[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Shattered Pieces of the Human, PG-13, gen, 7/7

[lomonaaeren]

“Harry, can we talk?”

“Sure, but I might not have anything to say.”

Hermione hesitates, then nods. “Just as long as we can talk.”

Harry follows her up to the seventh floor and the waiting Room of Requirement. He has to hide his amusement. Hermione wouldn’t want to hear about the kinds of dummies the Room can conjure if asked.

When Harry walks in, his amusement falters. The room beyond the door is an exact replica, except larger, of Ron’s room in the Burrow. He doesn’t know if his friends are trying to be intentionally manipulative, but they are laying it on a bit thick.

He takes a slow breath and walks forwards.

Ron stands up from one replica of his bed when he sees Harry. There’s another bed facing him and a giant Chudley Cannons poster on the wall behind him. He bites his lip, his eyes darting back and forth between Hermione and Harry. Then he says, “Tell us about the relationship you have with the people you Marked.”

Huh.

Harry doesn’t know if they sincerely want to understand, if they think they can persuade him out of Marking anyone else, or what. It doesn’t matter much. He sits down on the bed across from Ron. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Why did you start Marking them in the first place?”

“Because they were in danger of being Marked as Death Eaters. Or being made to serve Voldemort some other way.”

“And they would rather serve you? Voldemort’s son?”

At least Ron’s disgust makes sense with the way he words it, so Harry just nods slowly instead of taking offense. “They think I’m saner than he is, and I think they’re right.”

“But you didn’t have to.”

“No. I could have refused, and probably died, and left them to be Marked as Death Eaters anyway. Maybe put to use as spies in the school.” Draco mentioned a task that Voldemort was thinking of giving him at one point, and then clamped his lips shut and looked so terrified that Harry never did have the resolve to pursue it.

“That’s still a choice.”

“Not a choice for me or them.” Harry speaks as calmly as he can, his eyes locked on Ron’s face. “Maybe for you.”

“I wouldn’t let myself be drawn into that situation in the first place!”

“So I should have just killed Voldemort when he showed up at the Dursleys’ and kidnapped me?”

Ron makes a frustrated gesture, and then springs to his feet and paces around the replica of his bedroom. Harry shoots a glance at Hermione, but she just blinks and shifts her balance and looks pointedly back at Ron. Okay. Apparently they’re hearing his objections first.

“It shouldn’t have turned into this!” Ron half-shouts, turning towards him with an expression that makes Harry glad Theo isn’t here right now and Basilisk is back in his bedroom. “The blood protections on your relatives’ house should have held—your mum shouldn’t have slept with him—”

“Yeah, but they didn’t, and she did. What do you want from me, Ron? Really?”

“An apology would be nice.”

“I am sorry that Voldemort found out I was his son. But he found out in the Department of Mysteries, when I wasn’t exactly in any shape to fight him off. Hiding it from him wasn’t an option. Unless you think I could have Obliviated him?”

“Why did your mum sleep with him in the first place?”

Harry just shakes his head. “She was an Unspeakable, and she seems to have been spying on him.”

“But she cheated on your dad! I mean, Potter!”

Harry shrugs. “At this point, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Ron puts his hand across his face and exhales shakily. Harry watches him and thinks that Ron is going through some of the same realizations and thoughts that he did, but months later. And unlike Harry, he doesn’t have to live with the results.

It means that Harry is less sympathetic when Ron swivels around to face him and says, “Just because you’re his son doesn’t mean you need to act like him. Marking people, spending time with the Slytherins, letting them address you like some kind of lord—”

“I explained the options, Ron.”

“I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Yes, I think we’ve established that.”

They stare at each other in silence for long enough that Hermione clears her throat and steps forwards. “There’s one thing we don’t really understand, Harry.”

“Just one?”

She flushes. “I mean, you look like the man everyone thought was your father, and I don’t think even Voldemort suspected you weren’t until he possessed you. So do you intend to be openly his son or not, in the future?”

“I look more like him than you’d think, but you’d have to have seen the diary shade,” Harry murmurs. He’s not about to reveal the Pensieve memory-lessons Dumbledore showed him. “But I don’t know exactly what will happen. For all I know, Voldemort could send a letter to Rita Skeeter tomorrow about how I’m his son.”

