A Funny Kind Of Hero

Author's Note: Thanks so much to Kim and TQA for betaing. All mistakes are my own.

Summary: Severus has taken the Dark Mark and deeply regrets it. A walk in the forest changes everything. This is a one shot written for themematic_hp

“Harry and I were just walking back from the Quidditch pitch when we heard the noise. He’s a hero, my mate Harry. A bone-fide white hatted knight in shining armour. Me, I’m just a Weasley. The least bright, least funny, least heroic, least important of seven kids, the one they wouldn’t miss much in the end, I guess, if I disappeared. So that’s probably why I decided to do it; cause nobody would miss me, not even Harry, really.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. This was just after Harry had defeated Voldemort. We can all say his name with no problems. Now he’s dead. Thanks to Harry. You all know the story, so I’m not going to retell it, except to say that it was hard and difficult and sweaty and bloody, just like you’d all expect. Except, Hermione and I thought we’d be with him at the final battle. But Harry got taken and it was Snape, the nasty, snarky bastard, that ended up saving him. Even if he did die being hexed off that cliff, seemed almost fitting after what happened to Dumbledore. Wasn’t as if anyone would ever forgive him for that particular act, even if he was blackmailed into performing it. Poor old Snape never did get to be a hero, and yet Dumbledore became a legend for sacrificing everything for the side of light.

Life really sucks sometimes doesn’t it? Always did for Snape, I reckon. Ill-fated sod.

We’d found the Horcruxes quite quickly in the end thanks to the fact that Mundungus Fletcher had found all but one of them and amazingly kept them safe. The extra one, of course, was Nagini. Well done Dung, eh? Then Hermione discovered that Snape was really on our side after all. We didn’t actually believe it until it was confirmed by Dumbledore’s portrait, but it all went so rapidly after that, especially with the help we got from Malfoy.

He was so broken after Voldemort killed his mother and tortured him. Even I felt sorry for him, and everyone knows how much I hate the ferret. Three days, so Snape said, of beatings and Cruciatus. He had this lost look in his eyes when Snape finally got him out of there. That’s how we found out about him; he brought Malfoy to us because there was nowhere else for him to go. Well, to Hermione really and then she rescued Malfoy. I didn’t tell you that my ex-girlfriend was a bit of a hero either, did I?

They always had so much in common, just never got to it with all that hatred that Malfoy always spewed about purebloods. We should have been able to tell that he had the hots for her all along. She fought it of course. Hermione was always honourable and she was still meant to be going out with me! But I really didn’t mind in the end, because he needed her and I didn’t, I really didn’t.

I hadn’t felt the same about her for a while. I love her, I do, but like I love Harry as one of the best friends I will ever have, and the sex was always great. But hey, I was a seventeen year old boy. Sex was always great, however it came.

We’d only been back at Hogwarts for a month or so and here we were playing Quidditch again, just like old times. Well, except it would never be like old times. Not after so many people died. How we Weasleys all survived, I don’t know. A large dose of luck and an even larger dose of Harry. We nearly lost George at one point, thanks to that bitch Bellatrix Lestrange, but Harry rescued him, just like he rescued my dad and me and Ginny in second year and Charlie. He’s been good to my family, Harry has. He even helped Percy, indirectly anyhow. Didn’t stop him being a prat, but at least he helped us track Harry down when Voldie took him, so he sort of got reabsorbed by the family no questions asked, no retribution extracted.

Anyhow, I’m not going to list them all here, if you want to see for yourself you can always head off down to the Memorial at the Ministry and check out the names.

It was good to see Harry smile though. He always carried around a lot of guilt, far too much in my opinion. Trouble with Harry was he always felt bad about the ones he couldn’t save, forgot all about the ones he did and sometimes no one could help him, not even me. He needed an adult in his life really, someone who just cared for him.

His cheeks were flushed right then though, with all the exercise and he was smiling. Quidditch always cheered him up; he was just so bloody good at flying. He wasn’t using a wand by then; I don’t think he’ll ever replace the one that Voldie destroyed. Not that he needs one anyway. But then we heard a noise, a thrashing in the nearby forest.

