Title: Volatile (1/2)

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairings: Harry/Draco

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: AU where Harry is Snape's son, established relationship, profanity, angst.

Summary: Volatile, adj.:Harry and Snape's parent-child relationship when they don't have Voldemort to concentrate on.

Author's Notes: This is an epilogue in two parts to my AU story Practicing Liars, in which Harry discovered that he was Snape's son. It would help a lot to have read that first. This is one of a couple fics requested by a reviewer, jtsbbsps_dk; I'll post the second one eventually. I hope everyone enjoys this brief return to the Liars universe.

Volatile

Chapter One—Problems Arise

"Did he say what he wanted?" Draco let his hand brush the hair out of Harry's eyes, then drift down his face. Harry smiled, keeping his eyes closed. Draco choked back the temptation to say a few of the things he wanted to. It would probably inspire Harry to lean forwards and kiss them, and as nice as that was, he didn't want Harry to be late for a meeting with his father.

"No." Harry opened his eyes, a faint frown forming between his brows. "He's been—strange lately. Glaring at people. Snapping at them. Saying things that make no sense."

"That's not strange," Draco pointed out. He leaned his head on Harry's shoulder. They were wrapped together in a nest of blankets in one of the further parts of the dungeons, whether overly inquisitive fans and outraged Slytherins alike would have trouble finding them. And they still had a few minutes before Harry absolutely had to leave to be on time to his meeting with Professor Snape. "With the idiots he has for students, he can explain the most basic Defense spell in words of one syllable, and he'll still get blank looks."

"Glaring at me," Harry said. "Snapping at me."

Draco raised his eyebrows. "That's more unusual," he said. Professor Snape's relationship with Harry still wasn't perfect and probably never would be; that was what happened when your father only discovered your existence at sixteen years old, Draco thought wisely. But the professor had been as careful as he could to keep the relationship going while still allowing Harry to maintain some freedom and distance.

Anyway, the Dark Lord was dead, a fact that still made Draco shiver with delight when he thought about it. Harry didn't need to worry as much about his safety as he once had.

Harry sighed and started to drag himself away. "I have to go," he said, when Draco muttered a protest. "He said that he'd flay the skin off my back if I wasn't there on time."

"He says things like that without meaning them, though," Draco said, keeping hold of Harry's arm. He knew he was being childish. He didn't care. He never got as much time with his boyfriend as he wanted, and now his boyfriend had a gloomy expression on his face that made Draco want him to stay close. Harry had suffered enough sadness in his life. Why did he have to go through more?

"I know," Harry said. "But this time he didn't have that—that shine in his eyes that told me he was joking, you know? It was more as if we'd gone back to the way things used to be."

Draco released Harry's arm at that, but it was the tone in Harry's voice that did it, not the news of the professor's threat. Harry sounded a bit wistful. The time when he had considered Professor Snape his enemy and not really his father had been simpler for him, Draco knew, but he still didn't want Harry longing for it.

"Go if you need to, then," he said. "I'm going to stay here and sleep."

Harry grinned and bent to kiss him. "I'd much rather stay here," he whispered. "I'm only leaving because I have to."

That eased Draco's loneliness as he watched Harry walk away, if not all his fears.

"Enter."

Harry slid cautiously into his father's office. The response to his knock had been colder than usual. To some people, that wouldn't have meant much, since they probably thought Snape could never be cheerful about anything but assigning detentions.

Harry knew better, though, and he was frantically trying to review his behavior in his head. What had he done? He'd been on time to all his classes, he'd been doing his homework, he'd been staying inside the strong wards at Hogwarts that would protect him from both the press and the rogue Death Eaters still present, and he hadn't broken any school rules more severe than those against running in the corridors. If he had done something specific, he would have expected Snape to give him a clue already, rather than a vague summons.

Snape sat in a tall red chair that faced the shelves of cauldrons, rather than behind his desk, marking papers. Harry swallowed, his anxiety level rising. When adults did something that changed the normal routine of things, he almost always suffered as a result.

But this was Snape, his father, he reminded himself, and even if their relationship was new, it still wasn't like any other he'd had in his life. So Harry just stood in front of Snape with his hands locked together behind his back and waited for him to get to the point.

Snape's eyes were cold and neutral in that unnerving way that meant Harry couldn't tell anything about what was going to happen next. He did some more staring, and finally Snape grunted and glanced away, as though Harry had scored a point of some sort.

"We have many things to discuss," Snape said. "Things I have been putting off in hopes that you would eventually grow more comfortable. Then I realized that they would become more uncomfortable the longer we waited to speak of them." He gestured with his wand, and a smaller chair trotted over to settle in front of him. "Sit down."