“But you don’t have to have that identity at school, do you? Or with us in the future unless he makes you announce it? You could be just Harry?”

Hermione’s eyes are wide and pleading, and Harry understands better what she, at least, wants. For things to go back to normal. For nothing to have changed, as long as they can skirt around some of the arguments they’ve had.

“Things have changed too much to go back to what they were, Hermione.”

She flinches.

Harry smiles at her a little sadly. “And my—father and my court would object, anyway. I can’t just turn my back on them and go back to pretending to be an ordinary person.”

“You’re giving them more power over your life than you need to. What do they give you in return?”

“Voldemort hasn’t tortured or raided or murdered anyone for three months. And he’s promised me that he’s not going to torture or kill you for finding out about my heritage, either.”

Hermione opens and closes her mouth. Then she says, “That was a possibility?”

“How can you at one and the same time think that he’s incredibly dangerous and also that the main thing you’re in danger from is hurt feelings?” Harry sighs at the look on her face. “He was the one who ordered me not to share the news with you. So I was the one who had to plead with him not to hurt or murder you. And he granted it, because I asked.”

“You shouldn’t be in that position with him!”

“Then there would be lots of raids and torture going on right now,” Harry says steadily.

“It shouldn’t be this way!”

“But it is.”

Hermione stands there and looks at him as if expecting Harry to join her in the nice safe world where she can ignore reality. Harry only folds his arms. That’s not going to happen, and he wishes his friends would see that. At this point, he’s willing to accept that they might reconcile months or years later as long as they can accept that he really is Voldemort’s son and he can’t run away from that.

“Your saving-people thing,” Hermione whispers suddenly.

“Huh?”

“You’re doing this because you want to save us, and all the people Voldemort might kill otherwise, and the Slytherins you Marked, and—” Hermione wipes at her eyes. “It’s not because you want to. It’s just because you feel like you have to save people.”

“I didn’t say that—”

Hermione ignores him and turns to Ron, who is staring at her with a wrinkled forehead. “Oh, Ron, we have to find out a way to protect ourselves and the Slytherins and as many people as we can! Then Harry wouldn’t feel like he has to be Voldemort’s son.”

Ron considers her with wide eyes, then turns to Harry. Harry just stares at him, wearily. He almost hopes that Ron won’t fall for it.

On the other hand, if it made things more peaceful with his friends, he couldn’t say that he wouldn’t take it.

“Do you feel like you have to save people?” Ron asks him, his voice low and serious.

“Of course I do—”

“Well, you could let us do it instead.”

“And you would save Theo or Draco or Pansy?” Harry asks, deciding that he might as well act obtuse if they’re going to do it, too. “When you don’t even know exactly what they face? When they wouldn’t want to tell you?’

Ron hesitates. Harry shakes his head. “You can’t save them in the way that I can, anyway, because Voldemort wouldn’t listen to you.”

“You shouldn’t be relying on him! We would find some other way!”

“What other way?”

“I don’t know, but we would find it!”

Harry rubs his hand across his face. Once again, he thinks, Ron and Hermione are trying to live in an unreal world, one where there’s always some other secret way to get around the distasteful course of action, one where they can do what they want and still come out on top.

And some of that is probably the fault of the “adventures” they had in the past, ultimately. They did manage to find crazy ways of stopping Quirrell and the basilisk, rescuing Sirius, and getting to the Department of Mysteries.

But a gulf opened in the Department of Mysteries, and Harry is on one side of it now. He doesn’t know if Ron and Hermione can ever cross over it. Maybe they’ll manage it, someday, but Harry can’t spend his life waiting for them.

“If you can find some way, then you can tell me,” he says quietly, dropping his hand. “In the meantime, I’ll do what I have to.”

“But you don’t have to!”

“Yes, I do.”

Ron and Hermione watch him. Then Ron gives a sigh that is too stern to be sad, and nods. “You’ll go about protecting people in your way,” he says, “and we’ll do it in ours.”

Part of Harry wants to protest, to say they’re probably going to put themselves in danger if they do something to contradict Voldemort’s plans. But Harry reminds himself that in that case, he can ask Voldemort for their protection, or for mercy, and—

He truly thinks he will get it.

Part of him still wants to scoff at himself for being delusional, but if he really believes that, he might as well give up now. And he doesn’t believe it, not really. He will keep going, and he will make compromises, and he will protect the people he can, and he will be happy.

