Hades, Greek God of Death

-

I don't know how many times my memory's been wiped of this incident, but it always manages to come back to me.

It happened the day after Uncle Sev told me that Dad was dead. He said that Dad wasn't coming back. Papa was crying too much to tell me anything.

Everyone had tried to comfort me, but it was obvious Papa needed more help. I didn't understand death back then. All I knew was that Dad wasn't coming back and that he wouldn't be able to finish that book off.

That morning, though, when Papa was sitting at the table, crying, I found a box in the hallway. It came up to my knees. It was a simple cardboard box with the lid folded shut. As any child my age would have done, I opened it.

And this is where it gets a bit fuzzy. I opened it; I can remember my hands fumbling with the edges. I reached in and my fingers brushed someone so smooth. It was just like Dad. That was the initial thought I had. Whatever it was, it reminded me of Dad's hair. And it looked like it, too.

The further down I reached, the wetter the box got. The sensation of soft hair thinned until I felt something cold. I needed both of my hands to pull whatever it was out of the box.

Thanks to my altered memory, all I get after that is a flashing image of Dad's face, followed by my screams. I can't remember how quick Papa was to get to my side, to scoop me up and hold me close. I don't have a clue how long that took, but I know I was screaming for my dad long after Papa had carried me up the stairs. He was telling me to stay calm, to focus on him.

My hands were wet and my rear was cold. I was sitting on the bathroom bench and he was washing my hands and up my arms. He had taken my shirt off and had burned it with a spell. Then he washed my neck and my chin. I didn't realise I had gotten them dirty, but when he pulled the cloth back, it was red.

He kept kissing my forehead, telling me it would be alright. Something kept telling me that it wasn't. My eyes were burning with tears and my throat...I must have been crying for a very long time.

I was put in his and Dad's bed, where I curled up around Dad's pillow. He then magically put me to sleep, giving me a potion.

-

When I went downstairs after that, I couldn't find the box. There was something in it that I wanted to see.

Papa and Uncle Severus were talking in the lounge. I found the two of them there, with Papa curled up in the corner. He was holding something to his chest, rocking back and forth. Uncle Severus wasn't happy.

"You have to give it to me," he told Papa, who looked up at him and cried.

"But she's my baby girl," Papa replied, shaking harder. "She's mine and Draco's..."

"It's a corpse, Harry."

He held whatever it was closer to his chest. "She's Lily!"

I don't remember much after that.

When I started dreaming of this, Papa took me to a doctor and he erased my memory. It happened at least once a year. Papa didn't want me remembering this at all. Thing is, though, I might have forgotten the main images or the facts, but I remembered what I felt. Papa would hear me screaming in the middle of the night and would shake me out of it before he carried me off to his bed again. They were the only times I slept in his bed.

But when he died, and I had the nightmare again, I asked Uncle Severus, who finally told me the whole story.

Voldemort had sent that box to our home. They never figured out how it got in or how whoever delivered it got through the safeguards, but it was definitely from him.

There were two things inside the box. What I had touched-grabbed out of the bloody thing was Dad's head. When Papa had found me, I was cuddling it, crying and screaming. The front of my shirt was covered in blood.

The second thing was the 'it' Uncle Severus was talking about. Voldemort had forcibly removed my baby sister from the womb and had snapped her neck in front of Dad. He then had her body sent to our house with Dad's head. They did a DNA test on it and everything. The thing Papa was holding was Lily's corpse.

When he died, I had no one to comfort me after I dreamt about it.

-

Scorpius jolted awake, screaming and shaking.

-

Unlike his counterpart, Harry wasn't used to people crawling into bed with him. So when he felt the mattress dip, he was up with his wand pointed towards the intruder.

He quickly dropped the wand when he saw the two emeralds staring back at him.

"Scorpius?" he hissed moments before the blonde teen tackled him, forcing him to lie back on his bed. Within seconds, Scorpius had broken down, sobbing into his shoulder.

Hastily, Harry ensured their privacy with several silencing spells and made sure no one could enter past his curtains.

