A Gutter Rat's Tale

I finish writing my name. I even add a little flourish to it in the same manner as James used to do. Remembering my brother--seeing him in my mind, bent over his letters as a youth and his tongue caught between his teeth in concentration--fills my heart with an ache. It hurts even more to let a memory from my past, back then a simpler and more kinder life and one I would never again return to, interrupt my stream of thoughts than to remember those milestones where the changes were catalytic.

I stare at the pile of parchment. Forty rolls of parchment I have used to explain to Harry the things he has the right to know, and more than three weeks of steady daily writing went into this. That does not include how many times I’ve had to rewrite the damn thing. There is so much to tell him still.

Too much. I have not the time. I feel Voldemort call me, each burst of energy and burning agony in the Death Mark stronger than the last, until it feels as if my arm is crippled momentarily after each burst. I know he will be murderously angry with me for taking so long in answering, but it cannot be helped.

Yet I feel frantic as I roll the parchment together. Should I tell Harry there exist more reasons for my showing dislike towards him besides his acting like Petunia, which is, of course, the truth? I understand that, as the only major mother influence in his life for his youngest years, Harry would unconsciously imitate Petunia to attract her attention in some positive way. I cannot blame him too much, but every time I see him, I also see James; noble, brash, loyal, and trusting in the end. I feel I have cheated both my brother and my nephew. For all that I have told Harry there is still so much more to be said.

I want to tell Harry of how I used to baby-sit him when he and his parents still lived at Dinsmore before the attack on Easter I had waged against them. I want to tell him Neville's talents are locked away, trapped behind a wall of clumsy ineptness Voldemort erected before my eyes on the very day Frank and Alice were driven mad, and the only way the wall can be broken is if Neville somehow manages to summon enough strength to shatter it. That will never happen as long as the intimidation Voldemort implanted within Neville’s mind rules his life. I want to tell Harry of how the portraits had cooed over him as a child, how he stared wide-eyed at Francis with fascination as his great-grandfather recited stories to him, and how he giggled as the twins made faces at him.

I want to tell him more of the family connections and family politics with others, to explain nuances and subtleties that would otherwise escape him. I want to explain connections that the knowledge of would die with me; of who to trust and who not to trust, of the Auror adventures his father had, of the different Orders that were bent upon protecting the world from Voldemort.

There is no time though. I have told what I can, given the circumstances. Neither Sirius Black nor Remus Lupin are capable tell him these things though. They shall die with me. I want to tell Harry I feel regret over Sirius' life being wasted in Azkaban for something he never did. It was harsh for someone with as bright and as cheerful a childhood as his.

In the end though, it is the gutter rat within me, the part of me I can never distance myself from and never be rid of, that refuses to tell Harry these things. My sense of survival still screams at me. My sense of trust still aches and bleeds. I have never opened up to anyone as I had to James and Pandora and I never shall again.

Except for Harry Potter. The loyalty I had for James and Pandora, the need to show them how deeply grateful I was for all they have done for me, reaches out now to strangle me. It forces me to tell the boy what I can. He may not be my flesh and blood, but he is still my nephew. Somewhere within him is the little baby I held and rocked and cleaned every time he crawled into the fireplace and ate the ashes with the simple childish belief that everything forbidden tasted good.

I cannot help but smile at the memory of that baby, black all over from chimney soot and his bright green eyes smug with innocence and knowledge that his uncle would never hurt him no matter how upset he is made. Little Harry had done everything within his limited power to turn as much of his uncle's hair grey as possible.

The smile disappears as I suddenly recall those harrowing adventures of his during the past four years at Hogwarts where he continued the traditional of giving me grey hairs.

The brat.

Ah, Harry. What would you think of the cruel Professor Snape now, who smiles as he remembers you slipping out of your diapers and crawling naked through your great-grandmother's herb gardens, cheerfully eating those bugs too slow or too stupid to escape your clumsy grasp? There are a great many times I was also annoyed at Harry, and I admit the majority of my time with him at Hogwarts was spent resenting him for making me feel pain I have tried for over a decade to bury. The moment I had seen Harry standing in the Great Hall waiting to be Sorted, I hurt. I felt that this was surely how James would have looked like, eager and somewhat nervous, had I not been knocked out of the boat and he frantic for my welfare. I never stopped hurting then. Every time I saw Harry’s head bent over parchment as he made notes, I remembered James. I remembered how much I loved him and tried to trust--no, did manage to trust--him. Every time Harry got into trouble, I remembered James. Everything about Harry spoke of the father he should have had; of the brother I did have.

