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Chapter Text

It’s not like Severus believes in any of that muggle crap-- karma, or cosmic justice, or, Merlin forbid, theism-- but there is some small, repressed part of his mind that holds a self-sustained concept of morality; and therefore he is able to acknowledge, begrudgingly, that even though he hasn’t exactly expected the universe to conspire against him to punish him for his misdeeds, he can at least admit that he probably deserves this.

But there are just so many other ways that he could have come to suffer something disagreeable enough to be considered his comeuppance, and Severus would have preferred literally any of those other painful, mortifying, gruesome possibilities to this.

This being, of course, Potter in Slytherin. Of which he is Head of House, and to whose students he is socially obligated to not only play favorites but refrain from any punishments at all, let alone the kind of humiliating and unrelenting campaign of spite that he has been plotting out all summer just for Potter’s arrival.

It’s a nightmare.

He barely makes it through the Welcome Feast without setting Potter’s atrocious bird’s nest of a head on fire by the force of his glare alone. He doesn’t bother to ensure the prefects are orienting his first-years correctly; instead, he stalks out of the Great Hall on Dumbledore’s heels. It takes less than two minutes for Minerva to catch up to them, and then they are all arguing fiercely and paying little mind to the curious upper-years they pass by.

“Re-sort him at once,” Severus demands without preamble.

“Ah, Severus,” Dumbledore sighs in that infuriatingly calm manner. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can; you’re the headmaster. And he’s Harry Potter. I think the circumstances are extenuating enough!”

“You can’t possibly let Potter stay in Slytherin!” Minerva agrees.

“I don’t see why not,” Dumbledore says genially.

“But-- because he’s Harry Potter!" Minerva insists, in an uncanny echo of Severu's own woes. "He can’t stay there!”

“If you think Potter belongs in your house just because he’s some celebrity...” Severus sneers.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re not just as displeased about it as I am,” Minerva huffs. She’s right; he would vastly prefer any other House at all for Potter, but the arguing, accusations, and aspersions have become second nature when he feels his House has been slighted. “A dead-ringer for his father, he is, except for--”

“Don’t,” Severus says darkly.

Minerva eyes him for a moment, then shakes it off and continues. “It’s not that I insist he should be in Gryffindor, Albus-- although obviously I believe he belongs there, yes-- but Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw would be fine as well--”

“Of course, Slytherin is never good enough--”

“It’s not a matter of House at all!” Minerva interrupts. “It’s a matter of housemates! How many of those boys he’s to be living with are children of Death Eaters, Severus?”

Severus’ lip twitches up in a hint of a snarl. “Four of the five,” he admits. “And Zabini’s no stranger to murder, either, I’m sure.”

“They’ll eat him alive, Albus!”

“I’m sure young Harry is at no risk from his eleven-year-old classmates,” Dumbledore says gravely as they approach the gargoyle guarding his office. “Acid pops.”

“It's not just the first-years I’m worried about!" Minerva insists. "There are plenty of other Dark and allied families whose children in Slytherin are older and more capable of harm!”

“I’m sure Severus is able to maintain peace within his own House.” Dumbledore sits behind his desk; Severus and Minerva both remain standing, rigid, in front of him.

“I’ll curse the boy myself if it means you’ll remove him from my House.”

“Alas, it is not your will that decides the boy’s House but the Sorting Hat’s,” Dumbledore says, gesturing to the offending article in question.

“I stand by what I said,” says the Hat, although nobody actually asked it for its opinion. “Potter will do well in Slytherin.”

“Surely there are exceptions to be made if his safety is in question,” Minerva pleads.

“Or the sanity of his Head of House,” Severus adds.

Dumbledore, infuriatingly, just smiles at them and shakes his head. “Alas, his sorting is final. He is a Slytherin and shall remain so. And Severus, in addition to... other commitments you have made in the past, it is also your duty as Head of House Slytherin to ensure Mr. Potter's safety.”

“I won’t do this!” Severus snarls.

“Albus--” Minerva tries again.

“His sorting is final,” Dumbledore repeats, harder and more firmly than before. His words are final, too.

Severus sweeps out of the office in a blistering rage. He stalks straight to his quarters, abandoning all plans of greeting the new first years personally. No doubt Draco will be disappointed that he can’t immediately flaunt his family connections to his Head of House, but Severus will deal with him tomorrow. For tonight, he can’t stomach the sight of Potter in a green tie with those green eyes. Instead, he locks himself in his room, downs a preemptive hangover preventative potion, and proceeds to get roaring drunk.

**

Alas, the nightmare of James Potter’s son in Severus’ own House does not disappear when he wakes, and does not improve throughout the first week of classes. The nightmare of teaching in general does not ease up, either. He has always hated the start of term, but this term in particular is looking to be especially odious.

He has been ignoring Potter so far. It’s a far cry from the humiliation he had planned but still a notably frostier countenance than the rest of the House receives; he hasn’t been able to expand his penchant for favoritism among Slytherins to this particular child and honestly, he hasn’t been trying very hard. Let the other professors and the rest of the student body fawn over the Boy Who Lived if they want to; Severus stoutly refuses.

And it’s fine, really, because Minerva has been keeping an annoyingly close watch on the boy anyway, as if she truly believes Crabbe or Goyle capable of any spells at all, let alone one strong or sophisticated enough to do Potter any real damage. Draco does seem to have picked a grudge with the boy, but Severus thinks this is for the best, too, because Lucius will not stand for anyone else to usurp Draco in the House hierarchy and so far Potter has spent too much time avoiding Draco to make any meaningful grab for power among the first-years. Severus approves of this, as it serves his dual purposes of avoiding the timesink of Lucius’ petty demands and making sure Potter’s head doesn’t inflate to the size of his father’s.

Then Minerva comes sweeping into his sixth-year potions lesson one afternoon with a morose-looking Potter in tow like a half-drowned duckling (and an ugly one, indeed, Severus thinks smugly to himself) and extends an olive branch of the worst sort.

“Severus, a word?” is all she says in front of his class.

“Baddock,” Severus growls at the most competent Slytherin in the class. “Make sure none of your classmates blows anything up.”

He shuts the door between the students and whatever appalling story of stupidity Minerva is about to recount, crosses his arms, glowers at Potter until he ducks his head, and turns his attention to his colleague with a raised eyebrow.

“Severus,” Minerva says tentatively. “I… There was an incident during Mr. Potter’s flying lesson.”

Severus snorts, utterly unsurprised. “I trust that you’re more than capable of doling out any punishment you see fit, Deputy Headmistress.”

“It’s not-- I don’t intend to punish Mr. Potter! Several eyewitnesses have confirmed he was attempting to mitigate--”

“If you don’t mind, Minerva,” Severus interrupts impatiently. “I am sure the class I just left all but unsupervised is mere minutes away from a fatal explosion, so if you could kindly get to the point.”

Minerva huffs. “Mr. Potter caught a remembrall less than a foot off the ground after a fifty-foot dive.”

Severus merely raises a disdainful eyebrow.

“He’s the most gifted seeker I’ve seen in decades! It would be a travesty not to put him on a team immediately.”

Severus scoffs. “I will do no such thing.”

“Severus--”

“If he wants to join the Slytherin team, he can try out next year with the rest of his yearmates. I’ll not be making exceptions just because Potter is Hogwarts’ newest celebrity.”

Minerva sighs wearily and crosses her arms. “Maybe you’ll just have to see it to believe it,” she says, staring determinedly into his eyes.

Despite himself, Severus takes the invitation. “Legilimens,” he whispers.

He watches from Minerva’s office window as Potters hurtles toward the ground in a tight spiral and Draco drifts to a more leisurely landing a ways back. Potter grasps a tiny glass ball at the last possible minute and just barely averts a crash. It’s an exceptionally dangerous maneuver, even for an experienced flyer, which Potter’s clumsy dismount suggests he is not. As much as he tries not to, Severus finds himself impressed.

Informing him of Potter’s talent seems exceedingly stupid on Minerva’s part, especially given that Gryffindor just lost their best seeker in well over a decade and has no promising prospects to replace him. Severus can feel that competitive little nugget of reluctance in Minerva’s mind, but more strongly, he senses her concern for the boy; he catches a wisp of errant thought that Potter would do well to make friends in his own House, beyond the Weasley he befriended on the train, and that a spot on the Slytherin quidditch team could be beneficial to him. It’s a disgustingly selfless, Gryffindorish sentiment, but Severus can’t refrain from taking advantage of it.

He pulls out of her mind and glowers at both Minerva and Potter. He also glowers inwardly at himself for his own avarice. He tells himself that his team already has a seeker and Higgs is half decent. He can’t bring himself to believe it.

“Potter,” he growls. “You’ll meet Marcus Flint and Terrence Higgs on the quidditch pitch tonight at eight. Do not be late.”

Draco is surely going to resent him for this. Lucius will not be pleased either. Neither of them will hate him more than he already hates himself.

Potter only nods anxiously. Severus sneers at him and at Minerva, then swoops back into his classroom.

From the smell of things, someone added too much powdered bicorn horn to their serenity solution. He spends the rest of class yelling at students and taking a slew points from everyone but his Slytherins.

**

The next day, Flint confirms that Potter’s practically a prodigy on a broom. Even Higgs wants him on the team; apparently, he’s more than happy to take the open chaser spot and leave the seeking to Potter. Severus is simultaneously thrilled and appalled.

Flint asks for special permission to buy Potter his own broom. Severus adamantly refuses. He'll do just fine on a school broom and he won’t allow the brat any more reasons to inflate his overly large head-- especially given it’s already butting enough with Draco’s own not-unsizeable ego.

**

Severus was planning to spend Halloween in the same manner as the last nine years: getting quietly and deeply drunk in the privacy of his own quarters. Instead, he finds himself sprinting to the third floor to head off whomever had the gall and the poor sense to use one of the Stone’s own defenses as a distraction from an attempt to steal it. Unfortunately, he assumes that the supposed thief would have already decapacitated the cerberus by now and yanks the door open thoughtlessly in his haste. He pays for that assumption with a nasty bite to the leg, but he does manage to catch sight of Quirrell turning the corner, spotting him outside the door, and abruptly changing course, so at least he’s got a suspect.

Figures that someone idiotic enough to employ a distraction sourced from the very location he was attempting to penetrate would also be idiotic enough to waste valuable time raising the alarm about the distraction himself.

As if that's not bad enough, Severus is then tugged back downstairs by Minerva-- and therefore must insist that Quirrell accompany them as well, so as not allow him free reign of the third floor-- to find that Potter and two Gryffindors chased down the bloody troll for reasons that are not clear from the obvious lie Granger told.

Honestly. He swore to protect one child and said child goes chasing after fully-grown mountain trolls?

Once Minerva has ushered her Gryffindors away, Severus pulls Potter into his office for a good tongue-lashing.

“Do not for one second believe that I bought Granger’s obvious lie about your empty-headed heroism,” Severus begins. “I highly doubt she, of the three of you fools, went after the troll with a false sense of her own trumped-up self-importance.”

Potter glares daggers at Severus, though the effect is highly diminished by the fact that he’s a runt even for a first year. “I didn’t go looking for the troll,” he protests.

“Don’t lie to me, Potter,” Severus hisses.

“I’m not!” he yells. “None of us went looking for it, okay? Not even Granger. She’d been in the bathroom all day crying so Ron realized she wouldn’t know about the troll. We just wanted to find her and warn her about it,” he says petulantly. “We didn’t expect the troll to find us.”

It’s almost as pathetic a story as the one Granger told, but as Potter’s not nearly good enough to hide a lie from Severus, it’s clear that he’s not lying. Severus barely restrains himself from pinching his nose, as he refuses to betray such an obvious sign of weakness. He does, however, sigh heavily and let his eyes stay closed for just a second longer than normal.

“Why did you not just alert a prefect?” he grinds out. “Or a staff member?”

Potter, still glowering, falters slightly as if only just realizing that was an option. “I, er, didn’t think about it,” he admits.

“Obviously,” Severus drawls.

The boy opens his mouth several times as if to protest, but either thinks better of it or decides his own weak retorts will do nothing to help his case. Severus watches the thought process with some small amusement.

“You are eleven years old,” Severus reminds him. “You have been studying magic for two months. You can barely turn a matchstick into a needle, let alone protect yourself or your friends from dangerous magical creatures. I don’t care what delusions of grandeur you think you can live up to as the Boy Who Lived, but I assure you, you’re worse than useless in any life-threatening situation. Running in trying to be a hero is much more likely to get you and all your friends killed. Do you understand?”

“It seemed to work out just fine tonight,” Potter says belligerently.

Severus rolls his eyes so hard he might see the back of his eye sockets. “Did you not hear Professor McGonagall, Potter? Sheer. Dumb. Luck. I guarantee you, if you ever find yourself in danger again, or believe somebody else to be in danger, you will do no good attempting to resolve the issue yourself. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” Potter mumbles.

“Yes…?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy huffs.

“In the future, if you ever do believe you or one of your classmates is in danger, Mr. Potter, what will you do?”

“Tell a prefect?”

Severus again disabuses himself of the temptation to rub his temples. “Good enough,” he mutters.

Potter nods his head curtly and turns to leave, then stops and turns back. “Professor?” he whispers.

Severus raises a cool eyebrow at him.

