Harry stuttered, running his hand over his hair again to flatten it. Ginny’s own thick orange braid swung haphazardly as she bounded over to him, anxiety and hesitation written all over her features. “Harry,” she said again, her shoulders hunched inwards, “I, err…”

“Ginny!” he blurted, desperately wishing he could form a coherent thought around the buzzing in his ears.

“I’msorryIspiedonyouandSnape,” she burst out, her words running together in her nervousness. Tears clung to her lashes like dew, making them stick out in clumps. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” he told her before he could stop himself, or even knew what he was saying, and she seized him around his shoulders in a fierce embrace before he could take it back. Awkwardly, he patted her back while she nuzzled his neck and he found himself wondering fleetingly whether or not it really could be alright that easily.

“I was so afraid that something was wrong, and you weren’t telling me anything, and you told Hermione, and you left me here while you and Ron and Hermione went to destroy the Horcruxes, and I had no idea where you were or how you were doing, and I only knew you were alive because You-Know-Who would be shouting it from the rooftops if he’d managed to kill you, and no one ever tells me anything, and I just thought you were protecting me and treating me like a little kid like everyone does…” she drew a breath that hitched in her throat and turned into a sob.

He rubbed her back and made soothing sounds as he slowly guided her up to the train. “It’s alright,” he said again, stepping up into the train and helping Ginny up after him, and then with more than a bit of surprise, eyes wide, continued, “it really is.”

She sniffed and wiped the tears and mucus off her face with a bunched up tissue. “I was afraid, Harry,” she whispered, kissing his jaw. “I had to do something to make myself less afraid.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Ron spot them and begin to follow, but Hermione, who was standing next to him, held him back with a small smile. “Yeah, I know but…” he trailed off.

“I know I shouldn’t have,” she said plaintively.

They sidled into an empty compartment and Ginny slid the door shut behind them. “But that just makes it worse,” he told her unhappily. “You did it anyway.” But he didn’t pursue it. It didn’t really matter. He didn’t really care; he just wanted everything to be back to normal. Tired and drawn as he felt just then, he didn’t want to be fighting with anyone, not Ginny, or Hermione, or Ron, or even Snape.

Out of the compartment window, he spotted Mrs. Weasley watching anxiously from the platform. He waved nervously, but she didn’t react. She probably didn’t know it was him, he reasoned, if she saw it at all. After all, she didn’t know which window was theirs anyway.

“I know,” Ginny replied miserably. As he turned back to her and they settled into a seat, he rubbed her back harder and she settled into the crook of his arm. He kissed her hair fondly. With a squeal of pure joy, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him deeply. Shocked into silence, he kissed her back.

The train started moving so slowly at first that they didn’t feel it start. It seemed as if the station itself were moving backwards. He spotted George out of the corner of his eye as the train gathered speed, looking woebegone and as un-George-like as Harry ever expected to see him. He caught sight of them and waved with a small smile.

As the station fell away, Ginny leaned against the padded back of the compartment seat. The silvery light that shimmered through the thick layer of clouds and streamed through the window fell onto her face and hair. “I was lonely without you,” she whispered, a note of wry self pity creeping into her voice.

“No you weren’t,” Harry reminded gently, “I saw you.” At first she had avoided everyone to sit with the first years, but one day, there she was, sitting with her friends, laughing and making impressions, the center of the sixth year girls again. Harry had missed her horribly then.

Her mouth twisted. “Yeah, but I didn’t want to go out with anyone else, though Anthony Goldstein and Summerby did ask me.”

A sudden flash of jealousy flashed through him. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she mumbled, “but I put them off. I… I missed you.”

Harry’s face heated. “You did?”

For one horrible moment, Harry thought she was going to start crying again, but she swallowed hard and gazed at the ceiling instead. “Yeah.”

“I missed you too.”

When she looked down again, a bit of the wetness gathering in her eyes trickled down her cheek as a tear, but she smiled winsomely. “Of course you did.” She flicked the tear away and shook her head. “I’m glad, though.”