The gutter rat hates Harry with fierce passion. It needs to survive, yet the feelings Harry inflicts upon the uncle forces the gutter rat to fight like a cornered animal, fiercely trying to maintain the brick walls that protects it from the betrayal and lies of the selfish and deceitful world.

I double over as I feel another jolt of pain from the Dark Mark. My arm becomes momentarily paralysed from the pain, and I wait for use to come back to it. Lord Voldemort grows exceedingly impatient with me. I finish rolling the parchment when I can move my arm, tie a single ribbon around the huge roll, and then tip my candle over to pour melted wax along the crease of the paper. Before the wax cools, I press the Snape seal against it. I spend a brief moment to admire the graceful winged Pegasus standing triumphantly on the single word, Snape. The Snape family did not believe in having a set motto and in that we differed from almost all of the other old, rich wizarding families.

"It is whatever we make it," Pandora had explained to me when she first showed me the seal. “Your Uncle Hector Snape’s motto was ‘Tactics? I don’t need no stinkin’ tactics! Cry havoc and release the hounds of war!’ Your Cousin Quigley Snape’s motto was ‘What can I do but accept what comes? After all, what will be, will be.’ Your great-grandfather Severus’ motto was ‘There is an exception to every rule.’ And there was one relative--who shall remain nameless--whose motto can be remembered as, ‘HAHAHAHAHAH!!!’ Each one possesses a different motto that express different philosophies, but each to his own, yes?”

I had asked Pandora what her motto was. She smiled at me then and said, ‘We are what we are, and that is all that we will ever be. If we aren’t who we are, then who are we but someone else?’ ”

I know what James’ motto was. “Life: it is the ultimate disease. No one has ever managed to survive it before, because you always die from it in the very end.” He came up with it when he was fourteen years old and never replaced it. If he did, I never knew.

Alas! That too I have not the time to tell Harry. I wonder what his motto would be if he had one.

I brush my finger against the seal and then pick up the roll of parchments. I walk over to my large four-poster bed and pull a trunk out from beneath it. I pick it up to set it on the bed. Before I open the trunk, I place charms upon the seal and the parchment to ensure no one but Harry reads what I have written.

It is bad enough I have had to share so much of my private life with a child who is little more than a stranger to me, but I will not have others being privy to the Potter and Snape family secrets. I open the trunk and do not glance at the mirror and box that sit within it. Those items, the last things Pandora gave me, belong to Harry. These things are apart of his heritage and I will not deny him anything that is his. I placed them in this trunk the very night of James' and Lily's deaths and never looked upon them since, as I had not had the need for them, nor the desire to remember the most painful night of my life.

I set the parchment roll in the trunk along with the family seal, close it, and then place a few charms on the trunk as well. Having finished with that business, I pick up my newly written will, drape it over the trunk, and drag both along behind me to Albus' office. The headmaster of the school looks up as I enter his office. He stands up. He knows I have written my account; I told him and asked him what he knew that I did not so I could give Harry a full accounting of Voldemort’s reasoning. One should never make conclusions without all the information.

It was my idea to write that family history for Harry. Albus had not suggested it.

Well, I had some dignity to retain!

Albus did not wish me to. "Leave the boy," he had said. "He will feel as if he has to live up with his family's reputation. It is hard enough for him to be so connected to Voldemort.”

"He should know what he is about. That is his right,"

I replied. "If he learns he was kept from the truth, it will shatter his trust in those who hold it. Believe me, Albus; it will do more harm in the long run to keep the truth from him than giving it to him all at once." That is to say nothing of how I personally feel about the entire matter of everyone constantly reminding Harry of how special he is to the wizarding world. Lying, deceitful hypocrites, the whole lot of them. Cowardly as well, since they need a little boy, the most innocent of all, to protect them from the horrible creature known as Voldemort. They turned on him in a single instant once, and I know they would not hesitate to do it again. He needs to know about his past so he can draw strength he needs from it, so he can use his family connections in retaliation.

