So, how do we want to play this? Severin mentally asked his father as they rode the spiral stairs up to the Headmaster's office. Just be normal, try to astonish them by acting really happy and mushy and stuff, or scare 'em by being stiltingly formal?
If it is just Albus, we'll do normal, if Minerva's there we must go for the stiltingly formal.
Severin grinned up at his father, and he smirked back.
"Enter Severus!" the headmaster called through the door a moment before it began opening. The two Snapes entered into the office and found Albus, Minerva, and Hagrid all sitting near the cheerful fireplace. Severin stood a little straighter as he caught sight of his godmother and reminded himself to call his father nothing more casual than 'Father' and maybe even through in a few 'Professor's. He stole a look towards his dad and was surprised to find him looking at Hagrid with the expression of a man about to walk into a dragon's den with only an inkbottle to defend himself with. Not that Severin had ever seen anyone about to walk into a dragon's den with only an inkbottle to defend himself with.
The headmaster smiled brightly, "Ah, Severus, I thought you might come by tonight, so I invited along the other two members of the staff who would very much like to meet your son. I hope you don't mind." Despite the words, Severin got the impression that, if his father did mind, he wasn't going to do anything about it. Revenge for keeping Severin secret, perhaps? The headmaster turned to the boy without waiting for a response from his father with a curious smile. "So you are Severus's son who we have heard so little about."
Suddenly nervous for reasons he couldn't explain, he nodded. "Yes, sir." Good thing they had decided on a formal interaction. He didn't think he could handle happy or normal right now. And Dad wasn't helping with the way he was still watching Hagrid as if expecting the half giant to grow fangs and attack.
"Severus, Severin, please, stop hovering and take a seat," the headmaster waved them toward an unoccupied sofa that Severin couldn't remember from the countless other times his father had been in the office. His father managed a recovery and gave the eager-looking floral sofa a sneer before gingerly lowering himself onto it.
When Severin hesitated, his father gave him an impatient look. "Sit, Severin," he instructed sharply, drawing frowns of varying intensity from the other professors.
Severin ducked his head, as much to hide the laughter he feared might show on his face as to act apologetic and submissive. As ridiculous as he found the thought of his father actually meaning the censure in his tone, the boy found it somewhat disturbing that these people who his dad had liked well enough to name his godparents or father his child couldn't recognize the falseness of it. Still, he played his role to the hilt and sat down meekly beside his father. "Yes, sir." At the very least, the current atmosphere would discourage hugging.
The headmaster's smile was starting to look a little forced. "Severin, why don't you tell us a bit about yourself."
A bit about himself, huh? Like he could condense the entirety of his life into a few sentences. Well, he supposed there had been one constant. "I'm good at potions. I can brew every potion on Professor Snape's syllabus, for every year," he said with no small trace of pride. "Professor Snape says I am . . . proficient," he added, imbuing the last word with Essence of Father. Severin could tell it was everything his father could do not to break down and crack a smile.
Dumbledore twinkled and chuckled a bit, "High praise, indeed." Severin nodded agreement, feeling quite irrationally pleased.
His godmother, however, was looking at Dad with a look of dismay. "Surely you don't treat your own son as you do your students, Severus," she asked worriedly.
His father frowned at her. "Of course I treat him as a pupil. Too many young wizards come to this school with no prior knowledge of magic. He also did not attend primary school, so his education in other matters fell to me as well. Severin, tell your godmother how old you were when you learned to read."
Severin frowned in confusion. "I have always been able to read, Father." That was like asking when did he learn to speak. What a stupid question.
"Yeh did let the poor tyke play dincha, Prof'sor?"
Both Snapes gave him identical raised-brow expressions. "Play?" they repeated together, making the word sound foreign. The three professors looked at them in horror. Severin broke first. Laughter burst from him in peals, and he had to fold double with their intensity, and wipe away tears. When he recovered enough to breathe and look at the adults again, his father was rubbing his back in circles, smirking in amusement at his fellow teachers. He looked down at Severin and ask, "Alright there, Sev?"
"Doing great, dad," Severin wheezed. "You shoulda seen your faces," he told the three professors, and nearly broke down into laughter again at the mere memory. He grinned back up at his father again, "Sorry, I couldn't help it. It was just so funny." His father's smirk and incline of the head conceded the point and passed forgiveness for the premature end of their game.
