Chapter 4
"I see you've found the delights of the Mirror of Erised, Harry," an elderly voice says.
Harry was so lost in the image of his parents that he startles, his head snapping up.
"Sir," he says, pushing to his feet.
Dumbledore smiles kindly. "What do you think this mirror does, Harry?"
Harry has had time to think about it.
"It shows us what we want," Harry says quietly. "Anything we want."
"Quite close," Dumbledore says. "What it truly shows is nothing less than the deepest, most desperate desires of our hearts. But this mirror gives us neither knowledge nor truth. Men have wasted away before it, or been driven mad." He gently guides Harry away from the mirror and towards the door. "Now tomorrow, the mirror will be moved to a different location. I ask that you do not go looking for it again, Harry. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
Harry follows along to the door. He hesitates at asking the question on the tip of his tongue, but his curiosity wins over. "Can... can I ask what you saw, sir?"
"Oh, I? Well, I see myself holding a pair of comfortable, woolen socks. You can never have too many, don't you think?"
It's obviously not an honest answer, but then Harry supposes most people won't be honest about something like this.
*
*
Weeks after, when they go into the Philosopher Stone's chambers, putting Fluffy to sleep with the flute Hagrid gifted Harry, they have to leave Draco behind for concern of his father's fury and how he might react to his son's involvement in these dangerous affairs. It can cost Hogwarts a lot, for one, and his father might force Draco to cut Harry out of his life. Draco is reluctant to leave Harry to go without him, but he knows it's true. Harry gives him a reassuring hug and tells him he can help by getting the Professors as a standby plan in case things go wrong.
"Come back safe," Draco says, with a squeeze around his wrist, wide-eyed. Harry promises they will. He will.
They go through each of the traps set by the Professors; Sprout's devil snare, Flitwick's flying silver keys, McGonagall's giant chess game that Ron selflessly takes on and sacrifices himself to let Harry win the game and make way for the rest of them. It is a terrifying moment, to see the Queen strike him so hard across the head.
Harry runs over to him and tears a strip of his shirt to stem the bleeding in his head and Hermione casts a small healing charm on him. It isn't much but it's all they can do, and Ron will be okay, that much they know. In the next room is an unconscious troll, so they are glad not to have to deal with that.
Then comes Snape's potions, seven differently shaped bottles lined up on the desk. As soon as he and Hermione step over the threshold, purples flames appear behind them as well as ahead of them, keeping them blocked.
There is a roll of paper next to bottles. They read it together, Harry over her shoulder, more slowly and carefully.
According to a very pleased Hermione, it's all logic. Three are poisoned, two are wine, one will let the drinker go back and the other forward. There is not enough of the potion for both of them to go forward.
"You take that one," Harry tells Hermione, pointing at the one that allows the drinker to return.
"Harry..."
"No, listen, go back and get Ron, take the brooms from the flying keys room and get out, both of you. Draco's getting the Professors, so let's hope they'll get here on time because I can't hold Snape off forever."
Hermione stares at him, her lip quivering. Then she launches herself at him and grips him tight with a strangled, fearful sound.
"I will be alright," Harry says, holding her back tight. "Promise."
"Harry," she whispers into his shoulder. "You're a great wizard, you know."
"I'm not as good as you," Harry says, breathing an embarrassed laugh, as they let go of each other.
"Me? Books and cleverness?" Hermione smiles, small and wistful. "There are far more important things, like friendship, and bravery, and — oh Harry, please be careful!" She's teary-eyed. Harry promises her again that he will be.
As she returns back, Harry is relieved there can be someone with Ron, at least. He takes the potion and the black flame clears, making way for the final chamber.
*
When Harry wakes up, Dumbledore is there, smiling and warm.
At first, he can only stare. Then the panic seizes him as the memories return and he springs upright, trying to throw the sheets off him.
"Sir, the stone! Quirrell! He's got the stone—"
"Calm yourself, dear boy, before Madam Pomfrey has me thrown out of here," Dumbledore says with a hand on his shoulder, stilling him. "Everything is alright. Quirrell does not have the stone."
