Chapter Text
The final steps in the approval process didn't require her presence, so Ellie decided to take her studies to the next level while she waited for her oldest dream to come true. With Snape's blessing, she journeyed to Diagon Alley on her own, to seek out the greatest wandmaker in the world.
Ollivander's shop was quiet and empty when she arrived. Aside from the annual Hogwarts rush, he didn't have much business. She rang the bell on the counter and waited a minute, then rang it again. After a while, Ollivander came slinking out of a back room to meet his customer.
"Miss Nihil again, is it? Having trouble with your wand?" he said, recognizing Ellie.
"No, sir, that's not why I'm here."
Ellie took a wand out of the pocket of her robe and laid it on the counter between them.
"What's this?" asked Ollivander
"A wand," said Ellie.
"This," said Ollivander, pointing at it, "is a stick. A pretty stick made of fancy wood."
Ellie took out a second wand and placed it before him.
"A mockery of a great artform," he declared.
She placed her third wand on the counter. This one had a large crack running down the side from when she had attempted to cast a spell with it.
"A parody of a failure," said Ollivander.
The fourth wand was smoother and uncracked, but Ellie had never been able to achieve any magic with it.
"There is more to a wand than sticking a hair through a block of wood. This stick is lacking all the essential features that make a wand. It is an insult to have such a thing in my shop."
Already expecting this response, Ellie pulled out the fifth one. This one used her first attempt at the wand stain, but had no treatment of the core, and she'd blown the tip to splinters shortly after it was made. But Ollivander did not seem so insulted by this one.
"Where did you get this woodstain? It's far too thick."
"I made it," said Ellie, placing her sixth wand on the counter.
Ollivander picked this one up and looked it over carefully. "Most unconventional," he said, "and still lacking some key components, but I think… yes, I think you could call this a wand."
Ollivander peered down at Ellie, perhaps taking her efforts seriously for the first time. "How many more of these do you have hidden in your pockets?"
"Just one," said Ellie, extracting her final creation.
Ollivander took it eagerly and evaluated it as he did the other. "Whose wand is this?" he asked.
"It's my wand, I made it," said Ellie, a little confused.
"No, no. Unless I am very much mistaken," said Ollivander, "this wand has chosen a master. And I do not think it is you… who else has used this wand?"
There was only one other. Whether he wanted it or not, this wand had decided that Hagrid was its master. "Oh… just someone." said Ellie.
"You should let them keep this," said Ollivander seriously, "it is bad form for a wandmaker to keep a wand that has already chosen."
"I tried," said Ellie, "He, er, didn't want it."
Ollivander narrowed his eyes at this news, but didn't press the matter. Instead, he said, "Congratulations, Miss Nihil. If you can make a wand that is capable of choosing its own master, then you can call yourself a wandmaker. But you are still a long way from mastery."
"I know," said Ellie, "which is why I want you to teach me."
"Yes, you are in need of a teacher," said Ollivander, "but I am not in need of an apprentice. I have two children, both of whom have been practicing their entire lives to take over this family business. You will need to find someone else."
Ellie had expected this, but she was still disappointed. "I only want to learn from the best."
"Flattery will get you nowhere," said Ollivander, "I already know that I'm the greatest wandmaker alive today. But unlike some others I could name, I do not go around handing out trade secrets to any hobbyist who asks for them."
Ellie thought about arguing, but Ollivander seemed resolute. She asked, "Who would you recommend, then? Jimmy Kiddell?"
"That hack? He can't teach you anything you haven't learned from Gregorovitch already."
"Then where can I go?"
Ollivander scooped up all the wands into a bundle and handed them back. "Try my son. He has yet to surpass me, but he has no apprentice yet."
This was better than what Ellie had expected. Not THE Ollivander, but AN Ollivander. Learning from someone who learned from the best was almost like learning from the best, right? "How do I contact him?"
"He owns a furniture store in Hogsmeade. An letter addressed to Lionel Ollivander will find him."
"Thank you, sir," said Ellie with genuine gratitude, "I won't disappoint him."
While Ellie was in Diagon Alley, Snape was at Miss Trumble's Home for Girls, filling out the last of the paperwork.
"I'm so glad you decided to adopt," said Miss Trumble, "Ellie was always a bit strange, a bit hard to place… who knows where she'd be now without you."
Snape thought of the half-starved runaway he'd first met. If he hadn't intervened then, they still would have met someday, at Hogwarts. And without that fateful meeting, Snape's life would not be so different, still teaching at Hogwarts. But all the same, he couldn't imagine his life now without her. "I'm glad I found her," he said.
"I always thought this would happen, you know," said Miss Trumble, "from that first morning when you brought her back to us. You were so protective, and you didn't even know her! It's a beautiful thing, to be able to place a child where they belong."