“Good-bye, Harry.”

Harry blinks and returns to the present with a jolt. Ron has already slipped out of the Room of Requirement. Hermione is lingering, her smile sweet and painful. She leans forwards to hug him.

“I hope that we can be friends again someday,” she whispers to him. “You’ll see that our methods are the ones that really save people and win the war. I hope you won’t be disappointed in your father when he reverts.”

I hope that you won’t be too disappointed when things don’t work out the way you think they will, Harry thinks, as he hugs her back.

“Good-bye, Hermione.”

*

“You’re invited to spend part of the holidays with Father and me.”

Harry starts and looks up. Theo is walking beside him on the way to the carriages that will take them to the Express, and his back is very straight and he’s looking ahead as though he can’t bear to see Harry’s face if he gets rejected.

“I think my father will insist that I spend all the time with him.”

Harry keeps his voice low, since they’re not alone. Theo turns towards him, his mouth twitching up a little. “Father is part of your father’s court. He suggested that you could use some time with friends, and Father’s Lord listened to him.”

Well, why not? Isidore did give Voldemort some child-rearing advice during the summer.

“All right. I’ll ask him.”

Theo ducks his head, but he can’t hide his pleased smile. “It will be nice to be able to talk to each other and not have to hide our conversations from someone every time we want to speak honestly. Or our dueling practice.”

“Do you think Pansy and Draco will want to visit?”

“Maybe not for the whole time you’ll spend at our house.”

There’s a tone in Theo’s voice that Harry’s learned to interpret. He stops with a sigh and puts a hand on Theo’s shoulder, squeezing. “You’re still the only one who doesn’t feel some terror around me some of the time. I don’t think Pansy means to, but she’s half-convinced this is a dream and she won’t be allowed to stay my courtier. And Draco is relaxing, but it’ll probably take years for him to realize that he can really disagree with me. You’re the only one who’s completely mine.”

Theo looks as if Harry’s given him the stars on a platter. His throat bobs as he swallows. Then he says, “Thank you, my lord.”

Harry smiles back at him—

And feels the gathering of energy behind him, magic rising as someone prepares to cast a powerful spell.

Harry dives, his arms around Theo, bearing him to the ground as well. A spell crackles over their heads, aimed at only them. It stops, hovering, in the air, and then turns around and flies right back at them.

Harry spits the incantation for a shield that Narcissa Malfoy taught him during the summer. It forms, manifesting like a pair of dragon’s snapping jaws shaped from blue light, between him and the spell, and swallows the magic.

Theo is back on his feet by the time Harry turns around. “Snape,” he breathes.

Harry takes a deep breath and feels something settle within him, even though part of him is also terrified at the thought of fighting Snape. So it’s come to this at last. The enmity is out in the open, and Harry is pretty sure that Snape won’t hold back.

Theo steps up to Harry’s side. Harry opens his mouth to command him away, but Theo only shakes his head, sharply, once, and his bond is solid and silent with stubbornness, not swaying and singing the way it usually does. So Harry is quiet.

Snape takes a step towards him, eyes quiet and measuring. His footsteps are quiet, too. Everything about him is so much more frightening than Harry has ever seen before, and he has to lock his left arm by his side so tit doesn’t tremble.

“What are you doing?” Harry asks. His voice is a little shrill, but he hopes people wouldn’t blame him for that.

“Taking care of the rubbish.”

“You know what the Dark Lord would do to you,” Theo says softly. He’s moved a little to the side, and Harry sees the way Snape’s eyes track him. Snape is warier of Theo than he is of Harry.

But his eyes come back to Harry, and Harry knows it won’t make any difference. For whatever reason, Snape has decided on this insane course of action.

“You were never truly hers,” Snape whispers. “You are not the boy I swore a vow to defend. Everything lay in the wording. Everything lies in the thinking.” A ghastly smile stretches his lips for a second, one that makes Harry glad that Snape’s not smiled more often in the past. “And with an Occluded mind, I can kill you.”

He whips his wand forwards. Harry doesn’t know that spell that comes flying out, and something tells him that a shield won’t work this time. He falls to the ground and rolls, though, and behind him, there’s the sound of one of the carriages breaking apart.

“Ossa confringo!”