"I... I was trying to stop him from getting the stone..."
"And you have succeeded, indeed, my boy," Dumbledore says. Harry feels strange at his calling him 'my boy'. It's not a bad feeling, he eventually figures. "I arrived just in time to pull him off of you. I feared I was too late."
"You almost were. I wouldn't have been able to hold him off much longer—"
"Not for the stone, for you. It nearly killed you, and for a moment, I thought it had. I can't express how glad I am that you're alright, Harry."
Harry swallows, unsure of what to say to that. "And the stone?"
"It has been destroyed."
"But Nicholas Flamel, your friend... he'll die."
"Well, yes. But he and his wife have agreed it is for the best."
"How was I able to get the stone, Sir?"
"One of my rather brilliant ideas," Dumbledore says, with a twinkle in his eye and a smile. "Only the person who wishes to find it — find it but not use it — can get the stone. Clever, wouldn't you say?"
Harry smiles back. "Yeah."
Harry learns, then, why Voldemort couldn't touch him: it was his mother's love and sacrifice, something far beyond the reach of Voldemort's comprehension, that has kept him safe.
He also learns that it was Dumbledore who gave him the invisibility cloak.
It's only then that Harry looks all around him. There are many tokens and gifts and flowers, cards telling him to 'get well soon'. This can't have collected in a few hours.
"How long has it been?"
"Three days. Mr. Malfoy was deeply frantic when he came to me, telling me you went after the stone. Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger have been most anxious for you to awaken. I should allow them all to finally see you now."
*
In the second last week of the school year, a potions accident gone wrong leaves Potter's hair red. Since it isn't harmful and will go away on its own, Madam Pomfrey did not prescribe any treatment, since it is neither necessary nor urgent. Indeed, magical potions are not to be given if they can be done without.
But Severus did not realise what it would do to him; what it will bring up.
To see Potter be sorted into Slytherin instead of Gryffindor made him seem a little less like his father, and has perhaps provided some kind of distance from the complicated entanglement of his resentment and grief, whether this distance is from his resentment or his grief. This small variation allows him to put it all away sometimes and pretend he feels nothing towards the boy.
How difficult it is now.
Before this, Potter was still mostly his father; just as foolish and reckless despite being of his Slytherins, unruly black hair and glasses and the shape of his face.
Except for his eyes.
He is both the person Severus loathed most and held dear more than anything, all at once.
In his resentment, he forgets that he is Lily's. In his grief, sharply, horribly freshened by the way red contrasts with brilliant green, all he can see is her. And in this grief, his father's foolish and reckless becomes his mother's wild and fiery, and he is, somehow, still gentle the way Lily had been; the way he is with his godson.
The way Lily was with Severus.
The two of them appear there, dropping to their backs to lounge on the grass of the Hogwarts grounds, floors below. Coincidentally, it's the same spot that he and Lily used to. History, repeating itself in its twisted ways.
Potter touches his own hair, still self-conscious of it, talking to Draco. Draco's smiling, reaches out a hand and runs a scarlet curl between his fingers as he makes some comment, as if in curiosity and observation.
Then come the Weasley twins, Potter and Draco sitting up. One of them pulls Potter in by an arm around his neck, skewing his glasses, which he brings a hand up quickly to fix, the other twin settling on the other side of Draco.
"One shade lighter and..."
"You could have been one of us!"
Potter laughs.
He laughs like her too; with his entire face, his shoulders.
And then his eyes catch Severus, and it fades. Draco follows his line of sight.
Severus looks away, keeping his face blank. He does not look back at them again, and lets himself drift away fully in his reverie.
He does not fault Lily for having chosen James. That is her right, after all; to choose whomever she wished, and be happy even if it was not with him. Even if his hatred for the one she chose was difficult to let go of, he has always understood this much. He has come to understand his fault in why they parted, that he had mistreated her by calling her that terrible word and joined up in school with pureblood supremacists, and he made his peace with her loving the man he loathed.
It did not mean he felt nothing. But he made his peace.
