Author's note: This story is a mash-up of two admittedly well-worn Harry Potter fandom tropes - 'Snape lives!' & 'Surprise, Snape is Harry's Dad!' - but not in the usual way. It has been deliberately written to avoid making Harry & Snape out-of-character any more than the situation requires. These two are Not Happy Campers, at least at first.

Content warning for description of blood/bodily fluids in a couple of chapter

Note: There was a division between switching sections, points of view and settings in the original text of this story as it was posted on Archive of Our Own, but when I copied the text over, fanfiction net apparently saw fit to strip them out entirely from several chapters. I will fix this issue when I have the time to do so.

Boy, you're gonna carry that weight, carry that weight a long time...

MONDAY, 2 MAY 1998

A dark figure lay crumpled on the floor where it had fallen hours ago. Blood no longer gushed from a jagged wound at the neck, but had slowed to a mere livid oozing. It did not move.

He drifted half out of time. Something had changed in the air around him, but he had no thought as to what it might be, and no will to care. He was dead, or ought to be. As he should be; a fitting end to a failed life.

His throat ached from thirst and more, but he could not move. The earlier numbness in his limbs and in his mind had been replaced by a burning pain that flared and receded in time with his sluggish pulse. Death would come for him, but did not seem to be in much of a hurry.

A point of light was moving in the distance, bobbing up and down in the cloying, humid darkness that surrounded him. Voices were speaking to one another, but he could not grasp their words. He shut his eyes against the growing light.

He'd done what he could to protect Lily's child, and failed in the end, as the one he had served had always intended. Could they not leave him now to his richly earned reward?

A warm breath ghosted against his face. His eyes opened. A pale face loomed above him. Large grey-blue eyes peered into his red-rimmed black ones.

"Hermione, Ron – come quickly! He's still alive!"

Bloody hell, he thought, then thought no more.