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Severus Snape and Harry Evans found themselves facing each other in the pine-tree-covered hall at Slughorn's ostentatious Christmas party.
One of the people involved looked like he would have wanted to be anywhere but there, while the other was grinning.
"Mr Ebans, I presume," the older man muttered in a sallow and resigned voice. However, his face remained painfully blank.
Harry was sure that if he were to extend a tendril of legilimency in this very moment, he would at first be rebuffed, but then find a painfully tight woven ball of emotions hidden between thousands of layers of apathy.
That was when it hit him that Snape had referred to him as Harry Ebans, which had been the manner in which the organisers had misspelt Harry's name at the duelling tournament in Vienna this year.
"A fan of duelling?" Harry thus asked.
Snape simply shrugged. "There was something of particular interest for me there at the time," he said vaguely.
The boy scrunched up his eyebrows. Of particular interest? What did that mean? "Did Professor Potter tell you I was participating?" he asked. "You seemed to be having a nice conversation; sorry for interrupting it."
The black-haired man frowned. "We are merely acquaintances from school," he drawled.
"You both knew my mother, I heard," Harry queried with a smile.
At the mention of Lily Evans, Snape's facade broke, and a feeling of genuine pain flashed across his yellowed face.
"Yes, my mother and your mother often partnered up in Potions class," the man muttered. "However, it seems that this time, the apple has fallen somewhat far from the tree."
"I see that Slughorn has been gossiping," Harry retorted.
Snape snorted contemptuously. "Announce it when he hasn't; that would be more newsworthy," he started, but Harry interrupted him.
"But according to my aunt, you and Lily were more than just occasional classmates."
Snape grimaced, his eyes flicking about as if he were looking for a way to exit the conversation. Then he frowned. "If you have something to ask, then ask it," he said, correctly guessing Harry's intention.
The red-haired tilted his head contemplatively. Snape was either a very good actor, which he was, a very good occlumens, which he also was, or there was no particular feeling of guilt or awkwardness about him. For all intents and purposes, he was lighting up on Harry's social radar as just an adult having a conversation he didn't want to have.
"What happened that night? Was a culprit ever found, but the information was simply suppressed, or what?" Harry asked.
Snape looked around before nodding his head towards a more secluded corner of the room. The two of them moved to a position where they were about half-covered from the rest of the hall by a large pine tree growing out of the stone floor. Snape pulled out his wand, almost putting Harry on the defensive, before simply casting a few privacy charms.
"Assuming that you sought me out with the intention of finding out more, you're old enough to process such a conversation," the man said somewhat reluctantly while crossing his arms. "But I am sorry to disappoint you, that despite the ardent wishes of me and a variety of other," he curled his lips, "somewhat talented and connected individuals… a culprit was never identified."
"What methods did you try?" Harry questioned further.
"Why do you ask?" Snape said suspiciously.
"So I don't waste my time trying something that's been tried," Harry replied.
The Potions Master considered for a second. "You're too young to be hearing about these things," he started.
"Shut the fuck up and tell me what you know," Harry interrupted harshly, starting to lose his cool. "I am not a child, and I have a right to know everything you do, if not more," he said.
"I won't be talked to like this by a-" Snape started as he went for his wand. A movement of the hand that Harry would not have noticed had he not been a duellist.
The boy clenched his fist, causing Snape's expression to freeze in place as he looked down at his right arm, which was frozen in place by a violently powerful telekinesis.
"You think this is a fucking joke?" Harry hissed as he exerted the entirety of his will.
Normally, it would have been impossible to hold a wizard of Snape's calibre, but magic followed the will, and Harry's desire for answers was much stronger than Snape's desire not to give them.
The man broke free with a snarl and cradled his probably bruising arm. "You little ignoramus," the man muttered angrily, but didn't go for his wand again. "First, the wandless finite, and now this? I see you inherited at least a modicum of talent, if not even a bit of personality," he snarked.
"What methods did you try?" Harry asked again in a tone that communicated that he wasn't asking.
"Potter knows everything I do. Did you pull the same routine on him last year?" Snape asked suspiciously.
"You were the Slytherin, better get answers from you first, then go corroborate them, rather than the other way around," Harry muttered.
"Fine," Snape said with a sigh. "Just note here that while I worked together with Potter and his ilk on this, we are not in any way… "friends," as you would call it. We simply worked towards a common goal."
"Get on with it."
