Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Author's Chapter Notes:
The long awaited next chapter is up! It turned out a bit longer than expected. Enjoy and don't forget to review!
The Kind of Son A Father Wants

His chest felt heavy as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He was aware that he was being carried down stairs, through various darkened corridors, and finally into a quiet room, although he only caught glimpses of things as he concentrated on trying to breath. Harry was also quite sure that he was delirious, because he could have sworn it was Snape carrying him down into the dungeons, and that he was in the man's private quarters bleeding all over his leather couch.

When Harry let out a harsh laugh, followed by a gurgle and a cough, Severus hurried in from the bathroom with several bottles. So it was him, and he wasn't hallucinating, Harry mused. How his life had taken a turn towards this end he wasn't sure, he thought as his professor gave him a look he couldn't discern, because it seemed too near to concern.

"You find something amusing Mr. Potter?"

"I'm in your quarters," Harry rasped. He tried to lift his arm into the air, but his arm was too weak to manage, and instead he coughed again in place of a laugh.

"I fail to see what's so funny," Severus said as he uncorked a bottle of brown ooze and held it up to Harry's lips, a hand under his head to lift it slightly so that he could drink it. It burned on the way down and Harry was shaken with a wracking coughing fit that he thought would never end. After long, tense moments of not being able to breathe, the weight in his chest lightened a little, and he sucked in deep breaths, still coughing a little.

"Ugh," Harry groaned, squeezing his eyes closed. His throat still burned and he asked, "What was that?"

"You had fluid in your lungs... probably blood. The potion was necessary to clear it out so that you could breathe properly."

"Is that what Pomfrey would have given me? Why didn't you take me to her?"

Snape didn't answer for a moment because he was pouring a pink potion into a bottle with a little orange potion and shaking it up until it started to fizz. Just as Harry's head started to spin and he felt like passing out again, the Potion's Master turned around and was tilting Harry's head back again so that he could drink the potion. This one didn't taste pleasant either, but it didn't burn like the last one had.

"It is exactly what Madam Pomfrey would have given you. Now be still so that I can heal some of your other injuries." He said several familiar spells and Harry felt his shoulder pop back into place painfully. Finally Snape answered his other question. "You are not in the Hospital Wing because Poppy is at St. Mungo's consulting a midwife for miss Lewitt."

"Susan? Is she ok?" Harry tried to sit up but found himself being pushed back onto the comfortable couch.

"Don't be foolish, lie back down." Harry obeyed, not because he loved obeying the snark in the man's tone, but because he felt weak and there were stabbing pains in his chest were it felt like someone had speared him with a big fork.

"Miss Lewitt is fine." He was forcing another potion on Harry now. "It is a consultation for January when she is due." He could see the boy visibly relax and wondered at how close he had grown to the girl who had made life very hard for him in the past two months. It was no wonder that Draco was so jealous. Severus looked back over at Harry just in time to see his face pale visibly.

"Potter?"

Harry didn't respond, and his eyes seemed unfocused.

"Harry?" Severus tried. Instead of an answer however, what he got was projectile vomit splattering his shoes as it hit the floor between the couch and the coffee table he was sitting on.

The boy on the couch looked mortified, and immediately started to stammer apologies, even as he swayed weakly on the couch where he had propped himself. Severus stood and reached over to push the fifteen-year-old back down yet again.

"Yes, well, that can sometimes happen with the first potion I gave you. Lay still and close your eyes until the nausea goes away."

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," Harry repeated under his breath. "Can I just go back to Gryffindor?"

"No. You will be staying here until you are fit to stand or until Madam Pomfrey returns."

Harry closed his eyes and tried not to think about the barf on the floor that the professor he often hated was now cleaning up with a spell, or that he was in the man's home. For some inexplicable reason, Harry wanted Ron and Hermione just then rather than Madam Pomfrey. Perhaps it was the thought that they might be a comfort, as they had always been when he was in the hospital wing, but he wasn't sure, especially now that he hadn't spoken to Hermione in months and since Ron was still avoiding him like the plague.

"Why are you being so nice to me?" Harry suddenly asked, voice small as he tried to fight sleep. The man was rubbing a bruise salve on his arms where he had been kicked lying down and it was relaxing.

