Harry Potter, Dead!
Avi woke in the hospital room feeling as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. However, there was a new weight over his legs. He sat up slowly rubbing tiredly at his face, when he reached his forehead though he froze. It was smooth… The scare he had grown up with and its near-constant ache were gone! There were other changes too. His hair was longer, and a kinky kind of curly like little corkscrews. His jaw was sharper and his nose longer. Even his hands were different! They were long-boned and delicate looking like a pianist’s, the skin was several shades darker too.
He was so distracted, he nearly jumped out of his new skin when the weight on his legs shifted. Severus had been asleep half on the bed, but all of Avi’s moving around had woken the man. He sat up in a rush but froze when their eyes met. “Your eyes are still green,” he said in an odd tone. “I didn’t think you would get to keep her eyes…”
Avi fidgeted, “Is that a bad thing? Do they look weird?”
“No.” His voice sounded a little hoarse. “If anything your new coloring makes them all the more striking.”
“What happened? I don’t remember how I got here.”
“The ritual went according to plan up until the end, but something interfered with the magic. There was a large flash that caused quite a ruckus, but it didn’t seem to affect the outcome. However, you have been unconscious for most of the night.” He cast a quick Tempus, the glowing numbers reading 3:36 am. “Whatever the anomaly was, it seems to have been feeding off your magic. The healers detected a considerable uptick in your magical core output. Prolonged exposure to whatever had been affecting your curse scare could have very well permanently damaged your core. But the cleansing magic of the ritual seems to have removed it.”
“What do I look like now,” Avi asked excitedly.
“See for yourself,” Severus waved his wand and conjured a large handheld mirror.
Avi stared at his reflection. He looked nothing like his old self. “You have your mother’s eyes, but your coloring is closer to that of Potter’s mother,” Severus explained. “She was originally from Jaipur, India, but came to Britain to marry your grandfather. Unfortunately, you also gained my prominent nose and unmanageable hair.”
Avi pulled on a curl and watched it bounce back, then he looked at Severus’ lanky hair in question. The man in question lifted some hair between his fingers. “I dislike how much the curls made me look like my father, so once I got to Hogwarts I started using a hair potion to chemically straighten my hair.”
Avi continued to play with the tight springs as he looked in the mirror. His face was longer but not as narrow as Snape’s. The slightly more defined jaw making the nose look more proportionate. His skin was a warm olive-tone and matched with the black curls framing his face, his eyes practically glowed in contrast. “I like it,” he declared, setting the mirror aside. “Can we go home?”
“Not quite yet. The healers need to give you another check. And considering the hour, we will just have to wait until morning.”
***
Severus had been home for hardly an hour when a summons from Dumbledore arrived. He quickly helped a morose Avyaan reapply the sticking charm for the mandrake leaf and left the child swaddled up in a heap of blankets on the couch with his books nearby. The anomaly with the ritual had left the boy exhausted and some side effects had him craving warmth. The healers had said his magical core had been severely depleted by the process and would take several weeks to recover. In the meantime, he was to be kept warm to supplement the warmth his magic would normally generate.
Loathed to leave his child in such a state, he snapped as he stepped out of the floo, “What could this possibly be about Albus? I have important matters to deal with at home, so if this is something that could wait-” He froze as he took in the surrounding teachers around the room. He was getting tired of the old goat summoning him to large gatherings without the courtesy of telling him in advance.
He took in the somber atmosphere that hung heavy in the air, like a physical weight. Minerva was sobbing quietly into a handkerchief while Pomfrey gently patted her shoulder. Hagrid seemed to have gone into a state of shock, staring unseeing out the window. Flitwick’s features seemed to be oscillating from enraged and devastated. The other professors were not much better.
Albus looked as if he had aged ten years. “I have dreadful news, my boy,” he took a shaking breath, the picture of grief, but the tension in his shoulders belied his true anger. “Harry Potter is dead.”
Severus used every ounce of his willpower to keep his face blank. “How could you know for certain? The boy has been missing for only two months. You can’t have given up already.”
