Author's Note: Well, here it is. This is my first published story. I've written drabbles and done a few little pieces on my computer, and taken a writing course at my school, but I've never posted anything before. To say I'm nervous is an understatement. The Harry Potter fandom is a vast ocean and this is my little drop in the sea. I hope someone somewhere finds this worth reading despite a premise that I've seen done before and a lack of experience on my part. I've spent some time revising this, but I don't have a beta so I apologize for mistakes if they pop up. For the record Harry and co. are in their 5th year and this all takes place during Order Of The Phoenix.

I would just like to state, and I mean this, all constructive criticism is welcome. Nobody gets anything right on their first try. I know I will make mistakes, have areas I need to improve in and basically need a landslide of pointers. I fully accept this and I'm not going to treat any reviews as personal attacks. They aren't. Reviews, criticism, suggestions, ideas and comments are how an author grows.

But beyond that, even if you don't review, I want to thank you for reading this. I worked hard on this, and I hope that it's at least interesting to you. Thank you for your time.

Ice was not common in September.

It made it easy to find her, even if you weren't looking for her specifically. Of course, there was a reason why the Muggleborn of Slytherin had taken refuge outside to practice magic. She had learned a spell that turned the hands of anyone who touched her luggage glacial blue, and so before the first class of the first day had started she had been in trouble with her house Head for 'excessive use of magic'. Trust him not to give her any pity, for Muggleborns were no friends of his, but now that the first day was over she could get back to the work she wasn't allowed to do at home.

Home. Home for her was a tiny village called Uyeasound on the northernmost of the Shetland Islands in Scotland. Home was a small place where she knew each person by name, where they greeted her return from her 'boarding school for the gifted' with smiles and presents. They were an extended family there. In Uyeasound she was not allowed to use magic, being the first witch born there in over a century, but there she didn't need it to defend herself. She had no enemies there. To say she loved it is to say that a starving person sort of likes food. Yet as good of a home as she had come from, bottling up magic was hard. Three full months of forcing down every impulse and praying each slip up wouldn't earn her a court order before the Ministry of Magic was like trying to told her breath in. Now, finally, she could exhale, grip her wand in her left hand, let the familiar hum of magic flow through her, and let it all out. Magic was a home, too. With a muttering of words and a thrust of a wand all the grass around her turned gray and silver, coated over with frost; she had made a circle of winter. A step back and a turn, icicles impaled themselves through the trees at the edge of the forest with a single word.

Though the magic was beautiful, the girl was not. Her body was thin, too thin, the result of a condition her pride had her refuse to seek help for, but she held her head high even if she was gangly and flat chested, supported by her own internal pride. Tall and long limbed, her light mouse brown hair was cut as short as a boy's, her eyes dull gray, unreadable. The ice around her was extensive and thick, a strange area in which she excelled. As the sole Muggleborn in Slytherin, she was reminded daily and extensively of all the ways she failed and all the things she did wrong. Her one area of skill was honed to a fine point to keep her pride alive. Technically, though it was evening, she was still allowed out. The rules prohibited anyone being out after dark, and she'd learned through trial and error how much she could bend that rule. She didn't care if she wasn't pretty, she was skilled, and one day, she'd rise above all this.

When she saw Dumbledore approaching, she dropped her arms to her sides, letting her red oak wand slip into her pocket, though of course an eleven inch wand stuck out a bit regardless. Her breath was coming in a bit fast from the exertion of spell after spell, but she tried to straighten up and look respectable to the Headmaster. In all her time at Hogwarts, this being the start of her fourth year, Dumbledore had been kind and exceptionally good to her. He had reduced her punishments more than once after talking to Professor Snape; Dumbledore understood that her birth and her house made life hard. While she wouldn't say he played favorites, he knew how to make an exception when circumstances called for it. In the dim light of the fading summer evening his beard and robes almost appeared to glow. If she were sentimental she might honestly say Albus Dumbledore was vaguely fatherly to her.

"Hello, sir. I was just practicing some spellwork, sir."

No one ever accused her of sentimentality. She hated emotional thoughts, and endeavored to push them away from herself. She told herself she was above it. Really, it was just for protection in case yet another person turned out not to be safe to show emotion to. But her politeness was soft spoken to Dumbledore. She never addressed him with the icy vehemence she'd learned to use on Pureblood Slytherins who hated her. He was someone she respected from the first time she'd landed in his office and he'd actually heard out her side of the story before passing judgment.

"Miss Connor, you have once again missed dinner." There was unspoken disapproval in the look in his blue eyes. She stared right back at him, not so much as twitching in guilt, because she was curious. The Headmaster didn't come over to a student because they skipped a meal. There had to be more. "If you would come with me, I'm afraid we have much graver issues to address."