Theo’s spell, a Bone-Breaker Curse, slams towards Snape. He blocks it, but he turns to Theo for a moment with his lip raised. “So you have chosen your side.”

“I chose it the first day that I swore,” Theo says in a low voice with no emotion in it. His bond in Harry’s head still feels like a solid block instead of anything alive. “You are the traitor.”

Snape laughs. “If you knew what I served,” he says, and turns his wand back to Harry.

Harry knows that he will die in a one-on-one duel with Snape. There’s Theo, but he might not be enough to help.

So Harry drops back as if overcome by fear, uses the staggering motion to open his bag, and hisses softly, “Go. Bite him.”

Basilisk slides away, a moment before Snape casts something at him that Harry doesn’t know and can’t avoid. He screams as it hits and his skin begins to blister and burn.

Theo shields him from Snape’s next spell and then whirls and hits the professor with a barrage that makes Snape have to concentrate on fighting back for a second instead of hurting Harry. But it passes, as Harry knew it would. Snape is straightening, his face creased in a sneer that’s as frightening for the despair behind it as for the hatred.

“You must die,” he says, almost soundlessly. “Albus has given me permission.”

Harry remembers the meetings that Snape was having with the Headmaster, the ones he and his courtiers laughed and joked about—

And then Snape is the one who staggers to one side.

“I bit him!”

Harry is stunned at the amount of blood that pours out of Snape’s ankle. He puts down his arm, and Basilisk slithers back to him as fast as possible. Harry backs up, with her coiled around his arm and shoulder, and aims his wand.

Snape is clawing at his robe pocket for something. Theo tenses, but doesn’t move. Harry wonders if Theo thinks that he’ll leave Harry vulnerable than he does.

Then Snape drags out a wrinkled stone, and—

Theo’s next spell shatters it.

Snape falls into the snow, his arms stretched in front of him, his hands curled so that they look like claws tearing at the air. His eyes are still dark, still full of hatred, as they rest on Harry, but a narrow smile is making its way across his mouth. Harry doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t think that it’s any good sign for him. He remains back from Snape, next to Theo, his wand still raised.

“Albus had me swear a Vow,” Snape chokes. The poison seems to be affecting his blood and his breathing. “To defend you—Lily Potter’s son. I had to work around it—Occlumency—to attack you—”

Harry tenses, thinking that Snape is going to blurt out something that will reveal him as Voldemort’s son to all the watching, sobbing, screaming students, but he doesn’t. His head falls into the snow, and he dies before that happens.

Harry is still staring, himself, when Theo presses his shoulder against Harry’s.

“My lord,” he says, low, intense, “if Dumbledore countenanced one assassination attempt, he might have countenanced another.”

Harry blinks, swallows, nods, and turns around. The carriage nearest to them is a splintered mess from whatever spell Snape fired at it that missed Harry, but Theo finds them a whole one.

A minute after he herds Harry into it, Draco and Pansy hop in. Both have their wands drawn and sit between Harry and the door.

Harry, now that he’s past the immediate moment where he had to fight Snape just to survive, can bow his head and shake. And he does, while Theo heals his burns and Basilisk coils on his shoulder and hisses gently. She’s trying to comfort him, but also proud of herself.

“I bit him! He is dead!”

“I know,” Harry whispers at last, sitting up and taking her from his shoulder so she can wind around his fingers. “You saved my life. I’m so proud of you.”

“Is that...?”

“Later, Pansy.”

“What happened?” Pansy turns to Theo, probably because Draco is the one who told her to wait to ask about Harry’s invisible snake. “Did Snape go mad?”

“He said something about a vow, and how he had used Occlumency to get around it.” Theo looks at Harry from the corner of his eye.

Harry takes a deep breath and stops his shaking. He survived, they all survived, so why is he acting like this is the worst thing he’s ever faced? He shakes his hair out of his eyes and says, in the most normal voice he can muster, “Snape was—friends with my mum. I think. I saw a memory where she tried to intervene when—James Potter bullied Snape. Snape called her a Mudblood. Maybe Dumbledore made him swear a vow to protect me. That would mean he couldn’t get around it without Occlumency to convince himself that…”

“That you were no longer truly Lily Potter’s son? That you weren’t truly the boy he swore to protect?” Theo’s mouth crimped. “If he knew Occlumency, then maybe he could do it.”