"Of course he played, Rubeus. He's a child. They don't know how not to play."
Severin thought his dad sounded strangely defensive, so he added his own two knuts on the subject, "We played Potions Master's Apprentice, and we played Going to Hogwarts, and we played The Potter Boy, and we played -"
"The Potter Boy?" the Headmaster repeated, twinkling madly now.
Dad turned suddenly expressionless, and a mental probe revealed acute embarrassment, but Severus didn't see what the problem was so he explained anyway, "Yeah, I ran around in his bathrobe pretending it was an invisibility cloak, and he'd try to find me and give me a detention, and calling out 'I know you're there, Potter.'" Severin noted the other three adults were looking at his father oddly.
"It was a variation on Hide and Seek," Dad said stiffly.
"And sometimes Death Eaters would attack while I was in my invisibility cloak and I would have to defeat Voldemort," Severin added, "Because that's what the Potter Boy always did. After that I would have to go to the Hospital Wing, because the Potter Boy always did that too."
"The Hospital Wing was his bedroom, and Death Eaters only attacked at bedtime," Dad stated in the same tone as before. "As a six year old, he was impossible to get to go to sleep."
Severin considered this revelation. "Huh. I never noticed that. Sneaky, dad. Very sneaky."
"Thank you." The other professors were staring at them again, looking like they had just watched the two Snapes, or perhaps more accurately, Severin's father, morph into a stranger.
"You played pretend, Severus?" Minerva asked haltingly, sounding shocked.
His father sneered slightly, "A moment ago you were horrified when you thought I didn't play with my son, now you look ready to cart me off to St. Mungo's because I did."
"Yeah, that's really not fair," Severin added, then he grinned widely, "He wasn't too good at pretend anyway. He was almost always a teacher except when he was a Death Eater." There was a sudden tension in the air. "Neither took much pretending," Severin finished with all the caution of a bather sticking his toe in the water to test the temperature.
"He knows about that?" the Headmaster asked Dad sharply.
"Of course he does," Dad snapped back. "It wasn't exactly something I could hide when I came back bleeding and trembling. He could mix a simple healing draught by the time he was three."
"The Potter Boy destroyed Voldemort when I was five and a half," Severin picked up the story. "But Dad was really hurt. He had a fever and sometimes talked about bad things and used bad words and even once blew up the turtle aquarium because he thought it was a bad man named Lucius. Crackers was okay since I had moved him to the bathtub and was keeping wet hand cloths in it instead. When Dad got better he explained what happened: why he was hurt and what the Potter Boy did and that he wouldn't get hurt like that anymore. That's why I started to pretend to be Potter in the first place. He stopped Daddy from getting hurt again."
For some reason, Hagrid looked about ready to burst into tears, while Minerva was subtly dabbing at her own eyes. The Headmaster looked solemn. "Severus, what would have happened to Severin if you had been killed?"
"In the first two years, I had a House Elf of my mother's looking after him. If I failed to return after several days, the elf was to take Severin to my mother. After that," his father trailed off.
"If he died, I was supposed to go to Hagrid." As his name was mentioned, the other adults turned to look at the Half Giant who was staring back at Severin. The boy met the big man's dark eyes squarely. "I was supposed to tell you, let's see if I can remember it now. Um. Hi. My name is Severin," he paused, then made a face and shook his head before looking at his father, "What came next? Was it the part about you being dead or the part about him being my dad?"
"'Mommy gave me this note to give you.'"
Severin scowled at him. "That was when I was like three. I actually had a whole little speech by the time the Potter Boy finished it all." He realized the professors were doing their staring-at-Dad thing again.
"Merlin, Severus."
Dad scowled at her, "My life expectancy was nil, Minerva, what else could I do?"
Just then, Severin remembered and blurted out his speech, "'Hi, my name is Severin. My mum was killed, and you are my dad. Can I live with you and Charlie now?' Ok, it wasn't that long of a speech, it just seemed that way back then." He grinned sheepishly, "I had to remember three whole sentences."
"Headmaster," his father said suddenly, "it is time and past time for Severin to be in bed."
Severin groaned. "But, Dad."
"Don't make me take house points."
He sighed. "Fine. Are you coming, too, or do you have to have that talk with Hagrid?"