"After it happened, we pooled our efforts to search the entirety of the castle for clues. Unfortunately, destroying evidence is much easier than finding it, and whoever did it at least learned the basic spells. The aurors, of course, had other priorities," Snape sneered, "so the report we managed to steal from the auror's office was less than useless. We managed to sneak away the wands of some of the main suspects, but they all came clean on the obliviate, suggesting that either it was someone else or that they had a spare wand that they threw away after the fact. Our first suspects were Mulciber, Rosier, and the lot, but they all came back clean. Months went by with no progress. Until you were…" he paused, "born. Then, I was the one to brew the potion to match the heritage. We managed to get samples from the whole school by sneaking into the kitchens and wiping the used cutlery. Nobody came back as a positive, not even one speck of relation. This would normally be impossible if your father was a pureblood living in the magical world because there is no single wizard on the islands who does not have at least a distant relation at Hogwarts at any given time. This either left the option of the perpetrator being a muggle-born, unlikely considering that a muggle-born would not have known all the spells to hide their involvement, or someone did a ritual to hide the blood connection."
Harry simply listened to the information he was receiving, taking it all in.
There was one thing that Snape hadn't mentioned, however. Assuming that Snape and the marauders had worked together, it meant that they hadn't noticed the issue of artificial insemination because they'd all been boys. Skeeter had said that the revelation came from understanding something about women that men didn't know.
"Why did my mother not abort me? She interrupted her schooling, for what?" Harry asked.
Snape grimaced, and from his facial expression, it seemed that he would have much preferred for that to have been the case.
"She was… stable despite the obliviation, but a part of her was also lost. She could thus make her own decisions, for better or for worse. She didn't want to do it, and thus she didn't," he said. "I was never particularly sure why, but it isn't like abortion was so common back then, or is now, even. Similarly, I think that being pregnant somewhat stabilised her. She was willing to carry you to term and move on with her life. She already had her O.W.L.s, after all. She just didn't want to return to Hogwarts."
"That makes sense," Harry muttered. "Another question I've had for a while now, though, is how she died. It was during birth, but how is that possible? She was young and healthy, and I hardly believe someone can die despite receiving medical assistance."
Snape grimaced. "The medi-witch who helped with the pregnancy said she'd never seen anything like it. She held you in her arms once, then, a second later, when the umbilical cord was cut, her eyes lost the light, and she tilted over and fell down, dead. It was as if she'd been hit by the killing curse. No wounds, external or internal, nothing unusual with the brain. Just the soul leaving the body," he said harshly. A man who'd grown up even further in the past could only express his grief through anger.
Harry, an enlightened zoomer, meanwhile, was crying.
Silent tears streamed down his face as he heard the entirety of the story. His emotions raged, but he kept them under control.
"It sounds like you saw it, but how?" he asked.
"We managed to convince the medi-witch to give us the memory. It was a murder investigation, after all. Not that the ministry was much help. They were in the middle of a war."
"So what, you lot, a bunch of sixteen and seventeen-year-olds were taking memories, searching for a culprit and witnessing the death of my mother?" Harry asked.
Snape slowly nodded. "Similar to what you're doing now," he said.
"Who delivered me to my aunt?" Harry asked.
Snape remained silent.
"Who?" Harry asked again, more loudly.
"The plan was always for Lily to live with Petunia and her husband afterwards. Her parents had died recently, and she had no one else. We needed to bring her to a medi-witch for the pregnancy for safety reasons, so when Lily died, Petunia wasn't there," Snape started.
"Who!?" Harry shouted.
"Me," Snape said in a low voice. "I was the one who brought you to the Dursleys and told Petunia that her sister had died. It was me who watched her fall to the knees with you in her arms, and I'm the one her husband beat up and threw out of the house in front of the whole street."
Harry was looking down at the floor as his vision swam.
"Thanks for that," he managed to croak out. "Why'd I never see any of you before if my mom was so important to you?" he asked.
It was then that Snape did something truly brave.
He closed his eyes and admitted his weakness. "We were just a bunch of traumatised teenagers," he started. "We were still in school. We were sneaking out and getting caught so often due to our investigation that our detentions would have spanned into the next century had we never graduated. After my mother died… I left a year early. I went to Germany. There was nothing left for me in Britain. Just painful memories. Petunia she was… She seemed like a good fit."
"She is," Harry said.
"James, Lupin, Black…" Snape paused. Harry didn't miss how he only addressed James by his first name and didn't mention Pettigrew. "They were heavily involved in the war. And after? From what I heard, there was no need to interfere."
"So that's the whole sordid tale," Harry said with a frown. He couldn't help but laugh tearfully.
"Quite," Snape said bitterly.
