Harry Snape, Chapter 1, part 2
Title: Harry Snape
Author: Me
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 9037
Characters: Severus Snape, Harry Potter, Remus Lupin, Narcissa Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, James and Lily Potter (although dead...), Andromeda Tonks, Sirius Black...
Warnings: Language, violence. There might be mentionings of homosexual relationships (*sigh* It still galls me to have to warn) and allusions to sex later on, but nothing too graphic.
Summary: The Dursleys are given a choice in the matter, and they refuse to accept Harry. So now, the baby that every Death Eater still at large in Britain wants dead is without protection. Harry needs a parent, but more than anything, he needs a protector, and it has to be someone they would never suspect...
Author's note: Sorry about the epically long first chapter...
***
The matter was settled rather smoothly, mainly because there wasn’t anyone at the Ministry that had the nerve to argue with Albus Dumbledore. What Severus thought, he kept to himself; what Remus thought was expressed only in very low tones to those he knew would not pass it on. Andromeda, of course, was an entirely different matter, and there was some grumbling from Rubeus Hagrid as well. All in all, however, the process was really quite painless.
What Harry thought was - understandably - hard to tell. But he seemed in general to be content with the whole situation as long as he was free to pull the nose of his adoptive father, have regular meals, wake whoeer was on baby-watch up when they least expected it at night, and at a regular basis attempt a runaway as soon as people turned their backs. Somehow he managed to get out of bed and open the doors, crawling as far in the corridors as it was possible before someone noticed and brought him back. He was an open-minded child, and enjoyed both the company of the Funny Man, the Very Tall Woman, the Even Taller Man, the one with White Hair All Over His Face, and the Yellow-Eyed-And-Skinny Man.
He remembered vaguely that there used to be others. There used to be one that meant food and warmth, with a soft voice that had brought comfort. And one that had held him in the evenings when he was going to sleep, one that used to lift him up on his shoulders, who used to sit by his bed and talk to him. And one that had tickled him, made funny faces, and used to throw him up in the air and catch him again. And one more who’s presence he had not quite liked, because it felt like this one was sad, and in some strange way, it had felt like it was Harry’s fault.
Then there was a day when he was lifted up from the Sleeping Place by the Funny Man, and carried outside. It was a bit cold, but he laughed, because there was so much light. He heard people speak, even though not all words were familiar. It was Yellow-Eye, he saw, and someone else that was not quite so familiar, with really strange eyes.
And then they were inside a something and there was a lot of noise and it was warmer as well. It didn’t seem like it would stop, so Harry fell asleep.
***
Remus leaned back against his seat, eyes scanning the cold flames of the autumn landscape outside. His body screamed for sleep, but his mind did not want to cooperate, flitting restlessly from one thought to another, never quite processing the information before changing course once more. He felt shattered and bound at the same time. He felt like he wanted to curl up under his bed and die, and at the same time he wanted to stretch his muscles and run as fast as he could, until he dropped to the ground from sheer exhaustion.
He was not unused to this feeling. Especially before the full moons he was more or less in an open war with himself. Or rather, the He that was Remus Lupin was in open war with the He that was the wolf.
The wolf was a fairly straightforward creature that didn’t like being betrayed, and was of the mind that someone, somewhere ought to be suffering badly for it.
Remus Lupin was of the mind that the wolf could do him a favour and kindly sod off and let him die in peace.
Of course it didn’t. There was nowhere for the Wolf to go, even if it had wanted to. Which it didn’t. It seemed to be of the opinion that Remus ought to be the subservient one, dealing out the punishment on the world that it saw fit. Remus, who naturally didn’t share that view, nonetheless hated himself for that small part of him that agreed with the wolf, that small human part that still wanted to taste Sirius’ blood on his lips.
He tried to shift position, and flinched when a sudden burst of pain set in. He would’ve been largely healed by now, normally, but the last full moon had been a nightmare. The wolf saw it as its right to expressively tell Remus exactly what it was feeling at the moment, which happened to be white-hot fury. Well, trying to tear off its limbs and skin - their limbs and skin - was, he had to admit, very expressive.
Harry gurgled in his sleep, and Remus stole a glance at him. He seemed happy enough. It was fortunate, at least, that he was not older. He assumed that small children wouldn’t like things that were unfamiliar very much, but the boy had not been old enough to understand what had happened that day. And even though he had been crying when... when Sirius found him, he would hopefully not even remember that terrible evening. Oh, he would grow up knowing his parents had been killed, but he would not have to suffer the trauma of having seen it with the eyes of an older child, a child that understood what was happening.
Remus moved his gaze to Severus’ face. The man holding the boy was staring out the window with a glazed-over expression. Remus remembered having seen it before, back at school; sometimes when James and Sirius were torturing him, and sometimes during breakfast, when the Owl Post arrived. Sometimes of late, too, when new deaths were reported in the Order. It was as if he shielded himself from the world, gave up whatever bonds were keeping him to it. Remus remembered having envied him that ability, and he still did. There was too much pain in this world. Too much anger and disappointment and fear and… betrayal.
