lomonaaeren

Chapter Thirty-One.

Chapter One.

Title: Kairos Amid the Ruins (32/?)
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.

Thanks again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty-Two—Fine

“I told you, I’m fine.”

Mariana found herself raising an eyebrow in disbelief, only to see Orion doing the same thing at the same moment. He leaned on the other edge of the table and regarded Harry patiently. Harry stared back, his expression dark, even though he was obviously bracing himself to keep his back from coming in contact with the chair.

“You are wounded,” Orion said. “Magically exhausted or close to it. You need—”

“I don’t actually have any open or bleeding wounds.”

“Strained muscles counts,” Orion said. He wasn’t on the verge of baring his teeth yet, but Mariana thought he would be if Harry continued to argue. “You are hurt, Harry. And you’ll hurt more soon when your body really starts to realize the amount of magic you channeled through it. You need to rest.”

“I can do that at Hogwarts.”

But Harry’s expression had started to falter, and he was biting his lip in a way that told Mariana his nerves might already be protesting. She nodded. She had arranged with Orion to keep the children out of the kitchen because the last thing Harry needed was the three of them climbing all over him, but enough was enough.

“Would you accept this answer from Severus if he had cut himself while attempting to use a knife on Potions ingredients, Harry?” she asked.

Harry shot her a baffled glance and shook his head. “No, of course not.”

“Then why in the world do you think we should accept it from you?”

“I’m an adult.”

“Who is behaving much more childishly than Severus would in the same situation.” Mariana increased the pressure of her gaze when she saw Harry on the verge of opening his mouth to argue. “You will wake tomorrow and wince, and that will make the children concerned. It will make Orion concerned. You might think that you should be above experiencing pain, but no one else thinks that.”

Harry was quiet for a long second before he sighed. “It’s not about being above pain. It’s—it’s not such a big deal as you’re making it out to be.” He might believe he was only looking at Mariana, but she saw the way that his gaze was being divided between the two of them. “I don’t want you to worry.”

Orion was at least not irritated enough to miss his cue. He gave Harry a small smile and stepped towards him, reaching out to delicately cradle Harry’s arm in his hand, as if it was fragile. “I will worry about you far more in the morning if I need to answer Regulus’s and Sirius’s anxious questions about why you’re in pain,” he said smoothly. “And you know they would notice and would ask. Severus probably more than they would.” He glanced at Mariana.

Mariana nodded. “I deplore what my daughter did to him in his infancy, but it does mean his mind is far sharper than an average child’s. And he’s attentive to your suffering and your actions, Harry, you know that.”

Harry scowled at her. Then he glanced down, as if searching his body for invisible bruises. Mariana let him do it. She doubted that he would win this battle, but it was better to persuade someone so powerful to surrender and think it was his own idea.

Harry finally sighed, a deep, exhausted sound. “If you think I need to rest…”

“I do.” Orion took a smooth step towards the table and reached out, letting his hand rest on the table, palm up. “Come, Harry. It’ll go easier for everyone, including the children, if you let yourself rest.”

Harry glanced at him, then nodded. Mariana wondered if he was aware that his gaze was lingering on Orion in a way that it hadn’t so far, or at least never when Mariana was around to witness it.

Orion probably knew, though, if the slight smile hovering around the corners of his mouth was anything to go by.

Harry nodded again, and let his hand rest in Orion’s palm. Mariana watched as they made their way out of the kitchen, and then went to find and soothe the children.

Answering Severus’s questions would be difficult, but perhaps she could let him look in later, once Harry was safely asleep.

*

“You once never would have trusted me enough to undress in front of me.”

A vivid blush covered Harry’s cheeks as he struggled out of his robes and shirt. Orion had offered to cut the clothes away from him, but Harry had shaken his head, as if that would make things more coddling than he wanted.

Or more hospitable.

Orion watched and winced as Harry hissed and caught his breath. But he had fallen in love with this man partially for his independence and stubbornness and refusal to do what anyone else wanted. Forcing help on him now would undo the good Orion and Mariana had managed to do by persuading Harry to rest.

“What taught you to not want to accept help from anyone?” Orion asked. “I know what you told me, of course, but what specific parts of it set you against everyone so badly?”

Harry shot him a glance, and then ducked his head and wriggled the collar of his shirt over his head. Orion bit his lip savagely as he saw the litter of old scars on his back. He didn’t know where most of them had come from, which meant they were probably Muggle in origin, but he could recognize the outline of a belt buckle well enough. His hands burned with the desire to comfort Harry, and it was a struggle to keep them balled at his sides.