“Someone’s in trouble Ron. That sounded like a groan.” Harry said.

I’d heard it too, he was right it did. A groan followed by a sort of strangled sob. One of the gorse bushes moved then and a boy sort of fell out of it. He was a very skinny boy with long greasy hair and a large nose and he was crying. I couldn’t help myself I sort of caught him. And that of course is when the trouble started.




I couldn’t believe I had finally done it. How could I have? I truly belonged to Voldemort. It wasn’t like Lucius had said it would be. He stood for me, vouched for me whilst they held my arm and I was branded. The pain seemed to go on forever and seep into my very soul, as did the brand itself, right to the heart of me. It was all I could do not to be sick; I was so fucking scared, because this is it now, for good. This is the sort of mark that will never go away.

I was running. I had gotten away from the meeting okay, although I did indeed have to vomit just after we were told to go home and I was out of sight of those all seeing, burning eyes. Lucius wanted to celebrate but I couldn’t bring myself to. Why would anyone want to celebrate being enslaved? I felt that Lucius was lost to me now; all that we’d shared had turned to ashes. I could not believe that I had been such a fool. The Dark Lord was evil. It radiated off him, from every atom, every pore. It wasn’t some glorious adventure being indentured to him; it was a nightmare and my horrible life and just become much, much worse.

I didn’t know what to do. It was almost dark when I got back to Hogwarts and I was running. Whom could I tell? What the hell was I going to do? I had thought it would be really special to be a part of something like this, that I would finally be accepted. How come I had no idea that I would feel so bad?

I was skirting the edge of the forbidden forest when I ran into it.

It was a mist, thick and impenetrable. This was all I needed, I was sobbing in earnest now, who was going to care if they saw me anyway? Even the Marauders had given up on me since the werewolf nearly ripped my throat out. I felt so fucking lonely. After mum died last year and Lily got friendly with Potter, there really was nobody who really gave a damn, except for Lucius, but then we were Slytherins, friendships were useful, not heart felt, at least mine never were.

I was groping my way through the soupy mist when I plunged straight into middle of a bush. It was gorse and fucking prickly, and I just wanted to sit down and sob my heart out. But instead I stumbled on, desperately trying to free myself from the tangled branches, ripping my skin and clothing in the process and I ended up in someone’s arms.

He was tall and strong and he just grabbed me out of thin air, and I was so on edge, so ready to crack up that I couldn’t help myself; I buried my head in the robes of this tall red headed Viking and wept. And whilst I did, he stood there and held me and stroked my hair and I don’t think that ever before had I felt so cared for. So I just clung to him as if my very soul depended upon it, and after all, perhaps it did.

When the tears were finished he tilted my head to look at him and mopped at my eyes with a threadbare handkerchief and he smiled at me. He had such soft, caring eyes and they seemed to understand me, and my heart did a little flip, and all at once, just like that, I fell in love.

Then I spotted Potter. My Viking was with him.

I stepped back and snarled at the cursed boy.

“Potter, what the fuck do you want?” I hated him more in that minute than I ever had before in my whole life. After all this was the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened as far as I was concerned. God, if he had made fun of me before, how much worse was it going to be now? I had just been crying all over his new friend. What god decided that Potter should have all the good friends anyway, and where were the rest of the Marauders? Black was normally practically welded to Potter’s hip. Potter couldn’t have known this guy for very long, as he certainly hadn’t been hanging around with him earlier that day.

But then Potter spoke.

“Professor Snape?” he said, and he didn’t sound like himself at all. His voice was less clipped, softer somehow.

All of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. What was going on? Why was he calling me ‘Professor’? Was it some sort of joke? And when in the name of Merlin did Potter’s eyes turn green?

I must have looked like a fish at that point, gaping at them. So the Viking said “Let’s get him up to the school, Harry. He looks exhausted and very confused.”

Too bloody right I was confused. But I was also too tired, too worn down by the horrible day, my horrible fucking life that I went with them with out any argument. I just couldn’t be bothered any more.

