Chapter Twenty-Six of 'Kairos Amid the Ruins'- A View from Shattered Mirrors
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Chapter One.
Title: Kairos Amid the Ruins (26/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Orion Black, Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, mentions of various canon pairings
Content Notes: Time travel, heavy angst, Harry mentoring Severus, violence, gore, minor character deaths, AU
Rating: R
Summary: Harry’s attempt to time travel and fix the past went badly awry. Time shattered, and the various pieces of the universe clung to each other as best they could. Harry finds himself in 1961, with Albus Dumbledore the Minister for Magic, Gellert Grindelwald his loving husband, Voldemort newly defeated…and Severus Snape being proclaimed the Boy-Who-Lived
Author’s Note: This is going to be a long story, focusing on Harry mentoring Severus as the Boy-Who-Lived, with flashbacks to an alternate World War II. The Harry-Severus mentorship will remain gen. However, the romantic pairings are a prominent part of the story. The word “Kairos” comes from the Greek, meaning a lucky moment, or the right moment, to act.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Six-A View from Shattered Mirrors
“You didn’t come! And I waited for you and you still didn’t come!”
Harry winced as Severus’s small fists smashed into his chest. Mariana hovered behind Severus, looking as if she would pull him away in a second, but also as if she was trying to hide a smile.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, and finally took Severus’s fists and held the boy a little away from him. It wasn’t easy. Severus was tall for his age now, and he was panting and struggling. And well, there was the fact that Harry didn’t really want to hurt or restrain him. “I don’t want to do something like that to you again-”
“Then don’t!”
Harry licked his lips and went on, trying to ignore the way that Mariana opened her mouth and then shut it again. “I can’t promise I’ll always be here when you need me, because I don’t know that. But I can promise that I won’t deliberately stay away like I did this last time.”
Severus must have been calmer than Harry thought, because he gave a loud huff and flipping his dark hair over his shoulder. “Why did you stay away in the first place, Mr. Harry?” he demanded, voice so imperious that it almost wasn’t a question.
Harry sighed and guided Severus over to the couch on the far side of the drawing room. Severus sat down on it with him, but gave him a stern look that told Harry he was very much still on probation.
“I was having a few bad weeks,” Harry explained. He wasn’t going to explain to Severus about how much he missed his original timeline or how he had injured himself by hitting his fingers on the edge of the desk. The last part was something no one needed to hear. The first part-Severus would probably misinterpret it and think Harry wished he’d never come here or got to know him. “I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was convinced that anyone I saw or talked to would get hurt.”
Severus frowned. Mariana made a soft sound in her throat, and Harry glanced at her. Honestly, she would understand more from even just that brief description than Severus would. He knew she might order him to leave, although it probably wouldn’t hold for long when Severus liked him so much.
But Mariana, although she had taken a step forwards, froze again and frowned at Harry, and he realized that her eyes were fixed on him, as if she was concerned for him more than her grandson. Harry turned away abruptly and faced Severus.
“Why would they get hurt?” Severus asked. “Did you want to curse people? Sometimes I feel like that.”
Harry chuckled before he could stop himself, and he felt more than saw Mariana smile. “No. I just-you know that when I came back in time, I shattered the timeline and changed it?”
“Yes. Grandmama told me that.”
“I changed things so much that basically no one is who they used to be.” Harry stared at Severus and tried to imagine what the original Severus Snape would have to say about his child self. Honestly, it would probably just be a bunch of insults about Harry’s intelligence and father. “I couldn’t help thinking that I made everything worse.”
“Harry.”
Mariana’s voice was so tense that Harry looked up with his hand straying to the Elder Wand, wondering if Seneca was headed for the sitting room or something equally dire. But instead, she was staring at him with large eyes. “In the original timeline, did I raise Severus?” she asked. “Or was it his grandfather?”
“Neither,” Harry said quietly. “It was his parents. He didn’t-Voldemort didn’t come seeking him the way he did in this timeline.”
Mariana closed her eyes once. Severus stirred under Harry’s arm, and Harry glanced at him, wondering if he should hear this. But Severus’s flat stare said that Harry wasn’t about to get away with sending him to another room.
“What kind of relationship did we have with him?” Mariana whispered. “Do you know? Did Seneca try to interfere? Did I find the strength to stand up to him?”
“I really don’t know. I didn’t know you there. I’m from-considerably further into the future. And the Severus Snape I knew there never spoke to me about his relationship with you. I didn’t even know your names until I came back in time.” Harry shook his head when she opened her mouth again. “Mariana, please understand. I don’t even know that his grandparents in that timeline were you and Seneca. So many things have changed that some people might exist who never did before, and some people might not have been born who were in that time and place.”
Severus snorted. “Well, I like existing,” he declared. “And I like being raised by Grandmama. That means that I’m glad we’re in this timeline.”
“I rather like existing, myself.” Mariana turned back to Harry after a fleeting smile at her grandson. “And you’re not going to try something silly like attempting to change the timeline back?”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” Harry admitted. “I still believe that it would have been better if I’d never shattered the timeline in the first place, but I won’t try to change it again.”