“I don’t know,” Harry said, sounding reluctant, perhaps because he’d finally recognized Orion wasn’t going to move away or leave him alone until he had an answer. He stood up and squirmed, a steady blush making its way down his neck as he dropped the shirt next to the bed. “Maybe growing up without real family? Not knowing about the magical world until I was eleven? Being expected to do things on my own that grown wizards couldn’t do?” He shrugged and lay down on the bed. Orion frowned, but let him keep the pants and trousers on. At least he’d taken his shoes off. “It could have been those things. Or any one of them. Or just the combination.”

“This is a new world,” Orion said quietly, and stepped up beside the bed, resting his hand for a second in the middle of Harry’s bare back, over one of the scars. Harry caught his breath and held it. Orion stepped away. “And I will do anything I can to defend you from agonies like those you have already suffered.”

Harry rolled over and stared at him steadily, as if he didn’t know why Orion would ever say that. Then he sighed and laid his head on the pillow. “All right. Thank you, Orion.”

It still caused Orion more of a thrill than it probably should to hear his name from Harry’s lips. He smiled back at him, murmured, “You are more than welcome,” and shut the door behind him. He was lifting his wand to spell it shut so the boys couldn’t open it when he heard light footsteps behind him.

When Orion turned, Severus Prince stood there, staring up at him with distrustful dark eyes.

Honestly, Orion approved. It showed the boy had the proper instincts, unlike his sons (Sirius was too trusting, and Regulus swung between pure fear and pure adoration too easily). “What is it, Prince?” he asked.

“I want to see that Harry is all right for myself.”

“Did your grandmother not tell you he is?”

Prince nodded, a bit of dark hair flopping across his forehead and almost hiding the lightning bolt scar. “But I want to see.”

Orion considered it, then shrugged a little. If Harry had already fallen asleep, then he would probably be in too deep a slumber to be disturbed anyway. He opened the door a little, quietly, and let Prince lean in.

Harry was motionless when Orion looked, snoring through parted lips. Orion stared at him and tried to imagine the way Harry would look beside him in bed someday, when he consented.

It was a fascinating image that he got pulled away from when Prince whispered loudly, “So he’s really okay?”

“Not perfect, but all right,” Orion said, not lowering himself to use the Muggle word that Harry appeared to have given Prince.

Prince frowned and spent a moment thinking, then nodded. Orion closed the door and put up the Silencing Spells and Privacy Charms he had already considered, assuming Prince would run back to the nursery to be with the other boys.

“Thank you for letting me see,” said Prince gravely. “I needed to be sure.” And he turned and walked away down the corridor.

Orion shook his head. He knew that Mariana was proud of her grandson and that Harry seemed to have accepted the strange way the boy acted because it was done and part of him, but he found the spells Eileen Prince had used on her son rather unnerving.

But he had much better things to think about, and dream about. He went to bed with a smile on his face.

*

“Mr. Harry! Mr. Harry!”

Sirius bolted towards him and jumped into his arms. Harry bent down a little to catch him, and saw Orion’s smirk from the corner of his eye. It could be about how enthusiastic his son was to see Harry, but Harry thought it was probably about the fact that Orion had persuaded Harry to rest, and he would have been in a lot more pain picking up Sirius otherwise.

But Harry managed to ignore that. Sooner or later, he and Orion would have to talk. It didn’t have to be now.

“I thought maybe you were really hurt,” Sirius said, and buried his head in Harry’s shoulder the way only Regulus usually did. “They wouldn’t let us see you, and you took so long to come back!”

“I thought maybe I was really hurt, too,” Harry said, and stroked Sirius’s hair for a second before setting him on his feet and reaching out to Regulus. Regulus didn’t exclaim the way Sirius had, but he did put his arms around Harry and hold him tight for a long, anxious moment. “But your dad and some other people came and helped me get away from the bad people who had me.”

“Who were those bad people?” Severus asked in a quiet voice.

Harry glanced at him as he lowered Regulus to sit in a chair at the kitchen table. Severus looked as if he would have liked to go to Harry and hug him the way the others had, but also as if he didn’t want to do that in front of an audience. That was fine. Harry could respect his preferences.

And he also wanted to wait to tell Severus that one of them had been his grandfather.

“Let’s talk about that after breakfast,” Harry said, and sat down as a heavy plate of scrambled eggs and sausages popped into being in front of him. He glanced at Orion with his eyebrows up. Orion only shrugged, faux-innocently.

“The house-elves must have thought you needed the protein,” he said, sipping from his cup while watching Harry with what seemed to be enjoyment.

Harry held back a growl and started eating. He was hungry. He just didn’t need to be treated like a child. Sometimes he thought both Orion and Mariana had spent too much around children on a day-to-day basis.