After all, I know that he hates what he is. I know that he hates being who he is because of some sadistic madman out to recreate the world. To him, that is what his past is. The future is a lock, and the key to freeing what lays within it is the past. After all, the past is what shapes us, and it is the hardest thing top escape. For Harry to change who he is, to move beyond the image of being the Boy Who Lived, he must know who he is. If he does not know who he is, he cannot effectively change what he is to what he desires to be, no matter how much I goad him with it. This account that I have told him will show him how things can be changed.

"This is it," I say as I set the trunk before Albus. "This is what I wish Harry to have upon my death." I hand him the will and he glances over it. "And this is my will." His eyebrows perk upon seeing what I have left to everyone. In Pandora's will, she had the Snape estate split equally to between myself and James, with little trust funds to neighbourhood families and children. When James died without leaving a will, his inheritance had been given to me to care for until Harry graduated. I now leave everything to Harry with Remus as caretaker until Harry becomes a legal adult. I trust Remus; at least, in that aspect. Remus would sooner allow himself to be flayed and tortured with silver pikes before allowing anything of Harry's entrusted to him come to harm, though I have left him--as I had with the Weasley family, all the permanent school staff I cared for in my own way, and the Longbottoms--a small fortune unto itself, though it is but a bare dent in what I inherited or what Harry will find he possesses.

That should surprise Harry, I think dourly as I sweep out of Hogwarts Castle and to the grounds beyond the anti-Apparating shields. He will go from being a pauper to being one of the richest wizards in Europe. The puny allowance I had created for his schooling and he had been using thus far is nothing compared to what he will soon learn he possesses. I feel my Dark Mark burn and I open myself to the foreign power that resides in me. I have not used it for more than fourteen years, and though I have used it hundreds of times before, to find the link and follow it to where Voldemort demands me to be, I am still filled with the thrill and repulsion of its strength and feeling.

I had not lied when I explained to Harry the power was both pleasurable and painful, but those words do not do it any justice. Each time I use it, the power kills me in an agonizing, horrible death of fire that burns and burns. Yet is also recreates me each time I use it, giving me back my life in a glorious splendour of reborn emotions and energies.

The feeling is almost seductive. If I knew I could get away with it, I would allow myself to be permanently swept away in the cycle of death and birth. The power is an echo of what Voldemort, the man formally known as Tom Riddle, is like. He destroys and creates. He is both glorious and horrible. Pandora was right; had he walked a path of honesty, truth, and integrity, the man would have gained much more than trying to take the world through bloody terror. He had the charm and the guile to enrapture the world, and he threw it all away for the sake of ruling people through their fear.

The power carries me away and in the process my shields are down and my entire being accepts the presence of my Dark Lord. He tugs at me and I feel a sharp desire to be with him. I Apparate immediately, the power lending me strength I usually do not have. I am instantly in the room I have come to call Voldemort's Throne Room. The title is not very imaginative, but every time I see Voldemort seated in his chair with shadows cast over his features, I cannot help but think he is like a king or, perhaps, a god.

I gaze upon him for the first time since that fateful night I had seen him standing before Dinsmore as it burned. He is so different, and yet nothing about him has changed. It is as if the unnaturalness of his being finally destroyed the fragile human shell he existed within. White hairless skin almost glowing in the darkness as snake-curved red eyes--still all seeing, still filled with cunning and hunger, and yet so unnatural and empty of anything remotely human--gaze at me. They are filled with anger and his hands grip his chair arms tightly, as if he can barely restrain his temper.

At the side of his chair, standing where Lucius used to stand before his precious son was born, is Peter Pettygrew. The coward flinches as I look at him. Perhaps he remembers a time when I had forced him on the floor, my foot planted on his thick stomach. Perhaps he feels the rage burning in me and the yearning I have to dump this man naked in the middle of the London slums with a "Mug me" sign plastered on his back. Let the vultures of the destitute tear him apart; I can think of no other fate worse. Not even Azkaban may compare to the slums.