"I can be meaner if you'd like Potter." The last thing he needed was for Potter to go babbling about how his professor kidnapped him into his private quarters only to be rude to him.

"I just wondered how my life is so upside down," Harry said, finally unable to keep his eyes open at all as his head pounded and other injuries continued to throb.

"I wouldn't expect any less. You are my-" he paused, not sure he wanted to divulge his secret yet. And it didn't appear that he'd have the chance this night, because the boy was soundly sleeping, unaware that his father watched over him.

* * *

Draco paced. It was four am and he couldn't get her out of his mind. Only hours before he had confessed to his head of house about his one beautiful night under the stars out on the grounds with Susan last spring, and how he felt so ashamed for not taking care of her. He'd hoped it would relieve some of the constant nausea and anxiety pent up inside, but it had done nothing for him. He could feel Susan slipping through his fingertips. He'd heard a rumor that the baby was a boy, and that Susan and Harry were compiling a list of names. That was what had pushed him over the edge. It should be him and Susan compiling a list of names. What would his father do to him though? Flashes of heavy objects flying at him from the mantelpiece in his father's study flew through his mind from a previous incident having nothing to do with a girl, but having to do with him befriending the one boy in the house that was known to be a mudblood. No, his father would not be happy, and he would be sent away if he were lucky, and dead if he was not.

He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. He hated his life. He always had. He hated his father, he hated the plans his family had laid out for him, he hated his own personality. The only thing he had loved was Susan and even the thought of their child, whom he could take fishing and teach to be everything the opposite that he was. To hell with being written out of the family fortune, but if he was dead or sent away permanently, he would not be able to take care of Susan and their son. A name flashed through his mind then, Aster, and he wished he could run to Susan and tell her that he wanted their son to be Aster Malfoy. The fact that he couldn't... strike that, the fact that he was to cowardly to sent him into smacking the sides of his head several times until his ears were ringing. "Coward!" he shouted aloud to nobody in the empty corridor deep in the dungeons. "Coward," he whispered to himself. "Coward. Coward. Coward."

* * *

"Sir?"

Severus turned to see Harry swaying in the kitchen doorway, unsteady on his feet. Rushing over and catching him just in time as he tilted a little too far sideways, he placed him in a vacant kitchen chair and gave him a stern look.

"I instructed you to stay on the couch, did I not?"

"Yes sir," Harry said, hand to his head and looking like he was trying to steady himself.

"Impatient, just like your father," Severus murmured, going back to the counter where he had been preparing dry toast to give to the boy to help fight the nausea the potions given to him the night before had caused.

Harry laughed then and Severus raised a brow as he gave half a glance back to him. "What Potter?"

Harry shook his head. "I'm not as much like him as you want me to be. You like insulting me and you've had it wrong all these years." He wasn't smiling anymore as Snape turned to face him, two slices of toast on a small plate that he now set before him on the small kitchen table.

"How so Potter? I know for a fact that your father is impatient, especially when ill."

"And? James Potter's not my father, how's that one for you?" Harry narrowed his eyes and Snape sat down on the only other chair at the table.

"As I said," he repeated slowly. "Your father is impatient."

Harry bit his lip. He had been considering asking a professor if they had any ideas as to whom his mother might have been with, but had been unsure whom to approach. And now here was Snape telling him he knew exactly who his real father was.

"You know him?"

"Intimately well."

Harry scratched his head. "Don't suppose you'll tell me who it is. Nobody ever trusts me with information about my own life." He bitterly recalled losing Sirius at the end of the last school year in the Department of Mysteries.

"You have yet to ask." The words hung there in the silence, and Harry was almost afraid to know now. What if it was somebody who knew he was his son, just as Draco knew about his son, but didn't want him?

"Did... did he want me?"

"He did not know until recently."

Harry was biting his lip again and asked, "Do I look like him?"

"You have his hair and thin frame, and your mothers eyes, which forcefully remind your father whenever he sees you that you are your mother's child."

Harry frowned now. So it was somebody he saw often?

Severus was anxious now, something that didn't happen to him often. What if Harry outright rejected him? He deserved it if he did.