“He does. Did, I mean. Dumbledore had him trying to teach me Occlumency last year.”

“That was a disaster, probably,” Pansy mutters.

Harry nods. It’s better to think about the past and the way that he failed to learn Occlumency from Snape than to think about the fact that he just killed his professor with his pet snake. “Yeah. He told me to clear my mind, but not how, and just tore into it all the time.”

“I should have killed him before this,” Theo whispers, hand resting on his wand. “I should have killed him when he attacked you in front of the Defense class.”

“Instead, I’m the one who killed him.”

“Tell him.”

Draco speaks the words while continuing to look out the window of the carriage, so at first, Harry assumes he’s speaking to Theo or Pansy. But Theo and Pansy turn to stare at Harry, and he says, “Uh. What?”

“Your father must know about this as soon as possible,” Draco says in a clipped voice. “My lord, reach out to him. Tell him.”

Harry closes his eyes, ignoring the way that his spine prickles. If he can’t trust his courtiers by now, he really is fucked. Father?

An answering ripple of inquiry, but Voldemort doesn’t pull Harry into the dream-room this time. Maybe he can’t do that unless it’s night.

Snape just tried to kill me. Basilisk bit him, and he died.

There’s a long pause that makes Harry think Voldemort is trying to deal with rage or something. Then there’s the sensation of a mighty pull, and Harry opens his eyes to that dream-room lit with fire after all.

“You are well?” Voldemort hisses, his eyes flickering up and down Harry, even though Harry doesn’t know if his dream-self is a representation of his real self or not.

“Yes.”

“But you are shaken. Severus tried to kill you.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Why did he?”

Harry takes a deep breath. “I only have speculation, but he said something about a vow, and Lily Potter’s child, and Occlumency, before he died. I think that he swore a vow of some kind to protect me, but managed to get around it using Occlumency, so that he thought of me differently. Theo said you could—do that.”

“A skilled Occlumens could, yes. I am only beginning now to realize how skilled Severus was.” Voldemort paces over to Harry and stares into his eyes as if demanding more truth, even though Harry has told him all the truth he has to give him. “You said that he has been frequently meeting with Dumbledore?”

“Yes.”

“The man was talking him into thinking around the vow and attacking you, I am certain. Which means that Albus wants you dead. Which means that he knows you are a Horcrux.”

“Wait a minute, what?”

“He was interested in the idea that your friends might want you dead. You told me.” Voldemort’s breath hisses in and out of his lungs fast enough to make it sound like he’s a snake slithering through dry leaves. “He probably thought things would be simpler if he could convince you to simply die. And now he has wielded Severus as a weapon against you.

Harry swallows through a dry throat. He wants to say that’s unlikely, but there are a few things Dumbledore said that make more sense if viewed in that light. “Okay. So what does that mean for the future?”

“You will return to school after the Christmas holidays.”

“Er. I will?”

“Yes.” Voldemort’s smile is a long, dark slash, a glimpse into a midnight at the center of his tattered soul that makes Harry shudder. “Because I am going to kill Albus at last.”

*

Harry gets off the train after a long ride in the same compartment as his courtiers where they wouldn’t even let him go to the bathroom alone. A tall man with pale skin and red eyes steps forwards, and Harry gives him a startled, flickering glance, wondering why no one on the platform is screaming.

Then he realizes that Voldemort is wearing just enough of an illusion-disguise to keep people from recognizing him, and relaxes a little.

Theo and Draco and Pansy all give deep bows that they hold in the face of the Dark Lord. Voldemort pays no attention to them. He takes Harry’s shoulders in his hands and looks him over carefully, then nods. “We are going to my home,” he says, in a hiss low enough that the clatter of everyone getting off the train and greeting their families will cover it.

Harry barely has the chance to say goodbye to his courtiers and make sure that he has his trunk and Basilisk. Then he’s being Apparated away, and gasps a little as they land on a snowy walk leading up to a huge house of white stone.

Voldemort bends over him, tongue darting out as he carefully examines Harry. “You are all right? You are not wounded?”

Harry shakes his head, breathless. Somehow, he thought talking to Voldemort in dreams was preparing him for the experience of being in front of his father again. But it didn’t. He ends up saying, “Snape tried a couple different spells, but Theo healed the only one that connected. I need to thank Theo as well as Narcissa Malfoy.”