“Er. In the interest of, erm, practical application of lessons…”

“What else could possibly be endangering your health already, Potter?” Severus sighs, though he gestures at Potter to continue.

“Well, now you’re the only professor who knows that Granger wasn’t at the feast, and I didn’t see her at lunch either...”

“I’ll send up a house elf."

This statement elicits more confusion than gratitude from Potter, but if he thinks his token acknowledgement of Severus’ instructions or his self-serving display of concern for others should have earned him house points, then he is sorely mistaken. Severus stares Potter down until he flees his office.

**

It really is a bloody miracle that none of them were killed or seriously injured, and Severus finds himself relating rather too much to Minerva's hope that Potter finds friends outside of Gryffindor. Instead, as if Potter was privy to that very thought and set himself determinedly to the contrary, it seems that the troll incident has somehow ingrained Potter even further with the Gryffindors. It's deeply concerning for Severus's multiple duties to keep the boy out of harm's way, and unseemly to boot. Whatever he stands to gain from Granger’s intelligence will surely be overshadowed by her dearth of social capital; that friendship will do Potter no favours in Slytherin.

Not that Severus cares an ounce for something as banal as Potter's standing in Slytherin.

He originally hoped to ignore the boy a bit longer, but alas, he now feels the need to be watching Potter at all times lest the boy run off again and get himself killed. It's clear that he would have done well in Gryffindor; Severus can't escape the bitter thought that he very easily could have been Minerva’s problem. But the more he watches critically, the more obviously Potter's Slytherin traits stick out from between his red and gold sidekicks.

Potter seems to come naturally to caution, with the confounding exception of imminently dangerous situations. Severus can see him watching the people around him warily, even anticipating some of the more predictable reactions of his peers. He hasn’t yet capitulated to Draco, which is either proof of long-term ambition or sheer Lily Evans stubbornness; Severus has yet to decide which. Inevitably, he's been the target of several hallway jinxes and common room ambushes, but hasn't yet required a single trip to the hospital wing. Severus hopes this is indicative of, if not cunning, then at least a certain agility that might serve him well on the quidditch pitch.

**

This hope lasts approximately five days. Then Potter's broom gets jinxed during his first quidditch match and Severus feels abject panic for the first time in ten years. Now that he knows Quirrell is plotting something for the Stone, he's almost positive it's Quirrell jinxing the broom as well, but he's concentrating too hard on a counterjinx to try confronting him directly. Then suddenly his robes are on fire and by the time he's finished extinguishing them, Potter's swallowed the snitch.

What the fuck.

Only once Potter is safely on the ground and disappearing under a sea of green-clad bodies does Severus take a deep breath and allow himself to process the events of the last ten minutes. He has quite a few new suspicions to bring to Dumbledore, but also concerning is the fact that Severus felt rather heavily invested in Potter's well-being, to a level he definitely did not feel after the troll incident.

It's merely different watching it happen live, he tells himself. A reasonable reaction to finding any child's life suddenly and unexpectedly in danger. A shock to find his various oaths and duties called upon during a quidditch match, nothing more. He most certainly does not feel anything personal for the boy.

Especially not right now, with the Potter’s hair windswept just like his arrogant, attention-drunk father's, basking in the adulation of his peers. It's disgusting. Severus is of half a mind to kick Potter back off the team, quidditch cup chances be damned. James Potter's son, a Slytherin quidditch star? It's a travesty. The only person who could possibly be more horrified than Severus would probably be James Potter himself.

… Hmm.

Now there's a thought.

Potter Senior would be well and truly appalled by these proceedings, wouldn’t he?

When he thinks about it like that, Severus feels downright smug about letting Potter on the team. He could even find it within himself to be nice to the boy, if it means converting James Potter’s only child into the most quintessential Slytherin to ever bear a snake on his chest.

Severus sweeps off the pitch with renewed vigour to confirm the identity of the person (probably Quirrell) behind this half-hearted assassination attempt, because there’s no satisfaction in turning the boy into his father’s worst nightmare just to see him fall to his premature death at the next match. He’ll have to catch the perpetrator (Quirrell) first, yes, but there’s no reason he can’t start building the foundations of his House pride now.

**

Severus keeps a careful but unobtrusive eye on the post-match party from the semi-transparent portrait connecting his office to the Slytherin common room. Draco tries his best to humiliate Potter for swallowing the snitch, but the majority of the House is just pleased that he caught it at all. Potter is steadily plied with butterbeer and showered with affection by his older teammates and the boy can’t quite wipe his utter shock off his face. If he were any other student, Severus would call him starstruck, but given Potter’s own celebrity and hereditary arrogance, he’s hard-pressed to figure out why Potter seems so stunned to receive praise from other students.

Theodore Nott presses a Chocolate frog card into Potter’s hand, and Tracey Davis sits with them for a bit and shares her bowl of crisps. A loner son of a Death Eater and an unremarkable halfblood for friends won’t do much for Potter’s place in the inner-House hierarchy (already dead-last due to his insistence on befriending Gryffindors), but Potter seems pleased with their attention nonetheless.

He’ll be ensconced nicely into his House by the end of the year, and soon enough, Harry Potter will be the proudest Slytherin of his age. And then Severus will go to Godric’s Hollow and laugh about it on James Potter’s grave.

Chapter Text

Severus confronts Quirrell about the Stone in late November. He’s not exactly thrilled to be playing the spy again, but he can’t deny it’s good to keep those skills sharp, especially given that his Mark has been twinging lately.

He dons his signature sneer and storms into Quirrell’s office unannounced.

“Quirrell,” he says. He used to call the man Quirinus, back when he was an unremarkable professor of Muggle Studies. Now, though, between his plot for the Stone and his attempts on Potter’s life and his offensively fake stutter, he doesn’t merit a first-name basis. “I know you’re after the Stone. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll share your notes.”

Quirrell is more inclined to deny everything than to question Severus’ motives. He gives nothing away about possible attempts on Potter’s life, and Severus doesn’t dare push him on that topic: those are motives he absolutely cannot risk being questioned. Not by some relatively unknown, historically neutral, and suddenly power-hungry wizard like Quirrell. That kind of combination is always volatile, dangerous, and prone to deception.

But it’s enough that Quirrell knows he’s onto him; even if he doesn’t accept Severus’ involvement in his plans, then he will have to be more cautious, and therefore make slower progress.

**

Severus sits in a leather wingback chair in his study and stares unseeing at the parchment on his desk. It’s the final list of Slytherin students staying on over the holidays and it’s exactly one name long.

He’ll admit he’s unnerved a bit that Potter doesn’t want to be with his family. It doesn’t make sense. It’s rare for any first-year to choose to stay at school over their first break, and Potter, especially, has not had an easy term. He’s already nearly died twice! And he must have been lonely: due to his enmity with Draco, he was rather ostracized by his housemates until the first quidditch match, and Severus knows personally how draining it can be for a lone Slytherin to maintain close friendships with Gryffindors. Shouldn’t he be longing for the comforts of home?

He’s curious enough to investigate: a few days later, he arrives early to the staff meeting-- a rare occurrence-- to slide into a seat next to Minerva.

“Potter has signed up to stay on over the holidays,” he murmurs with no forewarning.

Minerva is not at all fazed by his lack of small talk. “Ah,” is all she says. “So have the Weasleys.”

Severus scowls at the inevitable mischief Potter is sure to get embroiled in, but he is satisfied, at least, that he has found a reasonable explanation.

**

He watches the group carefully come Christmas dinner. Potter looks bedraggled, with wet hair and horrendous, overlarge muggle clothes for casualwear. Severus is displeased to see him outfitted in a manner that would shame any self-respecting Slytherin, especially when Potter, unlike Severus in his youth, can actually afford better clothing. But he’ll not ruin his holiday peace by talking to Potter about it-- or talking to Potter at all. For all that he has decided to win the boy over, he still hasn’t quite figured out how to make Potter like him-- nor how to make himself like Potter.

The Weasleys are as obnoxiously boisterous as ever in saccharinely matching sweaters. Weasley the youngest wedges himself firmly between Potter and the Ravenclaw fourth-year he’d been sitting next to and immediately starts both plying his plate with food and interrogating Potter.

“Hey, Harry, good Christmas? Why aren’t you wearing your jumper? Is it too small? Only Mum had Percy guess your size, it was that or let Fred and George knick your clothes to check the tags, but I figured she’d make it a bit big just in case. Or, oh no, is it an ugly color? Mum sent me maroon, again,” he gestures at his sweater with a grimace.

“Er,” says Potter when Weasley finally stops talking long enough to shovel potatoes into his mouth. “What jumper?”

Weasley chokes; not an altogether surprising outcome of stuffing that much root vegetable into one eleven-year-old mouth. “Your Weasley Jumper!” He says once he’s cleared his airways back out, waving again at his own sweater, and then at his various assorted brothers’. “Mum said in her letter that she made you one and to make sure it fit alright.”

“Your mum made me a jumper?” Potter says, so quietly Severus almost can’t hear it, fork poised, forgotten, halfway between the table and his mouth.

“Of course she did! Wait…” Weasley looks from Harry to Severus and then immediately back again when he sees Severus watching him. “You didn’t get it?” he asks in a low voice, but not low enough to be inaudible.

Potter shrugs, looking dazed.

“How d’you mean, you didn’t get your Christmas present!” Weasley almost yells, his earlier attempt at discretion immediately forgotten. “If that greasy git hid your--”

“I can hear you, Weasley,” Severus cuts in, tempted though he is to allow Weasley to dig himself even further into the hole of his own baseless accusations.

Weasley pales and then colors into a gruesome shade of magenta. “I just meant, er--”

“I know what you meant, Weasley.”

Weasley gulps and finally finds the sense to remain silent.

“Professor Snape, do you think the Weasleys’ owl might have gotten confused because he’s only ever delivered to Gryffindors?” Potter asks.

Severus sighs. “All of your presents should be under the tree, Potter.”

Potter furrows his eyebrows in confusion. Severus realizes he is not getting out of this insipid conversation easily; he refills his eggnog and spikes it heavily with honeybourbon from his personal stores. Thank Merlin for nonverbal filling charms.

“The tree, sir?”

“The Christmas tree in the common room, Potter. Do you need your eyes checked?”

“Probably,” Weasley sniggers. Then he looks up at Severus’ unamused glare, remembers who he’s speaking with, and shuts back up.

“Oh,” Potter breathes. “I didn’t realize…”

Merlin, but the boy is thick.

Weasley just shrugs. “Try it on before tea then, yeah? Let me know how it fits.”

Their conversation moves onto even more inane topics then, which Severus duly tunes out. He takes another deep swig from his eggnog and waits for Potter to finish eating.

As soon as he leaves the Great Hall, Severus follows him. He can’t quite justify why he does it, except that he has never known an eleven year-old to forget to look for his Christmas presents, and he’s never been able to not investigate a Potter acting suspicious.

The boy appears too excited about his Weasley jumper, of all things, to notice he is being tailed all the way to the dungeons, where Severus ducks into his office to watch Potter through the portrait spyhole.

The tree in the corner of the common room is enormous and lavishly decorated, so perhaps in comparison, the six packages and one envelope waiting under it are somewhat less eye-catching. Potter checks all the tags with an expression bordering on disbelief, then just stands there and gapes at them, looking both ecstatic and deeply shocked.

Did the boy just whisper “I’ve got presents” to himself?

Eventually, though, he does get around to opening them: the Weasley sweater, all present and accounted for, in Slytherin green and silver; a box of wizarding sweets; a crudely carved flute; a century-old guide to wizarding culture that’s been popular in the pre-Hogwarts tutoring of lesser pureblood families who are too reliant on a working income to teach their children themselves; a homework planner; and a muggle-looking note in the muggle-looking envelope that Potter seems dubiously surprised by. Lastly, he opens the final present and pulls out—

Potter’s entire left forearm vanishes under a shimmering swatch of fabric and he yelps, tearing the cloth away. After a few more moments of confusion, the boy goes running off, presumably in search of a mirror. Severus doesn’t need to follow; he’s seen very few invisibility cloaks in his lifetime, but he still knows one when he sees one. The real question is, who in Salazar’s stone dungeons sent that to an eleven-year-old?!

With Potter occupied off in his dorm, Severus taps a brick below the portrait and slips through a doorway into the common room. He walks quickly over to the tree and picks up the card that came with the cloak.

It’s not signed, but he recognizes the handwriting in an instant: Dumbledore.

Sweet Salazar, it’s like he’s trying to make Severus’ life miserable.

He returns the note to its place on the floor and leaves. Just because he knows Potter’s bound to use it for trouble doesn’t mean he has grounds to confiscate that cloak without proof of wrongdoing. He has seven hours before Potter’s curfew during which to brew up and boil down a Footprint Finder solution, and the reduction into a powder is time-consuming if you want to do it properly.

**

By nightfall, though, Severus has helped himself to maybe a bit more eggnog than was advisable and can’t be arsed to go creeping around the castle after Potter all night. He scatters the Footprint Finder dust in the corridor, sets a silent surveillance charm on the common room entrance, and is asleep by ten.

The next morning, Severus wakes to an alert that Potter did, indeed, leave the common room-- at ten to midnight no less-- and follows his spell-activated footprints to the library, of all places. Well, he’d be more impressed with Potter’s sudden bout of studiousness if he wasn’t sneaking into the Restricted Section at the first opportunity. But a quick chat with Irma Pince reveals that no books were removed last night, so Severus sets the issue aside for now.