Mind you, it was rather nice when the Viking put his arm around me.

The school looked different, not very, only enough that I would notice. The children were all different too. They weren’t my classmates and there was no sign anywhere of Potter’s usual cohorts; there was not a single person that I recognised. Well until we got to the Headmaster’s office. I really didn’t want to go in, because I knew that if I did he would know everything, just by looking at me, like he always did. But he wasn’t there. It was Professor McGonagall waiting instead, and since when had she looked so old?

“Oh my dear,” she said when she saw me, “Oh my poor dear Severus.” That really freaked me out. Since when has McGonagall ever called me ‘my dear’? She hates me, at least I thought she did, hates all Slytherins. But her eyes looked kind, concerned and then my eyes burned with unshed tears.

They sat me down, and Potter found a blanket from somewhere and wrapped it round me. Potter, who had made it his life’s mission to torture Severus Snape, was being kind. Then the Viking brought me a cup of cocoa, with cream and teeny little marshmallows and it was so nice that finally the tears did start to flow again and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop them.

Instead of laughing at me and calling me Snivellus the Viking put his arm around me once more and Potter patted my hand. Then I knew that something had changed. This was not, could not, be the world I knew. I must be in some alternate reality, I decided. But I was wrong; it was not a different place, not a different place at all. It was a different time and a different Potter and a tall red haired Viking who turned out to be called Ron Weasley.

Funny name, sounded Mugglish. Of course I knew it wasn’t, it is the name of one of the oldest pureblood families. Oldest and poorest. There was a Weasley a few years ahead of me at Hogwarts. Arthur Weasley and Ron, so it turned out, was his youngest son.

So how did I feel when I found out that I had travelled so far into the future? I don’t really know. It was so strange. I sat in that office for hours and hours whilst my ‘plight’ was discussed, then someone said, “I wonder if he has taken the Dark Mark yet?” They kept their voice low, so I wasn’t really sure who had spoken but I couldn’t miss those words, could I, not when everything was so raw? I tried; I really tried hard not to say anything but I couldn’t help the sob that escaped me, and they all turned and stared. And I felt weighed down by the weight of their gaze.

Then Professor McGonagall was holding me and stroking my hair. It was almost like having my mother back again. “When did you do it?” she whispered, “How long ago child?” My throat felt like it would seize up, for a moment or two I couldn’t breathe, but finally I managed to croak out,

“Tonight, Professor. I’m so sorry it happened tonight.” I truly could not believe it when stern, strict Professor Minerva McGonagall took me in her arms and rocked me as if I were a baby.

Much later, I was wrapped up in a soft fluffy duvet in Gryffindor House. I was in the bed of someone called Seamus Finnegan. The others didn’t seem to want to talk about him, but something had obviously happened because they couldn’t quite meet each other’s eyes when they said his name either.

Was it wrong to feel so comfortable in the bed of their lost friend? I thought he was just away or ill. I had no idea that he had died. Not until later anyhow, I then suffered more than one pang of guilt that I had been grateful that he was missing.

It was Neville Longbottom that filled me in on a lot of what had happened in the past twenty years. I could not understand why he was so terrified of me to start with, so I asked him. The others had gone down to breakfast he had just come back. I was feeling unaccountably shy right then and Weasley and Potter were full of bounce and exuberance and promised to bring me a coffee, which is all I ever wanted in the mornings. So it was just the two of us.

“Are you really Severus Snape?” he’d asked quite nervously, looking at me as if I were about to eat his face off. He was scared of me, turned out he had every reason to be. Apparently I was a right bastard as a teacher, but had been especially mean to him and Potter, which didn’t explain why Potter had been so nice to me.

“Harry’s like that.” Neville said. “He should be proud and arrogant, considering who he is, but he isn’t impressed by people who think they are better than anyone else. Most of his best friends are misfits that others dismiss. A poor pureblood, a Muggleborn girl, me, we’ve all been his friends since we were eleven and he hasn’t deserted us even now.”

