Joanna woke up late at night. From the clock on the wall in front of her it was nearly three in the morning. Where she was, she couldn't say just by lying there. Joanna sat herself up and found she was incredibly weak. It took a considerable amount of effort to simply raise herself high enough to look around the room. There were three other beds in it, with privacy drapes hanging around them, but none of them were occupied. From what she could tell, she was in St. Mungos.

Joanna looked to her right. Severus was sleeping in a chair, slumped over. Joanna reached her right arm to him and touched his hand. Severus started and looked up. He met her eyes and Joanna tried to smile. Severus got up and sat on Joanna's bed, taking her hands. "You're okay."

"What happened?"

"You were poisoned. I got you here as quick as I could. You've been out of it for a whole day."

Joanna placed a hand over her face, "A whole day…"

As she lay her other hand on her stomach and what she felt was alarming. "Where is that baby? What happened?" Joanna hardly realized she almost started bolting out of her bed. Severus calmed her and gently pushed her back down.

"He's all right. The healers delivered him wile you were still out. He took a hit of the poison, but he's been given the antidote and he'll be fine."

Joanna smiled. "A boy."

"Yes."

"Lucan."

Severus smiled. "Lucan Snape?"

Joanna smiled back. "Lucan Severus Flamel-Snape."

It did not take Joanna long to grow bored with her time in the hospital. Caring for Lucan was her bright spot every day. That and there were plenty of visitors. Alastor came to check on her and asked her to take charge of her admittance files. He, like Albus, didn't want the poisoning on the record. Following instructions, when Eric came to visit, Joanna asked him to take a look at her file and alter it. It was to mention labor and delivery, but nothing about poisoning.

Joanna had hoped she would be home for Christmas, but it turned out that the poison still hadn't completely cleared her system so the Yule was spent in the hospital room, with Severus and Lucan and fairy lights in various colors hanging from the ceilings.

Two days after New Years, Joanna was allowed to go home with her husband and new son. But Severus insisted Joanna spend the remainder of the break at Grimmauld place. Molly Weasley was there and she could help Joanna while she was still recovering. When she asked why he couldn't be there to help, Severus sighed, saying as they walked through the park towards the house, "Dumbledore has asked me to prepare for a task. It's been a while since I taught this particular subject, I'll need to brush up on my old methods. For that, I need some peace and quiet."

They came to stop at the entrance to the door of number 12 and Severus stroked his son's cheek as he lay sleeping in Joanna's arms. "Believe me, I would love nothing more than to spend this time with you and Lucan, but he's asked me to teach Potter Occlumency. I haven't taught anyone for sixteen years…not since I taught you."

"Hm, well, at least now I know you're the one who taught me."

Severus smiled and opened the door. They stepped inside and headed for the kitchen where they found Remus, Sirius and Molly. Molly spent a few minutes cooing over Lucan before Severus asked her to fetch Harry. Molly handed Lucan back and went to get him.

While they waited Remus took a turn holding the baby and Joanna sat at the table to rest. When Harry came down, Severus informed him he would be teaching him Occlumency every Monday evening until further notice under the guise of remedial potions. Sirius was not pleased. He wanted someone else teaching Harry. That inevitably led to an argument, which led to Severus and Sirius standing chest to chest and trying to make one another look bad. It would have escalated more if Joanna hadn't had the good sense to stand up and get between them.

"Listen, Sirius, take it from me, Severus is the best Occlumens beside Voldemort. Harry couldn't have a better teacher." She rounded on Severus. "And you need to stop rubbing his nose in Azkaban. He was falsely imprisoned and you know it." Both men stepped back. "He gave you two one rule last year…be civil. And you can't even do that much." Tired, Joanna sat back down on the bench at the table.

"Sorry Joanna," Sirius mumbled.

Severus knelt before her, saying, "I am truly sorry. I'll try harder in the future."

Joanna did not answer, but gave a look fit enough to tell him he had better make good of that promise. Joanna stood again, collected her son from Remus, and made her way upstairs.

After she was gone, Sirius and Severus did continue to glare at one another. This did not stop until Arthur, with Alastor and Kingsley, walked in the doorway to the kitchen, finally returned from the hospital after his run in with Nagini while on watch.

Joanna hated going back to work. All she really wanted to do was take time to be with her son. But duty called and she answered. Sometimes, on days when she was merely gong over procedure and information for the next visiting creature with her students, Joanna would bring Lucan along. Additionally, Hagrid took on classes when he could if Joanna was feeling overly tired from lack of sleep.