Both Snapes looked toward the half giant who looked like he was desperate for answers by now but was somehow just barely restraining himself from asking. Dad sighed, "I suppose I should talk to your father. If only to get it over with." That looked like it only exacerbated the difficulty Hagrid was having.
"Well, good luck then," Severin bid his farewell cheerfully. "Good night, godmother, godfather, Hagrid."
"Straight back to the dormitories, Severin," his father reminded. "I will know if you do otherwise." Severin took that to mean his father would be mentally watching him, so he decided it would be smart to just go straight back.
"Can he find his way?" Minerva asked quietly, to which he just barely heard his father reply, "Yes, of course," before the door to the Headmaster's office closed behind him.
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Severus looked around the room as his son rode the spiral staircase back down the corridor and began the trek back to the Slytherin rooms. Minerva and Albus watched the door, as if they could see Severin descending the stairs. For all he knew, Albus could. It would certainly explain how the Headmaster always knew it was him when he came up.
His eye fell next upon Hagrid who watched him as he would a rabid beast. Or perhaps simply a very dangerous beast that he was trying to figure out how to become friends with. Severus wasn't sure which classification would be worse. "I will go directly to the point, then," Severus said, hoping to get this over with quickly. "Hagrid, the night I made the dugbog's potion in your hut, there was . . . a disturbance, a howl, if I remember correctly, from the forest. It startled Fang, who ran across the room and bumped into my work table. The potion was finished except for the final ingredient which would prevent it from becoming fatal if the potion taker did not become pregnant.
"When the bloody hound hit the table, the incomplete potion was jarred enough to splash toward me. You tried to push me out of the way, but it was too late. We both got hit. I cleaned the spill, put aside a small vial for the dugbog, and we . . . we decided that pregnancy was better than death, and neither of us had anyone in particular we wished to have a child with, so we . . . used your bed." Severus swallowed and Hagrid's eyes grew large. "After we accomplished impregnating each other, you fell asleep. Not wanting anyone to know that I was pregnant, I cast obliviate, and left. At the time, I had every intention of putting my own unborn up for adoption once it was born. By Christmas, that was no longer an option."
Minerva smiled, "Did you feel him kick then?"
Severus's eyes turned haunted and he shook his head. "I heard him scream. He should have died. The Cruciatus does awful things to a fetus. But the protection of the potion was powerful and it didn't kill him. I think he has finally stopped having nightmares about it. There hasn't been one in over a year."
They looked at him with sympathetic horror. Albus spoke slowly, "I am surprised he remembered it well enough to have nightmares at all."
"I have read the theory that a child starts to keep memories when he or she has the words to describe them." He looked between his three colleagues. "On Christmas Eve, three and a half months after he was conceived, Severin opened a mental link to me. From that point on, he was exposed to the English language. He had direct access to my mind. He was returning words to me by two months after he was born, though he didn't speak until he was about a year old, and I think that was only because the house elf couldn't hear his mental voice. He never made baby babbles, and when he did speak, he went straight into sentences instead of individual words. The first thing he ever said aloud was 'Floppy, my juice spilled.' Reading followed the same pattern. I never taught him to read, he picked it up from being in my mind while I was doing it. It was something of a shock to return home from classes one day and find my one and a half year old son sitting quietly in his playpen and reading a child's novel the house elf had found for him somewhere."
Albus chuckled while Hagrid and Minerva looked as shocked as he must have that day. "When the house elf left, he had only what I put in the pen with him to amuse himself with. He tended to get bored with those quickly, so he took to watching my day through my eyes. He knows his way around the castle as well as I do. He knows the names, faces, and potions ability of every second year and up in the school. He knows my syllabus inside and out. He has seen Charlie."
"And what does Severin think of Charlie?" Albus asked curiously.
"He knows they are brothers, and told Charlie so on the train this afternoon." Severus smirked, "Charlie evidently hugged him, which Severin did not take well at all." He looked at Hagrid, "I believe your son got off without being hexed, though it was doubtless a near thing." He turned back to Albus, "Severin is quite curious about his brother, but he rarely talks to me about him. He has a severe case of sibling rivalry and does not want me to have anything to do with Charlie. Until now, I have complied with his request. Today, however, I told him he had to choose between having me solely to himself, or extending the family to include Charlie and Hagrid. His curiosity won over his jealousy, and so the boys are not going to attempt to pretend to be anything but brothers. Given their appearances, I expect this is probably the wiser course in the long run anyway."