More interestingly, the footprints don’t return directly to the dungeons, but instead veer off and eventually enter a dusty unused classroom. They cluster strangely around a mirror in the middle of the room.

Damn Potter and his incessant penchant for trouble! He’s already narrowly avoided death twice and now seems to encounter dangerously powerful magical objects at every turn?

And what was Dumbledore thinking, leaving a mirror like that just lying around? Wasn’t he testing out special enchantments on it a couple months ago??

With a scowl, Severus sweeps out of the classroom and returns to his quarters. It’s not yet ten in the morning but between his mild yet lingering hangover and the constant headache of trying to keep Potter alive, he’s already in need of a nap. Not to mention that he won’t be getting much sleep tonight.

**

He's awoken by his alarm on the common room door at half midnight. He gives Potter a fifteen-minute head start, the better with which to catch him in the act, and then follows his footsteps up, up, up-- to Gryffindor tower.

Ugh.

He drops the disillusionment and waits outside the entrance to the tower. A couple minutes later, the portrait seems to open of its own accord-- and then shuts quickly back closed.

"Really!" The Fat Lady huffs. "At this time of night!"

"Apologies," Severus says to the portrait.

He can't be bothered to wait outside and see if Potter and Weasley will try to sneak out again. He leaves them to their anxiety and goes back to bed.

**

The next day finds him grouchy, standing with his hands on his hips and glowering at the last few grams of Footprint Finder powder in a jar on his desk: just enough for one more night of surveillance. Is he really going to follow Potter around the castle at all hours of the night again?

Yes, he decides. He is.

This time, when the alarm goes off, Severus slips out into the hall and waits, disillusioned, for Potter to walk past his chosen alcove. It's disconcerting trying to follow a student who's so entirely invisible, but he’s soothed by the knowledge that he has a Footprint Finder trail to fall back on if need be. Potter is walking quietly, with the kind of skill Severus himself only ever developed by sneaking around his childhood home trying not to wake his father, but still not quite silently. It helps that the halls of Hogwarts are hard stone below and high ceilings above, which means even the softest of footsteps echo faintly if one pays attention.

Severus pushes aside his desire for punishment temporarily to feed his curiosity: if he's going to catch the scoundrel in the act, he might as well find out what Potter's looking for in the Restricted Section first.

But Potter doesn't bother with the library this time; he heads straight for the Mirror of Erised. For a child so obviously talented at sneaking, he gets incredibly careless once he's entered the room: he rips off his invisibility cloak and sits down in front of the mirror.

“Hi mum,” he says. “Hi dad.”

Oh.

Severus is suddenly very grateful for his disillusionment, so that nobody, and especially not Potter, can see him drop his brow into his hands or rub at his dry but smarting eyes. After all this time he’s spent hating the boy, and even the time he’s spent trying to shape him into something his father would hate, he’s still refused to think of Potter as anything other than a nuisance, a trickster-in-training like his father, a pint-sized celebrity with a head too large for his body.

It stings, in the hushed, moonlit darkness of the Hogwarts halls, to remember that he’s also just a boy who was orphaned too young to remember anything about his parents, who must have grown up learning of them only second-hand. And whoever ended up with the child must not have known much more about Lily and Potter Senior than the wider wizarding world had known, if Potter still craves his parents enough to see them in the Mirror of Erised.

For the first time, Severus wonders if he should mention to Potter that he was once friends with Lily.

But no; it’s just the late hour talking, a psychological trick of the witching hour, a natural slip of emotions caused by three consecutive days of sleep deprivation, which is Potter’s fault to begin with, for insisting on visiting this accursed mirror in the middle of the bloody night, as if the castle isn’t empty enough in the daylight during Christmas break to sneak around in an invisibility cloak, the dunce--!

A hand lands on Severus’ shoulder and he startles. He whips his head around but sees absolutely nothing-- what in Salazar’s testicles--?

“Severus,” says Dumbledore’s voice quietly. Bloody Dumbledore. “I will talk to him. Go back to bed.”

Severus sneers in the general direction of Dumbledore’s voice, but the headmaster doesn’t even do him the courtesy of sticking around to allow Severus a biting reply; before he knows it, that quiet voice is emanating from inside the dusty classroom.

“Back again, Harry?”

He could go back to bed, yes, but he won’t be getting to sleep any time soon with adrenaline still thumping in his veins, so instead Severus creeps forward to eavesdrop more effectively.

“So you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised.”

Delights. Honestly. This child is a few nights away from losing his touch with reality. Still, Severus keeps his derisive snort inside and keeps listening. Dumbledore walks Potter through the purpose of the Mirror and imparts upon him the most lukewarm warning a professor can give. ”It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Well, Severus doesn’t know what he himself has been doing for the last ten years, then, but he’d never admit that aloud anyway.

Dumbledore sends the child off-- after unsubtly dodging an impertinently personal question-- and doesn’t even hand out a single detention for repeatedly being out of bed after hours. But at least he doesn’t attempt to talk to Severus again on his way out. Small mercies.

Severus trails Potter down to the dungeons, seething quietly, and feels some vindictive schadenfreude at how high the boy jumps when Severus tears the cloak off his shoulders. He looks around wildly; in the dim underground night, it takes Potter several seconds to locate his invisibility cloak, hanging inert in the air, and only then does Severus remove his disillusionment.

Potter gasps and it is not quite satisfying enough to make up for Severus’ long nights tailing him, but he’s not done yet.

“In,” he says, shuffling Potter into his office.

The boy stands there, looking flushed with guilt and yet also some small defiance, in what Severus in good faith can’t even call pyjamas; they’re just a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants several sizes too large to be comfortable, even for nightwear. Alas, Severus can’t be bothered to criticize his abysmal fashion sense when there are more important matters to discuss.

“Who gave you this invisibility cloak, Potter?”

“I don’t know,” Potter mumbles. Severus glares expectantly at him. “Sir,” he adds after a beat.

“And how did you ascertain that it was safe?” he asks, although he already knows that the boy didn’t.

After a moment of quiet confusion, Potter mumbles, “safe?”

“Safe, Potter. It is not uncommon in the wizarding world to send cursed, sentient and vicious, or otherwise dangerous gifts to unsuspecting enemies. There are any number of spells and instruments that may be utilized when checking for malicious intentions.”

“Oh,” the boy says.

Severus glares harder, the better by which to convey his disdain. “You received an anonymous gift for Christmas-- in fact, you received a rare and powerful magical object from an unknown individual when you did not expect to receive any gifts at all-- and it did not even occur to you that it was suspicious?”

Potter stares sullenly at his hands, then admits, “No, sir.”

“And upon receipt of this gift, without bothering to check for foul play, you not only donned this mysterious cloak, but used it to sneak about the school, alone, after hours, with no concern for the fact that, if the cloak had been embedded with any kind of malignant but slow-acting substance, you could have been killed or disabled and left invisible, in some dark corridor of the castle, in the middle of the night?”

Potter opens his mouth to argue, shuts it at the glower he sees on Severus’ face, and shakes his head.

“And then, you discovered yet another powerful magical artifact, again failed to check it for curses or ascertain its function before use, and saw nothing amiss about the fact that it showed you the very deepest desire of your heart?”

“I didn’t know that’s what it did at first,” the boy mutters.

“Nonetheless, you were immediately presented with an impossible but poignantly appealing image and it did not occur to you, even once, that such an image could easily be used to entice you, ensnare you, entrap you, enslave you, and/or drive you insane?”

“No, sir,” Potter mutters into his hands.

“Do you have a death wish, Potter?” Severus snarls. “You might as well come clean about it now, else I will be forced to assume that you are just that stupid.”

“No, sir,” Potter repeats with a grimace.

“Do you have any idea how many people in this world would dearly love to see you dead, Potter?”

Potter’s head snaps up at that, and he squints his eyes at Severus as though assessing whether his professor is one of them. Severus bites back a scoff only because universal suspicion, while disappointingly unsubtle, is at least better than its opposite.

“Detention,” Severus decides. “One week. For being out of bounds after hours. You will report to my office every night at seven once term resumes.”

He looks like he’s about to argue, but just as Potter opens his mouth, his indignant protest comes out as an enormous yawn. It not only underscores Potter’s consecutive sleepless nights of vagrancy but renders him even more difficult to take seriously. Potter must realize that too, because he settles for one last eleven-year-old scowl before he tromps out of the office.

Good riddance, Severus thinks, and good grief; that boy has a penchant for trouble that could rival his father’s, if not for the fact that it seems to be entirely unplanned and vastly more dangerous to his own person.

At least he feels relatively confident that Potter will not attempt to sneak out again; they are both long overdue for a decent night’s sleep.

Chapter Text

Term resumes with a squelch, as a freezing rain turns the snow atop the Hogwarts grounds to sludge. Filch has his work cut out for him, clearing wet tracks from the Entrance Hall at all hours of the day and attempting to confiscate the multitude of Zonko’s products gifted over the holidays and subsequently smuggled into the castle.

Potter reports to his first night of detention, looks around expectantly, and blurts out, “No cauldrons?”

It takes supreme effort not to roll his eyes, but Severus manages it. “Astute observation,” he drawls. “Sit.” Atop a student’s desk that he’s moved into his office for the occasion are a quill, ink, parchment, and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts, volume IV. “You will read chapters twelve through fifteen and make a list of everyone known or suspected to be supportive of the Dark Lord.”

Potter stares at the book as if it’s planning to jump up and hex him. After Severus’ lecture about the dangers of unfamiliar magical objects, though, Severus will consider that an improvement. “Sir?” the boy says.

“You clearly have yet to understand the precarious position in which you have found yourself, both in the wizarding world at large and in Slytherin,” Severus explains. “Tomorrow you will read chapters seventeen through nineteen and make a separate analysis of individuals who remain free to this day and may plausibly maintain their support for the Dark Lord and his cause.”

“You mean people who might want to… hurt me?”

Well, well. The brat is capable of logical thought after all.

“There are unequivocally dozens of people who want to kill you, Potter,” Severus drawls. “The question is not of mere ill-will but of ability and opportunity. Many of the Dark Lord’s most fanatical followers are safely imprisoned in Azkaban, but not all of them, and assuredly not all of their offspring. It would serve you well to be cognizant of which families may have cause to wish you harm, should you ever encounter one of their more vengeful scions.”

Potter gulps and gingerly takes a seat at the desk. Once he finally cracks the book open, Severus turns his attention to his fourth-year essays. They work in silence for three hours, broken only by the rustling of pages and scratching of quills, and, about an hour in, Potter’s quiet but rather triumphant gasp of, “Malfoy!”

Well, the truth will do no favors for their inner-House feud, but it’s better that Potter knows now before Draco comes back from the holidays with some political sense beaten into him by his father and attempts to win Potter over. Severus has no doubt that Lucius would see a great deal to be gained from an association with a Slytherin Harry Potter, and the boy should know from the first overtures exactly who he’s dealing with.

**

The next evening, as promised, Severus assigns Potter additional reading from Rise and Fall and a new list to compile of Death Eaters who still roam free.

Potter looks him in the eye, takes a deep breath, and asks, “Does that include you, sir?”

He’s known this was coming, of course, so Severus is not offended; he only smirks. “Trust nobody until you have reason to,” is all he replies.

Oddly enough, Potter looks both frightened and vindicated by that answer. When he sits down, he shifts the desk around in a manner that would keep the professor in Potter’s peripheral vision as he reads.

Good. Severus likes to be feared.

**

On day three of detention, Severus presents Potter with two tomes: Nature’s Nobility and the more extensive Almanac of British Wizarding Families. He relishes Potter’s apprehension at their size.

“You will research every known supporter of the Dark Lord-- alive, dead, missing, and imprisoned-- and compile a new list of all surviving family members who may seek vengeance on their behalf.”

Two hours in, he realizes that he hasn’t heard the scratch of Potter’s quill for quite some time. It’s too soon for Potter to have completed his task; British pureblood families, especially the pureblood supremacists, are notorious for the complexity of both their family trees and their individual loyalties. When he looks over, it’s to find the boy staring avidly at the Potter section of the Almanac. The sight awakens an old bitterness in Severus, but it doesn’t last; the child is, after all, the only living Potter left in existence. It’s a vicariously lonely thought.

Severus clears his throat gently. Potter flushes and turns the page. Neither of them comments on it.

**

Now that Potter has a decent background in who may have motive to do him harm, Severus moves on to his original concern. For the remaining nights of detention, he assigns books about the most common post- and object-based curses, jinxes, and hexes, as well as the easier spells used to detect them. Each night Potter stares at his reading material like he’s trying to decide whether it’s a threat, an approach which Severus makes no efforts to contradict.

At the end of the last night of detention, Severus returns the week’s worth of lists to Potter, to keep and hopefully to study. Potter stares at them as if he’d like to test out some of those detection spells he’s been reading about. When offered the chance, he only manages to successfully cast one of them, but he makes valiant attempts at the rest.

**

The Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff quidditch match goes off without a hitch. No brooms jinxed, no seekers almost killed, and, last but certainly not least, Hufflepuff only wins by 50 points, which keeps them quite nicely middling in the cup standings.

