Choices Not Made

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Harry had no idea as to what to do, so he wandered around the castle followed by Twinky. The castle was an odd combination of muggle and wizard design. In some parts the doors, stairs, walls, and suits of armour would act perfectly normal and then a hallway later nothing would behave as it should. Even the walls were covered with an odd mix of wizard and muggle paintings.

The funny thing was that the people in the old wizard paintings were somewhat afraid of the muggle paintings, as the people didn’t move. One of the paintings even asked him what his neighbour had done to have been frozen. Harry had to explain to him that he was non-magical and had never been able to move in the first place. The painting didn’t appreciate this and after jumping into his other neighbour\'s painting asked to be moved to another place. According to the painting he’d only agreed to be put there in the first place as he thought the guy could use some company.

Harry was somewhat comforted that the castle reminded him of school. “I like Hogwarts, but this is too different to feel much like home,” he said to no-one in particular.

Harry eventually wandered into a room that looked somethlikelike a museum. The room was filled with glass encased objects with cards beside them explaining what they were. ‘His wife made the skull of Hieronymus Vinland into a goblet upon his death. A money purse and pillbox made from Monsieur Vinland are in private collections,’ Described a particularly gruesome goblet.

Examining the unbleached skeleton of Anslain Marion he commented. “This place doesn’t seem anything like a place where I would live. I always thought I’d move into a house with a white picket fence with shelves holding mass-produced trinkets or reproductions. You know, the house where I’d live with my wife and 2 kids while leading a normal life. Well as normal a life as I could.”

Twinky who was walking next to him just looked at him and shrugged. “You never complained about the castle. Well… when you were pregnant with the twins you requested an elevator, but that was it.”

Harry blinked at the House Elf. “This place has an elevator?”

She nodded.

“Don’t tell me it’s like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, it goes anywhere in the castle you want it to.”

He shook his head in disbelief when she nodded again.

“It even goes to the separated parts of the castle,” Twinky added.

Harry was surprised when he noticed that he had wandered his way into the library.

“This is part of the library? I thought the library was in the East Wing?” Harry asked while skng tng the books and finding even more potions and dark arts books.

“This is the East Wing. The keep is fairly small compared to the wings. It only contains the main rooms. The museum, schoolroom, and main nursery are in the North wing. The lab is on the first floor of this wing.

Master Snape already owned a lot of these books when you moved here so you put them all in this wing. The previous Master also had a lot of books but most of those are still in the original Library which is located in the South Wing,” Twinky answered.

In the mean time Harry had found a book which said it discussed sexuality and was glaring at it. “I don’t have any ‘issues’ with my sexuality. I like girls! I’ve always liked girls. Just like all the o boy boys.” He grabbed the book and sat down with a “humph.” Twinky, figuring that Harry was all set for now, disappeared.

Scanning through the book made him feel rather awkward. Hermione was very pretty and had lots of nice soft curves, but Ron was just like him, flat and hard and kind of geeky looking. He didn’t think he’d ever felt strange when taking showers with the other boys. They even sometimes wrestled and stole each other’s clothes and towels. But maybe he had felt a little bit strange… He didn’t always feel comfortable, but he’d always assumed it was due to living with the Dursleys, where he’d thankfully never seen anyone naked. There was that one time he’d felt positively embarrassed trying to magically draw Ron in charms class having to stare him deep in the eyes so that ouldould transfer what he saw to parchment. He’d also felt sad when he saw Ron with his first girlfriend, he should’ve been happy for him. Shouldn’t he have?

Deciding this wasn’t something he wanted to deal with right now, he grabbed the book and made his way back to the bedroom. He dumped the book on the nightstand before making his way back over to the writing desk. Sitting on it was the letter he had been in the process of writing to Hermione. He wondered if she would know hinghing about time travel.

Sitting down, he stared at the letter for a few minutes trying to think of the best way to ask. From the letter itself, she wouldn’t suspect that he couldn’t remember anything. It discussed boring stuff -- like that he hadn’t had the time to visit some famous library in Monaco. But he couldn’t decide whether to inform her of his problem. On one hand, Snape said they had probably been Obliviated and not to inform any one of their lack of memories. On the other hand, they could’ve been transported into the future and that way informing those whom they felt could help them was a good idea. Well, he did have a lot of children in this world, and kids are always curious. So he wrote…

“P.S. Orion has been asking about Time Travel and it’s possibilities beyond Time Turners and frankly I’ve become a bit curious myself. Would you please explain to me what you know?”