"What's wrong?" he whispered, holding his son tightly. Scorpius couldn't get any information out, so he just cried, his hands clutching at Harry's nightshirt. "Okay, okay."

Harry rocked the two of them together in a comforting pace, his hands running up and down Scorpius' back and arms.

"Is it your dad? Did something happen to him? Is he okay?"

The blonde still couldn't say a thing.

"Was it a nightmare? Please, tell me Scorpius. I'm worried about your dad."

Scorpius nodded his head, his sobs getting stronger.

Harry let out a relieved breath. He had gotten really concerned for Draco's health. He wrapped his arms tighter around the child, knowing exactly how he was feeling. Harry had battled with his own nightmares for years and with the past Scorpius had had, it came as no surprise that he suffered from them as well.

And whatever this nightmare had been, it was hell.

"I know you probably don't want to talk about it; I never really wanted to talk about mine, either. Everyone wanted me to talk it through with them-they thought it'd make it easier-but I know it doesn't work that way. The only way for it to get better is with time. Isn't that right? I guess life for you wasn't the easiest thing. Your papa doesn't seem like the most understanding of fathers and you lost your dad at such a young age." He smoothed Scorpius' hair back, trying his hardest to comfort the other boy. "You can go back to sleep, Scorpius. I'm right here. It'll be okay....we'll have breakfast in a few hours and then we'll go see your dad."

"No!"

Scorpius shook violently as he objected to that.

"Was it a nightmare about your dad?" Harry asked softly. He felt the other teen still for a moment. "Then we don't have to see him until you're ready to." The way Harry's hands would play with Scorpius' hair started to comfort him. It was no different from how his papa used to treat him.

"I lost someone I loved a few years ago," Harry continued. "And I wouldn't talk about it. Thinking back on it, I probably acted a bit like a brat when it first happened. I didn't want to admit that he was gone. I guess you were too young to realise what was happening when your dad died...."

"He didn't die," Scorpius interrupted. "He was killed. Murdered. There's a difference between dying and being murdered. Death is natural. Murdering is unforgivable. You take away more than just one life when you kill someone. You take away all the souls attached to that one person. My papa felt like he couldn't breathe half of the time after Dad was killed. Murderers take everything...and what they give back..." Scorpius' words broke off as he started to cry harder.

It was then that Harry realised the nightmare wasn't just a dream. Whatever that boy had dreamt about, he had also lived through.

He could only wonder what had been 'given back'.

"Murderers deserve to see the faces of everyone they've ever hurt. They deserve their souls taken away from them. Voldemort should be tortured for the end of time. He should be forced to feel what it's like to lose a loved one. He should know pain and suffering...my parents never deserved to go through what he did to them!"

It was Harry's first time seeing Scorpius so distressed. He was too used to seeing the blonde teen smile. These tears certainly didn't suit him at all. But he knew what he was going through. How many times did Harry wish he wasn't who he was? And if Scorpius really was his son, then the poor kid would have gone through just as much, solely because of who his parents were. The combination of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy wouldn't have been overlooked by Voldemort. He would have wanted the life of the child created by his mortal enemy and his betrayer.

That reminded him of a time when Scorpius admitted he had been a secret to the Wizarding world. Voldemort had never discovered him. He had found out about Lily by pure chance-a spy who had spotted Draco in the Muggle world. Scorpius, though, had been forced out of the public eye to keep him safe. Had he gone to Hogwarts, everyone would have known who he was and word would have gotten back to Voldemort. It made perfect sense to Harry to keep Scorpius away from that attention.

And that had Harry cringing. If Harry was Scorpius' papa, then he was an absolute idiot for what he had done to his son. The boy had hated his life. He wasn't allowed to do anything he wanted to do. The Muggle friends weren't allowed to visit and he was rarely allowed out of the house. He had also hated his life at school. And it was all because of his overprotective papa. Sure, his papa had done the right thing in that Scorpius was a child that would have needed all of that protection, but to take away his happiness as well was something Harry-was something his papa-would have regretted right up until the moment Voldemort killed him.