So then of course I asked why now would be any different and he told me everything. By the time the others came back I knew it all, what had happened in the past twenty years all that time since last night. Harry (for he was so unlike his father that I could not bring myself to call him Potter anymore) and my Viking had spelled a pot of coffee hot just for me and they had brought me back a bacon roll – Ron’s favourite apparently - which they insisted I consume.

I sat and listened to their chatter whilst they told me that only this Gryffindor dorm was going to know who I was, everyone else would think I was some relative of Professor McGonagall’s until they decided what to do with me. I wasn’t about to argue. Not after what I had just been told; that Harry, this fragile boy with the kind, haunted eyes had destroyed the vicious monster that had claimed me.

They found me some robes. They borrowed them from Lucius’ son a pale shadow of a boy called Draco, because of course he was a Slytherin like me and wore Salazar’s crest. He came up to the dormitory hand in hand with a Muggleborn girl with curly brown hair and bright, inquisitive eyes. Lucius, it appeared, had died not long ago in Azkaban. The Lucius I had known would have thrashed any child of his that associated with‘Mudbloods’. Maybe Draco was a better man than his father was, just like Harry seemed to be a better man than his. Because in the next few weeks these children; who had all been through so much and who should have hated me for we had done to their lives and for the way I had acted as a teacher, why they saved my soul.

The way that they casually discussed loss and death told me more than anything what they must have been through. We knew nothing, my generation. Lucius and Regulus, Bella, Narcissa, we thought it was all just a bit of fun. Nothing was really going to happen to the Muggleborns. They would get a fright or two and learn their ‘proper place’. Purebloods would rule, and those of us who were half blood, but had the right family connections. We would sort out what was wrong with the wizarding world, take our true place as leaders. Be powerful and strong and nobody would really get hurt, right?

Wrong.

We sold out a whole generation of magical children to the most evil wizard who ever lived and now they were all dead, each and every one of them. Not just Slytherins either. James and Lily. Sirius Black. Frank Longbottom tortured to insanity and kind, smiling Alice Elliot who’d helped me with Arithmancy on a number of occasions she too had lost her mind along with her husband. Neither Neville nor Harry had ever known their parents and boys and girls of my age were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they should be laughing and bickering with their friends.

As I sipped my coffee and listened to them chatter about charms homework and a Ravenclaw girl, whom Dean was dating, and whether Hermione or Neville or Ron thought them right for each other. I sat in that dormitory surrounded by hangings of red and gold and thought what a fool I was, what fools we all were. I thought of my bright and lively, if misguided, classmates dying, destroying so many lives along with their own and nearly bringing the world we had thought to rule to a close and I nearly broke with the sorrow of it all.

Some of them were not much older than me when they died. They bravely tried to protect their children or died lost and alone to satisfy a madman’s blood lust. So much potential, so much sadness left behind. And Lucius, my beloved Lucius, shining and beautiful and so alive only the day before, not like this pale shadow of a son who had, because of his father’s actions, lost everything that Lucius had once held dear. Oh Lucius, the thought of you in that benighted place brought tears to my eyes. Did you ever know, before you died? Did you know what you caused in your arrogance and your pride? I looked at his son, trying to see how he must feel about the loss of his father and his eyes met mine and he smiled a sad little smile.

“Hello S S Severus,” he said. Apparently he counted as an honorary member of the dorm as he obviously knew who I was. These Gryffindors had taken a Slytherin under their wing and befriended him and that was all due to the wishes of a Muggleborn girl. He held out his hand and, when I stared stupidly at him, told me that my classes would be with him for now, as apparently we shared similar subject options. Then he led me downstairs for the first class of the day.

It was Draco who taught me Occlumency and Leglimency in the end, a skill he insisted would come in useful one day and most truly it has. I spent most of my time with them, the Gryffindors and Draco. They named me Sebastian McGonagall or “Seb” for short and they were kind to me and never left me on my own for too long, in case I got sad or lonely. And if occasionally I looked at them and read their desolation in their eyes? Well I did as they did and pretended that there really was nothing wrong after all and that we were normal teenagers and everything was fine.