“Of course, I didn’t miss you that much,” he assured her.

“Of course,” she replied cheekily, nuzzling his neck. “That would have shown weakness.”

He kissed her hair and inhaled the scent of her flowery shampoo. “It’s nice to have you back, though.”

She grinned disarmingly against his shoulder. “I know it is.”

Over the chugging din of the train wheels grinding against the track, he and Ginny could hear the bickering of a compartment full of Slytherin seventh years. Malfoy’s drawl cut through the low buzz of voices as his housemates fell silent. Harry wrapped his arm around Ginny’s waist and pulled her snuggly against him. She kissed his cheek and looked away. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“I wish you’d told me.” Harry wished she hadn’t spied on him, but he let it pass.

“Would it have made a difference if I’d told you?” he asked quietly. Her hand found his, and he almost thought she had a fever, because her skin felt so warm where it touched him.

She shivered. “No.” Harry hadn’t thought so. A secret core of cowardliness within him had kept him from telling her the truth in the first place, and he could only imagine what she would have done if he’d told her that he’d just spent three months with another woman and had a child with her as she asked him if they could get back together. Harry nibbled her ear as she tapped his nose with her forefinger. “It would have made no difference.”

~*~

Minerva ushered Belby into her office trying to hide her trepidation, and on an entirely different level, the intense excitement slowly building somewhere in her chest. He ran a hand through the tufts of brown hair growing in a band around the back of his head. “Was their something you wished to talk to me about, Headmistress?”

As the students sped toward the castle, Minerva smiled tightly. “You’re a fine brewer, and one of the most creative minds in the potions field alive today,” she gushed, watching the professor loom over her desk, perched atop the chair across from her like a plucked vulture.

“Thank you,” he said, taken aback, looking up from the desk into her face.

“Of course, this is why I contacted you about the professorship in the first place,” she continued, clearing her throat flushing as she oozed false gratitude. He nodded, eyes like two grapefruits sunken into his head, his head shaking up and down twitching. “I just want you to know that I recognize the sacrifice you’re making to teach here…” she trailed off, uncertain of how far she could take this and keep him believing her.

“Is there any particular reason you wished to speak to me before the term began?” he asked, sounding surer of himself, his droning voice taking on a hint of condescension.

“To tell you the truth,’ she lied happily, “I’m a little unsettled about some rumors I’ve been hearing about your work.”

“Has my teaching been unsatisfactory?” he asked, somehow managing a timid rumble. They had been as it happened. Hermione Granger had come to her wringing her hands to tell the headmistress that she didn’t understand a word the professor said.

“No,” she said, not having to fake her apprehension. “That isn’t it at all!” She wrung her hands, and then clasped one of his. “It’s only that I’ve heard that you’re close to another major breakthrough, and I just wanted to remind you not to neglect your students, especially not now, so soon before exams, in your pursuit of your next invention.”

He clasped her hands with the hand she wasn’t holding. “Have no fear, Headmistress, I will not neglect the students.”

She smiled, aping reassurance with everything she had. She had barely anything left over from trying not to smirk with satisfaction. She had him, and as soon as he revealed the new potion she had convinced him everyone was expecting, she’d send in the Aurors to unmask him. “Thank you, Professor. Now, I’m sure you have lesson plans to go over before the students arrive?” She stood and opened tie door for him, and as he walked out, he bowed to her, smugly.

When the door had latched safely shut behind him, she collapsed into her chair with relief, her knees almost giving out on her halfway across the office floor, grinning broadly. She supposed she would have to warn Severus about the change of plans, because, after all, he was expecting her to sack Belby. For a Gryffindor, she said to herself, she had just done something very Slytherin indeed.

~*~

By the time the Hogwarts Express had pulled into the Hogsmeade train station, somehow every student in the school knew that Harry and Ginny had made up. Even before the carriages arrived at the castle, the professors somehow knew too. When they sat down to eat together at the Gryffindor table, Ron grinned widely at them, and Hermione raised both eyebrows and exclaimed, “Welcome back.” Harry shrugged his shoulders at her.

