It’s spring at Hogwarts, and towards the end of the school year, Harry and the other professors are in the usual scramble to fit everything in before the end of the year. The last thing Harry needs is one more thing to deal with. However, his son Albus Severus Potter is going to give him just that.
Al walks into Harry’s office without knocking, Harry looks up surprised, Al always knocks. “Hello, can I help you?” Harry asks, eyebrows raised in exasperation.
“Yes you can,” Al said, shaking in anger. “You can help by telling me why I’m named after a horrible bully who was mean to you all the time and traumatised uncle Neville?!?”
“Whoah, where’s this coming from?” Harry asked, setting down his quill and giving this his undivided attention.
“I just told Uncle Neville how you told me that Snape was a good guy, one of the bravest you ever knew. He rolled his eyes and wouldn’t say anything more, but I pressed and he told me some of what he did. I can’t believe you named me after that asshole,” Albus was shouting now, and gesturing wildly while pacing the floor. Even at thirteen, he has a very strong flair for the dramatic.
Harry tried to calmly defend himself, “I meant what I said. He was a brave man. He might not have been the nicest guy, but he did the right thing in the end.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not good enough. He was mean to people I love, and he’s ugly.” Albus stopped dead in the middle of the floor when he said that last part. “You named me after an ugly mean jerk, I deserve better.”
Harry was trying not to laugh at Albus’s dramatics. “Alright, if you don’t like it you can change it,” he said, giving in. He wasn’t wrong about Snape being a jerk, and there were times Harry regretted his name choice. Should’ve let Ginny do that. “We’ll talk to your mum about it tonight alright, you can come home and we’ll sit down and chat about it,” He said, trying to calm his son’s temper.
“I’ve already thought about it,” Albus said proudly, and with a grin announced, “My new middle name is Arthur because grandad is way cooler than that jerk.”
Harry grinned and thought about just how happy Arthur would be to hear about the name change. “Alright then, I’m glad you’ve put some thought into this. Your grandad will be glad to hear it. We can go to the ministry at the end of the term and change it. We’ve got to talk to your mother first though,” Harry added, with a grin at his son, who was losing his angry expression quickly.
“I thought this was going to be a lot harder. Why aren’t you mad?” He asked, a quizzical look replacing his angry expression.
“Well, I suppose it’s your life and your name. So if you can’t stand it we’ll change it.” Harry nodded once and crossed the room to where Al stood. He wrapped an arm around him and said, “I made a choice thirteen years ago, why should you be stuck with it forever?”
“Thanks, dad.” Albus Arthur Potter said, throwing his arms around his dad. “Can I still come home and tell mum tonight?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell your Uncle Neville not to miss you.”
Ginny immediately got worried when Albus walked through the front door with his father. “Is something wrong? Why are you home?” She asked, quickly hugging him and then checking him for injuries and fever.
“Nothing’s wrong, love” Harry answered, putting his bag on the hall table.
“I’m not sick or anything, I’d just go to the hospital wing if I was sick,” Al said with a laugh. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
Ginny was now more worried, but she played it cool, stood up straight, smiled, and said, “Okay, What’s going on?”
Al smiled and calmly announced, “I’m changing my middle name.”
Ginny breathed a sigh of relief, “Oh, that’s wonderful news. I’ve never gotten over the fact that your father gave you that awful man’s name.”
Albus laughed and looked at his dad, “You really went against everyone’s better judgment didn’t you?”
That got Harry to laugh, “I guess you could say that,” He answered, shepherding them both into the living room where Lily Luna and Minerva Ruby, who both got much better namesakes, were doing muggle homework.
“Why are you here?” Lil asked, jokingly looking at her brother with her nose wrinkled in disgust.
“Yeah, why are you here?” M.R. joined in, mimicking her older sister.
“Why are you here?” He asked back, sticking out his tongue in response.
“Why are you like this?” Harry broke in, shaking his head and laughing. Siblings are weird, Harry never experienced that. Ginny, however, found this to be a quite normal greeting.
They ignored Harry’s question and Ginny said, “You two finish that homework up at the kitchen table. We have something to talk about.”
The girls grumbled as they picked their stuff up off the floor and tromped off to the kitchen. “Fine” Lily sighed, head thrown back as she carried her folder and pencil out of the room, followed by Minerva Ruby, with her colouring page and box of coloured pencils. “Fine,” M.R. mimicked.
Harry couldn’t help but giggle at them and their annoyance. He turned his attention back to the conversation at hand.