Snape agreed, but it was a little too soppy for him, so he said, "Now I just sign here, and it's done?"
"That's right! Just one signature away from being a father. How does it feel?"
"It feels right," he said, signing the paper with a quick flourish.
"There! Done!" said Miss Trumble, stamping the stack of papers and sliding them into the folder. "Now that that's out of the way, I do have something to tell you, which may or may not be a surprise."
Snape gestured for her to continue.
"When Ellie came to us, her mother requested a closed adoption. That is, I was not legally able to tell Ellie anything about her birth parent. But now that Ellie has been adopted, the terms have changed. As per the original agreement, I can now tell you the mother's name and address, so you can seek her out if you wish."
Snape had not expected this at all. He'd taken for granted that Ellie would never know her birth parents. But now he could find out, once and for all, if Ellie's parents were muggles or not. Would Ellie want to know? She claimed that she didn't, but if it was this easy… "Why did the mother allow this?" asked Snape.
"Well, she was quite young at the time," said Miss Trumble, "not ready for a child, I think. But she said that the child may have questions for her someday that only she could answer. For many years, I thought she might come back for Ellie, you know. I only met her the one time, but she seemed the type."
"And you never contacted her again?"
"Not allowed. Not even for a medical history. So I take it you want to know?"
Now that he knew that he could know, he couldn't resist. For better or for worse, willful ignorance was not the answer. He nodded, and Miss Trumble moved to the filing cabinet to get the information. He tried to prepare himself. The address could be in his own neighborhood. The name could be a witch he knew. Or worse, it could be some filthy drug-addled muggle who would destroy Ellie's life upon re-entering it…
Miss Trumble slid a piece of paper across the desk, and Snape read the words. Then he read them again. He was not prepared. His mind spun in circles, trying to take it in, but there was something in the way. His body got the message before his brain did, as a thick tear dripped off the end of his nose and onto the paper. But even through the watery smudge, there was no misinterpreting the name above that familiar address.
When Ellie got back from Ollivander's she started to excitedly relate her story about possibly apprenticing with the wandmaker in Hogsmeade, but stopped when she noticed Snape's red eyes. He looked like he'd been crying. "What's wrong?" she asked, "Was there some problem with the adoption?"
"No," he said, sounding a little hoarse, "No that's done. No problems."
"But, that's… that's good news, right? That I - that I'm your daughter now?"
She was suddenly overwhelmed by the thought that he was regretting it. He was going to change his mind, make them reverse it. Snape started to say something, but his voice cracked. He put his head in his hands and abandoned himself to crying for a minute. Not sure what to do when your adoptive father is crying like a child, Ellie awkwardly patted him on the shoulder and said, "It's alright."
After recovering himself a little, Snape said, "Sit down, Ellie, we need to talk."
Ellie sat down on the sofa opposite Snape's armchair and asked, "About what?"
Snape took a deep breath and began, "About your mother. Miss Trumble told me her name and -"
"I don't want to know," interrupted Ellie, "I always said that I didn't want to know."
"Please, Ellie. I know you've said that before, but I need you to know."
Ellie bit back a snappy remark. He shouldn't have found out. He should have told Miss Trumble to keep it to herself… but he did know. And whoever it was, it had a big impact on him. With a sudden realization, Ellie asked, "Did you know her?"
"Yes."
"Was she a witch?"
"Slow down. There… there needs to be an order to this. I - can I start with the hardest part first?"
Ellie nodded.
"She died. Ten years ago."
Ellie felt like she had the wind knocked out of her. Snape wasn't leading her into this gently at all. This is what she had secretly hoped for though, isn't it? That they had never come back for her because they were dead? And it didn't matter, then, who she had been. It didn't matter that Ellie had never looked. She'd been dead for most of Ellie's life. Ellie didn't feel like crying. It felt right, somehow. Like the obvious answer to the great mystery of her life that she'd never wanted to investigate. Dead. Gone. Book closed, story over.
But Snape had more to say. He had known her, after all. "Ok," said Ellie, "I'm good. Go on."
Snape pulled something out of his pocket, and handed it to Ellie. It was a small photograph of two children, no older than Ellie was now. One of them was obviously a young Snape. He was smiling, just a little, and kept glancing over at the girl next to him. She was laughing and shaking out her hair. She must have been looking right at the lens when the photo was taken, but to Ellie it felt like the girl was looking at her.
"Her name was Lily Evans," said Snape, "and she was my best friend."
"Oh," said Ellie, softly, understanding the source of the tears. "I'm sorry. So, she was a witch then? At Hogwarts?"
"She was the finest witch I'd ever met." said Snape, looking fondly at the photo, "but we met here, as children, before starting at Hogwarts."