Harry’s eyes wandered to the head table and the triumphant sneer that consumed Snape’s features every time he glanced at Belby. He seemed to find reasons to glance at his fellow professor more than he normally did. Harry looked back to his plate, glad that Snape was directing that expression at someone other than him.

“It’s really weird thinking of him as your kid,” Ginny whispered amost shyly, seeing where he was looking. “He isn’t anything like you.” He nodded vaguely, his stomach sank to his ankles and began to squirm as he found himself disagreeing with her.

Before the food could appear before them, McGonagall stood up and flicked her eyes over the students and announced the date for the next Hogsmeade weekend, and reminded the Quidditch captains that they had to sign up for the spring pitch schedule by Friday. Harry listened halfheartedly, and planned to go to Madam Hooch’s office after he ate, his stomach rumbling after the long train ride.

When McGonagall folded herself back into her seat, the tables filled with food and the four of them piled their plates high. Harry had his fork almost to his mouth before he heard a swish and twisted around in his chair to watch Snape pass by his seat and sweep out of the Great Hall, his jaw clenched with ire. Harry turned back around, his eyes wide, and Ginny wrinkled her nose. “Oooh, I still have detention with him tonight.” Ron snickered, undisturbed at his sister’s discomfort.

Harry winced in what he tried to insure was an empathetic manner and muttered his excuses. Slinking between the tables, he tried not to make it too obvious that he was following Snape, but no one he glanced at embarrassedly looked fooled.

Halfway to Snape’s office, Harry caught up with him. Snape snarled at him as he fell in beside him, but Harry ignored him, despite seeking him out in the first place, until he snapped, “What do you want, Potter?”

Harry shrugged. “What was that?” he asked instead of answering.

Snape stopped cold and glowered up into his face. “Do you feel that it’s your paternal duty to chastise me for making a scene?” he jibed.

“I don’t know,” Harry replied, tone infuriatingly neutral, unable to figure out why he had followed at all. “Do you want me to?”

Snape’s expression snapped shut. “No.”

“Do I get to know what was wrong?” he asked irritably, swinging his arms and sincerely wishing he hadn’t followed.

“You gave up the right to know anything about me when you returned to the present, Potter!” he jeered, turning his back and continuing down the corridor.

A terrible suspicion blossomed in Harry’s mind. Startled, he called down the hall, “You don’t want me to have stayed, do you?”

“No!” the man yelped horrified.

“Imagine being raised by me,” he mused, relieved that his words were at last finding some purchase, “as a family.”

“An absolutely revolting prospect,” he hissed, “which we are all lucky to have avoided.” Snape whiled around again and resumed striding jerkily down the corridor. Harry followed, a few steps behind, making a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. When he heard from whence the noise came, Snape shot a scowl over his shoulder. Do you intend to follow me for the rest of the evening, Potter?” he spat through clenched teeth.

Harry shrugged. “Probably, it depends on when you tell me.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Snape turned around and dropped his voice mock patiently, “no matter how long your sudden compulsion to seek my company lasts. Leave before I give you a week’s detention.”

Harry reeled back. “I don’t have a sudden compulsion to seek your company,” he cried defensively, “I just want to know why you ran out of the Great Hall!”

“Honing your parental interrogation technique?” he sneered sarcastically. “Just think, boy, someday you might want to have children.”

“You’re really are jealous!” he said softly, looking up, suddenly enlightened.

“Are you mad?” but his high pitched denial only made Harry much more confident in his conclusion.

“You’re mad that I came back,” Harry gasped. “You can’t stand me, you hate me, but you’re still mad I left you there.”

Snape regained his calm before Harry could run away with his idea. With a snort, he brought his student back to the present.

“You are a supremely arrogant young man if you think I wanted-”

Harry cut him off deliberately. “No, it doesn’t have anything to do with me,” he said thoughtfully, “not at all, not really.”

“No it doesn’t,” Snape returned, perturbed.