"Come, Severus." The anger disappears from Voldemort’s eyes, but my Dark Mark burns and I know he is still fuming at me. He holds his arms out and beckons me into a sweet embrace. I hesitate only an instance before walking over to him and kneeling down at his feet. His arms wrap around me and I find myself filled with peace as I relax across his bony legs. He runs his hand through my hair and grimaces at the grease; he then turns to rubbing my shoulders.

There are many things I have never understood about Voldemort and this need of his to touch me is one of them. Why? There is nothing sexual about his touch. I remember times when people have touched me in that manner, and it is easy to distinguish the difference between lust and simple necessity of reaching out. As if he revels in the ability to touch. I do not fight it or protest. Yet how ironic it would seem to me that Voldemort is the only one, besides Pandora and little (very, very little) Harry, who has ever touched me merely for the sake of physical contact.

"Do you hate me?" Voldemort asks softly as he runs his hand over my cheek and down the line of my throat.

I cannot lie. I have never lied to Voldemort for I know he would know. "Yes." He laughs softly at that. Still I amuse him. Some things truly never change.

"Would you give your life for me?"

Magic calls to magic. That part of him that exists in me sings in counterpart of that part of me that belongs to him. Even as the gutter rat cowers and refuses to sacrifice anything for anyone, for that required trust of some sort, that which is his carries me along and answers. "I would."

"Your life?"

Not that I really ever had one. "My life."

"Your soul?"

"I would if I possessed one."

He laughed again at that. "Ah yes; you sold that to me many years ago for knowledge."

"It was worth the price."

"Your heart?"

"Somewhere in the slums."

Another laugh and softer words this time. "Your blood?"

"A turnip does not have blood."

"Everything?"

"That which you hold."

Hands sweep through my hair again, more out of habit than desire or need. "For everything human granted to me out of free will, so then I become more human." I felt something cold press against my throat and I know this is the end. The cold pressed further against my neck and I lift my head to ease the pressure. I see it is a knife, but I do not panic. "I once said I would destroy you with a good reason, if ever I would. I cannot afford to play games but you will remain useful to the very end. Do you willingly grant me your life?"

My eyes glance upward into Voldemort's. So empty. So very, very empty. No matter how many human gifts are granted to him, he will never be as human as he was before he sold his own soul to the Darker Powers That Be. I sometimes wish I could have seen what he was before he became this soulless monster. I wish I could have seen what Pandora saw when Tom Riddle first appeared on the Potter doorstep, when Francis was still alive. I drop my neck onto the knife, a silent assent for what I know will happen next.

To Pandora's grandson Voldemort is, at least, merciful. The little gutter rat's throat is slit from end to end, which no doubt would have been my fate had I stayed in the slums and never met either Pandora or Voldemort. How fitting. I do not struggle but allow the pain to wash through my body. With each fluttering beat of my heart, blood gushes onto Voldemort's legs. I choke as the blood floods into my lungs. His arms hold me close, gentle and caring in death. I see his hands. They are white, yet slowly gaining a healthy colour.

From out of nowhere I hear a scream. Awareness blossoms in me a moment, then pours away with my blood. I had not told Harry that, when the Mirror of Rebounds had shown James' death, I heard Pandora scream in agony. Why does that scream echo now? Can she understand what is happening? Is she still ali . . . ~ ~

============================================

Ding ding ding.

"Harry!" Uncle Vernon did not look up from his newspaper as he shouted. Sitting next to him at the kitchen table, listlessly chewing on the other half of Dudley's banana, was the very person Uncle Vernon yelled for. "Answer the door!"

Harry said nothing as he stood up. He walked around Dudley's balk and ignored the warning look Aunt Petunia shot him from where she stood next to the toaster. He sighed as he opened the door, half expecting a neighbour or a deliveryman or-- "Professor McGonagall?" Harry's eyes were huge behind his glasses as the Head the Gryffindor House swept into the living room, dragging a trunk behind her.

"Who is it?" Uncle Vernon yelled. Harry did not answer as McGonagall set the trunk before him and straightened upright. Her eyes were red from crying as she gazed sadly down at Harry. Any bright mood he might have gained at seeing her plummeted at the sight. He had a feeling that the news McGonagall brought was not good at all. The cold lump in his chest that had been there since Cedric died dropped to the pit of his stomach.