Shaking his head to clear out the thoughts before he once more ended up in the quickly spiralling maelstrom of depression, he plunged his hand into his pocket to have something constructive to do. He fished out the thin chain with its pendant, nothing more than cheap silver bought from a muggle shop. He wished that he would’ve been able to buy something else than silver, but gold was too expensive, he couldn’t afford it, and buying something cheaper was out of the question.
The metal glinted with false innocence as it seared his fingers. Soon enough bleeding wounds would open, and the poisonous metal would find its way into his blood, little by little. The wolf inside him howled in fury and pain - it hurt him too. Silver was one of the few things that did. He quickly fished a napkin out of another pocket, using it to hold the chain as he nimbly snapped the pendant open, trying to ignore the pain. It had been really hard to fit the pictures inside it, but he had wanted to do it by himself. Now Lily was smiling at him from the left half, James from the right.
The boy had the right to some kind of link to his parents, whatever his adoptive father might think of it. He would give this to Severus and tell him to give it to the boy when he was big enough to keep from sticking it inside his mouth or immediately losing it. Of course, Remus would visit once in a while, but he thought it better if it was the boy’s guardian who gave it to him.
Flicking his wand at the pendant, he muttered a soft spell. It glowed blood-red for a moment, before once more turning silver. But now there was a slight pink cast to the metal. The spell would warn Remus if Harry was ever to find himself in great distress, or if immediate danger threatened him.
Just to be on the safe side of the Beater’s bat, as James would’ve put it.
***
Severus entered his new house with the boy on his arm, not even deigning to look at the people that were still unloading his furniture and personal belongings. He stomped through the bare, inhospitable rooms, muttering curses to himself as he went. In his hand he clutched the pendant that Lupin had bestowed upon him, scarcely bothering to hide his relief as he let go of the trinket. His fingers, Severus had noticed, were bleeding.
With the fingers of one hand he flicked it open, staring down at the two faces smiling cheerfully up at him, obviously unaware that they were dead. His first, violent impulse was to throw it out the window and force himself to forget about it. But as much as he hated James Potter, he was not stupid.
Pissing off an already unhinged werewolf was very stupid.
Instead, he found the only furnished room in the house, the bedroom, and absently put Harry down on the unmade bed. On the wall, just as Albus had said, an old reproduction of an impressionistic paining hung, looking slightly out of place in contrast to the old, faded wallpaper.
"Melius frangi quam flecti," he mumbled, tapping it with his wand, and the portrait swung open.
‘Melius frangi quam flecti.’ Rather break than bend. Needless to say, Severus had chosen the password himself.
Behind the painting were his most prized possessions. Some rare - and probably illegal, he had not bothered to check - books; some old letters and photographs; an old, tarnished, best-friends necklace; some heirlooms; and - because he was of a suspicious nature - a large part of his savings. Amongst them, he now placed the silver amulet and some papers concerning his guardianship, before carefully closing it once more.
He then hurried back to the door, where his bags were now waiting, hoping feverently that the child would not attempt to explore his new environments - and probably fall off the bed and break his head - just yet.
This, of course, made rather evident his lack of experience when it came to taking care of children. When he came back, Harry was standing - albeit with a bit of wobbling - in his bed, supported by one of the bedposts, waving happily at him as he entered. Groaning in despair, he hurried over, securing the child once more in a horizontal position. Harry gurgled with laughter and kicked his legs, recognising this as a very funny game. He would have to try it again, later.
“‘Lay!”
Severus shook his head and said, in what he hoped was an appropriately stern voice, “No, we shall not play right now. Lie still!”
It has to be agreed upon that this was a rather pathetic attempt, and it wasn’t very surprising that Harry happily ignored it.
***
James was still upset, and was off somewhere sulking, so Lily had to watch over her child on her own. She wasrather happy with that, actually. James’ rants about hook-nosed slimeballs were rather repetitive, and they had begun to wear her patience down. There are just so many ways you can insult a person before it stops being interesting.
To tell the truth, she wasn’t sure that Severus was the best person to take care of her son either. But this wasn’t because she thought - as did James - that he was the incarnation of all evil. She knew this wasn’t the case. She was simply worried; worried that he would regard the task as a burden and come to resent her son for it; worried that he would bring Harry up to the kind of believes that had smashed their friendship, once. However - and of this she was certain - anything was better than Petunia and her lout of a husband, not to mention that horrible son of theirs. She shuddered, resting her head in her hands, an old habit left from the time when she still had an actual body.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been exasperated about Severus’ dismal attempts at handling the child. He was so wretchedly awkward! But she wanted to believe that he was learning, even if he indeed was taking some time. More than anything, she wanted to believe that he wanted to learn. Remus, from what she had gathered by observing him, seemed to think so. And she had observed Remus very carefully indeed, partly because he was the most sensible man she knew, and partly because she had been worried about him. No one but the invisible watchers on the Other Side had seen Remus stand perfectly still in his room, his wand pointed at his own chest, his breath coming rapidly as he tried to gather the courage to either kill himself or continue to live, and apparently not knowing which was more difficult. In the end, he always flung the wand away in disgust, and the crumpled like a dropped dummy to cry himself to sleep right there on the floor.