Hagrid stood abruptly and began moving towards him. He perforce, stood as well, not wanting to get trapped on the floral sofa by a possibly enraged half giant whose son he had kept from him. Except, he didn't look enraged. He looked . . . Severus realized that he looked tearfully happy far too late and did not mange to escape the powerful hug that enfolded him.
Severus stiffened, and every point of contact between them burned with molten fire. He was terrifyingly aware that he was in the embrace of the only man who had ever penetrated him. It was strangely arousing to know that he was again being touched by someone who had enjoyed entering him, strangely arousing to know that he had once seen the soft lump pressed into his stomach. Terrifying, but even more arousing, to realize that the soft lump was hardening.
But it was Hagrid who stepped hastily away. Severus had made no move to escape, not even a look to Minerva or Albus for help. His black eyes met Hagrid's embarrassed ones, and he wondered what, if any, emotion he was giving away to the half-giant. He felt fear, confusion, and arousal all very strongly, but hoped none of them made it to his eyes. He hoped Hagrid just saw a cold blank mask looking back at him. "I have a syllabus to revise," he excused himself and left the office.
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"Rubeus," Hagrid jerked out of his contemplation of the door Snape had left through to look at the Headmaster.
"Aye, Prof'sor?"
"Albus, Rubeus," Dumbledore invited, though the old wizard had given up years ago that Hagrid would call him by his first name. "May I ask you a personal question?" he asked, with a brief darted look toward the door.
"Sure," Hagrid granted, not really giving the request any consideration.
Consequently, the Headmaster's next question took him entirely by surprise, "Have you feelings for Severus?"
"Prof'sor Snape, sir? No, sir," he answered by gut instinct before he remembered what had happened during that ill advised hug moments before. "Leastwise, I doan think so."
"Why do you ask, Albus?" McGonagall asked, sounding a bit shocked by the turn in the conversation.
Dumbledore looked at the door again. "Severus didn't pull away."
Hagrid found himself speared by McGonagall's stare. He shifted nervously. "He didn't, did he?" she said after a moment. "Albus what does this mean?"
The Headmaster chuckled, "Well, it isn't the end of the world or that hell has frozen over. I do think, however, that our potions master has developed a liking for our Care of Magical Creatures professor."
Hagrid wasn't convinced the three were unrelated, and, by her expression, McGonagall agreed with him. Then he reconsidered the hug in that light. Snape had frozen when they had touched. That was normal for him. His personal space was twice the width of anybody else's, and to brush by him accidentally was to risk a hexing. But he had not fought the embrace, hadn't even draw his wand. He hadn't moved. But Hagrid had felt the furious speed of the smaller man's pounding heart. He had taken that for fury at the invasion of his space, but what if it had been something else? And what in Merlin's name had caused himself to turn hard? It had been a simple hug of the variety he gave the Weasleys or the Potters. Had he been subconsciously responding to pheromones coming from Snape? But if that was the case, then Snape must have been . . . surely not.
He recalled with unease the look Snape had given him after the hug. Empty of anything, completely at odds with the wildly pounding heart he could still almost feel. What had gone through the potion master's mind then? And how had he sounded so calm and normal when he excused himself?
"Albus, I'll be the first to admit that he seems to make a fairly decent father after all, but surely you can not expect me to believe that Severus is looking for a relationship of any kind with Rubeus, or anyone else."
The Headmaster's eyes twinkled. "It does seem a bit far fetched. However, before you leave, I give you the observation: even with threat of death if he failed to get pregnant, Severus would not have settled for anything less than his first choice."
"You heard him, Albus, he said Rubeus and himself chose the other because there was no one else they preferred. That doesn't imply they did want each other."
Albus smiled enigmatically, "I am certain Severus sees it the same way. However, the boy is skilled with keeping secrets. Even from himself. He did not pull away, Minerva. He does not even hug his son." Hagrid wondered how he knew that, but did not doubt the Headmaster's word. So. Snape liked him. In that way. This was going to take some getting used to. He found, oddly, that he didn't particularly object. Hagrid hummed the entire way back to his hut.
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