But Lily was the one that made him most himself, feel most cared for. When his parents began to quarrel in the other room, when the screams and the sounds of breaking furniture began and he got injured trying to separate them, it was to her house he used to run to afterward, just so she would take his hand and put butterfly bandaids on his cuts and try to make him laugh again. He'd bring her lilies and put them in her hair. She was his dearest friend, and the only person he had ever cherished until Draco, and there is no regret more bitter than what he had not stopped from happening to her.
He had learned too late what Voldemort was planning, to kill the Potter family. He had gotten there too late. James was dead by then, and there was no sign of life in the house except for the wails from upstairs. His hands shaking like never before, he'd entered the room and known what he'd find and still hoped, somehow, that he would find her standing and alive.
But of course, she was gone.
He'd allowed himself only a moment of grief, before he had forced himself to his feet and tended to the child crying in the crib.
He does not remember the rest of it much; only the memory of holding her boy in his arms, hiding him away from the sight of her cold corpse as he sat against the wall and stared blankly through the shattered window and waited for the Aurors to come and take away her body. He doesn't remember the boy quieting on his own eventually. He remembers, only, his small hand wrapping around his finger while he slept. He remembers not being able to bring himself to look when they did come and take her away.
He could not remember why he had joined the Death-Eaters after. What had he wanted? A place of belonging where there was nowhere else (no more Lily to belong with)? What had it been worth?
It had been worth nothing.
Now every choice he makes is with her in his thoughts, and that means protecting the child she died for. That means keeping his distance if he cannot find it in himself to forget his father in him. That means finding his penance at every turn.
His penance is this; ensuring her son's wellbeing and safety wherever possible without being too near.
His penance is also this; teaching his godson, the closest he may ever have to a child of his own, to be better than he was.
*
Draco's father sends him a howler in his dorm. On it is written the demand, alone. He knows what's coming when his father says that. They are never screams, but they are cold and furious and so full of hatred that they may as well be.
"I don't think you should be here to listen to this," Draco says to Harry quietly. It would hurt him too, and make him angry. One person getting hurt and angry is enough.
"I don't want you to be alone," Harry says, even though he is already tensed.
"It'll be better if you're not here."
This isn't the first time. It's the second. He has made the mistake of opening it in front of Harry, Blaise and Theo that first time, and it was horrible and embarrassing. He was just glad Hermione wasn't there for it, because he can't imagine how she'd feel.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Harry swallows. "Okay. I'll just be out in the commons, okay?"
Draco nods. Harry slides off the bed and leaves the room, shutting the door after him.
"Coming second to a filthy mudblood?" The Howler hisses, furious and disgusted, "Is this how far all the money I've spent on you has taken you? The only subject you've beaten her at is Potions! Clearly you aren't trying very hard, or perhaps you are far too distracted byyour...friends." Draco can hear the sneer. "I hear you've been hanging around that mudblood and blood traitor, the Weasley boy. Now Potter, I could understand... half-mutts have their uses, at least, and he is certainly an influential one, but have I not taught you better than extending your hand to filth? When I see you next, I should hope I'm in a far better mood to do no more than discuss your wrongdoings."
Draco swallows as the Howler sets itself on fire and falls to ashes, the burn of his anger sickening in his throat. He expected the muggleborn slurs. He didn't expect his hatred to touch even Harry, and is relieved to have sent him away.
His father has always seemed fine about his friendship with Harry, but there was always something troubling and wrong in the way he spoke of it; as if it was some kind of scheme or alliance or something transactional, or he only wanted Draco to reap benefits from whatever fame and influence Harry has, to elevate the Malfoys in reputation and appearance. This is not what Draco wants.
Now he's really revealed just what he thinks of it all.
He is so angry that he finds he doesn't care if his father disapproves of his friends. He cares for Hermione and Harry is the best thing that has ever happened to him, and even if he doesn't get along with Weasley so well, he makes Harry happy.
If this is the way his father thinks, if he calls Hermione a 'mudblood' and he thinks of Harry as a 'half-mutt', then what he thinks of Draco is hardly worth much. Draco loves him, but he has stopped longing for his father's approval a long time ago when he was too busy at the Ministry or away on his work trips to come for half of his birthdays or go flying with him in the summers or just be there.