When Harry woke screaming at night I watched Ron comfort him or Neville or Dean and when Neville sobbed in his sleep when his turn came for remembered sorrows or Dean wept for his lost friend, or Draco’s eyes turned vacant and he sat staring for hours at things that only he could see I learned to treat it as something that was accepted and lived with just like they did.

But all the time I wore my guilt like a robe, and it wrapped itself around me weighed heavily on my heart. And all the time, as the days went by, I watched Ron who seemed shining and unbroken as he went from one to another offering hugs and comfort and a solid shining presence and, slowly but surely, I fell even more in love.

Then one day when he found me alone, wallowing in my hoarded guilt, and put his arm around my shoulders in that lazy way of his and I kissed him.

I still remember the shock in his eyes and the feeling of dread that flooded me when I realised what I had done.

I fled. I did not wait for a response. How foolish one is when one is young. Because of course he found me and we talked. He told me that he was very tactile and that he had brothers, lots of brothers and that he had never thought of me like that. That he hugged everyone and it didn’t mean anything and then he kissed me back.

Ronald Weasley made love like he did everything: with passion and vitality. I was so sore that first time, his first time with a boy, because he truly was big all over, my Viking lover, and never in my life have I felt so safe or so loved as I did when I was with him.

We had three weeks. Three weeks of being together. One week in terror of what our friends would say and whether they would reject us, because they were my friends too and I cared for them by then almost as much as he did. Of course they did not. Harry pointed out that there had been enough loss in his life in all their lives and if we were to find happiness in each other’s arms then who were they to object?

Then there was one week of becoming a couple of tentative hand holding and gentle stolen kisses, of rough and passionate sex whenever we could find some space alone, of tenderness and exploration.

And finally one week of pure unadulterated joy.

Then they sent me back.

Apparently my presence caused a rift in time. Strange things were happening at the Ministry in the Department of Mysteries and they said it was because of me. My disappearance had caused a paradox. If I was here in the late nineties then I could not be in 1976 where I belonged and as I had played a major part in the war (“First time they admitted that!” Ron had muttered under his breath), there was no option. I had to go back or the fabric of time would start to disintegrate and everything would be destroyed. What else could I do? Despite the protests of the others, despite their assertions that they would sort something out, that Hermione would find a way – they had such a touching belief in the powers of a seventeen-year-old girl! Despite Ron’s tears and sorrow, despite all this. I said yes.

The ugliest man I had ever seen, a squat, disfigured senior Auror by the name of Alastor Moody, turned up with an orb of some kind, a one-way one time only ticket to my past.

We walked back to the edge of the forest where they found me. I held Ron’s hand for the final time, stroking it with my thumb, caressing it, desperately trying to remember every inch of it so that I had something to comfort me in the long, lonely years ahead. Then they pulled us apart.

Ron was sobbing and Harry and the others, they held each other close in their grief. They’d just lost someone else from their damaged, fragmented lives. But at least they had each other I had no one I was once more alone. I turned away towards the past. Only now I knew everything, the evil that was to come. How was I going to live with it? Without Ron. Moody stopped me, a hand on my arm and I looked up at his distorted, wounded face. I was searching for hope for a reprieve but instead he spoke just one word, “Obliviate.”

And tonight is the night I die, this I know. Because between them, these children, my long ago friends told me everything that was to happen and I didn’t forget. Draco told me he owed me, because I saved his life, protected him at the risk of my own safety and Leglimency was his thank you. Moody did not expect a boy of eighteen to be so able at Occluding but he underestimated my friendships and how important they were to me. There was no way I trusted him and no way that I was ever going to forget what they had meant.

I went to Albus’ office the very moment I returned and I told him everything.

We knew it all. We stood by whilst Lily and James were killed, we watched an innocent man sent to Azkaban, we allowed Harry to suffer childhood abuse and I killed Albus knowing that my death was to follow soon. All the time we knew what would happen but we could change nothing, nothing at all.