Harry let out a deep breath, so lost in his thoughts that he didn't even realise that Scorpius had stopped crying. His body would give out the slightest of sobs, but he was in a deep sleep, holding on to Harry's nightshirt like it was his protection. Harry's arms held Scorpius to his chest as he looked over him.

-

He wanted to turn away from the accusations held in those eyes. It might have been an arranged marriage, but there were still some things within his wife that Lucius didn't want to evoke.

Such as her wrath.

Emotionally, the two were never a loving pair. In fact, he normally found the woman too dull. She wanted money, so she got her money. He let her shop and gossip and hold as many cocktail parties as she wanted to. He kept her far away from his business and she kept him away from her friends. That's how it was. The only thing the two of them had a say in was their child.

Lucius was thankful both he and Narcissa were fertile. It took only one shot for her to fall pregnant. While Lucius wasn't one for romanticism in bed, Narcissa was. Their sex life was non-existent. In fact, they had only ever copulated once and that was the night of their wedding. Narcissa had insisted on the wedding of her dreams and that involved the consummation of it. Little did she know, her new husband intended on nothing more than leaving his seed inside her that one time and it was over before she could fulfil her dreams.

Oh, how she teased him for years afterwards on how quickly he had finished, especially when she came home from one of her many affairs.

The affairs never bothered Lucius. Hell, he was involved in several of them over the years. They'd act like a perfectly married couple in public and during Narcissa's parties, but the truth of it was that they slept in different quarters of the manner and divulged in their own sexual partners, who the other would never meet, save for one time. One of Lucius' one night stands had refused to leave before breakfast. She had come downstairs to greet Narcissa and brag about how good a night she had had. That, of course, brought up the night of Draco's conception, causing the (much) younger woman to brag again. This time, she was praising Lucius' stamina, causing Narcissa to see red.

However, Draco never knew about any of this. When he was at home with them, Lucius stayed in his pants and Narcissa put her knees together. They were the image of loyalty. Hell, they even went to Lucius' bedroom (Draco didn't have a clue Narcissa used the fireplace in Lucius' room to Floo over to her quarters) when they retired for the night.

But the news of Draco's betrayal had upset the both of them. Narcissa knew that her son would soon be targeted by the Death Eaters and Lucius knew he would look bad in front of his master for raising such a disappointment to the cause.

Hearing Draco's side of the story, though, changed things for Lucius. His son knew about his child. He knew about the child he and Harry Potter were meant to have together. And now, Lucius knew. Narcissa knew. The two of them had discussed this in Lucius' study. The idea of them being grandparents had been a given. Of course their son was to reproduce. It was the way of the Malfoys. They were to produce an heir when the time was appropriate. Only, they were meant to choose Draco's wife. He wasn't supposed to have a say in it, much like Lucius and Narcissa. That was simply the way of the Malfoys, and had been for generations before Draco.

Scorpius. That was the name of his future grandchild. It was his own middle name. The boy was named after him. The boy was the reason why his son had turned against him.

Narcissa instantly wanted him. She wanted nothing more than to speed up the years so that she could see her one and only grandson. She wanted to see the child their lord kills.

And Lucius wanted to as well.

However, the boy was part Muggle. He was the son of Harry Potter. His grandchildren were fathered by Harry Potter. It was perhaps his greatest nightmare. Lucius would have preferred his son sleeping and procreating with a Squib or a Muggle. They could have been disowned or denied. But he had claimed to love the Gryffindor Golden Child. His son was in love with their lord's enemy. He had admitted it.

Narcissa's eyes continued to burn over him.

"Well what do you suggest we do?" Lucius asked, running his hand over the back of his neck.

It was rare that the two of them came to an agreement over things. Narcissa was a follower. When it came up to the greater decisions like these, she was to listen to Lucius. But when things involved Draco, it got a little complicated.

"I don't want to follow a creature that will kill our son and our granddaughter," Narcissa claimed. "I don't want to do that at all. I care about my boy. I birthed him, Lucius. He's important to me and any child he has is just as loved, regardless to who the other parent is."

