Chapter IV

I

It was a bit past one in the morning. The house was dark and silent. Shadows crept across the floor, merging with each other. Harry was trying to sneak down the corridor, past the bathroom, Lily's room, the boys' room, the hallway closet and finally to Snape's room at the end, just above the staircase. Leaning against the door he tried to listen. It was awfully quiet. Perhaps too quiet. He held his breath, but the thumping of heartbeats in his ears drowned out all the small sounds he was trying to listen for. Slowly he let his breath out again, wincing at the loudness of it. For a moment he pondered fetching his wand, but just as he was about to remove himself from the door it opened violently. Startled, Harry whimpered just before losing his balance and fell heavily into the man on the other side of the door.

'Oomph,' complained Snape. Removing himself, he watched with detached amusement as Harry fell the last distance and connected with the floor. 'What are you doing lurking outside my room?' he demanded. Looking up and into the stern face, further caricatured by the dark shadows of the room, Harry was eleven years old again and sneaking out after curfew.

'I-I'm sorry, I was just going to the bathroom and took a wrong turn and- … wait a second.'

'Hah,' said Snape, pointedly crossing his arms. Harry got up without assistance and brushed off his pyjamas.

'You're scary in the dark,' ground Harry out. 'I've still got trauma from school.'

'Serves you right, sneaking about getting in trouble at all hours. I never got a proper night's sleep.'

Well, thought Harry, he had seen Snape in his sleepwear one too many times, true. This time there were no grey nightshirts, however, merely a blue pair of pyjama trousers and one of Ted's baggy band t-shirts. Harry wasn't certain Snape would approve of Rammstein, or whatever it was. But then again, Snape had enjoyed playing one of Ted's ridiculous online games for a good few hours last evening. Harry wondered when Snape would start making sense and stop giving him a headache.

'Doesn't seem like you're sleeping now, either,' commented Harry dryly at Snape's last retort. 'I was merely wondering if you wanted to have a cup of tea with me.'

'Now?' Snape peered at the alarm clock on his nightstand table. 'Shouldn't you be in bed with, oh I don't know, your wife?'

'Ginny is a big girl, she isn't afraid to sleep alone.'

'….very well then.'

Harry was whistling a tune to make the silence go away. He wasn't really certain what tune it was, but he'd heard it plenty of times, somewhere. Probably one of Lily's cartoons. 'Do you want any milk or sugar in your tea?'

'Just half a spoon of sugar.'

While rummaging around in the cupboard Harry realized he had forgotten to pick up biscuits. 'No biscuits,' he informed. He was met with a disapproving glare when he turned around.

'Then I want milk in it.'

'You're worse than Lily.'

'I just know what I like.'

Harry gave Snape his milk and then sat down opposite him. 'I'm happy you're tolerating staying here,' he said, ponderously stirring in his own sugar. 'At least you haven't vocalized any dislike towards it.'

'No, that would both be ungrateful and unhelpful, it's not like I have anywhere else to go,' said Snape. 'And while we're on the subject; do you have any idea what happened to my belongings?'

'I suspect they would have been auctioned off. I wasn't responsible for all that. I think McGonagall was.' Harry shrugged a shoulder in apology. 'It was many years ago, I can't really remember.'

'And McGonagall is still alive?'

'Yes, very much so,' nodded Harry. 'She's Headmistress at Hogwarts.'

'Old bat.'

'Your words, not mine.'

For a while they were content drinking their tea. Harry was vaguely aware that he was getting drowsy, but the novelty of sitting down and drinking tea like this with Severus Snape chased away any thought of bed. 'It's sort of fantastic,' said Harry, continuing on a conversation that was going on inside his head. There was a lot in the word "fantastic". He decided he wanted to share it. 'You're alive. You've been given another chance-….' Harry spent a few moments trying to conjure up the right words to describe his feelings. 'I'm at a loss of words,' he finally admitted, trying to cover over his choked voice by coughing. Carefully he rubbed at his cheek, pretending he saw something interesting outside the window that wasn't just his own reflection.

'Are you crying?' asked Snape incredulously.

'No,' mumbled Harry.

'I still know legilimency,' informed Snape, 'not that I need it on you.'

'I guess it's just that you-,' Harry took a deep breath, trying to collect himself, 'you bring back a lot of memories I thought I had forgotten, or at the very least come to terms with. I suppose I'm not as okay with it as I presumed.'

'Of course the resurrection of someone presumed dead would be startling to anyone but-'

'It's not that!' interrupted Harry. Snape indignantly snapped his mouth shut. 'I'm sorry, of course that was a shock, it's just that- …I named my son after you. Don't you think I've been thinking about you after your dea-disappearance? Don't you think I've been going over everything that transpired between the two of us, over and over again? In the end it turned out that the man I hated the most in the world sacrificed his life for me, and-'

'You're making no sense,' said Snape coldly. The onslaught of feelings was making him uncomfortable. 'You're obviously projecting something.'