“I shall do so,” Voldemort says. “Now, come.”

They walk up to the front door of the manor house, and Harry gasps again as that door swings open to reveal a bright, warm room with a fire crackling on the hearth. The walls are a soft dove-grey, not like the white of the stone on the outside, and in a corner of the room opposite the fire—

Harry chokes.

“Isidore said this was appropriate.”

“Er, yeah, it is,” Harry says, petting Basilisk as she starts to ask why he’s so startled. He tears his gaze away from the huge Christmas tree strung with fairy lights and stares at Voldemort. “I wouldn’t have taken you for the type to celebrate Christmas.”

“I would not be, but you should have what you want.”

Harry thinks of all those years when he never got to celebrate Christmas properly at the Dursleys, and he thinks of the holiday last year with Mr. Weasley getting attacked by Nagini and gifts in Grimmauld Place, and all he can do is smile helplessly. “I like it.”

“I am glad.”

And then Voldemort has a house-elf bring him hot chocolate, and Harry can do nothing but sit down on a couch and talk to his father about his marks, of all things, while Basilisk hisses sleepily on his shoulder about how killing someone and long train rides make her tired.

*

“Dumbledore fled.”

Harry looks up as Voldemort steps through the Floo. “Oh,” he says, and hesitates. “You think he went to hunt down Horcruxes?”

“Or where he thinks they are,” Voldemort says, and his tongue darts out in Harry’s direction as he sits down on the couch across from him. “I scanned the minds of several other professors before I Obliviated them. He told none of them of Horcruxes. The old man’s secrecy shall be the downfall of him at last.”

“So what happens now?”

Voldemort leans closer to him, so close that Harry shifts uncomfortably. Voldemort doesn’t seem to notice. “You, my son, my heir, my Horcrux, will attend Hogwarts with more protection than ever,” he says. “You will go to your classes and your meals with trusted servants of my own watching over you. You will learn more Dark Arts spells that could hurt those who try to hurt you. You will never be alone with your former friends or your Head of House who is now the Headmistress. I will keep you safe.”

Harry swallows. He hates to say it, but he has to point it out. “Some people would probably say that just keeping me trapped in the house all the time would make the most sense and keep me the most safe.”

Voldemort gives an impatient sway of his neck. “But you would be upset and unhappy, so I shall not do it. You shall go back. And now that Dumbledore is gone, I shall order some things in Hogwarts to my liking.”

Harry swallows again. He can just imagine what Voldemort is going to do. Since the school will be looking for both a Defense professor and a Transfiguration professor, he’ll probably slip Death Eaters into those positions. And he might “encourage” some Slytherins who were hesitating to swear to Harry as his courtiers.

But honestly?

It’s still so much better than what Harry once envisioned happening. It’s so much better than Voldemort torturing and raiding and killing.

“You are not reading the book I got you.”

“Er. It’s bound in human skin. It’s a little gross to handle, actually.”

“That is not human skin. It is giant skin.”

“Still—sort of—hard to handle.”

Voldemort looks baffled, but says, “I will have it rebound in a less objectionable leather.”

“Thank you, Father.”

Voldemort practically preens. Harry holds back his laughter, because what is he going to say? That he never imagined he could coax Voldemort into acting like this? That he’s starting to understand some of the things Theo and Draco and Pansy said to him in a new light?

“I also said those things to you.”

Harry strokes Basilisk’s scales, thinks about the fact that she was evidently reading his mind, and blows out a little breath.

“What is she talking about?”

At least Voldemort isn’t reading his thoughts the same way. Harry lifts his head to meet his father’s eyes. “She’s saying she told me so about you truly caring for me, essentially.”

Voldemort leans uncomfortably near again, until his red eyes fill Harry’s vision. “I wish you to be happy. You will be happy.”

And he sweeps out of the room, probably to start ordering Hogwarts to his satisfaction. Harry touches Basilisk’s scales and stares into the fire.

Despite everything…

He actually kind of is.

Will he always be in the future? He doesn’t know.

But he doesn’t know if the future matters as much as he used to think it did. What he has is here, now. His courtiers. His familiar. His books and his classes. His friends, maybe, someday.

His father.

I can be happy with that. I can try.

The End.