Severus tugged on his sleeve. “That means you’re saying that it would have been better if you’d never come back and met me.”
“Severus-”
“That’s what you’re saying.” Severus leaned away from him without getting off the couch, his eyes liquid and full of hurt. “So do you just want to go away and live with the people you used to live with and leave me alone?”
Harry sighed and wrapped his arms around Severus. Severus acted so grown-up and spoke so well and knew so much thanks to the spells his mother had used on him, and probably the teaching Mariana had given him, that it was hard to remember sometimes that he was just a little boy.
“No, I don’t want to leave you alone,” Harry whispered. “I can’t regret meeting you, Severus, even though I do regret all the lives I changed and might have made worse.”
“Might have made?” Mariana took a step towards the couch. “So you don’t know for certain?”
“No, because how can I know that someone isn’t going to suffer something worse in the future than they suffered in the past? It might seem as if their lives are better now, but I can’t-I can’t be sure-”
Harry licked his lips, and shook his head, and fell silent. Nothing horrible had happened after he’d told Black the truth, so he’d thought that he might be able to tell Severus and Mariana, too. But plain words couldn’t convey the horror that welled up inside him.
“So let me see if I understand this,” Mariana said, when a few more moments had passed in silence, and Severus had settled back against Harry’s side. “You don’t know if you’ve made many people’s lives worse. At the moment, the evidence suggests that they might be better. And you’re still on the verge of fainting at the thought that you might make them worse in the future?”
“I’m not on the verge of fainting.”
“You sound like it.” Mariana smiled at him then, and it was a quick and darting thing. Harry had expected that, but not how bright it was. “And you’ll forgive me for accepting you the way you are while also believing that you worry unnecessarily.”
Harry sighed and shrugged. He supposed that from her perspective, it would be better to raise Severus, and maybe exist, than to leave him with the Snapes. Just like it was better from Orion’s perspective for his sons to possibly have longer lives, and to have virtually no chance of becoming Death Eaters.
But the future hung before him like a motionless cloud, and who knew what it concealed?
“You will also permit both me and Severus, I hope,” Mariana went on, settling into an armchair nearest them, “to feel happier for having you in our lives.”
“I am very happy for having you in my life,” Severus said promptly, as if he thought Harry might run away if he didn’t. He turned and glanced at him anxiously. “And you really aren’t going to go away.”
“No,” Harry said, smiling at him.
Severus wasn’t satisfied. “And you aren’t going to take yourself away?”
Harry paused. That had been what he was doing when he was hiding in his rooms at Hogwarts, he supposed. But it had taken Severus’s wisdom to put it like that and make him see what he was really doing. Harry finally nodded, when he saw the way that Severus’s face was growing tighter and tenser.
“Then everything is well,” said Severus, with the same pompous intonation that Harry had heard Black use.
Harry pictured for a second what his own time’s Snape would have looked like if Harry had compared him to a member of the Black family, and snorted. Then he looked down at the one who was here, and existed, and who would have a much longer and happier life, if Harry had anything to say about it.
Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about what my time’s Snape would have cared about.
*
“I appreciate your discretion.”
Harry said that in stiff tones, avoiding his eyes, and Orion stomped on the impulse to reach for him. It wouldn’t be something that would benefit either him or Harry, in the end. He merely inclined his head.
Harry looked around the kitchen as though he suspected Orion was trying to hide Sirius and Regulus from him. “Where are the boys?”
“In the nursery. They said they had some surprises prepared for you, and I told them they couldn’t bring them into the kitchen. The last one made the table very nearly explode.”
Harry’s eyes widened and locked onto the barely visible crack in the middle of the table. Orion had managed to repair it, more or less, but he had also banned the use of the “magic powder” left behind from an earlier generation that Sirius had somehow discovered hidden behind the jar of Floo powder.
A second later, Harry laughed.
Orion half-closed his eyes. He could admit, if only to himself, how much he had missed that sound. He looked at Harry again to find the man watching him, cautious but with a corner of his mouth ticking up as if escaping from his control.
“That much, huh?” Harry asked, obscurely, and then shook his head when Orion would have replied. “Never mind, let’s go see Sirius and Regulus.”
Orion followed Harry to the nursery, at least content that he had made Harry laugh. And earned his trust through something as simple as keeping his secrets.
It made Orion wonder what Harry had had to suffer before, if someone not betraying his trust meant that much to him.
Sirius crowed the instant he saw Harry, and stood up with his hands tucked firmly behind his back. “Mr. Harry!”
Regulus was bolder, and ran over to hurl himself against Harry’s legs. Harry just bent over and gathered him up, shaking him a little. “What do you think you are, an Abraxan?” he demanded.
“Yes!” Regulus flung his arms out and gave a sound that wasn’t that far from a good imitation of a winged horse’s whinny. “Fly me around, Mr. Harry! I’m an Abraxan!”