Uncle Vernon entered the room to see what kept Harry and froze when he saw what sort of visitor had come calling.

"You're one of them!" he roared. His face flushed a deep red. One steely-eyed look from McGonagall silenced what else he was going to say.

"I bring bad news, Mister Potter," McGonagall said gently as she turned back to Harry. "Professor Snape is dead. I understand this will come to a surprise, as there is no love lost between the two of you. However, he left some very important things meant for you only." She pointed at the trunk. "These things. I advise you to look at them as soon as possible."

"Snape?" Aunt Petunia was chalk-white as she stepped forward. Harry had not realized she had entered the living room until she spoke.

McGonagall glared at her. "You know whom I speak of." A look of severe anger swept across Aunt Petunia’s face.

"That worthless slimy bastard of a gutter rat?"

Something clattered suddenly in the kitchen and Dudley screeched. He waddled as quickly as possible out of the kitchen. "Mum! The toaster attacked me!" he cried with one thick finger pointed where he had come from. The others ignored him.

McGonagall picked the trunk up and shoved it into Harry's arms. "Look at them," she said softly. She glared at Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. "Leave him be until he has had a time to examine the things. Unless you would rather I stay and ensure his privacy?" Shock and fear filled the faces of Harry's family members. Puzzled, intensely curious, and a tad regretful as to why Snape would leave him anything, Harry carried to the trunk over to the base of the stairs. He paused on top of the first step, then glanced over at McGonagall. "Voldemort killed him, didn't he?" he asked. "Because Snape was a spy."

McGonagall shrugged. "Voldemort killed him, but why I don’t know." Harry and she gazed at each other for a long moment before Harry continued to carry the trunk up to his room. He heard Uncle Vernon speaking rapidly to McGonagall in a soft voice, but did not care what was being said. He sat the trunk down beside his bed and opened it. Colour flashed as the wards on the trunk acknowledged Harry and dissipated harmlessly. The first thing Harry noticed was the large roll of parchment papers, sealed with wax.

He pulled that out with only a brief glance at the box and mirror, and then sat cross-legged on his bed. After a moment of studying the seal, he broke it. Again colour flashed, but Harry did not feel his senses prickle in warning, so he knew the magic meant him no harm.

He read. All that day he read, until he finished just as the sun was setting. Harry listlessly dropped the roll of parchments into the trunk. He felt emotionally and physically drained; well, more so than usual. He had taken in so much information of his family, of Voldemort, especially of Snape (perhaps a little more than what he would have liked . . . Well, all right. A great deal more than what he would have liked), that his head felt it would burst open. He was giddy with delight of knowing something about his father beyond the vague recollections Remus, Sirius, and Dumbledore had granted him. Because of this letter Professor Snape had written him, he knew some things about the family his father had come from, how he had grown up.

Yet, also because of this letter, he had the vague notion that there was a reason why Voldemort hated him so much floating somewhere in the words. He knew why his family had to suffer the way it did. There were still questions unanswered, such as how and why he had managed to survive the Killing Curse, but this was all still confusing. Harry knew he would have to read the letter a few more times to understand all that Professor Snape had been trying to tell him.

But now was not the time. Harry did not have the strength to reread all that had taken place. To be sure, that what had been written was rather one-sided. Harry felt that Professor Snape placed emphasis upon the things he wanted Harry to pay the most attention to, and skimmed very briefly over the things he felt Harry had to know but did not want to admit too much about the matter, or even exaggerated what he resented a great deal about, such as Peter Pettygrew’s overall pathetic personality (though Harry was not going to complain about that point) and Sirius Black’s mischievous nature.

How very depressing all of it was though. Harry thought he had a difficult life, but all of his pain and torment paled in comparison with horrors that Voldemort had created. His father saw the deaths of his family; his uncle had been a child who lived in some of the worst conditions known to mankind. Strange how it seemed that everyone he was related to met with horrid ends even before he knew them. It spoke ill of what may be, since history had strange ways of going full circle.