"You doing well in Germany?" Harry asked curiously, causing Snape to pause, likely not expecting to be asked about his well-being.
"I can't complain," he started haltingly. "I run my own laboratory in Munich and currently have two students pursuing a mastership. I'm also involved in some other research activities related to Defence against the Dark Arts, but I won't bore you with the details. It recently came to my ears that you were able to master the patronus charm?" he asked, seemingly happy to steer the conversation in a different direction.
Harry looked at the man critically. He looked on the surface the same as the books had described him. Sallow-faced, hook-nosed and greasy-haired. But one couldn't help but notice that he wasn't overly acidic or bitter.
His tale, in a way, was less tragic. Sure, Lily had died, but since Snape had presumably never joined the Death Eaters, it hadn't been his fault. Similarly, he'd never gone through the anguish of being a double agent and then a school teacher.
Teaching… it changed a person.
The question that was now open was who'd told Voldemort of the prophecy.
For all intents and purposes, this Snape had a shitty childhood but was able to break away from it once he came of age in another country. In that way, he was quite similar to many people walking the earth and not an eminently tragic and hateful figure anymore.
"Light magic, yes," Harry said idly, answering the question. "It was a challenge, but now I'm focused on other things. Enchanting, mainly."
"And duelling," Snape helpfully provided before smirking. "I have to thank you for knocking Habsburg down a peg at the tournament. The family has been rather… insufferable."
Harry hummed, thinking about how the magical communities of Germany and Austria were probably quite interconnected. They spoke the same language after all.
"How so?" Harry asked curiously. "Imperial arrogance, I assume?" he asked.
Snape shook his head. "Let's just say that while Grindelwald was born in Switzerland, the magicals in Austria and Germany were more fascinated by his ideas. The Habsburgs, especially, albeit more out of greed for power, would like to rekindle those days under the leadership of one of their own."
In Harry's mind, several things suddenly clicked together. The mind attack he'd suffered fighting the boy. But… Habsburg had already been sixteen at the time. "He'll be participating as a seventeen-year-old next year, hardly equal to winning at fourteen, like Grindelwald," he said with a sneer. "How exactly do they plan on drawing a parallel?"
"A strawman. He'll have a duelling career, some magical accomplishments in different fields, provided, of course, by others," Snape said contemptuously. "Having a powerful family behind you can almost replace having actual talent. Almost."
"Talking about talent," Harry muttered, thinking about Penny. "I have a friend who will take her Potions O.W.L.s one year early next year. She's been a fan of yours ever since she found your notes from sixth year," he said.
"And how did she know that it was me who made them?" Snape asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I put two and two together."
"I'm sure you did," Snape said dubiously.
"Regardless," Harry started again with a cough. "I'm sure she would appreciate having a discussion about Potions from her idol. I won't lie and say you'll get much out of it, but you might be receiving her application for a mastery in a few years."
Snape hummed noncommittally.
"There's also a piece of information in it for you if you do me this small favour," Harry said with a twisted smile. He remembered how the man had avoided him last year, potentially hampering the investigation.
"My birth was the result of artificial insemination," Harry informed the man, which suddenly caused Snape to go supernaturally still.
If he'd been holding a wine glass like many of the other attendees, this would have been the point when it would have shattered.
After a few seconds of silence, Snape looked Harry up and down critically. "And how did you discover this?" he asked dangerously.
"The same reports you had access to, I also got through some social engineering," Namely, asking Rita pretty, pretty please. "The only difference was I had the help of a woman to interpret the whole thing. Suffice it to say that she noticed a few things that five teenage boys didn't."
It was then that Snape got stuck on the most interesting of details. "How did you know it was five?" he asked with furrowed brows.
Harry shrugged. "Just because Pettigrew is in prison now doesn't mean that no one can make the connection that this wasn't always the case. He wasn't born there, was he?" he asked rhetorically.
Snape continued looking at him.
"Time is running short," the man eventually said. "I'll do you this favour. After all, it would be interesting to see whom someone like you considers worthy of attention. But," he paused dramatically. "We may have more to discuss than I initially thought." He put a hand into his black cloak and pulled out a letter. "This was originally meant for someone else, but perhaps you could use it better than they could." Snape's black eyes flashed before he turned around and swept off towards Penny.
In that brief moment, Harry saw something which had previously been hidden underneath his robes. Around his neck. A small silver chain carrying a symbol.
A triangle split down the middle with a circle touching all three edges on the inside.
The symbol of the three hallows, or as most people knew it, Grindelwald's mark.
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AN: Bam, fuck you. Three new plot threads, see if you can identify them. Patreon