Severus takes advantage of the post-match hubbub to sneak out of the castle and meet Quirrell in the Forest. Quirrell is already trembling by the time Severus reaches the clearing of their rendezvous, but he’s been looking rather pale and drawn for weeks now, so Severus refuses to shoulder the blame for his shivers.

“I h-hope you’ll k-keep this q-q-quick,” says Quirrell. His affected stutter is not at all improved by the chattering of his teeth. “I d-don’t know why you wanted t-t-to meet me here of all p-places…”

“Oh, I thought we’d keep this private; students aren’t supposed to know about the Sorcerer’s Stone, after all.”

Alas, Severus’ little exposition there is the closest to a straightforward sentence to come out of that meeting; Quirrell does nothing but stutter, deny, and prevaricate, and it’s too cold to waste his time trying to intimidate him further for the moment.

“We’ll have another little chat soon,” Severus promises. “When you’ve had time to think things over and decided where your loyalties lie.”

**

A month later, he watches vigilantly from the professors’ stands as Potter once again takes to the air. He hates having to split his attention between the boy and Quirrell, whom he’s taken pains to sit behind but close enough to monitor. Thankfully, Potter catches the snitch in less than ten minutes, so apparently, if there was another assassination attempt in the works, it hadn’t enough time to come to fruition.

Severus again keeps an eye on the post-game party from his office. Given Potter’s sabotaged and clumsy debut, today’s match seems to be what has truly proven his talent to the rest of his House. Potter spends a rather flustered half-hour being passed around from shoulder to shoulder of various upper-year Slytherins, and slinks off as soon as his feet hit the ground to the safety of a group of first-years.

Nott and Davis are there, of course, but also Bulstrode, Zabini, and Greengrass. Bulstrode, who has proclaimed herself bored of both Draco’s little gang and all of the girls in her year, and, indeed, everything except quidditch, seems to have finally deemed Potter worth her time. Zabini, too, appears to be assessing Potter, and Severus is just glad he has chosen to re-evaluate Potter on a day when he’s proven himself talented and well-liked. Greengrass doesn’t look quite as open to an alliance as the others, but she’s always kept herself closely guarded. Regardless, if Potter wants to build up a support base, today is a good day to start making those moves.

**

In the weeks before Easter, Severus notices Potter and his little Gryffindor friends acting strangely. They’ve been slipping out of the castle often, but all they appear to be doing is visiting Hagrid. Severus can’t tell if their suspicious behavior has something to do with the gamekeeper himself or if they’re using the cover of visiting Hagrid to then sneak off to other, more nefarious pursuits on the grounds.

He keeps an eye on them while he can, but he’s spending most of his energies on protecting the Stone and bullying Quirrell into giving up his secrets… unsuccessfully.

One would think, for a man who looks ever more sickly by the week, that either his willpower would crumble or he’d be desperate enough to access the Elixir of Life that he’d accept Severus’ demanding but still useful “offer to help.” But alas, Quirrell remains steadfastly tight-lipped, no matter how hard Severus pushes.

Sometimes, he gets the feeling that Quirrell is working for someone more terrifying than Severus himself. Even more infuriatingly, Dumbledore doesn’t seem the least bit surprised nor perturbed when Severus gives voice to this impression. Most frustrating of all, neither professor seems inclined to fill Severus in on who it might be guiding Quirrell’s wand.

**

Severus is woken in the past-midnight darkness to Minerva and Draco at his door. Draco looks indignant while Minerva looks furious.

This will be a lovely visit, he’s sure.

“Severus,” Minerva says. “I encountered Mr. Malfoy here by the astronomy tower, after hours, spouting some kind of nonsense about Potter and a dragon!”

“I swear,” Draco whines, rubbing the conspicuously red top of his ear. “Potter and his friends are smuggling a dragon out to Weasley’s brother! Tonight! They were supposed to meet on the astronomy tower at midnight!”

“Never in my life have I heard such an absurd excuse for being out after hours!” Minerva gasps.

Severus remains silent, watching Draco. He certainly looks sincere, and Severus hasn’t noticed any tells that suggest he’s lying, but that only means that Draco believes he’s telling the truth. Much more likely, Severus suspects, is that this is an uncharacteristically elaborate (and uncharacteristically successful) ruse from Potter or one of his friends to get Draco into trouble.

But he won’t display any of that doubt in front of Minerva, so he falls back on an old favourite method of Slytherin discipline.

“You’re saying you believed that Mr. Potter and his friends were in possession of a Class XXXXX highly dangerous magical creature, and chose not to alert a single adult to its presence in a castle full of schoolchildren?”

Minerva looks at him askance, but he ignores her.

“And then, upon learning of their plans to move the dragon, you decided to sneak around after hours to, what, confront them? Where you would be outnumbered two or three to one, not to mention putting yourself in the presence of a volatile magical beast of unknown age and ability? Did you perhaps come prepared with any means by which to subdue the dragon, Draco?”

Draco’s face reddens steadily throughout the course of this chastisement, until his cheeks and forehead match the patch of his ear that was evidently manhandled by Minerva upon his apprehension. He hangs his head, but answers with no small amount of defensiveness.

“Once I caught them I was going to yell for Filch,” he mutters. “Then the adults could have handled the dragon.”

“So hypothetically, Potter and his friends would be sneaking around, quietly, by necessity, with the dragon in hand, and your brilliant idea was to yell for help once you spotted them? Did you stop to think for even an instant how a dragon would respond to a sudden loud noise in its vicinity? Did it not occur to you that such a disturbance could frighten or upset it, or even make it identify you as a threat?”

Draco’s face pales impressively for how red it was mere moments ago. “It didn’t occur to me,” says quietly, sounding defeated.

“Obviously,” Severus drawls. “I have to admit I’m quite disappointed by your behavior this evening. You exhibited a shocking lack of foresight and a Gryffindor’s worth of rashness and idiocy. I thought you were above placing yourself in unnecessary danger for the sake of petty personal rivalries.”

“Please,” Draco whispers, “don’t write to father.”

“I won’t,” Severus promises after a long, tense beat. Draco’s shoulders visibly slump in relief. “But I will be informing your mother. What she chooses to do with that information is her own prerogative.”

He lets the boy stew and looks back at Minerva. “I will escort young Mr. Malfoy back to the dormitory,” he promises.

Minerva nods. “Detention, Mr. Malfoy,” she says. “And twenty points from Slytherin for being out after curfew.”

Severus has no doubt that she would have taken more points had she not witnessed Severus’ lecture first-hand. Still, it rankles to watch another Head of House take points from his student in his presence. Not that he would have done it himself if she hadn’t, which Minerva obviously knew.

The walk back to the common room is quiet. Draco takes a couple of deep inhales, as if preparing to speak, but never does. Severus suspects that’s for the best; he’s in no mood to hear whatever half-stewed excuses Draco’s no doubt brewing up. All he wants to do is go back to bed.

Once he makes it back to his quarters, though, it feels like his head has hardly hit the pillow before he’s once again woken, this time by Filch with Potter. He fixes them both with his most poisonous stare, which only seems to work on Potter.

“Found Potter here leaving the astronomy tower with the Granger girl,” Filch says gleefully.

“Thank you, Mr. Filch,” Severus sneers. “I’ll take it from here.”

“Aye,” says the caretaker. He whistles for his accursed cat and leaves them.

Severus siphons a bit of his ire into slamming his office door, which feels good for a half-second before the sound reverberates a headache into existence right behind his eyes. He winces, whirls around, and all but flings himself down into the chair.

“Explain yourself,” he snaps.

“Er,” says Potter. “Hermione and I were just exploring the castle, sir. Filch caught us.”

It’s such a flimsy lie it’s practically an embarrassment to the name of Slytherin.

“And you couldn’t explore the castle during daylight hours?” he drawls.

“It’s more fun at night, is all.”

Severus looks up so that Potter can clearly see him roll his eyes. It hurts; he’d forgotten for a moment about the throbbing ache in his frontal cortex. But other than that, he stays silent long enough for the boy to start fidgeting.

“And this has nothing to do with Mr. Malfoy’s report of a dragon in your possession?”

The watching pays off: he sees Potter’s neck twitch up, catches a glimpse of wide, panicked eyes before Potter catches himself and stills the automatic head-jerk half-way.

“Dragon?” he echoes, several octaves too high.

“Indeed,” drawls Severus. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a dragon, would you?”

From the way Potter’s shoulders tense, he obviously does, although it’s still not clear whether the dragon was just an elaborate story told to mislead Draco or, Merlin forbid, a real-life beast that has been raised somewhere in the castle. He does seem exceedingly anxious for someone caught out in a mere lie to a fellow student, but that would mean, impossibly, Potter actually had a dragon tonight…

“I told Malfoy I had a pet dragon to try to intimidate him,” Potter blurts out. “And then when he demanded to see it, I told him he couldn’t because I was giving it away tonight and it was already packed up in a crate for transport. It was all a lie, though. I just wanted to rile him up.”

Severus briefly wonders whether Lily would blame him if he inadvertently allowed her son’s head to be bitten off by a secret Class XXXXX pet. He deeply resents that this is what his life has come to.

“And what were you and Miss Granger doing out of bed then?”

The several-seconds-long pause that Potter takes to marshal his thoughts is damning. “Like I said, just exploring, sir. I forgot I’d told Malfoy I was getting rid of the dragon tonight. It was all just a coincidence.”

Severus finally succumbs to the urge to press his fingers deeply to the portion of his forehead that feels like his skull is threatening to burst. “Potter,” he grinds out from between his teeth, “if I find even one shred of evidence that you are or have ever been in possession of an actual dragon on school grounds, I promise I shall not stop until I personally see you expelled from this school.”

Potter gulps audibly but doesn’t look nearly as defeated as Draco did earlier tonight. “I swear I am not and have never been in possession of a dragon on school grounds,” he says.

All of a sudden, he appears to be telling the truth, which makes even less sense than all the rest of this conversation. Severus’ head throbs in frustration. He needs more sleep before he can deal with Potter’s nonsense.

“Twenty points from Slytherin for breaking curfew,” he hisses. It hurts to take points from his own House, but he’ll never hear the end of it if Draco loses points and Potter doesn’t. And, well, if he was going to take points from any one Slytherin over the course of his Hogwarts tenure, naturally it would be Potter. “And you’ll serve the same detention Professor McGonagall assigns Draco and Granger.”

“Yes, sir.”

Potter looks entirely too relieved to have reached the apparent end of his interrogation. Severus does not have the capacity to wonder why that is at the moment.

“Bed, Potter. Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

**

Severus’ headache persists in the morning and he feels awful. He must look awful, too, because Pomona takes one glance at him over breakfast and says, “Oh, not you too, Severus?”

She nods at Hagrid, who looks even worse than Severus feels: eyes rimmed red and puffy above purpling bags. He seems to have had little sleep and a long, recent cry.

On the night that a dragon was possibly smuggled out of the school.

Severus wants to strangle someone.

He settles for ranting at Dumbledore an hour later, a fat lot of good that does. Dumbledore says that with the dragon gone he has no reason to investigate Hagrid and there’s nothing to be done.

Severus wants to strangle Dumbledore.

Later, in the staff room, he hears that Hagrid has “generously offered” to take the supervision of first-year detentions off of Filch’s hands, seeing as he has some work to do with which he could use the help. This only cements the idea in Severus’ mind that Potter and his cronies were acting on Hagrid’s behalf, and that the groundskeeper is now rewarding their loyalty by making sure their token punishments are easy.

Severus wants to strangle Hagrid.

The headache lingers for a week.

**

“Potter,” he calls over the din of students preparing to leave. “Stay after class.”

The boy looks nervously at his mediocre potion, flask still in hand, but waves off his friends who are sending him exceedingly obvious (in the case of the Gryffindors) looks of concern. He approaches the desk once the rest of his classmates have left.

“Yes, sir?”

“I believe that it was not your dragon you were smuggling out of the castle,” Severus says without preamble.

As suspected, Potter freezes for several long and incriminating moments.

“There was no dragon,” he lies. It is only slightly more convincing than it was on Saturday night. “That was just a story I told Malfoy--”

“Potter.”

He falls silent.

“Perhaps I was not clear enough after the mountain troll incident,” Severus sneers. “If you believe yourself or other students to be in danger, what are you to do?”

“Alert a prefect or professor?” Potter answers warily.

“And if you believe one prefect or professor in particular may pose a danger to yourself or other students, what do you think would be the best course of action?”

Maybe Potter’s caught on to his line of thought, because suddenly he looks extremely wary. His shoulders tense, he shifts the books in his arms to leave one hand free, and he steps slightly back, one foot angled towards the door. It’s a bit of an overreaction for a child facing nothing more than a lecture, or perhaps being caught out in a lie; Potter looks two seconds away from fleeing the room altogether. Still, he answers, cautiously, “Alert a different prefect or professor?”

Severus smiles his most condescending smile. “And tell me, Potter, would you consider a Class XXXXX magical beast on the school grounds to be a danger to yourself or other students?”

He watches the realization hit with no small amount of satisfaction, but he’s a bit confused by the flash of relief that follows, and he really doesn’t like the crafty little smirk Potter ends up with.

“You mean like a cerberus?” Potter says with a falsely innocent voice that sounds entirely too much like his father.

“I mean Hagrid’s bloody dragon!” Severus spits.