Severus was the one who showed up.
Severus was there for all his birthdays.
Severus tutored him in potions and taught him how to fly and spent time with him.
Severus was there.
"Are you alright?" Harry is standing in the doorway, half behind the wall with his hand on the doorframe.
"Yes," Draco says, and deliberately relaxes, clenched fists loosening around the sheets. He clears his throat. "I hope you only just came back?"
"Yeah," Harry says. He comes over and sits beside him on the bed. "I mean, I only heard the last part. What did he mean?"
"Nothing," Draco says. "He says that but he'll just tell me the same old stuff he's always told me, about - muggleborns and 'blood traitors' and all that rubbish. I'll listen and nod and when he asks me what I've understood, I'll repeat it back just so he'll stop."
"Oh," is all Harry says, as if he doesn't know what else to.
Draco remembers the first time he said the word mudblood, when he was six and he was repeating whatever he'd heard his father say, playing with his toys.
Severus had grabbed him by the arm, not so roughly but enough that it rattled him, and said firmly, you will not. say that word ever again. Do you understand me?
Over the years, he observed his father say and believe all these things he'd once thought he should say and believe as well, but in his confusion, he always turned to Severus, who talked him through it and prevented such ideas from taking root in his mind. His father still does not know of this, since Draco pretends to be absorbing all of it.
His mother never pushed for it so much either. She had a sister who married a muggle, that she loved very dearly, that Draco thinks she still loves very dearly, even if they are estranged and she no longer knows how to say this aloud. But it has always shown in the way she, even if rarely, speaks of her. Andromeda. Her views aren't so clear, but maybe she only went with the tide. It is a hard thing to fight against it, Severus said, but you are less ashamed with yourself for it. You are more of yourself.
You always have a choice in what you believe. And every choice you make yourself makes you into your own person.
You are not your father.
Draco knows of the way his mother sounded, quiet grief and shame; those times he'd heard her speak to Severus of the way they'd cut Andromeda out, how she wished she had fought for her more when they were younger. She does not know how to go back to her.
"I could have been like him, you know," Draco says softly. "It would have been so easy, if I hadn't had Severus."
If, between his father and godfather, there hadn't been only one person he cared to make proud anymore.
"We wouldn't have been friends," Draco says, looking at Harry, who is just listening. He is so good at listening.
He would have never asked Dobby to take him somewhere new that Christmas, ended up in a muggle neighbourhood and started talking to that wondrous boy sitting alone on the swings, now sitting here in front of him.
"But we are," Harry says, with a small smile. "And you're nothing like him."
Draco half-smiles, a quirk at one side of his mouth. He doesn't say that sometimes he still fears he might become so.
"Professor Snape is... important to you," Harry says, curiously. He has been curious about him ever since he's learned of Severus protecting Harry against Quirrell from the backgrounds.
"Very," Draco says.
"And he doesn't believe in all that stuff either?"
"No. But he used to, I suppose. His mother was a pureblood witch and his father was a muggle, but he was a bad man, so I theorise that partly influenced his beliefs. It took him a long time to realise that those things aren't exactly related. And... he also met a girl."
A dear friend, he called her. The brightest witch of her age, and of the finest character. Not so unlike Hermione, now that he thinks of it. When Draco had questioned if it was true what his father said; that muggleborns were fundamentally of lesser talent and intelligence, she was among his examples to the contrary. He never told Draco her name. He never told Draco if it was because of her that he made himself better than he once was, but Draco can put two and two together; that she is the only person he has ever spoken of with such fondness. He has never heard him sound the way he did then.
Severus has never said it and he never will, and Draco has never asked and he never will, but he is sure he loved her.
He does not tell Harry that last part though.
"I found a picture of the two of them in his office once," he does say, "So I suppose she meant a lot to him."
"Who was she?"
"I don't know. She was pretty though. Red hair. Green eyes..." His voice trails off.
Oh.
Draco's mind is suddenly very, very focused on Harry's red hair and green eyes. He is remembering the Mirror of Erised.