"Like us?" asked Ellie.
"Just like us," confirmed Snape.
"I don't look like her," said Ellie, "except maybe the hair."
Snape smiled a little, "No, but you do look quite a lot like her mother. And her sister. It would have been obvious if I was looking for it, I think."
"Grandmother…" said Ellie, "and Aunt. I have a family then."
"There is so much to tell you," said Snape, "and I don't know where to begin."
"Maybe you can start with how you met?"
Snape told her some stories. It was hard to wrap her head around the idea that the shadowy half-imagined figure she'd had in her mind for so long had been a real girl, and Snape had known her well. It seemed like too much coincidence, but the magical world was small. She could feel that Snape had loved Lily, and possibly still did. He had nothing but wonderful things to say about her. She was a potions genius, humorous, and unfailingly kind. As he spoke, though, Ellie could feel a little bubble of anger growing in her chest. Good people didn't just abandon their babies at orphanages.
“If you were her best friend,” Said Ellie, “did you know about me?”
“No, I had no idea.”
“How could you have missed that?”
“Well, we… grew apart. In our last year of school, when she must have been pregnant with you, I hardly saw her. And then we graduated and went our separate ways.” Snape hesitated and added, “She joined the Order of the Phoenix to fight you-know-who… and I became a death eater.”
Ellie wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “So… in the end… you were enemies?”
“No, never enemies. I could never have raised a hand against her." He paused in thought for a moment, then continued seriously, "I think, given the information that has come to light, that it is time you understand my past. I had thought to protect you from it… but it’s clear now that you were always going to become involved, one way or another. You recall, I hope, Dumbledore’s warnings to keep our relationship secret?”
“Of course.”
“Well, to shorten an exceptionally long and convoluted story, I came to regret my service to the Dark Lord and became a spy, under Dumbledore’s command.”
“So you and Lily were on the same side then?”
“Yes, although she never knew. But there is more, so much more. Do you know how the Dark Lord fell?”
“Yes. He tried to kill Harry Potter, and it backfired on him.”
“And you understand that he’s not dead? That he’ll be coming back someday, maybe someday soon?”
Ellie nodded.
“Well when he comes back, I’ll need to be a spy again. And honestly, I’ve never really stopped.”
“Wow,” Said Ellie, “that’s pretty impressive. But what does that have to do with me?”
Impressive is not what Snape had been going for, though he was a little honored that Ellie had interpreted it that way. He explained, “The Dark Lord has always threatened innocents to control their loved ones. It is… an incredibly effective tactic. And Dumbledore, I think, sees you as a weakness that I cannot afford. If the Dark Lord threatened you, I would be at his mercy. I would do anything he asked of me, no matter how repugnant, in order to protect you."
"You don't need to do that," said Ellie, "you should do the right thing, even if it means I might get hurt."
"Maybe I should," said Snape, "But I wouldn't, and Dumbledore knows that. I won't claim to be Dumbledore's only secret weapon, but it would greatly damage our cause if I were not able to fulfill my duties. And he also thought that adopting a muggle born child would damage the image I need to maintain in order to successfully infiltrate their ranks again.”
“But I’m not muggle born. So it’s better now, isn’t it?”
“No, I’m afraid it’s worse. You know the name Harry Potter, of course. But do you know who his parents were?”
Ellie shook her head. She knew she’d read their names somewhere, but she couldn’t remember anything about them.
“On the night the Dark Lord was defeated, he murdered Harry Potter’s parents. James Potter and Lily Potter. Formerly Lily Evans.”
“No way,” said Ellie, “that would make the boy who lived my brother!”
“He is. Which means that you are in more danger than ever.”
Ellie didn’t care about that, though. “My mum was married, then,” said Ellie quietly, “and they had a son who they kept.”
Guessing her thoughts, Snape said, "She was young when she had you, and still unmarried. I don't think it would have been an easy choice, but she wasn't ready for a daughter at eighteen."
"When she was ready, though," said Ellie, "they didn't come back for me. They had another child. And they kept him. They died for him."
Snape shifted uncomfortably and said, "We'll never get to know their reasons for certain. It's too late for that. But I have my guesses. You have to understand that the wizarding world was still at war when they died, and they were both strong opponents of the Dark Lord. You were safer, hidden in the muggle world. Maybe they intended to come back for you someday, but were robbed of that chance."
"They thought it was safe enough to keep Harry," said Ellie, "Why wasn't I worth the same risk?"
"I can't answer that for certain," said Snape.
