Blood Magic

Sharing Secrets

"Well," Harry said, into the silence that followed Ron's departure. His voice came out a bit squeaky. He looked cautiously at Hermione, and found her regarding him in fearful horror. She was pale as a ghost, and her hands were still clasped tightly in her lap. He smiled shakily. "That went better than I expected," he said.

Hermione laughed. She seized Harry's hands, and he found himself laughing too, more with hysteria and relief than amusement. Slowly they stopped, and Harry realized they were now kneeling with their arms around each other, hanging on for dear life.

"Better?" she managed, choking on the word.

"I was expecting him to say he'd never speak to me again." Harry rested his head on her shoulder. His heart was beating far too fast.

"He'll get over it," Hermione whispered.

"I know." Harry sighed. "I just wish I knew how long it would take."

Hermione leaned her cheek against his head. "He has a point, though," she whispered.

"What?"

"You do want desperately to belong to someone. And Professor Snape seems like a bad choice, no matter what he may be to you biologically. You should know from the Dursleys that you can't trust someone just because they're kin."

"It's not just that he's kin," Harry protested. In a series of little shifts, still maintaining contact, they both settled back on the couch. Harry had to stretch to keep an arm around her waist.

"No?" she said. Her knee bumped into his.

"No. I lived with him for most of August. We didn't expect to like each other, at all. But he understands me, better than most people, once he started paying attention, rather than assuming."

Hermione tugged at his extended arm, and when, guiltily, he pulled it back, caught at his hand and held it. "Understands you, how?" she asked.

"Well... the Dursleys, the prophesy, that sort of thing. He's had a rougher life than I have, really, and he can be helpful without being patronizing or making things worse. The only thing we really can't talk about is Sirius." Harry shivered. "Well, James is difficult, too, but I have Remus for that -- or I had." He squeezed her hand. "Thanks for staying."

"It's okay. It's been awful not knowing what you were hiding."

"I had to see him, and I knew you'd notice. Remus thought we were lovers, or that he was ... forcing me, or something. It got very messy. I was trying to avoid that."

"You had to see him?"

"I'd got used to it."

"To what?"

"I don't know -- having someone look after me? Long conversations about potions and people and Dark Arts and where things get ballsed up, all spiced with sarcastic little cuts and pointers on poisoning people, and such. He can be very funny, in a sly way."

Hermione sighed. Her voice shook slightly as she said:

"You like him."

"Yes." Harry realized he was looking at the seat cushions, and forced himself to meet her eyes again. "Do you mind?"

"I ... I'm not sure of it -- that it's good for you."

"But you're not angry."

"No."

"Thanks." He squeezed her hand again. "You've more reason to be angry than Ron has."

"Why's that?"

"Because he's such a bigot."

Hermione laughed. "So you're not claiming it's an act, then?"

"Some of it is. Some of isn't." Harry frowned. "There was certainly a point in his life where he believed Muggles, Muggle-borns -- even half-bloods -- to be less than human."

"That's ridiculous."

"Yes, but people do it all the time, about all sorts of things. It's much easier to kill someone when you believe that of them."

"I imagine so." Hermione pressed into the couch back, again, though she left her hand in his.

"And when you've made that choice, you have a huge emotional investment in continuing to believe those people are inhuman -- because, otherwise, you need to face what you have done."

"And can he?"

"Partially." Harry remembered Severus hiding his face as he spoke. "Actually, yes, but he's paralyzed with it. He can drown in his guilt, but he can't leave it, so he can't do anything new. I think I'm helping, some, because I'm such a random element." He paused. "And I love him. And I'm Lily's child, and his half-blood child." Harry managed a weak smile. "He spent half of August lost in 1976, I think."

"For therapy, I think a lost child is a bit extreme."

"A stolen child," Harry corrected. "I was meant to be his. Have you ever heard of Herem -- the Heir Spell?"

Hermione's eyes lost focus for a minute, as she thought. "I came across that in a history," she said, "but it didn't make any sense. The note said it was a way for a woman to bear an heir to someone who was already dead?"

"Usually, yes."

"Is the sperm saved somewhere?"

Harry laughed. "Inside her. They need to ... to have sex while he's still alive." He reddened. "But it's time-locked. The woman can release it, if he's dead -- except, spells to tell 'dead' at a distance aren't very good, as you probably know. When Severus was in a coma, or something like that, my mum release the lock, and it worked. She got pregnant. Then he turned out to be alive, and none of them had made plans for that."

"Why would that ...?" Hermione's eyes widened. "Oh."