But for all her sleeplessness, Severus had even less. He worked all day, spent time after dinner working with Harry and when he wasn't doing that he spent long nights pacing his study not coming to bed until long after Lucan's middle of the night feeding. Marvin was more than happy to help, but Joanna loved those feeding in the wee hours of the morning when everything was silent and still and there was time to bond with him.

Joanna worried about Severus. There was one night when Lucan had gone down early that she decided to pop in on Harry's Monday night lesson. As it turned out, it wasn't going so well.

Severus wasn't being so easy on the boy as he had been on her. Then again, he wasn't giving lessons to an eight year old right now, but certainly the motive was the same. Harry had made no progress since he began his training more than a month before. The boy seemed to be trying, but he also seemed to be having trouble staving off Severus' attacks. Joanna could hazard a guess at why: the boy had a lot of things in his memory that could stop him up if he let himself. It appeared that this was precisely what was happening.

"Feeling sentimental?" Severus said as he looked into a memory as Harry sat sweating in a chair in the large storage room.

"That's private," he choked out.

"Not to me, and not to the Dark Lord if you don't improve." Severus stepped closer, getting in Harry's face. "Every memory he has access to is a weapon he can use against you. You won't last two seconds if he invades your mind." Severus stood straighter. "You're just like your father, lazy, arrogant-"

"Don't say a word against my father!"

"Weak."

"I'm not weak!"

Joanna cut Severus off, knowing he would say something less than wise.

"Then prove it." She kept her tone soft, but adamant. "Control your emotions, discipline your mind."

They were all standing now. Severus cast his spell again. After a moment, Severus said, "I may vomit…"

"Stop it!" Harry pleaded.

"Is this what you call control?"

Harry moved around Severus. "We've been at it for hours, if I could just rest-"

"The Dark Lord isn't resting. You and Black, you're two of a kind, sentimental little children forever whining bout how bitterly unfair your lives have been. Wll, it may have escaped your notice, but life isn't fair. Your blessed father knew that, in fact he frequently saw to it."

Joanna clapped a hand to he forehead. This discussion was going nowhere fast. Nowhere good anyway. But before she could say something Harry rose his voice. "My father was a great man!"

Severus grabbed Harry's shirt and tossed him back toward the chair he had been sitting in. "You father was a swine."

Severus shot his spell again. Unfortunately, Harry shot back. It was not Leglimens, in fact it was the Protego charm. But both men froze for a moment leaving Joanna utterly confused until the bond was broken and Severus called, "Enough!"

Harry fell into the chair. Severus repeated his command and lowered his head, striding toward Harry with a glare. Lifting the boy up by the shirt, he said lowly, "Your lessons are at an end."

"I didn't mean to-"

"Get out."

Harry rushed from the room, and wisely so. It was a few minutes before Joanna dared to get close to Severus. When she did, he didn't turn, and she didn't dare touch him. He was feeling vulnerable; she could tell from the shrug of his shoulders.

"I would ask what he saw…but I expect I already know."

Severus' wand dropped form his hand. In the time it took Joanna to knit her brows together in puzzlement, he had turned and pulled her into a strong embrace. Severus was shaking terribly and Joanna could feel his tears running into her hair. After a while Severus lost the strength in the legs and began to sink, and Joanna sank with him. She held him for an hour or more while he cried, until the tremors stopped and the clock struck midnight.

Severus finally calmed down enough to talk and lay wit his head in Joanna's lap and recounted the particular memory for her. When he was finished, Joanna was quiet for a moment, choosing her words. Then she said, "Severus, listen to me. That boy cannot accept faults that he hardly knew about. The thing is, he only heard stories from you. You couldn't have expected him to know the true nature of his father as he was when he was in school."

"He is so like James, you know."

Joanna nodded. "Yes, I'm quite sure he is, but it seems to me none of us here are truly capable of working harder than most have to to obtain this ability. Severus think about it, you had a hard time learning Occlumency when you were young, didn't you?"

"I did. I kept pausing on…my mother…Potter and his band of miscreants."

"I remember when you were teaching me, I kept seeing my mother. That's what stopped me. At the time I had nothing more to pause on, but because of my age it led me astray as surely as it would someone with more life experience in the bad pile than the good. Harry is one of those. He has a lot of things going on with him right now. You went smoother because you were an adult, you know who you were. I went smoothly because I was a child and didn't have much to sift through. Harry is an adolescent who is still unsure of much least of all himself even if he doesn't realize it."

"I should have gone harder on him. If I did he would have improved."

"I don't see how you could have."