With a small sad smile, Harry turned to leave Snape to continue on, resigned that he wouldn’t get anything out of the man. Something strange pinched at his stomach as he said, “Well, bye then.” He’d messed something up.

Perhaps he hadn’t messed it up that badly. It was Snape’s turn to call him back, “I will not allow you to run away with such an erroneous impression of me, Potter,” he called snidely. Surprised, Harry trotted back. Snape gritted his teeth in a sullen grimace. “No doubt if you had raised me, I wouldn’t consider you to be a malicious half-wit.” He paused before adding snidely, “Of course, I might have gained your measure anyway.”

“I’m sure you were a very clever child,” Harry sniped irascibly.

Snape jerked, pulling his hand up sharply as if he wanted to slap him across the face. “You are so very much like your father, Potter, intelligence is something to admire, Potter, not deride, even if you cannot comprehend it.”

Harry glanced sharply at Snape, supposing he must have hit an old sore point. “You do realize that because he’s my father, he’s your grandfather, right?” he retorted, raising his eyebrows.

“You enjoy stating the obvious, don’t you,” he scoffed.

“I didn’t mean intelligence anyway,” he grimaced, pausing to think. Snape probably had been like Hermione, only many times worse, brilliant and knowing it, frustrated that everyone else wasn’t brilliant too, and at the same time scornful of everyone who wasn’t. Harry bet he let everyone else know he was brilliant too. “It’s just that you still treat people like we’re all idiots.” He shook his head. “Besides, none of this has anything to do with me or my father.”

They stopped abruptly at the door to Severus’ office. Only then did he realize that his feet had carried him there instead of to Minerva’s office as he had planned when he had left the Great Hall. He opened the door and ushered the boy in, bowing and smiling mockingly. Potter strode across the threshold calmly, but his eyes didn’t leave Severus’ face. He pushed the door shut with a hard push, still watching his student, grabbing one wrist behind his back. “You were saying?”

Harry wanted to ask him if he knew how conversations worked, because it was his turn to reply, not Harry’s. Awkwardly, he shrugged his shoulders.

“Well?” snapped Severus, growing more and more annoyed with the boy’s persistent crypticness.

“I just mean that you’re not angry with me because I’m your dad, or because I didn’t raise you,” Harry said softly, suddenly nervous.

“No,” Snape hissed deliberately, his lip curling. “I’m furious with you for not going away and following me around like a lost puppy!”

“Then why did you call me back?” Harry shot back, hands trembling.

Severus jerked forward and then halted, rattled. “Don’t be ridiculous, Potter; I didn’t call you back,” he denied at last. “I simply refused to let you walk away with such idiotic notions in your head.”

Harry snorted, folding his arms. “Of course.”

“If you’re so sure you know everything about me,” he snapped defiantly, “then you can tell me.”

Harry looked down guiltily, but then fixed his gaze steadily on Snape’s face. “You’re mad that I told Eileen to marry Tobias Snape.”

“I won’t deny that you impressed me with your sheer heartlessness,” hissed Snape, his nails digging into his wrist so hard that they left little bloodless half-moon shaped indentations in his flesh when he let go.

Harry’s face heated. “I didn’t want to…” he stopped speaking, catching his breath. “I didn’t like doing it.”

“Of course not,” Severus sneered, sensing that at last he had the upper hand, “but you did it anyway,” which was what mattered, after all.

“I had to!” Harry shouted, the last vestiges of calm draining away. “I... I already knew that I… couldn’t stay, and when… I knew who you had to be.”

Severus snorted and held back a burst of cold laughter. “You are not soothing my resentments, Potter,” he jeered. “You are trying to force me to soothe your guit!”

“Don’t turn this around-” but Severus cut him off.

“You left my mother and me in an untenable situation, because you had to, yes,” a smile tugged at his lips as he continued brutally, “but you still were the one to do it.”

Harry clutched the edge of Snape’s desk, nails biting into the wood. “I don’t need you to absolve me of anything!” he roared. “I knew what I was leaving Eileen and you to, but I couldn’t do anything else!”