He turned and began to walk towards the castle, the crunch of the frosted and frozen landscape she'd created audible underneath both their feet as she followed. She spoke up, tone polite and neutral as always. "Sir, if this is about the death of my mother, I already sent an owl to you, about a month ago, sir, explaining I'll be living with my aunt Jessica."

"It pertains to your mother, Miss Connor," he acknowledged with a nod of his head. "And I am terribly sorry for your loss. However, I don't wish to say any more on the matter where it might be made public. Simply trust me when I say this must be handled delicately."

She nodded. She did trust him. She trusted Professor Dumbledore, her friend Qendrim a year above her (and in Ravenclaw, to boot) and her friend Ivalu, a year below her and, Salazar forbid, a Gryffindor. She had a small circle of people she knew wouldn't turn on her. After a grueling first year of being pranked, spat upon literally and figuratively, bullied and left without anyone to turn to, she had begun to change. The coldness in her gray eyes was something that had come with time, that had developed as she learned to fight back. Qendrim had been in the same boat of bullying, although not as extreme, for being foreign. They had spent her second year developing a cautious trust of one another, helping each other fight back against bullies. She failed at all Potions, so if her things happened to have a bottle of corked Laughing Elixir fermented and ready to go off, of course it wasn't her fault. He was bad at offensive spells, so if trying to mess with his food resulted in a frozen hand, of course it wasn't him. Ivalu had come into their fold a year later, picked on but brave, ready to take on the world armed with cheerfulness and an unbreakable spirit.

Her friends had likely told the Headmaster where she was. It wouldn't have taken much to see she wasn't at the Great Hall to eat, but she could normally count on them to cover for her. That meant this must be something serious. She ran her mind through the possibilities. Expulsion was the immediate fear. It was also unlikely because she simply hadn't had time to get into a fight with even the snobbiest of her housemates. Had something happened to Qendrim or Ivalu? Doubtful, they were both model students except when pushed by bullies, and she swore Qendrim could be nominated for sainthood if it weren't for the whole magic thing. The Headmaster had said it had to do with her mother. Her mother's will she had gone over with her aunt and grandfather a month ago; everything was settled on that front from a legal point of view. There was nothing left to do but move on from her mother's murder, even if the thought of it made her left hand twitch for her wand, aching to blast something in a mixture of grief, anger and pain she didn't know how else to express.

All the way up to Dumbledore's office, she was confused. He spoke the words 'cream puffs' and that was, apparently, this week's password. She was too deep in thought to even giggle at it as they ascended the stairs to his office proper, where the usual array of fascinating magical devices were scattered about his desk and on the shelves alongside thick magical tomes. Fawkes tilted his head at her, curiously. This warm toned, normally comforting place, however, was marred by the presence of Professor Snape. He sat in a chair in front of the Headmaster's desk like a punished child. His expression was unreadable, but there was something different in how he looked at her, a certain way he took her in that made her feel on edge. She was glad she hadn't eaten anything, or she'd be getting nauseous right about now. Ignoring his staring, she sat down in the chair placed beside his and focused her attention on Dumbledore, whose face was solemn and serious. Most students had a hard time pretending Snape wasn't in the room, but she'd had three years of practice, and was exceptionally good at talking and acting as if that horrid man were nowhere to be found.

"Miss Connor, I know that you must still be reeling from the death of your mother. My heart goes out to you," Dumbledore said sincerely. Her left hand loosely gripped her wand's base for comfort. "I understand that now is not the time, and you do not wish to discuss this. You must heal in your own way, on your own time. Despite my desire to leave this matter well enough alone, however, certain matters have recently been brought to my attention which means we must address this now."

He paused. She said nothing. Snape said nothing. They both managed not to so much as glance at each other. This was the point she was supposed to ask questions, but she would do no such thing in the presence of Professor Snape. He shot her down in and out of class every time she asked something. He was as much a bully, as much a daily endurance and nuisance, as anyone else in her House. If he thought she would give him the satisfaction of opening her mouth, he had another thing coming. Time had taught her exactly the kind of man he was.

Dumbledore continued after a stretch of silence, "I know you were raised by your mother, and not as part of the magical community. This does not mean she was ignorant to the magical world; like most parents of Muggleborns, she accompanied you to Diagon Alley. Tell me, Miss Connor, do you remember a point in time where she left you to try out wands while she attended to other business?"

Slowly, she nodded. She still wasn't going to risk speaking in front of Snape. It had taken her a while to find a wand, although that had been in part because of a few other first years in front of her, and her mother had been back in time to see her frost the windows over with a swish of her red oak, dragon heartstring wand. That was a good memory, a good time, back before she had been Sorted and everyday began to feel like an uphill battle.

"What she did, which was done for your legal protection, is fill out a wizarding will in case anything should happen to her before you came of age. She wished for you to be protected in both the eyes of the Muggle and Magical law. Part of this agreement, which she paid for in advance, was that upon her death a paternity test was to be run via magic to see if your father was a wizard."

