serious," I told her. "I don't have any good role models. I'll be rubbish, and the Prophet will be all over us, all the time--and I just can't do any of that to our kid."

Gin didn't say anything, so I didn't either. I finally dared to look at her--she just looked tired.

"Are you finished?" she asked me.

"Do you believe me?" I asked back, because I was ready to support my argument if I needed to.

"Listen," she said. "When I found out I was pregnant, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for a solid hour. But then I told you, and you were so...calm and level-headed, and when I told Mum that, she told me to watch out for you. 'Men are slower on the uptake, Ginny, so be ready when it hits him.'" (Gin could really do her mum's voice spot-on.) "So, I took her advice and planned a speech for you, but now that I'm seeing your freak-out, I'm not sure it's the right speech. But I'm so fucking tired, Harry, it's just going to have to do."

She blinked a few times, and I got tired of waiting, so I said, "Go on, then."

She was quiet for several moments, and finally said, "I'm trying to work in a bit about how love conquers all, but it doesn't quite fit the tone, and I'm not sure I'm hormonal enough to pull off that lovey-dovey shit, anyway."

"Maybe the best way for me to love the kid is to let you both go."

"Oh, fuck you. You're getting the speech then." She cleared her throat, and then started talking in an authoritative voice. "Being a parent is hard, but when have we ever done the easy thing? We'll fuck the kid up, I'm sure, but as long as we love her, I'm sure she'll be fine. Now, buck up, Potter, and be a man, because I'm not shouldering this one alone!" She poked me hard in the ribs, and I flinched.

"Hey!" I said.

"Yeah, I know--I was going to storm out the door after I said all that, but you're going to have to help me up first." She poked me again, and I got to my feet and gave her a hand up. She nearly pulled me down with her. "Sorry," she said. "My center of gravity is all wrong--and I only sat down on the floor because of you, anyway. And by the way, did you notice that I worked in a part about love?"

I nodded and said, "And I didn't think it was sappy at all."

She smiled at me. "Thanks. Now!" She drew herself up to her full five feet four inches, with both hands on her lower back, pushing her nine-month belly forward. "Buck up, Potter, and be a man, because I'm not shouldering this one alone!" And she turned and flounced out the door--which was impressive, given her belly.

I stared after her, and decided to go get drinks with Ron.

Ron, by the way, was unsympathetic when I told him I didn't think I could raise his little sister's kid. I tried to explain it--that it was my kid I was worried about, and I asked him how he'd feel if he got Hermione pregnant and he was going to be a dad--but still, all he said to me was "Fuck you, mate, I'm not listening to this." Wanker even stuck me with the bill.

And it struck me, as it never really had before, that a lot of my male friends were Weasleys, and so the possibility for commiseration on this point was low.

Luckily, I did have one or two close friends who were decidedly not Weasleys. So after I paid my bar tab, I Apparated to Severus and Neville's house in Hogsmeade.

Look, I know that two gay blokes might not know much about being an unexpected expectant father, but I didn't know much about it, either, and they both knew what it was like growing up without a father at all, or with a shit father, and so maybe they could understand me on that point, at least.

So, almost as soon as Neville opened the door, I told him everything: about how I couldn't be a good dad; about how I didn't know the first thing about what good fathers did; about how--even if I could be a good dad--it wouldn't matter because fucking Rita Skeeter would want pictures of the kid and would write stories every time we stepped out in public. I admit: I may have even cried a little bit, right there on the doorstep.

Neville turned around a little bit, and I saw Severus standing behind him, giving him a sharp look. Most of Severus's looks are sharp, but this one was particularly so. Neville turned back to me.

"I'm sorry, Harry," he said. "I just remembered that I've got patrol duty tonight."

"Neville--" Severus said, sharply--again, more sharply than usual--but Neville cut him off.

"I was just leaving, I'm sorry, but you can tell Severus all about it." And Neville brushed past me and walked towards Hogwarts, not looking back at me or Severus.