Ginny sat down on the sofa, and Albus followed suit, sitting on the other end and turning to face his mum. “I think snape was a lousy guy and my new middle name is Arthur because grandad is cooler,” He said, the whole conversation spilling out in one sentence.
Ginny smiled brightly, “Your grandad is going to love that.” She looked so proud of him at that moment. “I love that,” She added, smiling ever brighter.
“I said we could go to the ministry office right at the end of term and change it legally,” Harry said, smiling at Ginny’s happiness.
“I’m glad you’re not fighting him on this, Harry,” Ginny said, shooting him a look that said ‘this is all your fault in the first place’.
Harry put his hands up defensively, “Why does everyone assume I’m mad about this. I made a choice, it was apparently a very bad one. So we’re fixing it,” He said with a lopsided grin.
“Good,” Ginny answered, her smile returning, “We’ll have to tell your grandad when you get off of school, or you could write to him,” She said, turning back to her son Albus Arthur Potter.
Al grinned and jumped up off the couch, “Okay, great! I’ll write him from school. Can I go back now? No offense but there’s a gobstone’s club after dinner tonight.”
Harry looked to Ginny, who just shrugged and smiled a little. “Yeah, C’mon, I’ll take you back through the floo,” Harry said, shaking his head and walking towards the fireplace.
“Awesome, can we go to Aunt Minnie’s office?” Albus asked, crossing the room, “I wanna tell her.”
“Yeah, alright,” Harry sighed, thinking that it would be kinda funny for Snape’s portrait to hear this.
“BYE LIL. BYE MIN.” Al shouted through the house. They shouted their goodbyes in return.
Harry took a handful of floo powder and they stepped into the fireplace together, “Hogwarts Head teacher’s office.” Harry said, clearly-ish.
They landed with quite a puff of ash in Minerva’s office fireplace. Without looking up she said, “Hello Harry.”
“How do you always know who’s coming in?” Harry said, brushing ash out of Al’s hair.
“Only when it’s you, Potter, no one else puts quite so much ash in the air when they come in,” Minerva said, mildly annoyed. She finally looked up as Harry was brushing the ash out of his robes and said in a much more pleasant voice, “Oh. Hello, Albus dear.”
The portrait behind her left shoulder, Dumbledore, woke up from his fake sleeping and asked, “Did you need something, Minerva?”
“Not from you, never from you,” Minerva answered in disgust. “I forgot I took the silencing spell off of you.” She turned back to Al and Harry. “What are you two up to?” She asked suspiciously.
Al, dramatic as ever, crossed the room to her desk, planted his hands on it, and said, “I have news.”
Minerva cracked an almost imperceptible smile and rolled her eyes, “You are just like your father,” She shook her head, “And his father,” she added. “What’s the news?”
Al stood up straight again and said, “I’m changing my name.”
Minerva looked surprised for a moment, in her almost imperceptible way, “Which one?” She said, glancing over either shoulder to the portraits of his namesakes.
“Well, since you’re mad at Dumbledore I’m questioning if I should keep my first name, but I’ve already decided that I’m changing my middle name to Arthur,” Al said with a smile.
Minerva looked concerned for a moment, “Don’t put any stock in what I say to Dumbledore, your father and I had two very different relationships with him. I can see why you have his name, I would never have picked that but that is not the point.” Minerva digressed a little flustered, hoping she wasn’t causing damage to Al’s self-image. She changed to the other topic at hand, “I think Arthur is a wonderful middle name for you, your grandfather will be over the moon.” Finally, her smile was, in fact, perceptible. “Quite a far cry better than what you were given,” Minerva added, with a look at Harry.
But Harry had been watching the portrait of Snape and didn’t see it. Harry was disappointed, Snape looked relieved when he found out about the name change. He really didn’t deserve to be a namesake. Suddenly Harry was over any residual sadness about the name change.
Harry went back home for the night, leaving Al in Minerva’s office, doing transfiguration homework. He fully expected Al’s name to be something other than Albus by tomorrow. That was one he might be a bit upset about, after all, Dumbledore was a great man, one of the best Harry had ever known. Even if he did raise Harry to die, and abandon him to fight grown adults several times, and withhold vital information, and talk in riddles…. Great, now he had another thing to regret.
Albus did try to pry out of his Aunt Minerva just what Dumbledore had done to incur her wrath, but Minerva’s a lot harder to break than Neville. She simply ceased to speak to him about anything that wasn’t his transfiguration essay.
Albus looked at her from where he sat ‘working’ and nodded after she ceased to speak at all, “Fine, keep your secrets.”