“Well sir,” the boy says, still infuriatingly pleasant, “If Dumbledore knows about the giant three-headed dog on the third floor and hasn’t moved it, then I guess I just don’t know enough yet to understand what makes an animal too dangerous to be in a school. I am just a first-year, after all.”

If he’s forced to remain in Potter’s presence another moment longer, Severus will start casting hexes. “Out, Potter,” he snarls.

“Yes, sir,” Potter answers. He turns away, but not before Severus catches the flash of triumph on his face.

He wants to strangle Potter, too.

Chapter Text

It’s a minor miracle that Potter hangs onto any of his Slytherin friends in the aftermath of the dragon incident. He has earned quite a bit of ire, indignation, and intrigue among his housemates as the first Slytherin in a generation to provoke Severus into taking points; the infamy only grows when Potter refuses to tell the truth about what he did to lose those points. The fact that Draco lost the same amount of house points to Minerva doesn’t garner nearly the same interest.

So it’s nothing short of a testament to Potter’s charisma, or perhaps just his social capital, that he still has Slytherins willing to sit with him in classes or the common room. Nott and Davis remain steadfast in their friendship, or acquaintanceship, or whatever arrangement they have going on; and even Zabini and Bulstrode join them to study on occasion, when Potter is separated from his Gryffindors.

Quirrell looks progressively worse each time Severus sees him. He looks like he’s contracted a genuine slow-acting ailment, beyond the mere stress of his mission to steal the Stone or the pressure of his mysterious master’s expectations. Severus catches him walking along the third floor corridor no less than five times over Easter break, but as far as he knows, nobody has actually opened the trapdoor yet.

Then Easter holidays end and the final exam fever begins in earnest. Severus expands his office hours to answer questions about Potions, but fortunately he is much too intimidating for the majority of the dunderheads he teaches to risk bothering him. Some of his NEWT-level students don’t have the same apprehensions, although they have generally proven themselves bearable. He does his best with the younger Slytherins who come to him for advice, and he thinks he only traumatizes about half of them.

**

Whatever goodwill Severus has been building for Potter since he decided to convert the boy into a consummate Slytherin lies dormant in the aftermath of the dragon fiasco. It remains so until the Slytherin vs. Hufflepuff quidditch match, which they win by a large margin when Potter catches the snitch on the tail end of a truly spectacular dive.

Severus allows himself some grudging pride for having allowed Potter onto the team, which translates into some grudging triumph as he observes the growing friend group Potter draws in at the post-match party. His notorious dragon-related point loss is forgotten in the excitement of another quidditch victory, which means the more industrious and less supercilious first- and second- years are free to flock to the boy wonder once more.

**

Whatever resentment Severus has been nurturing for Hagrid lasts until the staff meeting a week before exams, when the gameskeeper finally makes himself useful and mentions that somebody has been hunting unicorns in the Forbidden Forest.

“Three of ‘em have been killed, tha’ we know of, and the centaurs are sure it’s a wizard o’ some kind doin’ the killin’,” he reports. “They think they scared ‘em off the firs’ two times, but whoever it is, they’ve managed ter drink the blood a’ least once.”

Severus’ mind jumps immediately to Quirrell. Anyone desperate enough to try stealing the Philosopher's Stone out from under Albus Dumbledore’s nose could definitely be desperate enough to drink unicorn blood, especially if they believe the Elixir of Life will soon be within reach.

Quirrell looks pale and nervous, but then he always looks pale and nervous these days, and the mere thought of anyone drinking unicorn blood is enough to make any academic nauseous. It’s not enough to be incriminating, no matter how much Severus would dearly love to incriminate him in front of the rest of the faculty.

Still. He will be keeping an annoying close watch on Quirrell from now on.

**

It’s easier said than done to keep an annoying close watch on another staff member when both professors are inundated with final exams to proctor, final assignments to grade, and final lessons to provide to a seemingly endless wave of stressed and nervous students.

In a careless mistake borne of a decade of peacetime, Severus barely notices when Dumbledore leaves the castle, swamped as he is with his own work to do. He doesn’t have the energy to care where anyone but Quirrell has disappeared off to, nor wonder what could possibly distract teacher’s pet Granger away from her urgent need to speak with Filius about her Charms exam.

He doesn’t even notice that Potter has snuck out of bed until Severus is jerked out of sleep by the arrival of Dumbledore at his quarters. He’s barely awake and still fumbling with his dressing gown when he opens the door, but the shot of adrenaline that hits him at the words, “Mr. Potter is in the infirmary” certainly does the trick.

They floo to the Hospital Wing, where Severus finds Minerva already present, head bent close to Poppy’s. Granger is flitting nervously between two beds containing Weasley, with a bandage around his head, and Potter, with no visible injuries, though he lies unnaturally still.

A sharp intake of breath is all the reaction Severus allows himself in front of a student. He nods to the headmaster, who summons Minerva and Poppy, and they all gather around for an explanation. As the only one of their foolish trio conscious at the moment, Granger is obliged to provide it.

“I daresay you weren’t convinced by my assurances this morning that the Philosopher's Stone was safe?” Minerva prompts drolly.

Granger’s face twists in acute distress. “I’m sorry Professor, really, but we were convinced that with Professor Dumbledore gone, Sn-- somebody would try to steal it tonight!”

“They brought their concerns to your attention?” Severus clarifies.

“They were seeking Professor Dumbledore and had to settle for me instead,” Minerva confirms. “I promised them the Stone was quite safe.”

Severus keeps his sigh internal. There goes his favoured chastisement for students who have acted impulsively.

“Quite alright, my dear,” Dumbledore tells the girl. “I commend you for your deductive reasoning, not only for gleaning what it was that we were guarding in the school, but also under what circumstances it might be at risk.”

Underneath the obligatory blush, Granger looks surprisingly guilty. Her eyes dart between all four adults, but seem to linger on Severus more often than not. “You’re sure it was Professor Quirrell, who was in there?”

Dumbledore frowns. “Indeed, Miss Granger. I retrieved his body myself.”

Granger lets out an “oh” and turns a rather concerning shade of green, which prompts a small recess during which Poppy plies Granger with a calming draught. The medication is, in Severus’ opinion, about half an hour overdue, but better late than never is occasionally a truthful adage-- just not in a potions lab.

While Granger recovers from her shock, Severus puts the pieces together: Granger’s guilty glances his way, the fact that Potter didn’t approach him for help after being rebuffed by Minerva, his strange assessing stares during that string of detentions in which Severus impressed upon him how many wizards out there would like to see him dead… in hindsight, when interacting with children as idiotic as Potter, perhaps it would be prudent not to lay on the menace quite so thick.

“I promise you, Miss Granger, that I have no intentions to win the Philosopher's Stone for myself nor make any attempt to end Mr. Potter’s life,” he drawls.

Granger pales again but the effects of the calming draught are already clearly starting to manifest.

“You suspected Professor Snape?” Dumbledore asks. He sounds amused. Severus is not.

“I’m sorry, Professor!” Granger gushes; not even a calming draught, it seems, can make her any less eager to please. “I just saw you at the quidditch game, when Harry’s broom was jinxed, and you were staring right at it and chanting something.”

“A countercurse, you silly girl!” Severus barks.

“If you don’t mind,” Minerva cuts in loudly. “I would like to learn how Mr. Weasley got his concussion and Mr. Potter ended up magically exhausted and mysteriously unconscious!”

Something freezes inside Severus’ chest. “Mysteriously unconscious?” he breathes in Dumbledore’s direction.

The headmaster only gives him a reassuring smile and condescending pat on his knee. “I do have my theories and I am not concerned.”

“So you decided that three first-year students were sufficient additional protection for the Philosopher's Stone, should a fully-grown wizard attempt to steal it?” Minerva prompts.

Granger grimaces at the implied reprimand. “Well, by the time we got there, Fluffy was already asleep and S-- Quir–- erm, Professor Quirrell had clearly gone through the trapdoor.”

It does not escape Severus’ notice that Granger knows the loathsome name of that blasted Cerberus. He will be having words with Hagrid, whether Dumbledore backs him up or not.

“So you decided to go after him?” Dumbledore guesses.

Granger nods. Severus bites back a scathing question about what possible good that could have done, only because he knows that hearing her pathetic excuse for a justification will do no favours for his mood.

She goes on to recount their nauseatingly ill-advised trip through the protections set up for the Stone. Unfortunately, her account ends with Potter going on alone into the last chamber and Granger turning back to check on Weasley. The most pressing answers, it seems, still lie somewhere in Potter’s frustratingly unresponsive mind. They sit quietly for a few minutes; processing, Severus assumes, although what there is to contemplate except the utter reckless stupidity of this particular group of witless children, Severus couldn’t say.

Minerva, luckily, seems to be aware of another witness to the subsequent events. “And what did you find when you arrived, Albus?” she asks.

Dumbledore casts a sharp glance at Granger, who is looking determinedly back at the headmaster, although her eyelids are also drooping rather insistently every few seconds. “It has been quite an eventful night for you, Miss Granger,” he says kindly. “And I do believe that you should be getting some sleep; I daresay that any calming draught at this hour of the night will have you nodding off soon.”

Granger protests feebly, but, sure enough, her head is also lilting precariously forward. Poppy coaxes her onto a cot with a stream of soothing words, and the girl is asleep within five minutes. With a last muffling and monitoring charm cast on her curtains, Poppy returns to the impromptu council to hear Dumbledore’s conclusion to the saga.

“I received an urgent summons to the Ministry last night-- a summons I later realized was falsified and plied with a strong compulsion charm. As soon as I’d fought it off, I returned to Hogwarts to find four separate alerts from my monitoring enchantments on the third-floor corridor. I passed Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley on my way down, and they confirmed that Mr. Potter was still below the castle, and had entered the Mirror chamber alone. By the time I got down there, Mr. Potter had removed the Stone from the Mirror of Erised--”

“But how!” Minerva gasps.

“A lovely little enchantment of my own invention,” Dumbledore says proudly. “He could only have retrieved the Philosopher’s Stone if he had no intentions of using it. The ultimate trap for one such as Quirinus and his master, although I regret that it did ultimately land Mr. Potter with the task of protecting the Stone.”

A strange sound halfway between a snarl and a growl erupts from Severus’ throat entirely without his consent.

Dumbledore turns his twinkling blue eyes at him. “I do apologize for inadvertently leaving Mr. Potter open to more danger. I should have realized this was a potential outcome.”

“Potter and his dunderhead friends never should have been able to get that far in the first place!” Severus yells. “You knew the traps were embarrassingly simple for a grown wizard! If I didn’t know any better I’d say they were specifically designed to challenge first-year students!”

“They were specifically designed to both slow any potential thief and give the illusion of a simple solution to each obstacle. I’m sure I walked you through the arithmancy prior to the start of term? The Mirror of Erised was the true trap all along; one designed to stall thieves in their place as they attempted to solve its puzzle, convinced as they would be that the Mirror, too, must have a relatively simple solution. Or, failing that, drive them mad with unattainable images of the Stone itself.”

“The Mirror--”

“Gentlemen!” Minerva shouts. “Can we get back to the discussion of what in Merlin’s name happened to Potter?”

“He’s my student,” Severus snarls, “and I’ll--”

“He’s my patient!” Poppy interrupts. “And I need to know what he’s been exposed to! You lot can argue amongst yourselves all you want once I know what I’m expected to work with.”

Severus crosses his arms petulantly but quiets. He won’t admit it aloud, but he, too, feels rather desperate to learn what happened to Potter.

“Apologies, Poppy,” says Dumbledore. If he thinks that apologizing somehow gives him the moral upper hand, however, he’s sorely mistaken. “Where was I? Ah, yes. Mr. Potter was in possession of the Stone and was engaged in a physical altercation with Quirinus. Quirinus was attempting to kill him, and Potter appeared to be burning Quirinus anywhere he made contact with bare skin.”

“How?”

“I only have theories, but I believe they are sound. Crucially, I also observed tonight that Quirinus had abandoned that singular purple turban of his, which quite literally revealed the face of the spectre that I believe has been possessing him all year: Voldemort.”

“No!” Minerva gasps. Poppy gives a strangled half-formed shriek. Even Severus lets out an involuntary hiss at the name.

“I have long suspected that Quirinus was angling to obtain the Stone on Voldemort’s--” (more gasps; Severus flinches as well) “--orders; however, it seems that Voldemort was… keeping a closer eye on Quirinus than I had anticipated.”

“But Albus, why didn’t you do anything if you suspected--?”

“Because I thought it more prudent to keep him under my watchful eye, Minerva.”

“And yet he almost killed Potter thrice under your watchful eye!” Severus snipes. “And it sounds like this last time, he almost succeeded!”

“Ah, yes. I think this will be of particular interest for you, Poppy, and perhaps for the rest of you as well. You see, I do not believe it was Harry Potter’s own power that defeated Voldemort ten years ago. I believe it was, instead, a form of arcane sacrificial magic bestowed by Lily Potter unto her son that protected him from Voldemort’s Killing Curse. In fact, I believe that protection lingers on in Harry’s blood: a love so pure and so powerful that Voldemort, and any being he inhabits, cannot bear to come into contact with it.”

Severus hasn’t occluded so hard in years, but he does so now; he plunges into the frigid depths of his mind where no mention of Lily nor her love nor the death magic she performed bears any meaning for him. Dumbledore continues on, and Severus listens, and he does not react.