"He works here?"

"Indeed."

"And I look like him?"

"Yes."

Harry's eyes flitted up suddenly to rake over Snape's long black hair and thin but muscular frame. He was the only male professor at Hogwarts with black hair. Professor August had brown hair but he was much too tall, a good half-foot taller than Snape even who was taller than Harry.

Speechless, Harry sat quietly thinking things over. Snape had been a lot less snarky to him this year, but then again most professors were nicer to him now than the start of the term. And Snape had taken him here when hurt and taken care of him instead of dumping him on McGonagall.

"Does my father want me now?" His words were barely audible as Harry stared down at the table.

"He always has, even before he knew you were his own. Jealously blinded him and made him sarcastic and naive." Harry looked up and their eyes locked. "I'm so sorry... son."

* * *

Harry felt numb as he exited Professor Snape's quarters a few hours later, finally strong enough to stand on his own without falling over thanks to a strength potion Snape- no, that his father had given him. There was a lump in his throat that he couldn't seem to rid himself of. Yesterday he was still Harry Potter, orphan boy who was often neglected and pushed around by the only family he had left. Today he was just Harry, and he wasn't sure exactly who he was anymore. He suddenly felt as if the abuse and neglect received from the Dursley's was needless because all of this time his father was right there before him, and even living with the snark would have been better than being neglected. Verbal abuse made him angry, but emotional abuse was something he hated because it always made him feel worthless deep inside.

"What happened to you then?"

Harry narrowed his eyes as he rounded a corner in the dungeons and a narrow stream of light filtered in through one of the only dungeon windows. Harry hadn't realized it was morning until now. Finally Draco shifted a little from where he leaned against the wall and Harry caught sight of his blond hair and unblemished face.

"Gary Lewitt happened to me," Harry said flatly and kept walking, realizing that there was still a lot of blood on his clothes and he was still fairly bruised. Draco's face fell and he pushed forward off of the wall.

"What do you mean?"

"No worries Draco, I took the fall for you, so you can just keep pretending that the baby's mine and nobody will ever be mad at you."

"Snape told you?"

Harry stopped now. Of course it had been obvious he'd just come from Snape's quarters as it was the only room down the short hall he'd just left.

"No, Susan told me. You broke her heart you know. She still loves you but you ignore her."

Suddenly angry, Draco stepped forward and asked, "And what about you Potter? Do you love her?"

Harry sighed, really altogether to tired for fighting at the moment.

"In a way that I want her to be happy and be taken care of. But her heart isn't whole unless you're a part of it, and mine isn't whole unless it's with Ginny. Thanks to you, nobody is happy."

"But you're dating her now, I've seen you holding hands."

"Two outcasts clinging to a life raft. What am I supposed to do when all my friends abandon me... just off myself?" He couldn't deny he hadn't thought about it once or twice on particularly lonely nights spent watching his friends across the common room talking and laughing without him.

Draco looked chastised and looked down to his feet, which were scuffing soles on the cobbled floor.

"Do you even love her?"

Draco nodded and Harry sighed.

"Then stop pretending you don't. Whatever reasons you may have for not telling her, forget them. Because she's hurt and she's more important than whatever image you're trying to protect."

"I can't," Draco said, pained and looking up. "They'll send me away, and I won't be able to take care of her."

"You're rich, aren't you? Pull all your money out so they can't get at it, hire tutors for the two of you and move away so you can take care of the baby. You can file for some kind of rights I think. You're almost 17 so you should be able to file for rights."

Laughing, Draco spat, "What. And Gary Lewitt's just going to let me take his daughter away?"

"That's something you'll have to work out. I suggest with her mother. You've got a choice: keep running and lose Susan and your child forever, or take a stand and fight for what's yours. I would."

Walking away and back up through the castle, Harry realized then that he hadn't been fighting for what was his. He had let his friends go, he had lost his honor, and most importantly, he had just accepted that Ginny was gone for good. Resolve hardening, he made his way up through the castle, finally able to ignore the stares he got.

Chapter End Notes:
It took a long time, but finally this chapter is done. And there's only one chapter left after this. This will definitely be finished by Christmas!

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