Severus sighed and Joanna stroked his brow. "You learned so much faster."

"Doesn't mean the boy's lazy," Joanna said softly. "You can't compare anyone to my learning rate, Severus. Prodigal children are few and far between." Joanna hesitated at her next utterance, but decided it was for the best that she ask anyway. "You're not really cutting him off, are you?"

"I can't do this anymore, Joanna. After that…no more."

Joanna sighed as she stroked Severus' forehead more and he nestled into her skirts. She could see plainly that he could no very well risk teacher the boy anymore. This event had broken him down in a way that Joanna had never personally seen before. It would be better if there was another teacher for the boy. But Dumbledore was concerned about having his own mid infiltrated as he was not as accomplished Occlumens himself. There was only one other person who had mastered both sides of the fence left.

"I'll speak to the headmaster tomorrow."

It certainly was a conundrum. In fact, it was worse. "I don't think Severus can continue these lessons, I really do not. Albus he's exhausted. The fact is that Harry is not progressing at all and Severus is frustrated. They spend hours upon hours drilling and still there's only marginal improvement from the very first day."

Dumbledore sighed. "I just don't understand it. He's a bright boy."

"And he hates my husband. My guess is he's not practicing. Maybe if he had a different teacher…" Joanna paused, taking a breath. "I could teach him sir. My repor with him is in much better standing. He'll listen to me."

Dumbledore considered for a moment before waving his hand at the notion and lifting his cup of tea from the saucer sitting upon his desk. "You're too close. To Voldemort I mean."

"Sir, I am not close to him at all."

"You are though. He has a special connection with you." Dumbledore too a sip and replaced his cup. He was right of course. Joanna did not yet know how her control would stand up to Voldemort. How could she possibly teach Harry properly when she needed to coach herself? "Has Harry learned the technique, even if he has yet to accomplish it?"

Joanna shrugged. "I was only there the one time, but Severs says he does."

"Then I think it's best to let it rest on his shoulders."

Joanna was surprised but did not question the verdict. As she left the office Dumbledore stopped her at the door, saying, "I appreciate your efforts, Joanna, but I think Severus would have done better to come this morning and tell me all this himself."

Joanna had partially opened the door. She closed it now and said, "In the nearly twelve years I've known him, he never shed a tear in front of me until last night. The things that happened to him when he was in school…frankly sir, I wouldn't wish it on an enemy."

Joanna woke up to Lucan crying. But before she could move, Severus got out of bed and left the room. When Joanna finally got herself up and slipped her arms into a dressing robe, Severus was already in the nursery, cradling his son and walking up and down the floor. Joanna smiled and folded her arms, resting herself against the door frame. Severus looked up and smiled back. There was a small sofa in the room and the small family sat together on it, the two parents watching their sleeping child.

Severus couldn't take his eyes away, and there was a strange look on his face. Joanna ran a hand through his hair and asked, "What are you thinking?"

"I wonder…I wonder if my father had held me like this…if I had gone through school popular or even simply had friends…I wonder if I would be a better person."

"What do you mean?"

Severus looked into Joanna's eyes. "I envy you. You're…so happy. And you watched your mother be killed, lived in hiding, your father was never around and even when you were in school you were often around on holidays even extra time before summer because he was gone on some trip or another. You had friends but they only loved you for your fame and you knew it. How is it that you turned out to be so well adjusted…and I didn't."

"Severus, when I was nineteen, I stripped myself in front of you because you called me a child. Does that sound well adjusted?"

Severus didn't answer. Joanna crossed her legs under her and turned herself so she was facing Severus. She took both sides of his face in her hands and said, "You are who you are, Severus. And I love you for that. I wouldn't be here if I didn't." She placed a chaste kiss on his lips and looked down at Lucan. He's sleeping again. Joanna stood up and headed for the door, but when Severus didn't follow she turned and asked, "Aren't you coming back to bed?"

"I think I'll stay up for a bit."

When Joanna awoke a few hours later, alone, she found Severus laying horizontally asleep on the couch in the nursery, propped up by pillows, and with Lucan resting soundly against his chest.

She couldn't believe it. Dumbledore was in hiding because the Minister tried to arrest him. Joanna looked over the other teachers seated tensely at the breakfast table to where Albus should have been seated. Instead it was Dolores, looking quite pleased with herself indeed. Apparently the position of high inquisitor carried a clause stating that she immediately became the headmistress. Of course it did.