“Thus when Quirinus, possessed as he was by Voldemort’s spirit, attempted to touch Mr. Potter, he found he could not. And Mr. Potter, realizing this advantage, was defending himself quite literally with his bare hands when I finally arrived in the Mirror chamber. Quirinus was alive but badly burned when I tore him away from Mr. Potter. Once he had noticed my arrival, however, Voldemort’s spirit visibly departed Quirinus’ body and fled, barrelling through Mr. Potter in the process.”

Poppy shrieks again. “You’re not suggesting the boy was possessed!”

“I am not,” Dumbledore reassures her. “After so many months of possessing an adult human, not to mention the exertion of both his attempt to steal the Stone and his altercation with Mr. Potter, I have no doubt that Voldemort will not have the strength to possess another human for quite some time. However, the brief contact that his intangible wraith had with Mr. Potter would have been a great enough shock to render a child unconscious.”

“And Quirinus?” Minerva prods. “You said you removed his body--?”

“Indeed. I’m no magical mortician but I suspect that he suffered some magical exhaustion from his altercation with Mr. Potter, and was therefore too weak to survive the trauma of Voldemort’s dispossession.”

For a moment, despite their various misgivings, all four of them share the same grim look and, undoubtedly, the same thought: good riddance to bad rubbish. Sometimes, they have come to learn over the years, the loss of another Defense professor is no great loss overall.

Minerva is the first to break the bleakly unrepentant silence. “You don’t believe Mr. Potter will face permanent damage, Poppy?”

The matron balks at the question. “I’m just a school medi-witch,” she laments. “I can’t say I’m an expert on the effects of momentary interaction with the disembodied spirit of a Dark Lord, not to mention whatever ancient enchantments Lily placed on him.”

Both witches turn as one to Dumbledore for guidance. “I do not believe he will face permanent damage, no, although I’ll admit I, too, feel a tad out of my depth when it comes to arts as dark as these.”

Nobody has the nerve to look at Severus after that implication, but the way they all stare determinedly downwards betrays the impulse all the same.

“I can look into it,” he begrudgingly acquiesces.

Dumbledore nods jovially, as if he had actually asked for Severus’ help himself. “Excellent. Thank you, Severus. Hopefully, Mr. Potter will wake within a few days, and we can examine his mental state more thoroughly at that time.” He claps his hands on his knees. “If you wish to berate me in further detail, Severus, you’re welcome to accompany me back to my office.”

Severus still wants to strangle Dumbledore, yes, but he finds himself oddly reluctant to leave the infirmary just yet. His eyes drift over to Potter’s bed of their own accord.

“Of course, we can always resume that conversation another day,” Dumbledore says with a twinkle in his eye.

“I might study his condition to better guide my research,” Severus suggests gruffly.

“Of course,” repeats the headmaster, sounding unbearably smug. “Good night, Minerva, Poppy.”

Dumbledore bows out and walks away. Only then does Severus allow himself to move to Potter’s bedside.

In sleep, with his eyes closed, there is nothing more of Lily in the boy than perhaps a certain softness of the jaw; he’s all Potter in looks, really, but even that resemblance is lessened with his atrocious glasses off. And, well, Severus never saw Potter Senior in repose, never saw him so still except in death, and, for what it’s worth, that Potter was never so small even in his first year at Hogwarts. Like this, Harry Potter is just a boy, just one of Severus’ Slytherins to protect, a lone child who’s been in entirely too much danger in Dumbledore’s school.

After a moment, he comes back to himself and hurries to cast some dark arts-related diagnostics. The cover-up probably doesn't fool either of the witches who are present and undoubtedly still watching him, but thankfully, they don’t comment. He doesn’t dare look their way-– looks only at Potter and then at the parchment Poppy hands him for notes-– but eventually, after some more whispered conversation in a corner, he hears Minerva depart through the floo.

Potter has lingering traces of dark magic on him, but nothing at the level that would suggest he practiced it himself, nor even that it was practiced on him. He supposes that’s more or less what one could expect from a brush with a dark and immortal spirit. It’s most concentrated around the boy’s head, which is concerning, but at least his brain activity doesn’t seem much disturbed for an unconscious eleven year-old. Severus will have to repeat the tests in a few hours to see if the magical traces linger.

That doesn’t mean he has to stay here, though. His lovely big mattress beckons from his quarters. He can have a quick kip and return for the follow-up tests. Yes, he’ll stand up now and go back to his quiet, comfortable four-poster.

He keeps telling himself that until he finally nods off, in the creaky wooden chair next to Potter’s bed.

Chapter Text

Severus wakes with a start into night too deep to be anything but the witching hour. He’s not by any means unaccustomed to darkness, but the unfamiliar surroundings are disorienting enough to let certain painful revelations slip through his mental defenses.

A shard of grief lances through his chest and it’s all he can do not to gasp aloud.

Lily died for her child, and somehow managed to take the Dark Lord down with her. And now not only her blood but her very magic, her love live on in the boy, this fragile little bird-boned creature with her eyes and her unyielding sense of justice.

Severus occludes all the feelings away when he realizes they’ve started to extend to Potter himself. It’s no doubt a temporary madness, born of stress and little sleep; nothing but a desperate need to project such poignant feelings onto somebody who’s still alive to receive them. But as soon as Potter wakes, with the light of day illuminating that awful hair and cheeky face and abominable posture, Severus will come back to his senses, and he can gratefully forget whatever grief-fueled desperation made him think he cared for the boy personally.

Settled by that resolution, he repeats his earlier examinations and notes their results: the remnants of dark magic are slowly fading from everywhere but Potter’s forehead. He will have to do some additional research on curse scars, too, if this becomes a problem.

He doesn’t need to check up on Potter again for another few hours. If he goes back to bed now, he can probably catch a full REM cycle or two. After all, he’ll need as much sleep as he can get if he’s to add two esoteric research subjects to his already-full workload of grading final exams.

He’ll come back up to the infirmary before breakfast to do another scan.

The comfort of his own quarters calls to him like a siren.

He falls back asleep at Potter’s bedside.

**

Poppy wakes him in the morning with an invigoration draught and a tiny vial of concentrated caffeine. She says nothing about his overnight vigil, but does pat him fondly on the shoulder. Severus wants to rebuke her for the unwelcomed informality, but he just doesn’t have the energy.

The dark magic seems to be dissipating from Potter at a constant rate, everywhere but his scar. Content enough with those findings, Severus heads out before Weasley or Granger can wake to find him here; it’s bad enough that Poppy, and probably Dumbledore, know that he watched over Potter all night.

Gryffindor loses to Ravenclaw in the final quidditch match of the season that afternoon. Ravenclaw only scores 180 points, though, so it’s Slytherin that wins the cup. Severus isn’t there to see it; the win feels hollow without their star seeker around to celebrate, anyway.

Instead, he spends all day doing research. He takes ten-minute breaks every three hours to relieve himself and to walk to the infirmary to repeat his tests on Potter, ignoring his watchful Gryffindor sidekicks. He skips meals until Poppy shoves him onto a cot at eight in the evening and refuses to lift her permanent sticking charm until he’s eaten the tray of food she brings him. It’s mortifying, but at least Weasley and Granger have finally been shooed away for the night, and therefore aren’t present to witness his humiliation.

The traces of dark magic have disappeared everywhere but the scar, but Potter still hasn’t woken. Severus returns to his reading.

**

By the second day of his convalescence, word gets out that Potter fought off the Dark Lord and barely lived to tell the tale. There are several other absurd rumors going around about how he landed himself in the hospital wing, of course, but the one thing every student seems to know is that Potter is unconscious in the infirmary after pulling some foolish and/or heroic stunt with his Gryffindor friends.

Every time Severus returns to check on him, Potter’s corner of the infirmary is covered in more flowers, sweets, and get-well cards than the last time. He catches snatches of visitors: Granger and Weasley, though technically discharged the first morning they woke, are a constant presence in the hospital wing, and now often joined by Nott, Davis, Zabini, and Bulstrode. The Gryffindor pair have never interacted much with his other Slytherins, but they seem to have settled into an uneasy peace around Potter’s bedside.

That afternoon, he returns for more tests to find the entirety of the Slytherin quidditch team visiting. Warrington and Higgs are stacking up piles of chocolate frogs and boxes of Bertie Bott’s to make room for the case of butterbeer that Pucey claims to have saved for Potter from their quidditch cup party. All of them are clearly hungover-- especially Flint-- but still in good spirits.

**

Potter still hasn’t woken by that evening, which doesn’t seem to worry Poppy nearly as much as it does Severus. He finds himself once again reluctant to leave Potter’s side. When Poppy wanders out of her office to find him seated rigidly in the same chair he occupied an hour ago, she transfigures him a more comfortable armchair and a warm blanket, and leaves him be.

After a futile repetition of his diagnostic scans, Severus allows himself to mull over his findings so far. It is not uncommon for curse scars to react unexpectedly in the presence of dark magic, especially if the wound was not treated properly or promptly upon infliction. The type of dark magic in question is of import as well, obviously, although Severus only has nebulous theories about the exact nature of the Dark Lord’s current incorporeal existence.

Of course, the survival of the Dark Lord in any form has led Severus to several books too evil even for the Restricted Section, trying to figure out the manner in which he managed to tether his spirit to the mortal plane. Several methods of attempted immortality require human sacrifice, so naturally, it was perfectly within the bounds of his task to research the parameters and possibilities of sacrificial magic, the more arcane the better.

By now he has learned that the most potent of sacrificial enchantments require the purest, most focused of intentions, and also a bilateral negotiation of terms. Not that the Dark Lord ever would have accepted the premise of taking Lily’s life instead of Potter’s, but apparently the intent, unlike the agreement, need only be one-sided. The bilateral part of a life sacrifice can merely entail the thrice-repeated offer of amnesty and the subsequent triple refusal of the person sacrificed.

Which can only mean that the Dark Lord did, indeed, offer to spare Lily, presumably on Severus’ request, and in doing so provided her with the astronomically improbable opportunity to give her life for Potter’s. Severus has been trying to avoid thinking too hard about this logic, because it only binds him further into the web of blame for the death of the Potters and now also the survival of their son.

Severus wholeheartedly resents his contribution to the exchange of Lily’s life for Potter’s. It is a trade he would have refused a thousand times over, had he been given the choice; but he wasn’t, and now he’s partly responsible for Potter’s legendary survival as a baby.

He’s also responsible for Potter’s continued safety as his student, though at the moment he feels about as successful at that mission as he ever was at protecting Lily. What good are desperate promises against the curiosity of an inquisitive eleven year-old boy or the wrath of the Dark Lord himself?

He can't stop thinking that he’s united in purpose with an enchantment that consists of the purest form of Lily’s love, and that once again he’s failing her.

Severus is grateful to sink into sleep before his thoughts can possibly get more maudlin.

**

Limbs stiff and muscles aching, Severus returns to his office for this third consecutive day of research. He studiously avoids the sacrificial magic books that so enticed him yesterday and focuses instead on curse scars. He’s officially willing to admit that he’s worried about Potter, not to mention annoyed by the mid-morning visit from Nott, Davis, Zabini, and Bulstrode, asking for his professional opinion on Potter’s health and likely prognosis.

“Do I look like a healer to you?” Severus snaps. “He’ll wake when he’s recovered.”

Suitably chastened, they leave him in peace. He allows himself a moment of weakness to palm his itching eyes, then pulls himself back together and returns to his reading.

Dumbledore finds him in the Great Hall during Severus’ fifteen-minute allotted break for lunch with the welcome news of Potter’s return to consciousness. The headmaster hasn’t shown his concern nearly as easily as Severus no doubt has over the last three days, but it’s obvious now that the tension is gone.

Against his better judgment, Severus returns to visit Potter. It’s a relief to see the boy conscious with his own eyes, even if one of them twitches with irritation to find Potter already halfway through a pack of Bertie Bott’s.

“I see you’ve once again failed to get yourself killed, Potter,” he drawls.

Potter jumps, startled, and drops the beans all over his cot. He blushes and ducks his head, trying to pick them up and shove them all back into the box. Severus is relieved to find that this behaviour exasperates and faintly amuses him, but nothing more. Potter is just another dunderheaded student in the hospital wing, due for a good scolding from Poppy about sugar intake.

“Sorry, Professor,” Potter mumbles once he’s boxed up the beans and left them on the side table. “I didn’t see you come in.”

“Obviously.”

Severus repeats his diagnostics as Potter fidgets on the cot. The dark magic results haven’t changed for a good thirty hours, which means that the last day and a half or so of unconsciousness must have been a result of magical and probably physical exhaustion, and nothing more.

He eyes the chair he’s occupied every night of Potter’s convalescence, but decides he’d prefer to loom over the foot of Potter’s bed instead.

“Dumbledore said you’ve been in to see me a lot,” Potter says shyly, peering up at Severus from beneath his eyelashes.

”Professor Dumbledore is a sentimental old fool who so dearly wishes to see the best in everyone that he occasionally sees things that aren’t there at all.”

“He said-- and Quirrell too-- that you’ve been trying to save me all year.”

Severus rolls his eyes. “You’re a student, Potter; of course I don’t want to see you killed. All the more because you seem so set on dying anyway,” he adds with a glare.

Potter cocks his head. “Professor Dumbledore said you hated my dad, and that’s why you hate me more than all the other Slytherins.”