Lucius nodded his head, agreeing with his wife. "Our son is our future..."

"Don't give me that bullshit, Lucius. I don't want to hear that he's our future. Having a child or not doesn't validate his life at all. It doesn't make him more our son and it shouldn't base how much we love him."

The man leant back in his chair with a deep sigh. Behind him, the fire crackled warmly, basking them in a light that made their ethereal skin look darker. "My love for my son should not be questioned, Narcissa. Draco means the world to me. And his children...my grandchildren..."

"We cannot follow the man who'd hurt or kill our family."

"I'm well aware of that." He rubbed at his forehead, suddenly feeling his age. "We can't turn our backs on the Dark Lord. We'll be ostracised like Draco's been for the past few months. I am willing to prevent any attack on him if it's possible..."

"You had better put your life on the line for him, Lucius! I want these grandchildren. We know he has two babies. I want Draco to be happy. If he loves Potter as much as he told you he does, we must make sure it happens."

And that thought hurt Lucius' head. He wasn't happy with his family when they forced him into the marriage with Narcissa. He knew Draco would hate him just as much if they did the same to him. Especially when they knew he already had a lover.

His arm burned, stopping his thoughts. Flinching as if it was something new to him, he looked up at his wife. Narcissa had never been Marked. That was how it was. If they were Death Eaters by association through marriage, there was no real need for the women to become Death Eaters. They were merely meant to be the incubators for future Death Eaters. Only the most avid of females were Marked and Narcissa wasn't one of them.

"That'll probably be him complaining about Draco's unwillingness to play friendly," Narcissa commented snidely, standing from her chair. "Give him the bird from me when you go crawling to him, would you? You can't allow him to end our boy's life any time soon. He begged for ten years, didn't he?"

Lucius just shook his head before he stood, downing the large whiskey he had put aside, and then Apparated to where his master was waiting.

-

It was a routine Severus was getting used to. Slipping out of Remus' arms was getting easier and easier. Whenever he felt that sting in his arm, he manoeuvred himself out of their room as best as he was able to, without waking the werewolf.

Ever since Tonks had caught them in bed together, Remus had moved into Severus' quarters with him. Neither made any sort of fuss over it, though Remus did catch Draco's look-a-like smirking at him from the darkened corner of his classroom one morning. Tonks was the only one who made any sort of commotion from Remus' extracurricular activities with Severus, pouting about it for a few weeks. She quickly transferred from working as the Ministry's eye on Dumbledore to protecting Muggle politicians. Of course, she wasn't forfeiting her place in the Order; she just couldn't cope with the Hogwarts life anymore. She didn't even bother to get an explanation from Remus, and that suited him just fine. He had moved in with Severus the very next day and that was it.

But as the month passed, Voldemort seemed to be getting more and more anxious. The further his snake got in her human transformation, the more pissed off he got. It wasn't going as well as he had hoped, Severus had noticed, and he wasn't too sure if Voldemort was doing it for his lover's sake or if it was to prove himself better than the man who had originally succeeded. Word quickly got out that this wizened sorcerer had indeed been Dumbledore, which assisted Severus' theory. He had to admit, though, the relationship between the Dark Lord and Nagini was beyond twisted. Now that she was more humanoid, their interactions were becoming more human, as well. It turned his stomach to think that he once followed a man who had fallen in love with an animal.

Moving nearly mechanically now, Severus got himself dressed and ready to leave, only to pause when he saw Remus' eyes on him. Apparently he had roused his lover.

"Come back safely," Remus said softly and Severus had to fight off the smile that threatened to take over his mouth.

He loved Remus. Plainly and simply. And to hear him be so concerned about his health warmed his heart in a way Severus didn't think was possible. Yes, he had been hit by Cupid's arrow once before, but this time it was returned. Remus loved him as much as he loved Remus and that really had his stomach flipping with butterflies and everything else that was good.

Severus knelt on the bed, pressing his lips to Remus'. "Of course I will," he promised, running his hand through Remus' messy hair. They always managed to make love, no matter what. It was just how they were.