Harry spun in the middle of the nursery, his arms extended so that he could spin Regulus as far as possible, both of them laughing. Orion lingered near the doorway, holding his breath and hoping that neither Harry nor his sons would remember that he was there for the moment.
It was thrilling and soothing beyond words, to see Harry like this. To see him playing with Sirius and Regulus as if they were family.
I would like to offer this home to him always.
The only problem was that Orion doubted Harry would agree if he simply made the offer. He would need to couch it in some way that would make Harry think the primary benefit would be to other people. Orion shook his head in irritation.
Harry seemed to catch the movement from the corner of his eye. At once, he set Regulus down, and turned away from him, although he kept a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Orion frowned. Did he think I disapproved of his spinning Regulus around?
Of course he did, Orion realized as Harry knelt down in front of Sirius and gave him a careful smile, as if he wanted to show off that he wasn’t going to snatch the boy up. It made sense, Orion supposed, with the things Harry had told him and how much he still felt separate from this timeline. But Orion could wish that it did not make so much sense.
“I made some biscuits for you,” Sirius said, his eyes wide and his smile innocent if you thought doxies were innocent.
Harry’s smile shaded into a real one. “Did you? What kind?”
“Chocolate,” Sirius said immediately, and moved his hands out from behind his back. They were full of crusted mud with ribbons sticking out of them. No one would be fooled by them for a moment, but for a four-year-old, they were obviously the best prank in the world.
“Wow, they look good!” Harry widened his eyes.
Sirius stifled his giggle. Regulus looked anxiously back and forth between Harry and his brother. “Mr. Harry,” he began, and then stopped, as if he wanted to warn him but didn’t know how.
“Yum,” Harry said, and dipped his hand into the “chocolate” wrapped around one of Sirius’s palms, and held it to his mouth. He made a creditable imitation of chewing it, although Orion was also sure it was only an imitation.
Sirius started to laugh, and the rest of the supposed biscuits crumbled and fell out of his hand. “It’s not chocolate, it’s mud!” he howled, and hopped up and down in place. “You fell for it, Mr. Harry, you fell for it!”
“Oh, no,” Harry said, and clutched his hands to either side of his throat. “It tastes horrible!” He pretended to spit it out, while Sirius went on laughing, and even Regulus had overcome his caution to giggle behind his hand.
Harry sat up with a wink at them, and then caught Orion’s eye again. He jerked his head up, and his cheeks flushed.
He really does believe that I disapprove of everything he does. What kind of reputation did I have in his former world, since there is no way that he could have met me face to face?
Or what did Sirius tell him about me? What kind of father was I?
Orion managed to banish the idea after a few moments of unpleasant contemplation. What he had been was not as important as the fact that he had the opportunity now to be a better one.
Both a father, and a husband.
*
“Don’t go away again.”
Harry blinked down at Sirius. Sirius had been cheerful all through the afternoon, giggling when Harry told him jokes and tickled him, and competing with Regulus to see who could get Harry to laugh more often. But now he was leaning against Harry’s legs, arms so tightly wrapped around them that Harry knew he would have tripped if he’d tried to walk.
“Are you okay, Sirius?” Harry whispered, bending over to smooth Sirius’s wild black curls down. The image of Sirius with wild hair in another world tried to intrude. Harry banished it. That one wasn’t coming back.
“You went away,” Sirius said, and leaned harder against him. Harry had to brace himself on the mantel above the fireplace. “You left. No one knew where you were. The owls came back.” He leaned harder. “Stay here.”
Harry swallowed a little. “You know I have to go back to Hogwarts. It’s where I work.” But he also knew that Sirius wasn’t talking about that.
Sirius leaned back enough to give him a look that said he thought Harry was being stupid. “I don’t mean that. I mean that you didn’t want to come back.”
“I’ll always want to come back,” Harry said, and knelt down to hug Sirius. “I won’t leave you like that again.”
Sirius clung to him for one more moment, then stepped reluctantly back. Regulus had already fallen asleep and been carried off to his bedroom by house-elves, and so Sirius and Orion were the ones seeing Harry off in the Floo room.
Reluctantly, Harry turned to Orion and held out his hand. He wasn’t-it was still odd, to think that he could trust the man who had been so aggressively wooing him for a while. But Orion had kept his word about not betraying the secrets Harry had offered him, and he was the father of two boys Harry wished very much to spend more time with.
Don’t go away again.
For the sake of keeping that promise, Harry thought he could put up with their father.
Orion gave him an intense look and squeezed his hand once, but didn’t try to keep a hold of it, just releasing it with a small nod. Harry blinked, and Orion gave him a faint smile, then turned and walked over to Sirius, curving an arm around his son’s shoulders.
“We’ll be waiting for you when you come back, Harry,” he said quietly.
Going through the Floo was always disorienting for Harry, but it was even more so this time. He stumbled out of his own fireplace and blinked at the wall.
I have a place here? I think.
Chapter Twenty-Seven.