And Lily had breathed a sigh of relief, even if she technically didn’t have any lungs to breathe with.
She had never thought it would be like this. Of course it was impossible to know, but that you were allowed to stay and watch over your loved ones before moving on, that seemed too good to be true.
She had to believe it, though. Her own mother had explained it to her.
“I’ve checked on the Longbottoms,” James muttered sullenly at her side.
“And?”
”It’s… frightening...” He shuddered, and she could feel his distress. “They’re sort of... empty. Lost, somehow. Wherever they are, I don’t think it’s like this place. And. I don’t think they can find their way back.”
“You think they will when they... die?”
“Don’t know. I hope so. For their son’s sake...”
She nodded, feeling the detached ache of melancholy. She thought maybe feelings were somehow different now. And yet… and yet it felt the same. It was hard to explain, even to yourself.
“So... what has happened?” James asked reluctantly, settling himself by her side.
“Lots of trial and error,” she commented dryly. “Mostly error. But he is learning,” she added stubbornly.
“I still can not believe that Dumbledore-”
“Hush! Look.”
Severus had just carried Harry outside, setting him down at the lawn. Harry, happy to explore these new surroundings, crawled around, poking everything new and exiting with his small fingers.
“He will sting himself on a wasp or something,” James muttered darkly. “And that twit is just sitting there, reading...”
“Don’t make yourself more stupid than you are, love,” Lily chided him gently. “He is not reading at all. He is just pretending to.”
“Why? There’s no one here.”
“Well, I think he is pretending for himself. He wants to think that he is reading.”
“Bloody stupid.”
“Some people are like that.”
Lily suddenly gasped, and Severus rushed out of his chair and lifted Harry up, backing away from a spot of grass that the child had been exploring. There was a vexed hiss, and they saw a snake slink away.
James looked stunned. “I didn’t see that!”
“That’s because you were more interested in criticising Severus than in watching,” Lily told him crossly.
“Well, I...”
“Yes?” The memories of her eyes were just as green as the real ones had been, just as sharp and intelligent, and they still seemed to look right through him. James sighed, deciding that he was fighting a battle he had already lost.
“Nothing, love.”
“Good.”
“I think we will stay inside today,” Severs muttered, trying to explain to himself how he had managed to see that snake while so focused on his reading.
Harry waved goodbye to his new friend in the grass, hissing a soft farewell.
***
“Frank?”
Alice took some trying steps, but it wasn’t easy. The world was just Presences and Feelings, and some steps seemed to take her miles, while others didn’t seem to bring her anywhere. And it was even harder to focus her thoughts; they scattered like down in a hurricane.
“Alice?”
She had heard that, she knew she had! So he had to be here, somewhere. A while before - it was hard to tell just how long ago, hard to know if there even was such a thing as time in this place - she had been sure that she had seen James, heard him call for her. But he had not been able to see her, hadn’t heard when she tried to answer him. And then he was gone again, and she wondered if he had ever been there.
Suddenly, there was a blurred but hopefully human shape close to her.
“Alice? Is that you?”
“Frank!”
She tried to hug him, but then the world around them stretched, and she got the feeling of going through him, and when she turned around he was gone again.
“FRANK!” she called, desperately.
“I’m here! I can’t see you, but I can hear you, Alice. Where are you?”
“I’m right here! I can’t see you either, but Frank... it sounds like you are right here, right in front of me… but I can’t see!”
“I know. I know, love. I can’t find my way out, Alice. I can’t find my way out of this… whatever it is. I can’t find my way back.”
“I know. I’ve tried, too. I hear people talking sometime, but they don’t notice me. They don’t hear. And I saw James a while ago...”
“Me too. But he could not see me.”
“You were there?”
”Yes.”
“But... but I did not see you.”
“This... place seems to be moving all the time, Alice. I don’t know what to do... But I think I can see you now. Can you see me?”
“No... Yes!” Slowly, she was able to make out of his shape, blurred and wavering, almost obscured by what seemed to be some kind of perpetual mist, but still there. “You think it is because we are talking?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s because we are thinking of each other. I don’t know.”
“Then I won’t stop thinking. It is so very lonely here, Frank.”
“I know.”
Then they fell silent, watching and waiting. They could almost see each other clearly now, and it felt like an endless relief.
“Frank?”
“Yes?”
“Are you scared?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
“What shall we do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neville?”
“Nothing. I can feel nothing, and I’ve seen nothing. He’s not here.” Her voice trembled, and he could feel her pain even if he could not see it. He ached to hold her, but could not risk losing her again.
“We will find a way.”
“We don’t... we don’t even know where we are.”
“No. But we will find our way out anyway.”
Silence.
“And... if we won’t?”
Silence.
“Then I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
Silence.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Silence.