He left, seeing Remus' concerned face as he did, knowing that he had something to come back to. It made all the difference when he thought about it that way. Long ago, he was nothing more than a spy. Now, he had a lover to come home to. He had someone who would miss him if he were to die. Imagining if Remus was the one in that position made it clear to him that he had to return, no matter what He wouldn't live if Remus was to be taken away from him. He had no idea how Potter had lived through that. Ten years is a hell of a long time to go without your lover. Severus mightn't like the Gryffindor, but he had to admire the strength of the boy in the future for hanging on that long.

-

It was a new sensation to him, and one he didn't expect to get used to. Waking up with someone in his arms was the strangest thing in Harry's mind, especially when he suspected that person was his own son. He groaned lightly, wondering where his arm had gone. He had no sensation in his right forearm since Scorpius' head was on his elbow.

"Heavy lump," he chuckled, pushing at the blonde. Scorpius merely groaned and moved along Harry's arm, stopping at his wrist. That just caused Harry to push him straight off the bed.

"Bastard!" Scorpius hissed upon landing, though still within the protection of Harry's curtains. He noticed the redness of the room and turned up to see Harry looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Excuse me?"

"Sorry...but you shouldn't have pushed me out, you know? I was highly distressed last night..." He trailed off, not wanting to get onto that subject.

Harry ran a hand through his hair. "How about we head down to breakfast, hmm? I bet your dad's really worried about you."

In perhaps the cutest way Harry had ever seen, Scorpius' face scrunched, showing how much he disapproved of that. "He's been on my case ever since he told my grandfather about me. He lied to him about how he knew about me, but he's still really cautious about it now. He has to see me every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to bed. It wasn't even my screw up. It was all his."

Harry rolled out of bed, grasping Scorpius' forearm as he pulled the boy onto his feet. "How did you even get in here, anyway?"

"Aunt Hermione tells me the password every time it changes so I can come in here whenever I want." It was said with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Oh."

And with that, Harry found the discarded Invisibility Cloak and threw it over the teen's shoulders before he pushed him out of the curtain.

The moment Scorpius straightened, he felt his stomach turn. Something was wrong again.

-

Lucius looked down at the potion in his hand. Potion was probably the wrong noun. Poison was a better word for it. It was designed to bring a slow and painful death to anyone who ingested it. He had been given the vial by Voldemort and was told to use it on his son. The Dark Lord had been interested to see that the blonde man had gotten in and out of the castle without a single curse fired at him. So, he had given him the task of doing so again, but this time, he was to hand it over to a student so that Draco would die.

It took all of his willpower not to throw the damned thing on the marble floor beneath him. He was supposed to be the executioner for his own son. It was tearing him apart.

-

"Maybe we should take you to Snape," Harry suggested, his hand rubbing up and down Scorpius' back as the blonde was sick in a hidden part of the hallway.

"No," Scorpius argued, wiping at the back of his hand. He was glad it was still there. It had disappeared at least twice since they had gotten out of the Tower. "No. I'll be fine."

"Fine? You've been ill four times down this hall. That's not fine, Scorpius."

"I wanna see Dad, okay? Just...I'll be okay getting there. After that nightmare, I just wanna see him and hug him."

Harry sighed, waving his wand to clean up the mess. "Okay then. Come on. We gotta get you down to breakfast. It's a good thing it's a Saturday, eh?"

Scorpius slipped the Cloak back over his head and heading towards the Great Hall, intent on keeping his stomach in check long enough to see his dad.

He didn't have to look too far to find him.

Draco approached Harry, looking as worried as Harry had ever seen him.

"Scorpius...?"

"It's okay," Harry told him, watching as Draco's body was bumped in to. "He had a nightmare and came to me..."

"That's not your place, Harry," Draco hissed suddenly. "You should have told me straight away-I was so worried when I came in to check on him this morning."