"He didn't hate James as much as he would after Lily died, but I doubt he would have been able to watch James raise his child. And James and Lily felt that, in addition to not being a suitable single parent, he wouldn't be able to protect me from Voldemort. They may have been right. Of course, now he's got the problem of protecting himself from Voldemort, when it's found he intentionally had a child by a Muggle-born witch -- me, just to make it worse."

"But Dumbledore will protect him."

"Dumbledore can't protect him from the Mark." Harry scrunched back in the cushions. "He's afraid he'll need to cut the arm off, if Voldemort is persistent. That would limit what he could brew -- he wouldn't be able to stand it. I think I should try to kill Voldemort for him, but he says I'm too young."

"Don't you think he's right?"

Harry had to consider that. "Yes and no," he said. "Ideally, I wouldn't need to. Of course, ideally, no one would ever need to kill, at all. It's a horrible thing, because it can never be undone."

"But we don't want it undone. Voldemort is evil. He ought to be killed."

"Yes," Harry said, "and no. He used to be someone a lot like me. And I've seen glimpses of that person. He's monumentally insecure -- far more than I've ever been -- abandoned, angry, and resentful. And because he couldn't stand to be hurt or confused, or to trust anyone as an equal, it all just channeled into hate. And when I kill him, I'm going to remember that I'm killing whatever is left of Tom Riddle. Because I need to kill him, but I also need to know what a terrible thing I'm doing."

Hermione looked at Harry searchingly for several seconds, then slowly turned away. While he was frozen with despair, she leaned affectionately back into his shoulder.

"You're a good person, Harry."

"Thanks." Harry managed to resume breathing. Tentatively, he moved an arm around her. "Come to the Halloween Ball with me?"

"What Halloween Ball?" she giggled.

"It hasn't been announced yet."

Hermione caught at the hand on her arm and squeezed it tight. "Ask me after it is."

Harry had just launched into a refreshingly honest recounting of his summer, when someone knocked at the door. Hermione sat up, and she and Harry looked at each other.

"It's days too early for Ron," Hermione whispered. Harry smiled, even though the thought hurt. It could be weeks too early for Ron. The knocking repeated.

"Who is it?" Harry called, then remembered he had soundproofed the room. Two swift, hammering blows came next. Harry darted over to the door and opened it. Ginny was standing in the hallway, her face red and her fist raised for another pounding.

"Hold your horses, okay? I'd warded for sound. What's up?"

"Ron's upset -- worse than I've seen since Dad was in the hospital!" Ginny herself was shaking. "He won't tell me anything, just told me to come here and talk to you."

Harry looked back at Hermione. In answer to his silent question, she nodded.

"Best do it," Hermione said. "She's far too smart."

Harry sighed. "All right," he said to Ginny. "Come in, then."

Ginny marched in and sat down on the free couch. Harry paused to renew the disrupted impenetrability spell on the doorway before returning to sit with Hermione. He looked across at Ginny.

"This is not to be repeated."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Fine."

"This is not to be discussed with people who know, except in a secure, warded room."

"Go on, then!"

Harry sighed. He looked at Hermione. "What does she know?"

"Well, about the Paternity spell --"

"Oh just go blabbing that all over, why don't you?! Were you paying any attention when I said that what I was hiding could get people killed?"

"Harry...." Hermione bit her lip. She caught herself and managed an apologetic smile. "When you're hiding something ... you're not very honest."

"What?!" Harry shouted indignantly.

"You're not! Two years ago, you told me you'd figured out the second Task. Last year, you said you were still studying Occlumency, and then that you were good enough at it not to need to."

"But not that it was critically, life-or-death important, go ask Dumbledore!" Harry yelled.

"It's a believable progression."

"I've been working on being better!"

"Fine," Hermione said reasonably, "but I haven't seen any of it. You've been hiding most of the last month. When I do see you, you're playing with potions, or falling over with visions, even though you say you're much better at Occlumency, or channeling Fred for the second-years...."

"Excuse me?" Ginny tapped a foot repeatedly against the carpeted floor. "Was someone going to tell me why my brother's looking like one of you died?"

Harry sighed. "Sorry. So. On my sixteenth birthday, I got a letter from James Potter. Time-sent to me, at then."

"All right. Your dad sent you a letter."

"In which he told me that my 'biological father' was an ex-boyfriend of Lily's -- not that it was an affair, or anything; I was planned -- this rather crazy man named Severus Snape."

Ginny's eyes widened. She giggled. "Oh no!" she exclaimed.

Harry grinned. "Oh yes. So when he found out, he told Professor Dumbledore, who said that if Snape was my father, I could stay with him."

"Lovely."