“Your father was a brash, arrogant, bullying toe-rag who caused a hundred times more trouble than he was worth,” Severus confirms.

“So if you hated him, and you hate me because I look like him, then why have you tried so hard to save me?”

Severus is struck dumb for a moment, warring impulses keeping him from a coherent answer. For the first time all year, Severus has a scathing, odious, condescending answer on the tip of his tongue, eager to be unleashed on Potter, and he can’t say it. It’s a paradigm shift he’s been trying to ignore since November: that old hatred of all things Potter finally ceding ground to this tentative new grudging affection. Blame it on his vow to protect Lily’s child and his absurd urge to make the boy a proud Slytherin at all costs.

“I promise you, Potter, that if I hated you even one iota as much as I hated your father, you wouldn’t last another day in my House,” he finally says. For all of its determinedly malicious presentation, Potter still beams at the underlying admission. “But if you continue down this path of reckless Gryffindor tomfoolery, I shall have no choice but to see more of your father in you than I ever wish to,” he threatens.

Potter finally looks sufficiently chastened. “We did ask for help,” he says defensively. “We tried to find Dum-- Professor Dumbledore, and then Professor McGonagall said he was gone, and we tried to get her to help but she said the Stone was fine, and we were so sure--” He cuts himself off before he can articulate his misinformed suspicions, but Severus is in no mood to allow him that small dignity.

“You were so sure I was out to steal it,” he drawls, “and possibly to kill you as well?”

Potter flushes. “Sorry, sir,” he mumbles.

“Do you think you have sufficient proof, now, that I am not trying to kill you, Potter?”

“Erm,” Potter says. “I read in Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts that you used to follow Voldemort.”

“Don’t say his name!” Severus hisses.

Potter ignores him. “But Dumbledore said you were spying, on Vol--”

“Potter,” he warns.

“--On You-Know-Who for him.”

Severus waits for a question.

“Were you really? I mean,” he rushes on, “you don’t want to kill me for revenge, like the other Death Eaters might?”

“If I wanted you dead, Potter, I wouldn’t have spent so much of my time trying to save your ungrateful life.”

“Right. Yeah. Erm, thank you, for that.”

He glares at the boy some more until he looks suitably abashed.

“I believe you,” Potter mumbles. “Sorry, sir.”

Severus nods his approval. “Then, as previously discussed, should you in the future ever believe yourself or other students to be in danger, what will you do?”

“Tell a prefect or a professor,” Potter duly recites.

“And should you believe a prefect or a professor to be a danger to yourself or other students, what will you do?”

“Tell a different prefect or professor,” Potter mumbles.

“And should Professor McGonagall not have learned her lesson about the dangers of dismissing you and your merry band of martyring idiots out of hand, what will you do?”

Potter blushes at the epithet, but doesn’t look away. He stares assessingly at Severus for a moment before replying. “Tell you, professor?”

“If you so wish,” Severus sniffs. He whirls around and strides out of the infirmary, robes billowing dramatically in his wake.

**

Now that Potter is awake and functional enough, Severus sets aside his research and finally turns his attentions to exams. He plows through the practicals easily enough; he knows each of these potions like the back of his hand, and barely requires a whiff of most of them before he can assign grades. There is still an ominous stack of written tests to mark, though, and he once again works far into the night, trying to get through them all.

Dumbledore comes calling around five the next evening, no doubt to berate him for his failure to turn in the year-end grades for his second- and first-years, whose work he’s left until last. Instead, when he lets Dumbledore into the office, the headmaster merely pulls up a chair, transfigures it into one of his squashy purple monstrosities, retrieves a gaudy red self-inking quill from his robes, and pulls a stack of parchments onto his lap. Severus only stares at him in shock for a few moments before returning to his own grading.

They barely finish in time for the year-end feast, but finish they do. If Severus had any leg to stand on, he would bicker with Dumbledore about being too generous with the second-years’ grades, but as it is, he says nothing.

Amid all the drama of the past few days, Severus almost forgot that Slytherin won both the quidditch and House cups, so it is a welcome surprise to enter a Great Hall bedecked in green and silver. He applies himself with vigour to the foods on offer, suddenly realizing how hungry he is now that the weight of his worry and his various academic obligations has been lifted from his shoulders.

Dumbledore, of course, can’t resist a dramatic announcement of last-minute points to award, but the extra points Granger and Weasley earn aren’t nearly enough to tie for second, so the last fifty awarded to Potter aren’t even necessary to tip the scale back in Slytherin’s favour. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to note that, while Weasley and Granger seem pleased with their impressive but ultimately insufficient points, Potter only looks uncomfortable under the extra attention. Severus wonders whether it was Dumbledore’s intention to reward the boy with public praise; if so, he’s cast wide and missed the mark.

**

Severus stands in the common room the next morning, nominally supervising the students’ last-minute packing. His behaviour could more accurately be described as ‘glowering at the guilty-looking students running around for their things and occasionally barking out names of people who have left books and other labelled possessions lying in plain sight,’ but nobody present is willing to call him on it.

It’s the same fracas as every year: a maelstrom of stressed, disorganized teenagers; wistful first-years trying to hide how relieved they are to go home; still-half-dead fifth years who are barely recovered enough from their OWLs to run around tracking down items, but too scared of Severus’ wrath to try summoning objects willy-nilly; and excited but nostalgic seventh-years, staying a day later for the graduation ceremony, lounging around the common room and amusing themselves with the chaos around them.

With these expectations firmly established by years of experience, Severus scans the outliers carefully: the few overachievers who have been packed for days; the tearful goodbyes of students who will be travelling all summer and won’t see their friends or significant others for two whole months; the sixth year girl who was engaged to a man ten years her senior over winter break, and looks a bit like she’s walking to the gallows instead of a wedding.

“Miss Bole,” he calls quietly as she slouches past him. “Do you require assistance making alternative arrangements for the summer?”

Bole worries her lip. Severus quietly regrets putting this conversation off for so long; he should have done it days ago, as soon as exams were over, but he was too preoccupied with Potter to get around to it. She shakes her head. “Thanks anyway, Professor,” she says wistfully.

“Should you change your mind, do remember that you can reach me by owl at any time.”

The corners of Bole’s lips twitch up in a consolation prize of a smile. Severus watches her walk away, feeling a bit like he’s failed her, and notices Potter eyeing them both. The boy is a bit of an outlier as well: most first years are all bluster about how much they’ll miss their friends and Hogwarts when in truth they’re secretly relieved to be going home. Potter, though, looks well and truly glum about it.

It’s disconcerting enough that Severus speaks before he fully comprehends the ramifications of what he’s saying. “Do you, Potter?” he asks.

Potter blanches and shakes his head, but not without a split-second’s hesitation. It’s not enough to push on, though, especially when Potter practically flees his presence. Still, Severus can’t quite dispel the uneasy weight in his gut, nor keep his thoughts from dwelling on Potter’s reluctance to leave the castle.

**

With the younger students gone, the outgoing seventh years traditionally go out to Hogsmeade on their last night in the castle, so it’s just the staff in the Great Hall for dinner. After several hours of stewing in his misgivings, Severus waits for Minerva to set off to finalize preparations for the morrow, and then takes her empty seat next to Dumbledore.

“Headmaster,” he murmurs.

“Severus! What a pleasant surprise to have your company tonight.”

Severus ignores the cheerful niceties. “Who is Potter living with these days?”

“With his family, of course,” Dumbledore says.

“Which family took him in?”

“His mother’s sister. Would you have known her, back in the day? Petunia?”

Severus makes an involuntary grimace. Petunia always was vindictive when she felt jealous of Lily’s magic; it’s no wonder Potter was reluctant to leave a magical castle for her no doubt painfully mundane, white-picketed muggle house in some boring suburb. Still, he has to ask, “Does she treat him well?”

“Of course, my boy.”

“And you know this? You’ve checked up on him?” he presses.

Dumbledore frowns at him. “I asked a very dear friend of mine to keep an eye on Mr. Potter full-time. They’ve been neighbors for several years now, and as you can see, the Dursleys have managed quite successfully to keep him alive and healthy.”

Severus frowns back. Dumbledore’s answer feels evasive somehow, which is not uncommon for the headmaster, but not unconcerning given the topic at hand. He spends so long trying to identify the source of the doubt niggling at his thoughts that Dumbledore finishes his meal and leaves before Severus can figure it out.

Ultimately, he decides that evening, Potter is indeed alive and healthy, and he rejected Severus’ offer of help; so whatever bitterness Petunia must feel about her magical nephew, surely it isn’t that bad.

She could never love him like Lily did, after all; nobody could. Maybe the boy just knows that his aunt is nothing but a shabby substitute for what he should have had.

Chapter Text

The graduation ceremony goes off without a hitch. Severus offers his traditional one underwhelming compliment apiece to his now-former students and sends them on their tearful way. After that, his summer truly begins.

As always, he feels itchy and a bit claustrophobic returning to his parents’ hovel at Spinner’s End, but it’s balanced out by the relief of being away from his students and responsibilities and Dumbledore for a full two months. He whiles away the days on potions experiments in his small but sufficient basement lab and occasionally on spellcrafting experiments in his heavily warded backyard. Three times a week he tends to the plants in his garden and makeshift greenhouse, watering and weeding and harvesting. Once a week he visits the apothecary for those potions ingredients he can’t locally source from his home, and every other week he buys groceries from the small Cokeworth Tesco.

Of course, there are still a few social obligations he can’t avoid. He visits the Malfoys for tea twice a month, writes a few articles for Prolific Potioneers, and corresponds occasionally with the headmaster when he comes across new information on curse scars. Dumbledore replies to one of his missives with news of Gilderoy Lockhart’s appointment to the Defense Against the Dark Arts post, to which Severus responds with a scathing howler.

**

In early August, he reluctantly attends Draco’s First Magic Anniversary at Malfoy Manor, a lavish traditionalist affair to celebrate Draco’s first instance of accidental magic seven years ago. It’s stifling, but there’s little that Severus can do as godfather to avoid attending the celebration.

He makes nice with Lucius and his society friends in a shaded corner of the garden for the first hour, already bored to tears behind his polite Slytherin mask, but too well-trained to attempt to beg off before the mid-afternoon tea has been served. Therefore he’s not actually as annoyed as he pretends to be when a group of Draco’s friends pulls him aside, because there’s at least a decent chance that whatever they have to say will be slightly more interesting than the various lucrative investments being made in various up-and-coming magical businesses.

“Professor,” says Zabini without preamble, “we’re worried about Harry.”

Severus blinks and re-assesses the trio of children in front of him. Zabini, Nott, and Bulstrode: Potter’s core group of Slytherin friends, minus Davis, but Severus is not surprised that she wasn’t invited.

“What about Potter?” he sighs.

Zabini and Nott exchange apprehensive looks, but Zabini soldiers on. “We haven’t heard from him all summer, and we’re not even sure if he’s getting our letters. Tracey checked with Weasley and Granger when we all realized Harry hasn’t written to any of us, and they haven’t been able to get in touch with him either.”

Severus lets none of his growing unease show on his face. “Perhaps his family has been traveling.”

All three of them share dubious glances at that.

“We were worried about him anyway,” Nott says carefully. “He was clearly upset to be going home. And he never talks about his muggles much but we’ve gotten the impression that they don’t like him and he doesn’t particularly like them either.”

Those words mean more than the sum of their parts coming from Nott, who also received and rejected Severus’ offer of alternative summer accommodations. The way Nott unflinchingly meets his calculating gaze means he knows it, too.

“My cousin who works in the Ministry said he got a warning for underage magic last week,” Bulstrode adds, which Severus is embarrassed to admit is news to him. He finally allows himself to frown slightly. “And Harry’s not stupid; he doesn’t always follow the rules but at least he knows when he’s obviously going to get caught. He wouldn’t break the law unless he thought he had to.”

“We had to communally talk Weasley down from some half-brewed rescue mission.” Nott rolls his eyes. “He and his brothers wanted to take their father’s muggle death contraption for a joyride.”

“So you can see why we thought it wise to come to you instead,” Zabini concludes smoothly.

“I will not take your concerns lightly,” Severus promises the group, eyes still on Nott. “I will look into it.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Nott says sincerely.

“Thank you,” Zabini and Bulstrode chime in a moment later.

Severus nods his acknowledgement. “You’d do well not to let your preoccupation ruin the party, else you’ll never hear the end of it from Draco.”

**

That night, he paces new furrows into the sagging floorboards of his parents’ cramped sitting room. If Potter were any other one of his Slytherins, he would have no concerns about looking into the matter himself. If Potter weren’t one of his Slytherins, he would pass along the message to Dumbledore to handle as he saw fit. But the headmaster has made it clear that he believes Potter to be safe, and he wouldn’t understand the weighty implications of this particular group of Slytherins confiding in a professor.

Although it’s a relatively insignificant concern, Severus also has to admit that he’s reluctant to speak with Petunia, especially if his misgivings turn out to be unfounded. The fall-out sure to arise from raising baseless accusations against her would undoubtedly be, at best, eardrum-splittingly unpleasant.

But he spends hours carefully reviewing everything he’s ever observed about Potter that was off or unusual, and he’s ashamed to realize that he has quite a few such worrisome observations meticulously stored away in his mind. Now that he’s brought them all out to consider together, he can’t quite manage to convince himself that his suspicions are unwarranted.