'No,' said Harry and straightened his back. Meeting Snape's eyes squarely took some effort, but he did it. Why did they have to be so black? It was like looking into two mirrors; all he saw was the reflection of his own green eyes. 'Even if it's just the memory of you I am fond of, I am fond of you. You can argue that as much as you want, but I am an adult now, married with three children, I am able to rationalize my thoughts and actions.'

Something minuscule changed in Snape. A muscle in his face twitched and he took a sip of his tea to hide it. The hand holding the cup was shaking. When he removed the chinaware his expression was back to stone. 'Last time I saw you, I thought you were going to your death,' he said. 'That even after everything that had been happening; I would still be sending Lily's son to the Dark Lord to die.'

'Well, I did die,' confirmed Harry quietly, 'but I was given another chance …Just like you?'

'No, I think what happened to you, and what has happened to me, are quite different things. I'd suspect a Horcrux, except I never made one.'

'True. Hermione and I sort of excluded all possibilities that had your involvement in them.'

'That's either quite foolish of you, or very kind. I am going for the former.'

'Having a tea party just the two of you, are you?' asked a sleepy voice from the door. Ginny stood huddled inside her gigantic bathrobe, tufts of red hair poking out in interesting directions.

'I would have invited you, too,' offered Harry, 'but you were snoring so loudly I dared not wake you.'

Walking across the kitchen with quick strides, Ginny picked up the discarded newspaper lying on the counter on her way. Without hesitating she smacked Harry square across the head with a satisfying whack. 'I don't snore!' she declared, using the whack of the paper as an extra exclamation mark. Harry laughed, weakly trying to protect himself against the onslaught. Snape's eyes were glittering in merriment at the abuse.

II

The long, black hair slid through her fingers like silk. Snape was sitting hairmodel for Lily. He had protested, but eventually capitulated when she had put her hands to her hips and pursed her lips. It really did work on men. Now he sat in the chair she had pointed him to, reading one of Dad's books. Apparently they weren't angry with each other anymore, Snape and Dad. Neither were they annoyed with Lily, for that matter, about the entire magic thing. Mommy had been proud when she had heard, but told her that she shouldn't do such things in front of muggles. Fair enough, but it just wasn't as impressive doing it in front of wizards; they already knew what it took. A couple of things had been bothering Lily, however, and she supposed this was a good time to get some answers.

'You're supposed to be dead,' she declared. No point beating around the bush.

'What?' asked Snape with that far away voice adults got when they had just heard that you said something, but not what.

'You're supposed to be dead,' said Lily again, 'together with Sirius and Grandpa and Granny and Remus and-'

Snape had turned and was looking at her, an eyebrow raised.

'You know about that, do you?' he asked.

'I am not stupid,' informed Lily levelly, 'Dad has told me about the Battle of Hogwarts one too many times, you know. He has named all his children after dead people he cared about. I am named after Granny and Remus. James is named after Grandpa and Sirius and Albus is named after Dumbledore and you. All dead people.'

'The brains must have skipped a generation,' said Snape, shutting his book with a snap. 'Because you didn't inherit that from your father.'

Lily gave a delicate shrug and crossed her arms. She had been imitating Snape's raised brow in the mirror, and was now trying its effects. All it did was make Snape raise his own. He did it in many different ways, sometimes when he was angry, irritated, annoyed, or when he didn't feel like actually smiling but thought something to be funny. This was the funny one. Jutting out her jaw, Lily tried to raise hers even further. She wasn't about to lose this battle.

They stood glaring at each other for a long while and just when Lily thought she couldn't keep her face that stern any longer, Snape gave a short cough and his entire face changed. He was smiling wide, teeth showing and everything, laughing and shaking his head. Lily couldn't help but giggle along with him. At last Snape straightened up, shook his head one last time and composed himself.

'So you wanted to know why I am not dead, do you?' he asked, and Lily nodded. She realized she was probably being rude about it; you didn't just go around asking why people weren't dead. But Snape didn't seem to find the question all that unsettling. 'None of us have really managed to find a satisfactory answer to that question. Yet.' Snape stressed the last word.

'It's a bit creepy that you woke up from the dead on Hallows Eve,' said Lily, pondering the entire problem while tapping her hairbrush against her lips. Snape cocked his head at her.

'That is true,' he murmured. 'I did wake up on all Hallows Eve. A peculiar date.'

'And we know you're not a zombie because you're pretty smart for an adult, and you're not a vampire because you can handle sunlight, and I don't think you're a werewolf either.'

'No, definitely not a werewolf,' conceded Snape.

'We have to get to the bottom of this!' declared Lily passionately, and smacked her hairbrush against the palm of her hand. 'You can't just walk around being dead.'