"So you expected me to go all the way down to the dungeons with him even though he barely had it in him to tell me that he had a nightmare? He didn't want to talk about it and he didn't want to be babied. He just wanted someone to hold him."

"And he had to go all the way up to GryffindorTower to find someone to do that?" Draco paused when he heard a stifled sob against his chest. "I was really worried about you, Scorp. Some of the Slytherins were going on about a surprise visit they had last night. I was scared..."

"Stop fighting," Scorpius hiccupped, causing the two of them to stop whatever they were saying or what they were going to say. "It-it's happening again, Dad, so stop fighting."

"What's happening?" Harry asked. "Scorpius? Are you feeling sick again?"

"You were sick?" Worried grey eyes turned up towards Harry. "He gets like this when we fight...he starts to disappear and he gets ill...we think it's because he won't be born if we continue..." Draco suddenly paused, realising what he was admitting to.

"So-so I'm his papa?"

Even though there weren't many people in the Great Hall, there were enough to see the two of them talking like this. The rumours had spread a long time ago that something was happening between them, but no one really had any proof. Now, they were talking about something no one could understand, and it was grabbing the attention of several people.

"Are you disappearing, Scorp?" Draco questioned, ignoring Harry.

"Yes," came the response, muffled by Draco's chest and the Cloak. Again, Draco looked at Harry.

"You have to want him as our child, Harry. He's our baby..."

"What do you mean by disappearing? How the hell can he disappear?" Harry demanded to know.

"That's not important at the moment..."

"It's important if it's happening to my child."

Draco nearly stumbled back as he felt Scorpius crash into him. "Stop fighting." His voice wavered as if he was about to cry again. "Please. It's getting worse. I-I can't see my arms...they're gone."

That was it for Harry. He grabbed the Cloak, regardless of the fact they were in the Great Hall, and whipped it off the boy.

Albus stood up from where he was sitting at the staff table, nearly in shock. Revealing Scorpius was perhaps the last thing he expected of Harry. Secondary to that, though, he was beyond shocked to see that Scorpius' entire body was nearly translucent. It was if he was fading away.

"Potter!" Draco hissed, trying to cover his son back up. Harry refused to give him back the Cloak.

The Gryffindor, however, was having a hard time breathing. Scorpius was disappearing before his very eyes.

"How do we stop it?" he asked Draco softly.

"It normally gets better when we stop fighting, Harry..."

"He was sick long before we even saw each other today."

The blonde was at a loss. "Then I don't know..."

All eyes had turned to the three of them. It was an unexpected turn of events, what with a see-through Draco Malfoy lookalike standing between the two former enemies and all. The first to move towards them were Ron and Hermione, who tried to guide them out of the public eye. They didn't need this information to get out into the papers or to the Death Eaters. Scorpius' life was in danger the moment he had been revealed.

Worst yet, he was disappearing more and more as the time went past.

"You have to want him as your child," Draco told Harry softly. "You know he's your kid; you've always known..."

The third person to move, Theo, had paused at the softly spoken words.

"I know...I want him," Harry replied, reaching out for his son. "He's our son."

"And me?"

"You're my lover-my future husband. I know this-I've accepted this, Draco...! Why is he still disappearing?"

There was no trace of calmness in Harry's voice.

Scorpius couldn't remember a time where Harry was so confused. His papa had always been in control when it came up to his life. He always knew what to do to keep him safe. And now, there were no answers. Scorpius couldn't be put into a glass box when they didn't know why he was in danger. He was disappearing and there seemed to be nothing they could do about it.

"Papa," Scorpius suddenly sobbed before he was gone.

Before they knew it, they were staring at an empty space where their son had once been.

-

Lucius looked down at the vial sitting on the bedside table. He didn't know which Slytherin child it belonged to, but he was hoping that it wasn't a Death Eater.He hoped that with everything he had. The man had no idea of the commotion happening up in the Great Hall. All he knew was that he had to talk to Draco. In his pocket, he had a second vial; this one containing the smallest drop of potion in it. With luck and the talent his son had, he'd be able to analyse it and come up with a cure before he ingested that hellacious poison.