“Of course not my boy, but I have proof he has been lost.” In answer, he pulled out a ward key, a device used to monitor and track ward stones. “When Lily died she used a blood sacrifice to protect Harry. I used some sympathetic magic to piggyback on the excess energy and create a ward stone that would use the ties of her blood relatives to power it and embedded it in the child’s shoulder for his own protection.”
Severus stared at the old man in horror. Ward stones were used to protect homes or personal belongings, not to be used as experimental tracking devices on children! The man would have had no idea how such magic would affect a living being! But before he could slip and yell at the man he was continuing.
“Unfortunately when Harry was taken I discovered that the stone had been damaged in some way. I could no longer use it to locate the boy. I fear it was damaged in the struggle as he was taken from his home.” More likely broken during one of the many beatings the child endured, Severus thought. To think the man had a way to tell him about any injury the boy suffered and yet had never checked the device… Or outright ignored the child’s plight intentionally, a less charitable part of Severus thought. “Once I discovered the issue, I found I was only able to monitor his vitals.”
“Late last night it detected an elevated heart rate that lasted for almost an hour before the ward stone key went dark. I confirmed with Gringotts this morning, all his accounts have been sealed from my entry as his magical guardian. As he had no family, I can only guess as to how the goblins will allocate his effects. I can only hope that his soul can now find rest.”
“How do you plan to handle this?” Professor Sinistra asked, the Slytherin woman getting right to the heart of the matter. “The ministry will have received notification of the vault closure.”
The headmaster nodded, “I will make a statement to the Prophet as soon as possible and try to mitigate the fallout. Filius, would you stop by the bank and enquire about the Potter’s effects? There may be some mementos some of our members would like to remember their friends by.”
Severus bit back a scoff. More like the man wanted to take custody of the Potter’s considerable wealth to help bankroll his war efforts. He watched as the other staff members filed out and left to follow, but was halted by the headmaster.
“Severus, you have seemed distracted as of late,” he questioned once the others had left. “Completely understandable under the circumstances, but I wonder if there might be something else on your mind?”
Severus had been thinking long and hard these past weeks about how to introduce Avyaan to the headmaster. Now, so close to the discovery of Harry Potter's death was not ideal, but he would have to tell the Headmaster soon if the boy was to come with him for the school year. He couldn't leave a seven-year-old home alone for semesters at a time, after all. So, he already had a story prepared. “You are right, headmaster, I have had some unexpected news resurface as of late.” He swallowed heavily, schooling his features into a look of embarrassment. “I have been recently made aware that I have a son.”
The old man lifted his brow in surprise. “It happened not long after I left school to study under Master Onery. We had briefly traveled the world and at one point I had a dalliance with a woman in Delhi, India.” This would help explain Avyaan’s coloring. “We broke it off once I was scheduled to return to Britain, but I have recently been contacted by her brother. Akhira never told me she was pregnant and later died in childbirth.” With that information in place, Avi would not need to memorize facts about a fictitious witch.
The next part would explain his son’s reactiveness in certain situations. The trauma he had sustained with his relatives was not likely to go away on its own so the story of his past would have to reflect the truth as closely as possible. A skill he had honed considerably in his time as a spy. “His uncle was bitter about taking the boy in. Akhira and him were never close and he already had a wife and son. They treated the boy poorly, to what extent I am uncertain, but eventually, his wife convinced him to have the boy registered for any Heirships in the hopes of sending him to his father.”
“I was contacted through the goblin overseeing my family vaults, and I have decided to take over the boy’s custody by the end of the week.”
The headmaster smiled knowingly. “That’s great news, my boy! You have been alone for far too long. Of course, your son will be welcomed at the school. I will have the elves prepare you quarters at once.”
Severus sneered, feigning disgust at the thought of having a child underfoot. Truthfully he had never seen himself as someone who could be a father. It was not like he had a stellar example to derive “wisdom” from. But Avyann made him want to try.