"Mm. So, Severus threw a fit, then told me not to expect any sort of interaction with him, and then the next morning he was off on 'you may not wear that in public' and 'what are you smoking?', and a week or two later I was helping him in the lab, and he was letting me read his books, and play around with potions variations, and brew in a gold cauldron. When I had to move out, we realized we'd got fond of each other." Harry sighed. Ginny's amused horror had faded to a thoughtful frown, but she didn't seem angry, just puzzled.

"That's what Ron's upset about, mostly," Harry continued. "Not that Snape's my father, you know, but that I don't mind that he is. I'm pretty happy, actually, except for trying to hide it, and knowing we'll both be in danger when Voldemort finds out."

Ginny shivered. "Is Professor Snape ... I know he comes to talk to the Order --"

"The old crowd," Harry corrected.

"--the old crowd, sometimes, but is he ...?"

"Don't ask questions we're not supposed to answer," Harry said gently. "Things are getting worse. You don't know. Keep it that way until there's some value to you knowing."

Ginny hesitated, then nodded. "All right. I do see the point. It's just so annoying, being the youngest."

Harry shook his head. "Ah, your mother's going to have fits when you're old enough. Four of her sons is bad enough, and you know Ron will make five, but her only daughter?"

Ginny nodded. "It's rough on Mum, but we need to have our lives, too."

Harry nodded. If I understand anything, he thought wryly, it's needing to be able to take risks.

"So you don't mind?" Harry asked curiously. "About me, I mean?"

Ginny shook her head. "Harry," she said, "when I realized how much your face had changed, I thought you were a replacement -- that the real Harry had died in the attack on the Dursleys, and it was being covered up."

"That was when we all got very weird around you," Hermione confessed.

"But then Ron remembered the Paternity Charm."

"For a while we were wondering if Voldemort might be your father."

Harry laughed and shook his head in amused bewilderment. "What?!"

"Well," Hermione said reasonably, "we were trying to figure out why you couldn't tell us."

"James Potter was popular, but your image doesn't depend on his," Ginny added. She cocked her head to the side. "Terry says that Professor Snape is horrible to you in class."

Harry gave a tight shrug. "He needs to be."

"That must be rough," Hermione said sympathetically.

"That's why I need to keep sneaking off to see him," Harry confessed. "I need to remember it's not like that, really."

"So tell us a story," Ginny urged. "Something fun about him."

"Or nice," Hermione added.

Harry laughed. He thought back. Most of his pleasant times with Severus did not make good stories. On impulse, he pulled a vial of pink bubble stuff out of his inner robe pocket and held it up so it reflected little colored lights. "Let me tell you the story about ... this."

Hermione frowned with disapproval at the choice of subject, but did not interfere, and Ginny was giggling by the time Harry was half-way through describing the transcriber and his paranoid reaction to it. When Harry, in an excellent mimicry of Professor Snape, crooned "closer, little Gryffindor," Hermione nearly fell off the couch from laughing. Both the girls went wide-eyed at Harry's embarrassed and rather vague "... and then, um, they started ... well, being obscene at each other."

"Professor Snape and Professor Lupin?!" Ginny yelped.

"They went out together at our age," Harry confided. He frowned. "Before Sirius played his little trick."

Hermione flinched.

"But Professor Lupin is so nice!" Ginny objected. She put her hands over her mouth. "Sorry."

"'S'alright." Harry said. He leaned forward conspiratorially. "You know what?"

"What?" the girls breathed, in chorus.

"I want to get them back together. Father's been mellowing about Remus a lot. I think they'd be really good for each other."

Ginny and Hermione looked at each other for a moment.

"Probably anyone would improve Professor Snape," Hermione said wryly.

"And what about Remus?" Harry countered. "He lets people treat him like crap. Getting back the boyfriend he lost over being a werewolf would be great for him, wouldn't it? And he loves Severus. You can't imagine his face, Hermione, when I brought him that picture."

Hermione clapped her hands over her mouth. "Ohmigod!"

"What?"

"The pictures! We left them out!"

"Oh shit!"

Hermione glanced at her watch.

"It's closed now. We should be back at Gryffindor."

"I'll get my cloak and go out."

"Harry!"

"Just to put them away, Hermione."

"Madam Pince will have done that."

"If she hasn't. If not, I'll come right back, okay?"

Hermione sighed. "Okay. But come right back."

"I promise." Harry stood, then hesitated. "Hermione?" he said. "What you did ... That was cruel. It's not your right --" He stopped and took a quick breath. "I want to speak to you alone tomorrow, when we're calmer."

Hermione bit her lip, but nodded. "Fine."