Harry did, but he was feeling even more anxious now, fear traveling through him like a cold wind. Was Snape going to put even more restrictions on him? He sometimes seemed to feel that, because he hadn't known Harry when he was a baby, he should make up for that with a lot more demands now.

"I have two questions," Snape said, and then smiled faintly. The smile reassured Harry enough to make him lean back in the chair. "Many more than that, in truth, but two to begin. Where did you learn the Sectumsempra spell that you used to kill Bellatrix Lestrange?"

Harry waited, but Snape said nothing else. "You said two," Harry pointed out.

"That is the one I wish to begin with," Snape said.

Harry sighed and stared at his hands. Compared to everything else he'd come to terms with in the past few months, maybe this was small, but he still didn't much like it. He just didn't like telling secrets to adults, period, he thought. They always wanted to do something with them, instead of keeping them, the way his friends did. "I found a Potions book," he said. "I didn't think I was going to be admitted into Potions—for understandable reasons—and so I didn't buy the book I needed. Slughorn gave me one instead, and it had spells written in the margins, and notes on how to do the Potions better."

"Ah," Snape said, as if releasing a breath he'd had contained in his lungs for hours. Harry looked up, startled, and then looked down again when he realized that he couldn't read the expression on his father's face. "So. Was this book marked as belonging to the Half-Blood Prince?"

"Yes!" Harry said, staring. "How did you know that, sir? Did you have the same book when you were in school?"

"My mother's name was Prince," Snape said, and then was silent, watching Harry intently. This must be one of the little tests that Snape liked to do, where he waited for Harry to come up with the answer on his own. He said that Harry didn't use his brain enough and needed to exercise it more.

Luckily, this one wasn't hard. Harry choked. "Your book? You came up with the spells? Er, found the spells?" He had never been sure how many of the spells were ones that the Prince—Snape—had invented and how many were just obscure ones that he'd researched.

"Yes." Snape waited again, apparently seeking a reaction this time.

"Wow," Harry said. It seemed to be the only thing he could say, because he still didn't know why Snape had started this conversation in the first place. Why did it matter what spell he'd used to kill Bellatrix? It mattered that she was dead. And Harry was not going to regret that death, not when she'd killed Sirius and tortured Draco's mum.

"Why did you use the spell without knowing what it did first?" Snape asked. Then he paused and tilted his head like an owl considering prey. "Unless you did know and decided that it would make her end appropriate."

Harry shook his head, amused despite himself. There were times that Snape seemed to think he never used his brain, and others when he seemed to think that Harry was secretly looking up Latin roots all night and thinking about Potions ingredients. "No. I chose it because the spell said it was for enemies, and she was my enemy if anyone ever was." He thought of Voldemort, too, of course, but he'd had to feel love and use Dumbledore's extra power, a gift when the Headmaster was dying, to defeat Voldemort. When he'd killed Bellatrix, he'd felt nothing but hatred, and then satisfaction.

"Do you not think," Snape said, voice deeper in the way that meant he was playing the disapproving parent, "that it was rather foolish to use a spell when you didn't know what it did?"

"I knew it would hurt her," Harry said. "And that was all I wanted."

Snape actually leaned back in his seat a little. Then he murmured, "Nevertheless, you will not do such a thing again. And I will want the book back."

Harry bristled. This was more demanding than Snape had been in a long time, except when he was trying to be a deliberate bastard. "Why not?" he demanded. "What happens if I need to use a spell that I don't really understand to protect myself against a Death Eater? It could happen. I think you're forgetting that I have a dangerous life, and I don't want to cower behind wards for the rest of it, so it'll always be dangerous. And—"

"Using a spell that you don't understand could harm others as well as yourself," Snape said, and great, he was making his voice all slow, as if Harry really did have that lesser level of intelligence, or at least didn't understand English. "I do not want you harmed. I will go through a great deal of trouble to ensure that you are not."

"If I cast the spell on someone who's trying to harm me, it doesn't matter what it does," Harry said. "It's not as though I'm going to stand in front of the mirror aiming my wand at myself, or do it at friends just for fun."

"And if the spell hits a shield and comes back at you faster than you are prepared to deal with it?" Snape's eyes were very cold. "If it affects stone or wood or glass unnaturally and makes defenses you may have prepared useless? If it has a wider area of effect than you think it does—and how could you estimate such things, if the spell was truly unfamiliar?—and strikes and injures innocents? If—"

"All right," Harry said, hating the fact that he sounded like a sulky child, but knowing Snape was right, and hating that, too. "But I need the book to continue doing well in Potions."

"You do not," Snape said. "I will be more than willing to tutor you."