When Harry came to Hogwarts, that’s when I nearly crumbled. Harry and Ron. I had been hateful to them, Neville had said, and so that continued but as my lover grew older that became harder and harder. We had been of age when I met him, he just a few short weeks younger than me but now I saw him as a child, impulsive and foolishly brave. Hot tempered and opinionated and yet as he continued to mature he became My Ron, loyal and steadfast and vibrant and true. When I heard his laugh I wept inside and when they were together my taunts turned bitter because these children had been my closest friends if only for a short while and yet such friendship could never be again. I watched them care for each other and grow like weeds and all the while I was forever excluded.

So I was glad that the time had come finally, for me to die. And I knew that no one would weep for me, that I am no hero. But maybe a few months hence they would mourn the boy I was, and that is far more than I ever deserved or expected.

Harry was getting tired, we had escaped, with the help of Arthur and surprisingly Percy Weasley, and had run to this cliff edge. Here was where Harry had to make his stand and we were trying to help to defend him as best we could, give him time. He had been dodging hexes for twenty minutes and I could see that he wouldn’t last much longer, now it was my turn.

It happened so quickly. One moment I was throwing myself in front of Harry, taking a cutting curse on behalf of the boy. I will never forget the look of shock on his face as it hit me instead of him; he had always thought I hated him and maybe somewhere deep inside perhaps I did.

Then I was falling, down into the dark sea. The sky was so black, it didn’t seem right such darkness in August, the only spots of illumination were provided by the light of flashing spells. Frozen forever on my retina that scene, the one that preceded my death.

But then I didn’t die, did I? I was falling, falling just like Albus. Already tensing myself for the impact as I hit the rocks below. Strong arms, sweet breath, I landed heavily, awkwardly, but not on rocks. There was no pain, merely safety and in the end I hadn’t fallen far at all. He held me tight and brushed a kiss against my cheek and before I descended into darkness we soured high into the clouds on a rather battered Nimbus 2000.

When I awoke, I was in a soft comfortable bed, covered in bandages and Mundungus Fletcher was sitting at my feet.

“What in Merlin’s name is going on, Fletcher?” I asked with broken tones. I had heard a scream as I fell, a scream of loss, of terror; I hadn’t known it was mine. It destroyed my voice, for a while at least.

Mundungus smiled and his wrinkled visage melted away, to reveal freckles and laughing eyes. For a moment I thought it was Bill Weasley before his run in with Greyback, but it wasn’t Bill at all, was it? My visitor, my rescuer was Ron, but not the boy I remembered this Ron Weasley was a man.

“Hi Sev,” he grinned, “You didn’t think I’d leave you, did you? Would you like a glass of water?”

We all underestimated Ron, us adults. We thought him a sidekick to the great Harry Potter and his brilliant friend Hermione, an adjunct, a hanger on, everyone did, even me. We should have known better really because Harry was never a boy to make friends with ‘yes men’ or hangers on, all of his friends were able had hidden unsuspected depths, yes even Neville. It was only ever Hermione who wore her cleverness on her sleeve. Ron is a strategist, a master at chess and he always goes for the long game, I know that now.

When I had left, Ron had been desolate, bereft. I allowed myself a little satisfaction when he told me that. I had been missed after all. He and Harry, Hermione and Draco had felt such sorrow over my loss and guilt that they had let me go. It had been Luna’s suggestion in the end that galvanised them. I had hardly known her then, she had been going out with Dean and they were spending all their time together but she was another who kept her intelligence quiet.

“If he can’t be with you Ron, then why don’t you be with him?” she had apparently asked.

And that had set them off.

They had read and researched and investigated and had not given up until they had worked out how to save my life and how to give us, Ron and I, a chance.

They discovered out that my body had never been found and that gave them hope.

“Then Hermione found out all about Mundungus Fletcher,” Ron said, “he was such a wastrel and he’d had to get out of the country to get away from all the people he owed money to. He finally got eaten by a shark whilst nicking someone’s surf board off Bondi Beach. But we knew he was still alive, he had found all the Horcruxes, hadn’t he? Wasn’t he always around at Grimmauld Place when we were there too? That’s when I knew what to do. I was going to be Mundungus, I would find the Horcruxes, watch over everybody. I knew I could do it because you see Sev, I already had.