III

The dusty tome gave an agonized creak every time one of its thick, waxed pages was turned. Hermione pushed her glasses further up her nose. They kept sliding down when she peered at the tiny typing. The book she studied was handwritten in unintelligible cursive; the language a mix of old English and Latin. Harry stood behind her for a while, curious about this huge monster of a book, but couldn't even read the name on the front, much less anything within. Snape stood behind Hermione's other shoulder, seemingly quite comfortable in reading and understanding it. Once in a while Hermione would point at a paragraph and Snape would either nod or shake his head, and that was all Hermione needed before continuing on. It was like they had their very own sign language that no one else could decipher. Tiring of feeling like an idiot, Harry joined Ron at the computer. It was going slow and he was cursing soundly.

'I think we should do it the good, old fashioned way and actually floo down to the ministry and get the papers we need,' he grit out, beating a fist against the keyboard. The computer gave a loud "ERP" in warning. 'Shut up, you. Stupid computer.'

'Have you tried just doing a basic search on "unsolved case, Severus Snape"?' asked Snape without looking up from the book he was so intently studying. Ron tossed him a glare, but typed it in the search engine. Immediately he got a hit.

'Just luck,' he grumbled. 'A decent wizard shouldn't be able to understand these things anyway.'

'No,' agreed Hermione, 'excelling at muggle technology often requires a high sense of logic and the patience to take in the information offered. It's not to expect that wizards should be able to do that easily, when even most muggle struggle with it.'

Snape snorted, Ron's look darkened. Harry halfheartedly bumped Ron's shoulder and pointed at the screen. They had to focus. At Hermione's invitation they had flooed to the Weasley's home to continue researching their new mystery. Shame-faced Hermione had showed them her library. To begin with Harry didn't understand her reluctance. She had always been very proud of it, but when Snape had narrowed his eyes, taken down an old book and opened it to reveal the signature of the Half-Blood Prince in it, Harry understood.

'Well, they'd just been auctioned off if I didn't take care of them. At least now we know they went to a good home, right?' said Hermione. She was lovingly caressing an expensive and old looking book, placed like a trophy on a pedestal. It got its own pillow and everything. Snape had crossed his arms and looked at her with murder in his eyes. His authority was still not to be questioned and he was obviously pissed.

'This isn't all of them,' he said. There were hundreds, if not over thousands, of books in the room, yet his certainty brooked no argument.

'No,' admitted Hermione. 'I only managed to steal- err, re-home parts of the collection. Most ended up at Hogwarts,' Snape paled, 'and the illegal ones, well some of them anyway, are retained by the Ministry.'

'You're saying snotty brats and snottier Ministry officials are snooping around in my books?' he roared, cheeks scarlet. 'My notes! My research! My life!'

Hermione had stepped behind the pedestal to keep the precious book between herself and Snape's rage. He wouldn't harm his own belongings, she reasoned. 'I did what I could!' she insisted, 'what more could you have wanted?'

There was a long silence. Snape was taking a couple of deep breaths and it looked like he was mentally counting backwards from one hundred. In Latin. 'My Will explicitly stated that I wanted Draco Malfoy to inherit my collection. And seeing as he's not dead, I don't understand why they're in your possession.'

Hermione whispered something, righting the pillow on the pedestal and not meeting his glare.

'What?' he ground out.

'The Ministry revoked your rights to have your Will read on the grounds that you're still being accused of being a Death Eater-... even after your death.'

'I see.'

'I'm sorry, I-'

'Don't waste your breath.'

'But I am sorry, I did what I could-'

'I said; forget it.'

A silent agreement went between them, and the argument ceased. Collecting herself, Hermione was again in control of the situation. They had a lot to do. Now that Snape was there she was certain they'd be able to concoct even more exciting thesis regarding his predicament. 'But,' she said with gritted teeth and head held high, tears in her eyes, 'we must immediately clear Professor Snape's name. That means now.' And that was what Ron and Harry was currently trying to do. The Ministry's homepage was completely incomprehensible to anyone mortal. Having previously applied and argued for Snape's innocence more than once, Harry felt his patience grow thin. The man deserved a Merlin, first class, not having his Will revoked.

Hours passed while they were engrossed in each their assignment. Hermione and Snape perhaps a bit more engrossed than Ron and Harry after a while. Swirling around on his chair, Ron threw his head back and let out a long sigh. They weren't really getting anywhere. All they had learned was that the Ministry's homepage was evil reincarnate, designed to bereave innocent people of their souls and sanity.

'Never again,' moaned Ron, massaging his temples. 'I am hungry.'

'Me too,' whispered Harry. He thought it added nicely to the effect of them lying prone on the desk in front of the computer. Turning his head slightly he tried to deduce whether Hermione had noticed their tragic predicament of boredom and starvation, but to no effect. The book had her entire and undivided attention. Snape and her had split up. She sat peering at a slim, black book while Snape seemed to need three other books just to understand the one he was currently perusing. 'Hey,' called Harry. None of them even batted an eyelid. 'Any of you want something to eat?' No response.