Harry stared at him for a while, and when he appeared to take no notice of this, Harry explained, gently, "We tried that experiment for five years. I don't think it's going to work."

"You cannot be bereft of Potions talent." Snape found his fingers fascinating, and Harry suspected that the stains on them probably did make up their own sort of map, but he needed him to pay attention to the conversation right now. "You're my son."

"Inheritance doesn't work that way." Harry rose to his feet. "Look, I'll promise not to use another spell that I don't know. And at least now you know where the book is. But I need that book. If I'm going to be an Auror, I have to pass my Potions NEWT, and that's my only chance."

Snape rose to his feet as well, too quickly. Harry frowned in confusion. That speed usually showed only when Snape was upset, but what would he have to be upset about? Harry was the one who had been dragged here and shown that he was wrong.

"It is not," Snape said, and he wasn't speaking through gritted teeth, but it sounded close. "I told you, I will tutor you. I will do everything I can. If you want to be an Auror, then I will help you become so. And if you decide on another career—which you may, as we have talked about several times—then I will help you with that, as well. But the book involves a level of knowledge and wisdom that you are not ready for. It constitutes cheating."

Harry thought back on the favoritism that Snape had shown Slytherins over the years. He couldn't have repressed the enormous snort that emerged from his nose if he tried.

Snape stiffened and stared at him. Harry stared back. He didn't know what else Snape wanted him to say. Harry had simply spoken the truth as he saw it, after all. He had tried working with Snape on Potions, and it didn't work. And him having the book didn't hurt anything. It wasn't like Snape had been looking for it and wanted it back. He would have a little extra knowledge, and he would learn something, and then he would take the NEWTs and become an Auror.

Perhaps he was being a little bit unreasonable. But Snape was being more so, and he was the adult, as he kept telling Harry when he made arbitrary rules, so Harry settled for another glare.

This was not at all the way Severus had wanted the conversation to go. He had thought of it as a subtle exploration of morality, of the way that he would have to ensure his son felt badly for his deed while at the same time not feeling too badly, because Bellatrix was no great loss to the world. But Harry needed a conscience more than Severus did. He had been raised in a different fashion, educated in a different House. Severus wanted him to retain the best of that upbringing while shedding the things from it that would hinder him.

And somehow the conversation had skewed in a different direction entirely, and Harry refused to hand over the book in the calm, mature fashion that Severus had envisioned. Instead, he acted like a moody—

Adolescent.

Sometimes it was hard to imagine that the boy who was sneering at him now, his face looking more like Severus's than it usually did, was the same one who had been willing to die to rid the world of the Dark Lord.

But he would not speak as harshly as he would have liked. If Harry refused to obey a rule, Severus had discovered, trying to enforce it anyway would only result in a clash that ended in detention. He would be reasonable. He held Harry's eyes and asked, "How much of your refusal to surrender the book comes from your need of weapons?"

He had successfully distracted the boy, at least. Harry frowned and shook his head. "What do you mean? My wand is the only weapon I need."

Severus sighed. He wished, again, that he had approached this under different circumstances, but he had not called Harry to this meeting simply to discuss his killing of Bellatrix and the obvious possession of Severus's invented spells. "I meant that you have an ingrained distrust of adults," he said. "Even of other children, in some instances. That is not blameworthy," he added quickly, because Harry's face was turning red. "But I do want you to think about how you treat knowledge and information as weapons that you must hoard for later in your life. You do not know that you would fail Potions with me if we should try again, with good will on both sides. You do not know that you want to become an Auror. But on the chance that you do, you want this book."

"I really don't know where you're going with this."

Severus hesitated. He had never been trained in the ways of Mind-Healing, and he sometimes thought any native empathy he possessed had died with Lily. But he had been trying in the past few months with Harry, and especially in the month since the final battle with the Dark Lord, and he was going to try again now.

"I meant that I wished you to consider whether the way you have been raised influences your decisions," he said carefully. "The distrustful environment, the need for constant self-defense, perhaps governs your reactions now."

Harry's head snapped up, with a motion that made Severus's neck ache in sympathy. His eyes were dark and glittering, and Severus saw Lily in him more strongly than ever. Unfortunately, it was the Lily who had declared that he either gave up the friends that he was following into the Dark Lord's embrace or he gave her up.

It did not help that she had been right.

"We're not discussing this," Harry said.

"Your upbringing?" Severus felt his own anger begin to rise in response. He had been patient, but Harry's flat refusals were not the rational conversations he had pictured. He had thought the best thing about having a son who had already reached the age of sixteen would be his understanding of reason. But Harry banished reason from the room on a regular basis. "We are."

"We're not." Harry clasped his hands behind his back. "It wasn't the best, but there's no point in talking about it now. You already know it wasn't the best. You haven't tried to talk to me about it so far."