Hermione found a spell, it duplicated the effects of that orb that they sent you back with. It was less focused but it did the job. Then we disguised me, we used a powerful glamour, Harry cast it so that only I could ever remove it. It was simpler than Polyjuice, especially as there was not much of Dung left to work with.” He grinned, but then his face was sad for a moment. “It wasn’t always easy you know? I got really lonely sometimes and I wished I could be closer to you, tell you, rescue Harry, just talk to someone that I loved, warn them perhaps. But I couldn’t, couldn’t change a thing and it was almost unbearable sometimes but I managed for the best part, took myself off when it all got too much, fitted Dung’s image that did.

There was just one time when I couldn’t stay away, the night that Albus died. I thought, that maybe it wouldn’t make much difference if he lived, not in the grand scheme of things, but Albus wasn’t having that, he sent Aberforth after me and Harry nearly caught me. If he had discovered me then it would have ruined everything so I had to apparate away.” He looked at me ruefully; “I didn’t want you to have to go through that, killing Dumbledore.”

“So he knew about you then, did he?” I asked tilting his face up to look at me. But he just swallowed and nodded. “I went to see him, as soon as I arrived, I only went back twelve years. Mundungus had cleared out just eighteen months before, it was long enough that we could be sure not to cross paths and Hermione researched his death, we knew it had really happened.

It wasn’t hard to pick up Dung’s life, make contact with his erm associates. I was much better off than he was, Harry gave me a huge bag of Galleons and well, I invested them. Just a few here and there, nothing to change the timeline, just enough so that I would be comfortable.”

He turned to me now. “I am more than comfortable Sev, I am extremely well off. Turns out that I have a head for business, I’d like to share it with you, be with you, if you’ll have me?”

I was completely and utterly stunned. What could I say? How did I feel?

I never stopped loving Ron Weasley. I knew I always would love him. But there could be nothing between us; I was old enough to be his father. He was a teenager, more mature than most but still a child. I thought that I was going to die and that Ron would meet the seventeen-year-old me and forget me not long after. But that hadn’t happened. He hadn’t forgotten me at all. He had given up his friends and his family all he knew, to spend twelve years on the periphery of my life and his own in order to do his part to defeat the Dark Lord and so that one day he could save me from my miserable fate.

This Ron was a boy no longer, not even the mature caring boy that he had been. My Viking had become a man. And what a man! He was so beautiful, on that summer evening, so strong. The sky clear now, all the storms were past. No fool either, he had survived his self-imposed task undetected and played a major part in the destruction of the Horcruxes and of Tom Riddle, no fool at all. He was instead a master of the long game.

Checkmate Voldemort.

Of course I wanted to be with him, how could I not? Being with him is just like going home.

“Well? What do you say Sev?” He looked at me tentatively, shyly, this wonderful man who had given up so much for me. What could I say? I kissed him.

“So that’s it. That’s how I became a hero, well me and Sev. Because of course when we got back to our friends after four months in hiding, Harry insisted on it: an order of Merlin each, First Class of course. By then we knew that our love was real and spending that time travelling, Paris, Rome, America meant that we could explore our relationship with a freedom that neither of us had ever known before.

My Mum nearly had a conniption fit when she saw me arm in arm with Sev, and the twins were, for once in their lives, speechless. No longer the baby brother I was the eldest now, which completely freaked everyone out, especially Bill.

But was it worth it? Oh yes. I regret nothing. Not only do I have a good life, with Severus whom I think I have always loved, somewhere deep inside me. But I have been able to help Harry too. Because they were slowly falling apart my friends, just before I left. Especially Harry. He never had anyone he could turn to before, not really. Well he does now and so do they all. And if Severus complains now and then when they come by, he knows and I know that he doesn’t mean it and if Harry turns to me for a shoulder to cry on and if Draco sits in our kitchen with his blonde head resting on his arms on our scrubbed pine table while his sobs for his losses then Severus and I we just give them a hug and help them carry on. And maybe, just maybe, carrying on with life and not giving up when you have lost everything, that’s the most heroic thing of all”