Deciding that was good, Harry sealed the letter and wondered where the owlery was in this place, or if any of the bells would call Hedwig. After a few unsuccessful summoning spells he discovered that the white whistle was for Hedwig. He whistled for her and sent her off with the letter.

A short while later when Harry had curled up on a couch and was reading his book again, Snape walked in. When he saw what Harry was reading he just smirked at him -- which caused Harry to glower back

Snape walked toward the closet and closed the door behind him. When he came out he was dressed in a grey nightshift. “You should change into night clothes, it’s getting late and we’ll need to face the children tomorrow.”

Harry nodded and went to change. When he came back out again he said, “I can sleep on the couch, it’s pretty comfortable.”

Snape rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous we have 9 children under the age of 10 and at least one of them is bound to come in the middle of the night because of some nightmare or fear. If they find their parents sleeping separately it’s going to unnecessarily alarm them.”

Harry looked warily at the bed he was supposed to share. “As if I wouldn’t be worried just by the fact that we have that many kids,” he mumbled under his breath.

Snape glared at him. “I am not going to make any attempts on your person. I choose my lovers for their personality and acumen, which means you have nothing to worry about as you have neither.”

“I do well enough in my classes. The only times I’ve failed in your class was when my potion was sabotaged by one of your precious Slytherins,” Harry steamed. “As for personality if you’re anything to go by, I’d rather not have what you’d consider a good one.”

“You have never put any effort into my class or any other besides Defence. What intelligence you do have is therefore wasted, as you don’t actually endeavour to learn anything. As for personality, the only thing I’ve seen you passionate about is Quidditch, breaking rules, and yourself. I’m sure that makes for great conversations with your dim-witted friends, but believe me it doesn’t qualify you for my association,” Snape reproved.

“Hermione is very intelligent and she finds me a perfectly acceptable friend,” Harry defended.

“Although evidently an abysmal lover,” Snape retorted. Harry’s eyes widened before turning and locking himself in the bathroom after slamming the door.

Snape closed his eyes and quickly regained his composure before walking over to the door. “Potter? Come out of there.”

“Potter?” He knocked, when there was still no answer he rolled his eyes.

“I apologise for what I said. It was entirely inappropriate. In reality I have no idea why you and Miss Granger broke up. I made an unsupported accusation.” He paused. “Please come out of the bathroom. You need to sleep.”

Harry unlocked the door and peered out at Snape. He didn’t look entirely sorry, but he didn’t look like he thought Harry was foolish eitherrry rry figured it was the best he was going to get.

He climbed on to the bed and watched as Snape followed.

“It’s true,” he commented quietly, “that’s why we broke up.”

Snape looked at him with guarded eyes.

“I understood that she was attractive, but I wasn’t attracted to her like that.” He sighed.

“While we were dating we spent most of the time avoiding each other. She couldn’t understand why I asked her out if I wasn’t attracted to her and felt that I had only done it to appease her feelings. I personally just couldn’t understand why I wasn’t attracted to her. She’s a great friend and really pretty.” He dropped his head down on the pillow. “Maybe I am… gay. But I don’t remember ever staring at another guy’s arse… Well except the time that Ron mis-aimed that charm and atedated Malfoy’s arse.” He laughed but it died off rather quickly.

“Potter, this isn’t something you have to figure out right now. Take twenty years if you want. But right now, just go to sleep.” Snape turned over and faced away from him.

Even with those words Harry didn’t get much sleep that night.



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A/N: You should be happy you know. I\'m uploading 3 chapters to here at once. I felt bad because for some odd reason it did not want to upload my chapters. But I finally got it to do so. So for ammends this is the first place I\'m uploading this particular chapter. 8 and 9 should be coming in pretty quick succession as they are as done as they\'ll ever be. 10-12 still need some kinks worked out. As for beyond 12? Well I decided I hate my outline so you\'ll have to wait a lot longer for those.