Harry set the huge roll of parchment to the side and glanced at the trunk. He saw the Mirror of Rebounds. He sat still on the bed and stared at it for a long moment. Before he knew what he was doing, Harry found himself reaching for the Mirror of Rebounds. As the pads of his fingertips brushed the cool glass, light glimmered in the glass’ depths and eyes the colour of turquoise stared into his, curious and happily surprised. Harry jumped and snatched his hands back. Belatedly, he remembered what Severus Snape had told him when he saw Voldemort look at him through the mirror.

Harry hastily closed the trunk and shoved it under his bed. With a sigh, he collapsed face-first onto his pillow. Why, he wondered, did everything always seem to happen to me? With that thought, he drifted into an exhausted sleep.

That night, he had a strange dream of an adolescent James chasing an adolescent Severus, the latter screaming something about how the former's children were going to be Fate's revenge for the pranks of his youth. Around they ran, around the legs of a giant woman with piercing blue eyes who merely shook her head and told them to behave or the Big Bad Riddle would come and eat them up as he did all naughty children.

He dreamt, also, of a small boy who cried a river of blood, and of another boy with curly black hair and black eyes who ran blindly through dismal streets, past rundown buildings and piles of garbage, all the while crying for his father and asking why he had been pushed away, why he had been left here. The dreams were a change from repeatedly hearing Kill the spare, and seeing the faces of those who died come to rescue him from the tip of Voldemort’s wand. Not, of course, that this new dream was a welcome change.

Harry awoke early the next morning just as the sun was rising. He still felt emotionally drained. So Severus Snape, the Terror of the Hogwarts Dungeons, and Harry’s uncle, was dead. Surely that meant something important at least. Harry felt the need to do something in commemoration of the man; something like a memorial. He supposed it was the least he could do for someone who had given him rock-solid information of his family’s past. He truly had no idea what, but after a moment of thinking he dug his Potions homework out from beneath the bed. For the next three hours, he poured his best effort into the homework. He finished just as Petunia called the others down for breakfast. He stared at the essay and experimental potion recipe.

Harry swelled with pride. It was some of his best Potions work yet without help; he would not be surprised if it was his very best Potions work!

"An F," said a silky voice behind Harry. The pride shrivelled into horror. "That is definitely an F if I ever saw one, and believe me: I have certainly seen many in my career as an instructor."

Harry turned slowly around to look behind himself as his mind stopped functioning. He stared, squinted, rubbed his eyes, and stared some more.

"What?" Severus Snape snarled as he floated before Harry. "Haven't you seen a ghost before? I know you have, so you can snap your jaw shut before something particularly disgusting flies into it. You look like Neville Longbottom did whenever he saw he passed on an exam.”

Harry was silent for a long moment. Then, "I didn't know your hair was curly!" Severus grumbled as he whirled around so his back was to Harry. He folded his arms over the afore-mentioned wild curls of black hair and muttered something about how it was bad for his image. Harry jumped to his feet. "Was that why your hair was greasy?” he asked eagerly. “Because it was always so curly and you didn’t like it that way?"

Severus grumped and refused to answer. Harry felt his initial surprise and amusement fade away. He slumped over the edge of the bed and knotted his fingers together between his knees.

"I can't imagine you as my uncle," he said. Severus remained silent. "Thanks for telling me. You didn't have to."

"It's not as if I expected to come back," Severus said with his back still turned to Harry. "If I had known this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have spent so much time writing about everything. Should have known though; ghosts are always those individuals with miserable lives, and my life was miserable, no doubt about it.”

Harry winced at the stark harshness in Severus’ voice. The ghost’s shoulders heaved with a sigh. “However,” Severus said softly and gently, “living with false illusions of who you are and who you parents were is like lying about all that makes you what you are. If you aren’t who you are, then you’re someone else.” A note of sadness appeared in Severus’ voice. “You deserve to know about your past." They both fell silent as Harry recalled that Severus' earliest memory was that of standing at a restaurant window with his fellow gutter rats.

What did you say to your uncle (who was dead and floated in front of you) when you thought for four years he was a horrible monster out to make your life a living hell? “Um, thank you,” Harry ventured carefully.

Severus shrugged casually. “Pandora would have wanted me to.”