Things got much worse after that. Oh much worse indeed. There were more decrees, Dolores had given herself more power, ruling the school with an iron fist Now she was hosting massive detentions on a weekly basis in the great hall on Saturdays, punishing things as small as forgetting to bring one's book to class, cutting open every students hand with her own "special" quills, and sitting in the headmaster's chair, "Like she is Merlin be damned royalty!"

Joanna was fuming again. She couldn't help but to fume. Everything about the woman enraged her, made her sick. Severus didn't usually do anything when Joanna got into a state, more or less he would pick up a book making the occasional comment until her ire had dissipated. At the moment however, she had been raging on for almost an hour. Joanna had done a fine job of mussing her hair while she stomped to and fro across the living room as Severus sat calmly on the couch with a book in hand. He looked at her now, and the way her hair looked, the rosy blossoms in her cheeks…there were other times Joanna looked like this, but those occasions had dried up since the previous summer. With Voldemort returned, the baby, and the increasingly poor condition of their school, they had hardly had time for acting on more pleasurable activities.

Severus set his book aside and caught Joanna's arm at the elbow as she passed by him again. He pulled her down into his lap. Brushing a lock of hair from her face, Severus kissed her lips gently. When Joanna relaxed she deepened the kiss, and lifted herself up to straddle Severus. They kissed for eons until there came a thump from the nursery. Seems Marvin was not asleep. He usually slept when the baby did. Not tonight it would seem.

Joanna stood up and offered Severus her hand. He took it and allowed himself to be led down the hall and into the bedroom. And once the door was shut and locked behind them, all the careful dainty motions disappeared. They stripped down with feverish speed before they pressed into one another, exploring with their hands and stumbling across the floor until they fell onto the bed together. Severus ground his pelvis into Joanna's. They groaned together at he sheathed himself into her and began moving. They loved hard and long, and finally collapsed onto the sheets spent and soaking in sweat.

A few hours later, Severus and Joanna were still basking naked in bed together when a knock came to the door. Joanna checked the clock. "It's nearly eight o' clock. Who could possibly need something?"

Severus got up and started dressing. The knock came again, and he stuck his head out from the bedroom, calling, "I'm coming!"

He strolled down the hall buttoning his frockcoat as he went and opened the door. There was a quiet discussion Joanna could hear, and from the voice it sounded like Filch. A moment later Severus returned and said, "Dolores is calling me. I'll be right back."

Joanna sighed and snuggled into the sheets again, getting comfortable, fully ready to simply doze off, but something struck her in her gut. Something wasn't right. Instead she got herself up and slipped a simple set of black robes over her head and grabbed her wand off the nightstand before heading out the door.

When she got up to Dolores' office, she thought better of joining the conversation and crept just outside the door, back to the wall listening. N the window across the wall she could see the reflections of those present, and there were many. There was not only Dolores and Severus, but also Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, and Neville Longbottom. Most were being detained by the thugs Dolores had hired as the Inquisitorial Squad; students, among whom was Draco Malfoy. Joanna listened to what Severus was saying.

"Unless you wish to poison him and I assure you I would have the greatest sympathy if you did…I cannot help you."

Joanna wasn't certain what to make of this, but her guess was that Harry and his friends were being interrogated about Dumbledore. Dolores was asking for Veritaserum, which of course had run out while she had been questioning students about Dumbledore's Army, as they called themselves. There were footsteps as Severus turned to leave, but Harry spoke insistently, saying, "He's got Padfoot. He's got Padfoot at the place where it's hidden."

"Padfoot?" Deolores repeated. "What is Padfoot? What is he talking about Snape?"

Severus simply said coldly, "No idea," and continued to leave. Joanna moved away from the door so as not to scare him as he rounded the corner. Seems Severus wasn't surprised to see her there at all.

"It's happened," he said, and led her back toward the dungeons, hand at her back and traveling at nearly a jog.

They had discussed the repercussions of stopping Harry's lessons, the most obvious of which was that Voldemort may well decide to start luring the boy to the Department of Mysteries, to take the premonition from its place. Only those whom a premonition is about may remove them from the shelves of the hall that housed all of them, and Voldemort was not likely to go there himself. Harry would have to remove it, after that, chances were he would send some of his loyal subjects to take it from the boy. "He must have used images of Sirius being tortured when curiosity wasn't enough," Severus said as he closed the door behind them again. As Severus made him way into the bedroom again, Joanna stopped by the nursery to wake Marvin ad make certain he knew they would not be in for the night. When she joined Severus, he had already changed the tapestry hanging on the wall to show Alastor's home. Joanna stepped through without so much as a word and was gone. Severus sighed before changing the scene on the woven threads again, this time to the drawing room of Grimmauld Place. When he arrived he found precisely what he knew he would find: Sirius alive and well, Remus, Tonks, and Kingsley visiting.