“You’re fool if you think you know anything about what-”

It was Harry’s turn to cut Snape off with a sharp gesture. “That’s right, you think I’m spoiled that I’ve never had a hard day in my life,” he threw his head back and laughed, seething.

“Can you tell me that your every action hasn’t borne out that assumption, Potter?”

“You knew my aunt; you knew how much she hated magic; do you really think she spoiled me?” Every time Aunt Marge came to visit, Harry had found himself envying Ripper. Aunt Petunia hadn’t liked Ripper any more than she had liked Harry, but she didn’t want to antagonize Aunt Marge. “And then she married someone as bad as she is!”

“Did your make you do chores then?” Severus mocked, “treated you like a normal boy?”

“Normal boys don’t live in cupboards,” Harry pointed out, biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted the metallic tang of his own blood.

A vein in Severus’ head throbbed. “Don’t exaggerate Potter! You weren’t beaten. You never watched someone you loved beaten.”

“How would you know?” Harry snapped back furiously. “My uncle used to shake me or drag me places, but he never really hit me. My aunt slapped me or tried to hit me with frying pans, but I could usually dodge her, so no, they didn’t beat me, but it wasn’t like they stopped Dudley from beating me either.” He stopped to catch his breath and glared at Snape, a pair of pink spots sitting like little burns on the top of his cheeks. “And there wasn’t anyone I loved to begin with, and they all liked each other just fine.”

“So you did know exactly what you were sending me into,” Severus whispered darkly, his voice soft with surprise and calculation.

Harry nodded defiantly.

“But that just makes it worse,” Severus’ lip curled, false sympathy dripping from each word.

When Ginny showed up at Snape’s office door for her detention only a little late, she had to dodge out of the way of the office door as it banged against the stone wall next to which she had been a moment earlier. Harry swept out of the office, a murderous expression on his face without seeing her. His robes billowed out behind him as he stalked down the hall and she crept into Snape’s office.

~*~

Harry didn’t immediately head to the Gryffindor common room. First, he skulked out to Madam Hooch’s office and skittered his quill across the lines for the times he wanted under her watchful eye. She swept the parchment out from under his quill and blew on it before rolling it up into a scroll. Ink splattered all over her desk and started soaking into the wood grain. “That’s one fourth of the times, Mr. Potter,” the flying instructor told him crisply. “Your team doesn’t get any more than that.”

“Yes Madam Hooch,” he intoned irritably, sticking her quill back into her inkwell.

“None of that,” she ordered, tapping his arm gently with the scroll. Harry supposed he was lucky she liked anyone who could fly whole Quidditch game without cheating; otherwise he might have been the first student to get a detention from her in years.

He meandered his way down to the kitchens to make up for the meal he’d missed with cream puffs and a bowl of strawberry ice cream. By the time he had finished, he just felt tired, and his feet took him up to the Fat Lady’s portrait. “You have something pink on your cheek,” she told him as he muttered the password, a box of chocolate liquors open and half empty on her voluminous mauve silk covered lap.

Harry flicked it off. “Yeah, alright, will you let me in now?” The frame swung open and he stepped through the opening. His housemates lounged in chairs clustered around the fireplace. Atop his favorite chair sat a pile of scarlet envelopes snoring faintly. Bodmin stood on the padded arm of the chair, snapping testily at anyone who passed by too closely. Ginny sat close by and waved to him when he walked over. As he passed, the Howlers stopped snoring and fluttered sinisterly. Harry gathered as many of the bad tempered letters into his arms as he could and propped open one of the windows. Ginny carried the rest. They dropped the envelopes out the window and they flapped furiously before they caught fire on the way down. Harry shut the window on the shrieking.

“I’m really sorry, Harry,” Ginny whispered, her eyes wet.

“It’s alright.” Harry slumped into the chair, exhausted, and Bodmin flew off to the Owlery.

She kissed his cheek warmly and touched her own cheek. “You have something sticky on your face,” she told him, “right here.”

“Yeah, I know,” he mumbled, and she licked her finger and wiped it off.