"I have waited," Severus said, and strove for the quiet tone he needed, given the subject. "I know a few details, enough to make me angry. I wish to know more. How often did your relatives withhold food from you? How exactly did they mistreat you? Why did no one ever notice this mistreatment?"

"No," Harry said. "I don't want to tell you that."

"Why not?" Severus took a step forwards, and then stopped himself. Harry didn't flinch or react wildly the way he had when he was still hiding the secret of their relationship—which he had known first—but his face had shut down, and he moved a step nearer the door in response.

"Because I don't."

Severus shut his eyes. He was trying to remember that this was sensitive for Harry, but denying that abuse existed—no, Harry was not even doing that, which Severus could remember doing as a prop to his own pride during childhood. He was simply shutting his mouth, like a child who didn't want to eat his vegetables.

He is a child, Severus thought, opening his eyes. My child. I have a right to know what happened to him, and I never will learn it from him if he has his way. He would have approached me by now if he felt comfortable talking about it.

The temptation to use Legilimency was there, like a knife under his hand. But at least he had enough sense to avoid crossing that boundary. That was the action he knew Harry would never forgive him.

"You need not speak of this right now," he said. "Choose a time and place and we will speak of it there. I will arrange for a qualified Mind-Healer to be in attendance, or Madam Pomfrey, if you prefer that. Or you may write it down. It need not be a long document. If written words would give you the necessary distance—"

"Don't you understand?" Harry said, with a viciousness that surprised Severus almost more than it displeased him. "I don't want to talk about it. I know it's not right. I know I didn't deserve it. I'm angry at them. But you already know everything important about it, the lack of food and the cupboard and everything. Why do you want to know more than that? It's fine. I'm fine. And I think that you just don't want me to use the book because you want to teach me in Potions yourself instead. I told you, that doesn't work."

"I do not want you to use the book because you have proven that you do not have the foresight and maturity necessary to do so," Severus said sharply. "I want you to talk about the abuse because it had unintended consequences that follow you through life, whether or not you recognize them. And I wish to know more because I shall always wish to know more about you. Because I did not raise you, I wish to at least understand those years of your life."

"They were bad," Harry said. He slid a step closer to the door. "The Dursleys abused me. I didn't know I had magic, or who my parents—my mum and James really were, or how they died. Then I came to Hogwarts, and everything was better, even with Voldemort after me. The end."

"I want more than that," said Severus.

"Sometimes we don't get everything we want." Harry smiled mockingly at him, that smile he seemed to choose precisely because it reminded Severus of James Potter. "I hope you have the maturity and foresight to understand that."

Severus locked the door with a single motion of his wand and said, "Detention. This evening."

"What for?" Harry glared at him over his shoulder. "For being right?"

"For talking back to a teacher," Severus said, so angry that he could barely speak. "For cheating in Potions. For—"

"You can't do that, you bloody bastard!"

"For language," Severus concluded, and felt a mean sort of satisfaction when Harry's face burned. "In fact, I think we'd better make it two nights, don't you? And during that time, you can think about what when you'll want to tell me."

"You can't make me do that," Harry said, and drew his wand. "Let me out. Now. Or I'll blast my way through your spell."

The tone in his voice cut through Severus's anger. It had gone dark and soft, the way he had heard Harry speak on the day he killed the Dark Lord. The way he spoke to enemies, not someone he was having a simple argument with.

This is not simple. I do not know how to be a father, and he does not know how to be a son. Severus raised his wand, but didn't remove the locking charm yet. "Harry, you must understand. I do not want to force obedience from you, but this is something you need. And you will have to obey me sometimes."

Harry answered by attacking the locking charm.

Severus reeled from the power behind the strike and the backlash that often came from someone trying to blast through a recently cast spell by sheer force. When he caught his breath, the door hung open, singed along the edge, and Harry was gone.

Severus stared. Anger and grief, guilt and pain, filled him with churning black waters. He had been wrong to speak as he did.

But Harry must learn not to simply act out when he was angry.

Draco raised his head and blinked. Someone was crawling into the nest of blankets next to him, someone who was shaking.

"Harry?" he whispered.

Frantic lips closed on his in response. Draco wrapped his arms around him and held him close, thinking. There was no way that Harry would be shaking this badly after a mere Saturday afternoon meeting with his father unless something had happened.

"What did Professor Snape say?" he asked.

"Not right now," Harry said. "I don't want to talk. I just want to lie here. And snog. Can you manage that?"

The primary difference between him and almost everyone else in Harry's life, Draco considered, was that he could set the questions aside for later and do as he was asked when Harry really needed him to.