Snape would love that. Going off of the fact he still wouldn't look at her, she was guessing that no, her father wasn't. She was fine with that; always had been. Let her be the Muggleborn spell creator who rose through the ranks of Slytherin through ambition and determination. She was fine with that being who and what she was. At this point it was something she was fiercely proud of even if her existence horrified her housemates. One day she would be an Auror and her parentage would be a side note in the story of her life. Let the test tell her that her father was still a mystery, a nameless faceless Muggle somewhere out there in the great wide world. She didn't need a father, all she needed her friends, her wand and some time, and she would make her own way through the world. She had the ambition and the strength to do it with time and nothing would stop her. Her mother had awkwardly explained the one night stand that led to her birth to her long ago, and she was alright with that. Her mother had loved her enough to make up for a disappeared dad.

"I won't attempt to explain the intricacies of the test or the specifics. It was no cheap endeavor, but she left you no debt. What she did leave you was a revelation of sorts." Dumbledore peered over his glasses into her eyes, serious as a heart attack. "Your biological father is Severus Snape."

There was a pause. Her mouth fell open, but no sound came out. Panic spiked within her. That cruel cold ex-Death Eater, her father? The man who let bullying go on in his house without much more than an occasional intervention, the man who assigned homework by the foot, who never seemed to leave the dungeon, was related to her? No. No. She was nothing like him. She stood up to bullies, she had friends in two other houses, she aspired to more than the walls of Hogwarts, she didn't give a damn about blood or lineage. She was no more related to this man than the sun was to the moon. Panic turned to outrage and she stood up abruptly, holding her head high and drawing herself to the most height a girl of five foot four built like a bundle of sticks could.

"There must have been a mistake," she said, and, because this might be her only chance to ever insult Snape and not get detention for it, she rushed on, "I'm nothing like him at all. I have standards."

He flinched. A small flinch, but a victory nonetheless. Good; he could consider that payback for three years of being ignored and being left to fend for herself. Dumbledore looked grim and simply pulled a scroll seemingly out of the air to present for her to read. She took the parchment, expression defiant. What followed was the closest to an emotional breakdown she'd had in years. Her eyes grew wide, her breath hitched and she paled. Her hands shook. Unfortunately, even so she could read the cursive script upon the scroll clearly.

Simone Yseult Connor is hereby confirmed to be the daughter of Paisley Ann Connor and Severus Tobias Snape.

She held it out to Dumbledore. Voice shaking, she managed a mostly confident-ish sounding, "I don't see what this has to do with me. I'm going to live with my aunt. The legal matters are sorted out. This is just… just… trivia. And trivial."

Snape looked hurt for a fraction of a second before his face resumed a neutral expression. Though their hair and eyes were different, though she was much paler than he was and their faces were shaped differently, they wore identical masks of not caring. Their eyes were purposefully devoid of expression, their jaws set, their breathing controlled, identical disdain and apathy forced onto both faces. Before now it had never been clear to Albus just how very fake that look was on either of them. But it protected them, delayed the impact of emotions and implications they had to face when eventually the gravity of the situation hit them. How eerie it was, to see them mirror one another without ever knowing it. In another life, under other circumstances, the two of them could have laughed about it, had it as a running joke. As it stood now, it was nothing short of sad.

"If it's alright with you, Headmaster, I'd like to go back to my dormitory. I have some reading to do for the start of History of Magic tomorrow." She was proud of how steady she kept her tone, but she wasn't good enough to keep a waver out of the end words. Still, it was strikingly Snape-like to the Headmaster's eyes, and a glance over at the Professor showed he had picked up on it, too, cringing visibly.

Dumbledore looked between them for a long moment. Neither Simone nor Snape looked at each other. It was as if they were already engaged in a standoff of sorts. He sighed, and nodded his consent. "Very well. Your friend Miss Augaviq saved you some dinner. I had it brought to your dormitory. Do remember to eat it. I do not wish to have to put Slytherin's Head Girl on food watch for any more students than she already is."

With this much anxiety and emotion boiling up within her, she'd be lucky to make it to the bathroom on this floor before puking. The food had a snowball's chance in Hell of being eaten and half that of staying that if she did manage to shove it down her throat. She nodded regardless, food the farthest thing from her mind right now, and left without a word, only clutching her stomach and breathing in deeply when she had cleared the staircase and was headed for the bathroom. By some miracle, the hallways were empty and she could allow herself to fall apart in the privacy of a stall in peace, the way she knew how. And if, as her stomach rejected everything including the panic and anxiety into the toilet bowl, some tears formed in her eyes, Simone told herself it was only because she was throwing up.

Up above in Dumbledore's office, the Headmaster placed a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder as Snape buried his face in his hands, shutting his eyes as tightly as he could.