"What is it Snape?" Sirius asked in an annoyed tone. Remus, however stood with a concerned look on his face. Severus really only used the tapestry in emergencies, and he had once assured Sirius tat he would not come popping in and out of the house unnecessarily.

Severus explained quickly, and before he knew it they were off, leaving him alone in the gloomy house.

Joann was in a similar position. Dumbledore had stayed behind to speak with her while Alastor went off to the Ministry to help. Albus was relaying instructions to Joanna.

"Listen, this may go badly, and I need you to promise me that if I should fall you will take my place. Teach the boy what we've learned."

Joanna hated talking about death. There had been enough of it in her life she felt. All the same she nodded obediently and clasped her hands together behind her. "Anything else?"

Dumbledore clasped his cloak about his neck and nodded. "Look over the notes again. We know about the ring, the cup, and the diary. I need you to put your brain to work…find out what else he endowed with a piece of his soul."

There was a stack of parchments and files on the table in Alastor's kitchen, the headquarters of the Priory, as it were. Dumbledore left Joanna alone. She twisted the ring on her wedding finger a few times.

Severus felt a gentle burn around his ringer finger as he sat in the kitchen with a bottle of butterbeer half empty before him. There were words etching themselves into the golden band. He looked closely.

'Long night. Back by morning.'

Joanna picked up the first parchment on the stack and began to read. After that she started in on a file. When she finished with that she moved onto a manual. When she finally got through the whole stack, she went to the fireplace in the kitchen and called Eric at home. An hour went by, then another. Then there was a knock on the door around three in the morning, and before it was four, a very dusty file was sitting in Joanna's hands, studied, reviewed and leaving less answered than Joanna had expected.

Joanna woke up to a tap on her shoulder. There was sun streaming through the window over the sink, but it was faint. The morning was young. The tapping had come from Dumbledore. He looked as though he had been up all night. He sat down at the table and relayed the night's events. There was a particularly bad piece of news, though all of it was technically not good news save for the part about the prophesy breaking. Sirius had been killed, falling through the veil of shadows at the Department of Mysteries. Joanna closed her eyes tight and felt the pain in her heart, but she was too exhausted to cry.

She opened her eyes again and rubbed the sleep out of them. "What did you find out?"

Joanna sighed. "Nothing new. We covered our bases before. All we can do now is best guess."

"And?"

"Well, judging from the ring and the cup he must have collected something from other founders as well, but it's not likely he would have procured something of Griffindor's. Something of Ravenclaw's…Eric only has a few records of things she left behind unaccounted for. One is a diadem, and there's also a spare wand that was never recovered as well as a book she was supposedly working on that never got published before she died. The book was likely lost in the fire Hogwarts suffered in its fortieth year, and the wand probably never existed. Rowen kept dozens of wands at a time, it's impossible to know how many she had accumulated by the time she died. The diadem is my point of interest. She was royalty, I'm sure she had one, it was never recovered and something like that would never be left lying around to be destroyed on accident. It would have been kept safe somewhere."

"Any other ideas?"

Dumbledore wasn't being impatient exactly. He was simply looking for the most direct answers. It had been a long night, and he was exhausted. He wanted to hear the cliff notes, not the novel.

"Well, chances are Nagini is one. She's a snake, represents his heritage, and she's uncommonly bright for an animal. She has more than simple intelligence, she takes orders. He's not just controlling her, he's a part of her. Then there's, his mother's locket. It had the Slytherine seal on it and its an heirloom."

Dumbledore nodded, satisfied, and stood up. "Bases covered then."

Joanna stood up with him, "Not exactly. We're going to have to change our game plan when we're teaching him about all this. I think we have bigger problems than we thought." She bit her lip before continuing. Neither of them moved. "Did you ever come up with a reason why Voldemort lost his power when he tried to kill Harry? He'd been splitting his soul. By the time he killed Lily and James he had created six horcruxes, that's seven pieces of the soul. Something no one had ever done. Not even close. It's a wonder he made it as far as he did. If he stressed himself again making another horcrux…he could have easily put himself to death, save for the fact that he did have other horcruxes."

Dumbledore turned and stared at her. Joanna lowered her gaze and concluded, "I think Harry himself is a horcrux."

Joanna had thought about this all night. She fell asleep on it. It explained the connection he's felt all this time, how Voldemort had infiltrated his mind from hundreds of miles away. It fit…perfectly.