'Let's just get something, then,' said Ron. 'If they starve to death I don't think we'll even notice the difference.'

Their supper consisted of grilled cheese sandwiches with lots of cheese and ham and a cold beer. Ron turned on the WWN while they ate so they could listen to the latest Quidditch game. The fun part was to make their own rather loud and rude commentary. Just as they were both agreeing they could play a better game with their arms tied behind their backs and blindfolded, the radio got turned off.

'Come on, we're heading for Hogwarts,' declared Hermione. She had already donned her robes.

'What?' asked Ron and Harry in chorus.

'Professor Snape and I have agreed that we need to further search through his books at Hogwarts,' explained Hermione as patiently as a deadly viper.

'You can't just go to Hogwarts,' said Ron, 'what about Professor McGonagall? She has no clue Snape's still alive. If he suddenly just appears through the floograte she's going to die of cardiac arrest.'

Hermione pursed her lips. 'You make a good point,' she conceded, 'I suppose we should warn her first.'

They got up and fell in behind Hermione as she briskly strode back to the library. Her bushy hair was flowing out behind her and her blue robes snapped around her legs. She was a woman on a mission.

'What does Seve-Snape think about this?' asked Harry, catching Ron's curious glance at his slip on the name.

'I don't know,' admitted Hermione, 'he merely conceded when I suggested it.'

Snape was standing in front of the fireplace, impatiently pawing through a book. He might seem to the entire world as if he could care less, but having had time to study the man for nearly two weeks had taught Harry to see the finer things in his behavioural pattern. Like the way he changed weight from one foot to another, as if he hardly could hold them back from pacing. Or the way he let his hair fall forward, obscuring the worried twitch around his mouth. The most obvious sign of discomfort Snape had was still the tone of his voice. It went from flowing effortlessly to stilted. He would measure every word, probably to discern the amount of damage they could do, before spitting them in your face.

Harry opted not to further antagonize him by asking him directly how he felt about going back to Hogwarts. Hermione grabbed a handful of floopowder and tossed it into the fire. The green flames flared up, thirstily licking the stonework before calming down. Getting down on her knees, she gave Snape a reassuring smile before sticking her head into the flames. They could only catch her side of the conversation.

'Professor McGonagall? ...

Good evening yes-...

Do you have a moment to talk, or are you expecting visitors? ...

You see, we have a rather delicate subject we need to talk to you about...

No that's the problem, I'd rather not talk about it over the floo like this, and we were wondering if you had time to see us properly...

Thank you, yes-...

Well no...

It will be rather a huge shock to you...

I know you probably have seen worse before, but it's still very shocking...

I wouldn't warn you about it if I didn't think there was a need to...

No, sorry Professor McGonagall, of course...

Could you please sit down, at least, before we come through? ...

Thank you. Then we're coming through now.'

She got up and nodded to them. 'I suggest Harry and I go first, you know, just in case, and then Professor Snape and Ron.'

None of the males in the room had any objections and obediently got into line. The fireplace was big enough for two people to fit in at once, and so Harry stepped in together with Hermione. She grabbed a hold around his elbow and clearly called 'Headmistress McGonagall's Office, Hogwarts!' The vertigo began. Even after all these years Harry still didn't care much about floo travelling, but it felt oddly comforting to have Hermione at his side. They stepped through, and landed softly on the bearskin rug in McGonagall's office. The only thing it still had in common with Dumbledore's was the portraits lining the walls. Otherwise everything was different. Everything that twinkled and shimmered had been replaced by sensible things: books, darker drapes, pictures and otherwise nice and homely clutter of someone who had lived to be ninety-one. McGonagall herself had done as Hermione had asked her and sat in a highbacked chair in front of the fireplace. She smiled, warmth shining in her eyes. Around her legs she had tucked a plaid patterned blanket and on the table next to her steamed a nice cup of tea. The cosy scene was abruptly destroyed when the floogrates opened again and Ron and Snape stepped through. McGonagall's face stilled while she stared at Snape. For a long time nothing happened. Eventually she covered her mouth with a shaking hand, her eyes growing larger and larger by the minute. Snape stood silently, pretending the room to be of great interest.

'Severus?' croaked McGonagall finally. 'Severus?'

In a rush she got up from her chair, the blanket discarded on the floor. She walked up to him until there were just a couple of centimetres left between them. Thin, wrinkled hands reached up to carefully touch his face. Snape let it happen without any protests. She caressed his cheeks, poked at his chest, gingerly touched his hair, and pinched his arms. All the while tears were freely streaming down her face.

'It's really you,' she whispered. 'You've come back to us.'