Harry wanted to say he would have liked to hear more of his relatives, but something nagged in his mind. Some of what Severus had told him did not quite add up to what the others told him. “Did Professor Dumbledore lie?” he asked softly. Severus turned around. One eyebrow cocked in question. “And Remus Lupin? I mean, they said you hated my father and you were probably jealous of him because he was good at Quidditch.”

Severus’ lips pinched together in a thin, pale line. He appeared to be sorting words around in his head. “Difficult to say,” he said finally. “Different facets of truth become distorted when certain things are emphasized to take notice away from other things although they are correct in and of themselves.” Harry made a mental note to keep that in mind when he reread Severus’ letter. “I hated to love your father and perhaps I was jealous of him. James Potter was the apple of Pandora Potter’s eyes, though that has little to do with Quidditch--I admired your father on the broom; he was like a graceful bird, but not once did I envy him of that skill. But there is one thing that I never meant to tell you but perhaps should.” Severus straightened upward and hovered over Harry.

Harry flinched at the sight and felt that once more he was back in the dungeons with the gleeful Potions Master cruelly pointing out every little thing he had done wrong with his potion. “I was a Death Eater,” Severus announced as his eyes narrowed. Harry slowly shrank away. “When Pandora sought and received a recall on my sentence, she did not make it known that I was a spy. For all intent and purposes of the world, I was a Death Eater kept at bay and under control only because Dumbledore was watching me under the request of Pandora Potter. Imagine the shock of those in the Ministry of Magic whom Pandora had called upon when they learned Harry Potter--the very person who vanquished Voldemort--was going to the school where the Potions Master was a former follower of the Dark Lord.”

Harry could imagine. He nodded slowly as Severus waited to see if he understood the fine irony of the situation.

“I could hardly be removed from the premises as they presumed the only thing that kept me from attacking my nephew in the first place was Dumbledore. However, nor would it do for you to be sent to a school of magic other than Hogwarts as this was the school that educated generations and generations of Snapes, then Potters. It was practically your heritage to attend!” Severus began to pace in the room, a preying predator whose menace filled the area like a choking fog. “Given that, all those who worked within Hogwarts and those close members of the family who would be involved with you were immediately notified--though ordered with all sorts of threats of medieval torture methods would more aptly describe the situation--that under no circumstances whatsoever were you to be informed of our relation together.”

Harry blinked in puzzlement. He felt resentment rise upward. “So no one could tell me who you were and you couldn’t do it either because you were a Death Eater? How would that protect me?”

“For the same reason no one was to inform you that your godfather is Sirius Black. For the same reason I was ordered not to build ties. It was all for the sake of protection.”

Harry frowned. “I don’t see how that could’ve possibly have protected me.”

“If I gained your trust, it would have been very easy for me to hurt you. Unguarded, you would have no protection against that which I could do to you once I had your trust--Barty Crouch Junior, who posed as Alistor Moody, is a prime example of what they feared would happen. Then, too, I was also surrounded by children of those Death Eaters who escaped the purging after the vanquishing of Voldemort. Their parents knew I was James’ brother. How would it appear to the Ministry of Magic should a Death Eater befriend you, and how would it appear to the former Death Eaters should their children informed them of James Potter’s adopted brother befriending you?”

“Not too well either way, I would imagine.”

“Exactly. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.”

Harry scratched his head. “Well, thank you for telling me that,” he said sincerely, not sure of what else to say.

“You deserved to know.”

“But everyone knew Remus from early childhood and he said he never had any real friends until he met my father and Sirius at Hogwarts.”

“Remus had a lot to cover up for. Dumbledore warned him about your knowing about me, and if he said that Pandora Potter--James’ grandmother and your great-grandmother--had covered up for him as a child at Dinsmore while he was just a pup, he would have had to explain about Pandora, and that was risky as I might have been accidentally mentioned. Though that, in and of itself, was not truly a lie.” For a moment, Severus’ expression of stern impatience shattered into the pain of someone who knew it all. “I imagine Remus did not, well, completely trust James and Sirius. There was usually something distant about him as a child, as if he held part of himself back from the others. In his child-like belief that if his friends thought he was different then they would hate him, he must have felt they were not quite true friends.”