“And you are really all right, Harry?”

Harry glanced up with a smile as Mariana stepped into the kitchen and visibly scanned him from head to toe. Severus went over and tugged on her robes, and she bent down so she could listen to what he whispered into her ear without taking her eyes off Harry.

“I’m fine, Mariana.”

Whatever Severus had whispered, it seemed to be surprising. Mariana nodded slowly, as if she was processing what her grandson had said, and then smiled fully and sat opposite Harry with a cup of tea. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “Severus, dear, you need to eat some of the toast as well as some of the bacon.”

Severus got a scowl on his face that Harry knew well. He winced as he made the comparison between the Severus from his original timeline and this one for the first time, and shoved it firmly away.

On the other hand, the fact that it had taken so long to occur to him was probably a good sign of how thoroughly he’d separated the two worlds, and the man and the boy.

“What did the bad people do?” Sirius demanded, after several noisy mouthfuls of the eggs.

“Not at the breakfast table, Sirius.”

“But I just asked Mr. Harry,” Sirius said, with a fluttering of his lashes and wide eyes. “He could tell me if he wants.” He turned back to Harry with a smug beam that got a frown out of Severus as well as Orion.

Harry noticed that, but confined himself to shaking his head. “I can understand being curious, Sirius, but I really don’t want to talk about it now.”

Five minutes of silence went by, and Harry concentrated on filling his stomach. Then Sirius blurted, “What about now?”

“I will send you away from the table and back to the nursey if you keep asking Harry, Sirius,” Orion said. His voice wasn’t dangerous, but it still made Sirius pause in a way that Harry doubted he would be able to.

“I was just—”

“I don’t want to talk about it today, Sirius,” Harry said, and Sirius pouted. At least he was old enough to understand that. Regulus, who was nibbling his own berries, seemed as if he would be happy to drop the subject altogether.

“Okay, fine,” Sirius said, and folded his arms and kicked his legs against the edge of the chair until Orion told him he could go. Then Sirius tore off with a yell, and Regulus followed him a minute later, pausing only so that Orion could cast a Cleaning Charm on his hands and face.

“I apologize for the importunities of my sons,” Orion said in a stiff voice.

Harry blinked at him. He was…embarrassed? “It’s all right,” he said. “And I meant what I said. It’s natural for them to be curious. Maybe I will feel like talking about it at some later time. Just not today.” He shrugged and finished up the last of his sausages, then accepted the small bowl of fruit Mariana was firmly holding out.

“Can I be there when you talk about it?” Severus asked.

Harry hesitated. Not only was the boy’s grandfather going to be in that story, but an older version of himself from a different universe. Harry hadn’t the least notion how to handle that. He glanced at Orion.

Mariana caught his eye and said, “I’m the one who’ll make the decisions for Severus, and I think it would help him to hear it, Harry. You can keep the worse aspects out of the story if you want—”

“I’m not a child.” Severus held his head up, his chin looking as though he was going to slice someone with it. “I can hear it.”

“You’re still a child,” Harry said, as kindly as he could. “But if you think it would help him to hear it, Mariana, then I’ll tell him. I just need to figure out—how to do it. That’s why I’d prefer to do it tomorrow.”

Mariana nodded slowly. Severus went on glaring at Harry. Harry stared back evenly. If he concentrated, then this boy was still separate from the man who had attacked and tried to sacrifice him. It was just that they looked more alike when scowling than he’d been prepared for.

“Severus,” Mariana said, in a gentle voice that nonetheless had steel underneath the surface.

After a moment, the boy looked down and nodded. His shoulders were still stiff, and Harry understood that he probably didn’t want to give up on the point, especially since Harry had had the bad taste to call him a child. But he could listen to reason.

Unlike the other one.

Harry wondered for a second where the captured Snape and Seneca Prince were being kept, and then shrugged off the idea. In the end, it wouldn’t matter until he had to testify at their trials, or whatever else the Ministry would insist on. They’d failed, and he was alive and had escaped.

And he had fully accepted this world as his home.

Severus asked a few more questions that were obviously designed to do end-runs around the prohibition of questions, and then gave up when he realized Harry was keeping his mouth shut. Harry ate through his enormous plate of food, and Orion snapped his fingers. Harry jumped when another plate and a cup of tea appeared in front of him.

“I honestly don’t think I can eat all this,” he hissed at Orion.

“Try,” said Orion, and if his mouth didn’t curl up in a smile, Harry thought that was only because Orion was trying so hard to prevent it.

Harry rolled his eyes, much more fondly than he ever had before when he’d done that in front of Orion, and lifted his fork to his mouth.