My mum has red hair and green eyes, like mine.
Harry swallows hard, wide-eyed. He is thinking the same thing.
"Do you think..." Harry says.
"I don't know. Do you have a picture of your mother?"
"Yeah," Harry says quickly, and then stands to his feet and moves for his trunk. He ruffles through and emerges with a still picture of his mum and dad, dancing together by a fountain, "Here."
"They were both young in that picture. But... she looks like her. Still, I'm sure there's loads of people that might have those features..." Except not really. Except he knows Harry's mother would have been around the same age as Severus is today. Except it makes sense as to why he tried so hard to protect Harry, beyond him simply being a responsible and concerned Professor.
*
That night, there is an invisible intruder in Severus' office.
He is casting a whispered Alohomora on his drawers, only the moonlight from the window behind him any illumination. Severus stands for a few seconds, looming silent and unmoving.
"What," Severus drawls flatly. He waits for the invisible boy to stop being startled, nearly knocking his quill holder off his desk, before completely going soundless in his fear, "are you doing, Potter?"
There is nothing. Severus waves his wand to cast a Lumos.
"Take off your cloak."
After a few delayed seconds, Potter does.
Under his cloak, he is holding a picture. The picture that was in his drawer.
The resentment begins to bubble up into anger. It's his father's cloak and it's his father's antics, sneaking around all the time, always up to something, always trying to ruin something for him.
"Put. it back," he forces out, coldly, through his teeth. It takes every fibre of his being to stay calm.
Potter slowly does, before he begins to fidget with his cloak.
"And get out."
"Yes Sir."
Potter moves quickly past him. Severus does not turn around to watch him go.
The scuff of footsteps stop suddenly.
He never hears the door open and close.
"What was she like?" Potter asks quietly, hesitantly, "My mother?"
For a few seconds, Severus merely stares through the window, unacknowledging.
(He remembers staring through another window once; shattered and dark and silent with death. A sleeping baby in his arms. A miniscule hand around his finger.)
He waits for Potter to take the hint.
He does not.
Severus turns around, back rigid, ominously slow.
He is standing there. So stubbornly.
Have I not told you to leave? he should say.
He finds that every second he is looking at him makes it harder to grip on to his anger, chipping away into that which is left behind when there is no anger to keep it at bay, that which does not let him speak.
"I know she was your best friend," he says. He looks as tentative as he is hopeful. Not accepting his silence as an answer. "What was she like when she was young?"
How he has worked this out, he does not know, though he can imagine it is in part to do with his friendship with Draco and a lot of connecting things together, considering he hasn't told Draco as much either. The boy is clever, at least, even if his grades do not quite reflect so.
The world is quiet at this time of night. He stands there so stubbornly, a small boy with his curls turned scarlet and her eyes and all her stubbornness and gentleness. He is all that's left of her.
His eyes are so very green.
They will always be hers.
Always.
(This is important; a crossroads.
His father or his mother.
Resentment or grief.
To distance himself or to not.
To remain silent now or to say—)
"Perhaps you'd like to sit." His throat rasps slightly, known only to himself.
The boy stands rooted in his surprise for a long moment, staring at him round-eyed. His glasses are far too big.
"Before I change my mind," Severus drawls, bored.
That spurs him into action. He comes over, quickly past him as if fearing just that, and takes the seat. He ducks his head, as if to hide his slight smile. Severus follows and settles down across from him at the desk, hands clasping together. His lips tighten at the corners. The silence lulls long between them, somewhat nervous on the boy's part.
"Ask away then."
Long into the night, he asks about her, clumsily grasping at questions, whatever he can think of to ask. They are all of the most mundane things: her favourite colour, her favourite animal, what her hobbies were, what she wanted to be when she grew up. Severus answers them all. Blue. A puffskein. Playing muggle guitar. To be an Auror. The boy's eyes are bright and hungry, searching for her in all these small details about her person, trying to know her in every way but the one way he can't.
The potion wears off eventually as it would have, and again, he looks like his father more than his mother, but his eyes will always be green and he never quite stops being Lily's boy to Severus again.