“Until they still cared for him upon learning he was a werewolf.”

“Yes. Which happened at Hogwarts, so what he said was not far from the truth and probably wouldn’t even count as a lie.”

“That makes sense.” Harry stood up. He and Severus locked gazes for a while, and then Harry shrugged. “I guess this is goodbye.”

Severus blinked twice. “Goodbye?” he echoed. He sounded almost innocent. Harry felt a sudden flash of wariness.

“You did come to say goodbye, didn’t you?” he asked. “I mean, you’re a ghost and you can’t stay here--”

Severus snickered. “I'm going to get my revenge for all those grey hairs you gave me! I have come to haunt you!”

Harry stared at his ghost of an uncle. “But . . . You can’t do that!”

“Odd; that’s what your godfather said too.”

“You’re haunting Sirius too?!”

“On holidays,” Severus replied casually, as if Harry was not standing before him and hyperventilating in shock. He knitted his fingers before himself and pressed them against his collarbone. “Which reminds me, isn't Independence Day in the United States considered a national holiday?”

Harry’s legs gave out from beneath him in his shock. He collapsed on the bed and stared at Severus for a long moment as the ghost roamed the room and poked at things, mumbling about how it was not much, but he could live with it--figuratively speaking, of course, since no pun was intended. “Wait.” Harry shook his head to clear it of his current confusion. “You said you were going to haunt Lucius Malfoy when you died!”

“I’m doing him every other weekend.”

“What about Voldemort? Why not haunt him too since he killed you and destroyed the family and all?”

“He’s the other every other weekend. Really, if I have to spend my afterlife in this plane of existence, I fully expect to have some fun for the first hundred years or so.”

Harry rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. “So you’re haunting me all the time except on holidays and weekends?”

“Well, haunting you, to be precise, is the operative word.”

“How so?” Severus ignored Harry as he floated down through the floor. There was a sudden scream from the kitchen below, and Severus’ head appeared as he stuck it through the floorboards.

“If you want me,” he said solemnly, “I shall be haunting your lovely Aunt Petunia’s toaster oven.” He disappeared again. There was another scream, and then a clatter.

“MUUUUUUUUMMMM! THE TOASTER’S ATTACKING ME AGAIN!”

“SEVERUS!” Petunia screamed. Harry stared at the spot where Severus had disappeared. A moment passed. Another scream was heard. “YOU STOP THIS AT ONCE, YOU ROTTON BASTARD!”

“HARRY!” It was Uncle Vernon this time. “IF THIS IS ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR YOU-KNOW--AHHH!”

Harry listened to the commotion below and shook his head at the chaos. A moment passed as a smile flitted across his face, and then, for the first time since Cedric Diggory’s death, he laughed.

In the far-off distance, beside a little cottage some few hundred meters from the burnt ruins of Dinsmore, Remus Lupin watched Sirius as amusement flickered in his gold-rimmed eyes. Sirius stopped chanting and waving his wand to glare at Remus. "You aren't helping!" he accused angrily. "You know I am trying to get these barriers up before the fourth of July!"

"Why should I? Severus has no reason to haunt me."

"Oh be quiet then. I’m trying to concentrate." Sirius squinted and waved his wand about in a circle. The shed behind the cottage exploded. "Drat. I'll get it right one of these times."

Remus watched Sirius once again launch into the intricate hand motions that were involved with the charm. After the tree behind them caught fire, he stood up. "If you need me for something besides the anti-ghost charm, I shall be roaming the catacombs beneath Dinsmore."

Sirius said nothing, and in the forest a tree crumbled into dust.

author's notes:
Adventures of Severus the Ghost and Harry Potter the Boy Who Lived continues in Pandora's Box.
The Psychological aspects of the Pegasus (positive) is one with the natural ability to change evil into good and (negative) one who feels superior to others because of his or her knowledge. Magical attributes most attested to the Pegasus are changing evil into good, learning astral travel, poetic inspiration, visiting with deceased souls, fame, eloquence, and learning great secrets of life and magic--all of which will be seen in the sequel. This little tidbit is for anyone who is curious as to why the Pegasus is the seal of the Snape family.