I slipped into the house before Severus could lock me out.

"I just need you to convince me that it's possible," I said to him.

"Be more specific, please, and I'll do my best so that you can leave soon afterward."

"Do you think I can be a good dad?"

"Of course you can," he snapped. "It's just far more likely that you'll be a miserable failure."

Sometimes, hearing these kind of things from Severus helped me to put things in perspective, but this time, it hit me like a punch in the gut. I doubled over, right there in his front hall, with my hands on my knees. "Oh god," I said. "Oh god, when I was a kid I thought it was normal to sleep in a fucking cupboard. Oh god, what am I going to do with my own kid?"

The thing about Severus is that he can come across as an uncaring bastard, but he doesn't hit you when you're down. He never says the right thing, and sometimes he doesn't say anything at all, but sometimes he says something that almost points me in the right direction. This time, he waited for me to get a little quieter before he said, "How is Ginevra?"

"She's fine," I choked. "Good."

"And the baby?"

"Fine."

"You still don't know the gender?

"We want to be surprised, I told you."

"Names?"

I finally started to straighten up. "You'll hate them," I said, not meeting his eye, because Frederick Severus was still on the list.

He nodded. "Does your house have any empty cupboards we should worry about?"

I snorted. "No, but we could probably move the brooms over to the cloak closet and get rid of some games."

"Would Ginevra let her child sleep in a cupboard?"

"N--" I started, but somehow it hit me--how everyone at Privet Drive let a child sleep in a cupboard. It took my breath away. "It's fucked up, right?" I wheezed. "Sleeping in a cupboard?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, Potter, it's fucked up."

"What if I don't know what's normal? What if I do shit that's--I don't know--abusive, or whatever--and I don't even know it?"

Severus looked at me for a long moment. "I'll tell you what's not normal, Potter: not normal is being raised alongside a boy who was treated like a prince while you were given nothing, and then when you were fifteen years old, you didn't think twice about saving that boy's life. Not normal is being forced to wear that boy's hand-me-downs, and suffer humiliations from him while in primary school, and then growing up and inviting him and his partner to your wedding!" He'd started in a normal tone, but he got angrier and angrier as he went along. "Not normal is being subjected to a grown man's irrational hatred when you were a child, and enduring his taunts and jeers for seven years, and then deciding you had a lot in common with him and that he was your friend! You, Potter, are not now, nor have you ever been, normal. But your heart has never--not once--been in question."

I may have said earlier that Severus never said the right thing. So, maybe this was the first time. I tried hard not to cry, I really did. But I couldn't stop myself from doing something I'd never done before: I hugged Severus Snape. And then he sighed--and even though I could almost feel him rolling his eyes, he put his arms around me, and patted my back awkwardly.

And then I did cry, and I couldn't help it. Because Severus wasn't saying anything, but he was so fucking uncomfortable--with the hug, with the tears, with all of it--and his stiff posture and the way he patted my back at irregular intervals told me, more clearly than words ever could, that maybe you didn't have to be a good dad to be the perfect dad.

And so I went home to Gin, and she was asleep on our bed, on top of the covers, but I slipped behind her and tried to spoon up to her, but she woke up and shoved me away. "Fuck, I'm hot," she said groggily. "Please don't touch me."

I dutifully tucked my hands under my chin. "I love you, Gin," I said.

She turned her head to look at me. "Are you in this with me?" she asked.

"I'm in." I thought I should say something more, so I said, "We may fuck up sometimes, but that won't make us shit parents. Just...reel me in if I go too far off."

"You do the same for me, and we have a deal," she said, and turned her head back away from me. "Oh, fuck," she said suddenly, and started to cry.

"What?!" I asked, panicked, but she answered right away.

"We're going to have to stop bloody cussing so goddamned much!" she wailed.

I grinned. "I love you so fucking much, Gin."

She sniffed. "I love you too, Harry."

"Can I touch you?"

"Can you conjure ice, first?"

I could, and I did.