Severus let out an inaudible groan at the memory.  To this day Severus was disgusted with his actions that night.  Though everything that had happened was consensual, Severus knew he had taken advantage of Lily.  She had been vulnerable, devastated with the potential loss of her husband and intoxicated. 

Severus had thrown himself deeper into the fold of the Dark Lord after that fateful night, fueled by the fires of self-hatred.  It was only after he learned that the prophecy he related to his master could in fact pertain to his beloved Lily did he regret his continued involvement with the Dark Lord.  He never once considered the fact that the child she carried could be his.  He had gone to the Headmaster and become a spy for the Order of the Phoenix, a role he played until just a few short weeks ago.

But this was neither the time nor the place to be traveling down the road of self reflection, Severus reminded himself.  There would be time for that in the future.  The same was true for the inevitable feelings of guilt that would accompany it.  Hopefully those feelings of guilt would be reduced as Severus tried to make up for the time he had lost with his son.  But that was something only time could tell.

Now he needed to listen to his son’s tale.  There still was much he did not know about the boy, even though he had gotten to know his son quite a bit better during the past few months.  Severus was familiar with the happenings of the past year, but much could be learned from the way Harry recounted the events.

“Now for the next several weeks we didn’t see Dad.”  Harry continued speaking, completely unaware of his father’s musings.  “He seemed to be avoiding Headquarters whenever possible.  Remus told me that Dad was actually only showing up to Order meetings when Dumbledore directly ordered him to be there.  When he did show up, he was Flooing directly into the kitchen, just before the meeting was to begin and departing as soon as it ended.  We didn’t mind it at all.  I had no desire to see ‘the greasy git’, even if people said he was my father.”

“We spent the next week working hard on cleaning up the house.  It wasn’t until the night before the trial that I thought to ask what had happened to Dumbledore’s letter.  I asked Sirius, but he grumbled something about needing to be more responsible with my things.  He told me the last time he had seen it, it was on the kitchen table.”

“I went on to ask Mrs. Weasley and any other member of the Order if they had seen it.  Most just told me no and moved on.  Moody actually accused me of trying to find out more information about what was being guarded at the Ministry and threatened to hex me to kingdom come if he caught me looking about like that again.  So, obviously I didn’t find the letter.”

“Now, most of you, if not all know what happened with my trial.  For those of you have been living under a rock for the last year, I’ll give you a quick recap.  I was charged for breaking the Decree of the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery for using the Patronus Charm to protect my cousin Dudley and myself from a couple of dementors.  I got off because I was lucky enough that my batty old neighbor Ms. Figg was a squib and saw them.  Otherwise, the Wizengamont might not have believed me.”

“It also didn’t hurt that they were so impressed a fifteen year old could produce a full bodied Patornus.”  Harry added chuckling lightly.

“Kreacher told us that Master Regulus had always been a fan of the Dark Lord.  How when Regulus had turned sixteen he joined the Death Eaters.  None of this was a surprise to Sirius.  In fact, he was making cutting remarks about his brother’s intelligence the entire time.  What Sirius didn’t know was the last part of the story.  A year after joining the Death Eaters the Dark Lord requested the services of a house elf.  Regulus had offered the Dark Lord the use of Kreacher.  Keacher had gone with the Dark Lord.  They had gone to a cave by the sea and taken a boat across a black lake.  The Dark Lord had made Kreacher drink the potion in a stone basin that sat on top of a podium on an island in the middle of this lake.  The Dark Lord had left him.  The potion had hurt Kreacher, made him see terrible things.  The Dark Lord had left him there to die, but he was under orders from Regulus to come home so he had.  A while later Regulus had asked Kreacher to take him where the Dark Lord had gone.  Regulus took the boat across the lake with Kreacher.  He made Kreacher force him to drink the potion and then go home with the necklace.  He told Kreacher to destroy it, but no matter how hard the house elf had tried he hadn’t been able to destroy it.”

“I’ll talk more about that later.  What I will tell you now, is that the Headmaster had already figured out Voldemort had created a number of Horcruxes.  He hadn’t told anybody in the Order, well with the exception of Dad, like I said more about that later.”

“The send off from King’s Cross was normal.  That’s if you think being escorted by multiple Aurors and half a dozen other witches and wizards all on alert for someone trying to kill you is normal.  Or having a fugitive disguised among you, just so he can stretch his legs, get some fresh air, and see his godson off to school for the first time.  Yeah, it was even a little crazy for me.  But at the time I was happy that Sirius was there, though I think we all regretted it later.  Mr. Malfoy recognized Sirius’s disguise, so he was even more confined to the Grimmauld Place than he had been.”

“Even the train ride was weird.  Everyone who had been reading the paper over the summer thought that I was either a liar, or an absolute nutter.  Add to the fact for the first time in my life Ron wasn’t there with me, since he had to do patrols of corridors as part of his prefect duties.  So, I ended up sitting with Ginny, Neville and somebody I hadn’t met before, Luna Lovegood.”

“If I ever was looking forward to the year at Hogwarts it was this year.  But that all changed, before we even had a chance to finish our pudding during the opening feast.”