"But you have your guesses? Are you really going to try to justify it?" asked Ellie, the bubble of anger bursting, "They didn't want me! I came to terms with that years ago. My mum and dad never wanted me, so they left me at the Home with all the other unwanted children. But now you suddenly show up and tell me that my mum was this wonderful person who could do no wrong, and expect me to be happy about it! To you she was a friend. To Harry she was a mother. To the wizarding world she was a hero. But to me, she was just a dumb teenager who got knocked up and couldn't handle the responsibility."
"Please don't blame her," Snape pleaded.
"Who should I blame then?" said Ellie, "my Father? James Potter? You haven't said anything about him yet. Was he a kind and loving hero too?"
"No, definitely not," said Snape, "but we don't know that Potter was your father."
"Just what I'd expect from a teenage mother," said Ellie petulantly, fully aware that she was insulting Snape's dead best friend. "I bet she had loads of boyfriends."
Snape put his head in his hands and stayed there for a while. Ellie couldn't tell if he was angry or crying or both, but it gave her time to fume quietly. This moment should be about her, she thought. It was her birth mother and her life being turned on its head. An hour ago, she was excited to be getting one father, more family than she'd ever dared to hope for, and now she was finding out that there was so much more. Dead parents, a famous brother, an aunt who looked like her… She hadn't asked for any of this. She didn't want to know in the first place, but she couldn't take it back now. And then there was that point she'd blown over earlier about how a dark wizard would probably want her dead because her birth parents had opposed him more than ten years ago.
Snape lifted his head and began again, "I know that this is a lot to take in right now. It's a lot for me too. But there's more I need to say, before you decide to hate Lily."
Ellie wasn't sure she could handle any more right now, and Snape looked close to a breaking point as well, but there was no stopping him.
"The way I see it, there are two likely candidates who could be your biological father. But no matter who it is, I am your father now, and I love you very much. I don't want anything about your birth parents to hurt our relationship."
"Will you hate me if I hate Lily?" asked Ellie.
Snape winced but said, "No, of course not. It is your right. But I don't think you will hate her, when I've finished, although you may hate me."
Ellie had always harbored some small hatred for the parents she never knew, mixed in with a slurry of other complex emotions that she suppressed for her own peace of mind. That didn't seem likely to change now.
"The first person to consider," continued Snape, "is of course James Potter. They dated in our seventh year and later married, so most people would assume that any children she had would be his. It would be hard to verify this, and it is possible that he never even knew you were born."
Snape hesitated. Ellie could see a mixture of fear and sadness in his face that almost frightened her with its intensity. His eyes were brimming with tears again, but he wasn't hiding his face. Whatever was coming next couldn't be good. "And the other?" prompted Ellie.
He started to answer, but couldn't get the words out. He was trying to suppress a sob, and his breath was coming in ragged gasps. "I'm sorry," he said, through the tears, "I am so, so sorry."
"Just get it out," said Ellie, not unkindly. It was hard to watch the ordinarily stoic professor breaking down like this.
"The other," said Snape, with a slight hitch in his voice, "is me."
Ellie wondered if she heard correctly. "You?" she asked, skeptically.
"Maybe," Snape replied, "And if I am… you can blame me for everything. When you were born, I wasn't there for you. I was - I was a Death Eater. I was torturing muggles and playing power games, and it killed Lily. How could she raise you, knowing what I was? Knowing I could come for you one day and bring you into all this? And despite all her efforts to hide you, it happened anyway. I'm so sorry, Ellie."
It took a moment for Ellie's already overwhelmed brain to catch up with Snape's train of thought. It made perfect sense. If she wanted to know how she, a witch, ended up in a muggle Community Home, she didn't have to look any further than the only wizard in town. And they'd always had a connection, from the moment they met. Natural, instinctual. Snape was her father in all senses: emotionally, legally, and probably biologically. Suddenly, blame didn't seem so important to her.
Afraid to get her hopes up, Ellie asked, "Are you sure it's you and not James?"
"I'm not sure," said Snape, "But I think I'm right. There's nothing in you that resembles him at all, and… Eileen… I think Lily may have named you after my mother."
It was good to have a reason for her hideous first name, but this seemed like flimsy evidence. She felt that he was right though. And even if he wasn't, he was still her father, and he had been for years. It didn't excuse Lily, in her opinion, but she'd lived with unwanted children for long enough to know that happy marriages rarely included the love-child of a former affair.
"I don't blame you," said Ellie, "or Lily. But what does all this mean for me? For us?"
Snape looked relieved. "It means we're family," said Snape, "but we can't tell anyone. Not until the Dark Lord is gone for good."
"Will I ever get to meet the rest of my family? My Aunt? My half-brother?"
"Believe me, you don't want to meet Petunia. But you'll have the chance to meet Harry soon, even if you can't tell him who you are. He's starting at Hogwarts in September."
"Will he be safe?" asked Ellie.
"No," said Snape, "but I'll protect him."