**

He’s still not ready to go to Dumbledore the next morning, not without irrefutable evidence, so instead, he goes directly to the source.

It’s not hard to track down Petunia from Cokeworth; several of his elderly neighbors remember her (and Lily, and Severus, but he dodges those reminiscences as best he can). One greying old man smoking on his front porch recalls that she married some large businessman called Dursley; another chatty great-grandmother remembers that Petunia supposedly lives in Surrey now. Instead of inflicting yet another nostalgic senior on his already fraying patience, Severus turns to the crumbling Cokeworth Library and finally finds an address for Petunia Dursley in the phone book.

He apparates to Guildford, which is as close to Little Whinging as he’s ever personally visited, and still has to transfer bus lines twice to get to his destination. It’s after noon by the time he arrives at Privet Drive, which means many of the neighborhood children are out and about, roaming the streets and playgrounds and making general nuisances of themselves. None of them are Potter, though (Merlin knows that with that hair Severus could spot him anywhere), so he proceeds to knock on the front door of Number Four.

Petunia’s expression is just as sour as it ever was, though her face seems to have gotten horsier-looking in the intervening years. “You!” she gasps.

“Tuney,” Severus sneers back.

“You!” she yells, visibly gaining steam. “Leave! Now! I’ll not have any more of your lot invading my home!”

“Try and stop me,” Severus scoffs.

He lets her slam the door in his face and lock it.

“Alohomora,” he says loudly. The lock clicks back.

He waits to hear Petunia’s whimper through the wood before he opens the door. “You were saying?” he drawls.

“I WON’T HAVE THAT FREAKISHNESS IN MY HOME!” Petunia shrieks. “I WON’T! LEAVE BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE!”

“The police are no match for me and you know it, Petunia.”

He pushes past her and into the house, though she refuses to move from the small entryway next to the stairs. Severus dispassionately takes in the family photos adorning the walls; not a single one of them includes Potter.

His threat, at least, seems to have knocked some sense into Petunia. “What do you want?” she whispers angrily.

He turns his cool gaze back on her. “Where’s Potter?”

Petunia pales even further. “What do you want with the boy?” she says with a sorry attempt at a sneer.

“Oh, I’m just wondering why he hasn’t been getting his post,” Severus drawls. “His booklist will be going out soon, you know, and it won’t do for the boy to show up to school unprepared.”

“As if I’d ever willingly get close enough to one of those disgusting birds to intercept his mail!”

“In that case, I’ll just confirm that he’s chosen not to reply to his friends of his own volition, and I’ll be on my way,” Severus says.

“Maybe he’s chosen not to talk to you either!” Petunia bluffs.

“How could he if he doesn’t know I’m here?”

”I’m his guardian, so I’ll choose who he talks to!”

“You know, Petunia,” Severus says, lowering his tone to the level of cold and deadly that makes even his NEWT students cower in fear. “The harder you fight to keep me from him, the more convinced I am that something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong!” Petunia sneers. “Is that why you’re here? The ungrateful brat has been telling tales at that school? Whinging about his aunt and uncle, who took him in and fed him and clothed him out of the goodness of our hearts?”

Severus smiles, sharklike. “Now what tales would you assume he’s telling, Tuney? All I know is that he hasn’t been replying to his post.”

Petunia pales even further. Severus does enjoy her fear, but he’s tiring of it.

“POTTER!” he roars. “GET OUT HERE!”

Petunia’s eyes gleam with triumph as he waits and no child appears. “Seems like he’s not interested in talking to you,” she says innocently. It reeks of deceit.

“POTTER!”

There’s a muffled sound from upstairs, but still no Potter.

Severus shoulders his way past Petunia and up the grey-carpeted staircase. She follows him, protesting, but he ignores her. A homenum revelio illuminates one child-sized wizard behind a door to the right, which has been locked from the outside with a chain lock, a padlock, and some other muggle mechanism he’s not quite familiar with, although its function is obviously the same.

“What the hell is this?” he spits.

Petunia stays quiet. It’s probably the wisest thing she’s done all day.

”Alohomora.” He pushes the door open to find Potter scrambling back out of his way.

“Professor Snape!” Potter blusters. He has the gall to look shocked, as if he hasn’t been trying to eavesdrop on their conversation this whole time.

Severus ignores him and stares around the room. There’s a disgruntled-looking snowy owl in a similarly padlocked cage by the window, which has somehow been covered with bars like a muggle prison. There are no sheets on the yellowing mattress, just one worn blanket and an even more unfortunate-looking pillow. There are less than a dozen empty tin cans cluttering a rickety dresser along one wall. Bizarrely, the rest of the room is filled with at least a hundred muggle children’s toys in varying states of disrepair.

Potter himself looks much the same as ever: untidy hair, raggedy clothes, generally unkempt appearance. But the clothes somehow look even worse inside Petunia’s classy suburban home, his hair is a bit greasier than normal, and his glasses have been broken in the middle and clumsily sellotaped back together. His cheeks look thinner than they had at the end of term, and there’s a yellowing bruise in a ring around his right bicep that Severus recognizes as the result of a constricting hand.

“Have they been feeding you, Potter?” was not his originally planned greeting, but it’s what slips out first.

Petunia shrieks indignantly, but it doesn’t stop Potter from blinking twice and then haplessly gesturing at the can-covered dresser.

Severus steps forward and grab’s Potter’s arm to inspect the bruise. Potter tries to pull away as soon as he realizes why, but it’s too late.

“That’s not-- I fell--” the boy blusters.

“A likely story,” Severus scoffs. He pulls at the fraying collar of Potter’s shirt to check the juncture of his neck and shoulder, another favourite place for abusive adults to manhandle children they don’t care for. His clavicles are unmarred, but the way Potter jerks defensively to cover up the area suggests that they aren’t always.

“He’s just clumsy!” Petunia insists.

Severus draws his wand and points it at Petunia, and the shrew finally falls silent.

He turns back to Potter. “Get your things.”

“Get my-- what?”

“Your things,” Severus enunciates. “We’re leaving.”

”We?” The boy looks genuinely shocked this time.

“Are you a parrot or a wizard?” Severus snaps. “You obviously can’t stay here. We’ll be going.”

“But-- where?”

“Finally, a sensible question. You’ll have several options, I imagine. Either way, you’re not staying here a day longer. Now. Get. Your. Things.”

Potter looks helplessly around his room and then at Petunia. Severus follows the path of his gaze and realizes there are very few magical items in their vicinity.

“Where’s your trunk?”

Potter looks at Petunia. Petunia, still at wandpoint, only whimpers. A vessel in Severus’ eye threatens to burst at the sound.

“Where’s his trunk, Petunia?” he snarls.

She turns and runs down the stairs. Severus can’t tell if she’s fetching the trunk or just fleeing. He quickly transfigures the pillow into a backpack for Potter and then follows Petunia down.

She’s fumbling nervously with two more locks on a cupboard under the stairs. He squints with morbid suspicion at the familiar-looking setup and makes no move to help her out magically. When she finally pulls the door open, Severus pushes her aside.

The boy’s trunk is right there, denting a cardboard box and leaning precariously against some cleaning supplies. He shrinks and pockets the trunk easily enough but pauses at what its absence reveals.

The jumble of brooms and mops and other inane muggle implements rests atop a small and extremely worn toddler crib mattress. He nudges it with his foot to find a bright corner on the floor where the mattress has been protecting the wood from dust and grime for several years. With an uneasy frown, he looks more closely at the shelves built into the angle of the stairs. There are bottles of cleaning solution, a large jug of laundry detergent, a toolbox, some dusty glass vases, and assorted other muggle rubbish. But-- he steps fully into the closet to nudge aside a box of lightbulbs-- at the back of one lower shelf are a few children’s trinkets in sad states of disrepair, scattered among the spider carcasses. Smushed to the side of another shelf is a lone child’s sock.

He turns back around and is rendered temporarily immobile with shock. The inside of the doorframe and of the door itself are covered with scratches, concentrated along the bottom metre and a half or so. Most of them only marred the paint but some of them have left gouges in the wood itself. It looks like some kind of rabid animal was set loose on the door for a night-- except for the fact that no rabid animal would have focused so much on the area around the door handle.

The taste of bile rising in his throat pulls Severus’ control back into his body. He takes seven deep breaths and occludes until his mind is nothing but snow and ice.

By the time he feels ready to look at Petunia, she is cowering behind the door.

“You know,” he says to her, coldly but conversationally. “Wizards have been researching death for millenia. Magic has granted us methods and insights that you muggles couldn’t imagine in your wildest dreams, and our evidence consistently suggests that there is a realm beyond this life. Souls don’t simply disappear, nor are they immediately reabsorbed into the energy of the universe. The evidence suggests,” he drops his voice low, to his most menacing, and leans in. “That she will be waiting for you when you die, and when that day comes, you will have to answer to her for how you treated her son.”

“Like you’re so innocent!” Petunia sneers defensively. “Last time I saw you around she hated your guts!”

“I called her a slur as a teenager and she never forgave me for it,” Severus admits quietly. “You were already an adult and a mother when you took in her orphaned child and locked him in a closet. I can’t imagine she will find that any more forgivable.”

He leans back at the clatter of steps on the stairs behind him.

“You’re ready, Potter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Wait for me outside.”

Potter hesitates on the bottom step, looking uncertainly between Severus and Petunia and the open cupboard behind them. Severus can only imagine how they must appear, but based on the fear and loathing on Petunia’s face, and the mortified realization on Potter’s, he can only assume that the boy’s conclusions are more or less accurate.

“Now, Potter.”

The boy frowns but hurries out.

Severus turns back to Petunia. “Lily single-handedly defeated the darkest and most powerful wizard of our time, and she did so to save that boy’s life,” he says, pointing at the front door. “She sacrificed her own life to do so, and she did it willingly, leaving behind a protective enchantment so formidable it literally burned the skin off of a wizard who tried to kill the boy this year. There is nothing I would expect her incapable of when it comes to those who have harmed her son.”

He strides to the door, but pauses with his hand on the knob. He’s never seen Petunia so ashen, nor trembling so hard, in all their sorry childhood acquaintance. His next words are barely more than a whisper, but he has no doubt Petunia hears them. “What do you think she will do to you?”

**

He takes Potter back to Spinner’s End. He didn’t exactly want to bring the boy home with him, but in a moment of pique right before they disapparated, Severus decided that he couldn’t go anywhere connected with Dumbledore. He wants to see for himself just how closely the headmaster has been monitoring Potter, if he’s been checking up often enough to have seen the signs. So, Hogwarts was out, the Weasleys were out, any of his fellow staff members were out. Most of Potter’s Slytherin friends were out for the opposite reason, though he might be willing to consider the Davis family eventually.

There was nowhere else to bring the boy but home, so here they are now in Spinner’s End. The place looks especially dingy in contrast with Petunia’s pristine interiors, but Potter hasn’t said a word about it yet. He just gazes around quietly, clutching a strap of the transfigured backpack on his shoulder.

“I wasn’t expecting houseguests,” Severus preemptively explains.

Potter shrugs. “I’m good at cleaning,” he offers innocuously. “It’s the least I can do for letting me stay over.”

Severus gives him a dubious side-eye. “Anything Petunia made you do beyond showering, Potter, I expressly forbid.”

Potter snorts. “I hope you’re a decent cook, then.” When Severus doesn’t respond, Potter flushes. “I’m sorry, sir! I didn’t mean to insult you-- I’m sure you’re--”

“I can cook, Potter,” Severus says, amused. “For now, I’ll accept your help clearing out my-– your bedroom, if only because it will have to be habitable by tonight.”

“Right,” Potter says faintly, as if he’s just realized he’ll be sleeping here. “Erm, thank you? By the way?”

“Were you ever planning to ask for help, Potter?” Severus sighs. “Especially given that it was freely offered?”

“Erm, maybe? But apparently a house-elf has been stealing all my post, so it’s not like I would have been able to anyway.”

It’s a ridiculous story, and only more astonishing in the fact that Potter doesn’t appear to be lying. Severus pinches the bridge of his nose. “Bedroom first,” he resolves. “Then we’ll deal with the house-elf. Actually… lunch first. Then the rest.”

**

Later that night, Severus nurses a nightcap in his peeling-linoleum kitchen, Potter hopefully asleep by now in a bed upstairs. He still can’t quite believe he’s basically kidnapped the Boy Who Lived. Even more unbelievable is the fact that he has willingly welcomed James Potter’s spawn into his home.

He doesn’t know how long it will take for Dumbledore to come calling. He doesn’t know if Potter will even want to stay here that long. Frankly, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, but he knows that Potter will be going back to Petunia's house over Severus’ dead body.

It’s still a bit disconcerting to acknowledge these protective instincts for Potter, of all people. The boy was supposed to be an arrogant, obnoxious troublemaker, just like his father. He wasn’t supposed to be one of Severus’ own, a Slytherin, an abused child looking for a home.

After his melodramatic speech about Lily’s love earlier today, it’s easy to tell himself that he’s only doing this as a favor to an old friend, maybe even an attempt to atone for his role in her untimely death. Whatever the reason, it definitely has nothing to do with any sort of affection he personally feels for the boy. If anything, he’s only doing this because it would royally piss off James Potter.

If he doesn’t think about that too closely, he can almost believe it.