Gut feelings
Severus cradles his inflamed cheek and tries not to sniffle. He was not being very successful.
He sits on the patch of grass by the lake, making fists out of the green blades and pulling, feeling his fingers moisten with the dew and mud, making little mounts with the discarded weed. His fingernails would be hard to clean. He pulls more. He ignores the tears sliding through his face and pulls more grass blades. He hates his father, he thinks, feeling the moisture in his face. Hates that his mum does nothing but look at him, helplessly, as if she couldn’t do anything. As if she wasn’t special.
He tries to wipe his tears and realizes, too late, that his muddy hands will dirty his face. That now, if the band of stupid boys from the primary school see him, they will be right: he looks poor, dirty, smelly.
He claws viciously at the mud until he is sure that no amount of time washing his hands will leave them completely clean.
He hates his father.
Hates his ratty old clothes. Hates looking poor and unkept. He hates being poor and unkept. Hates the boys in the primary school. Hates his house, which was always dirty partly because his mum wasn’t good at cleaning with her hands and partly because no amount of cleaning would get rid of the rancid smell of alcohol and nicotine. He hates his mum sometimes (only sometimes, and every time he thinks so, it hurts. She loves him. She cries for him, reads him stories, tells him about Hogwarts, she always apologizes), because she chooses not to do anything, even though she has the means to do so.
Severus is special, like his mum. He just doesn’t feel like that at that moment.
“Wow! Are you making mud castles?”
Severus startles and tries to stand up, but falls on his arse.
The stranger boy tries to help him stand but he bats his hands away.
He assesses the other boy with a critical eye, forgetting about his muddy hands and face and dried up tears.
He looks lanky, but somehow short at the same time. He has a head full of dark, unruly hair, unlike him, who has longer and strather strands down to his shoulders. His clothes look too big for him. Must be handouts. They look old but not dirty. He’s skinny. He has knobbly knees. He must be poor. I’ve never seen him here. He must be new to town. Will his parents be close?
“So?” says the stranger, expectant.
“So what?” he responds, looking the boy down, which isn’t hard at all, he is at least a head taller.
The boy frowns and looks at Severus's soiled hands.
“Are you making mud castles? Or looking for worms?”
Severus also looks at his filthy hands and feels his cheeks warm. He tries to clean them on his trousers but only manages to dirty them too.
“Why would I look for worms?”
“I don’t know” responds the boy, frowning again and shrugging. “That’s why I’m asking, dunderhead.”
Who did this boy think he was? Filthy muggle, trying to-
“Sev! Sev are you here?”
Severus widens his eyes and runs towards the tree in the clearing, trying to make himself as small as possible so Lily wouldn’t be able to spot him.
“Why are we hiding?” whisper-yells the stranger, sticking to his back and trying to look over his shoulder.
“What are you doing here? Leave!” he responds, in the same tone.
“Is that girl bad? Should I prank her?”
Severus glares and elbows him to push him from his back behind the tree, not caring if he leaves traces of mud on the boy’s shirt.
“Touch her,” he says, coldly “and I will make you regret it.”
“Severus! I know you’re here!” yells the redhead girl, stomping her foot. “That mess in the grass is still fresh!”
“Your name is Severus?” the boy snickers “I take it that gal is not bad. Why are we hiding, Sev?”
“Do not call me-”
“Severus Snape! I’m going to bash your head in if you don’t appear right now!”
“Okay, maybe I see why we’re hiding. That gal is a bit scary, Sev”
Severus glares at him again and tries to wipe his hands on the bark of the tree and his face with the back of his hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck” he curses, unsuccessful, under his breath.
“Oh, it’s because you look like you were rolling in mud!” then he comes out from behind, waving and yelling “Red gal! We’re here!”
Lily startles and Severus feels compelled to put his hands on the other boy’s neck and shake and squeeze. She obviously spots him, that with the other boy making a ruckus, and she scowls at him at the distance, running towards their hiding place.
“No prob pal, I know a brill trick! Look!”
Out of the blue, the boy clasps his hands on Severus’s shoulders and closes his eyes in concentration, simply holding tighter when he tries to push him off. He shudders at the effervescent sensation that suddenly surrounds his whole body and gapes at the boy just as Lily arrives.
“Who are you? Are you messing with Sev?”
Severus stares in awe at his mud-free hands, his clean nails and trousers and touches his face. It isn’t crinkly with dried dirt and even the sting from his cheek is lesser. He widens his eyes at the boy.
“Who are you?” he asks, as his friend just has.
The boy opens his eyes and swallows.
His face has a distinctive green tint to it.
“I shouldn’t have done that” he dry heaves.
The boy is special, like Severus and Lily are.
“I’m Harry!” he cheerfully announces “Nice to meet you both! What’s your name, red gal?”
“It sure isn’t red gal” she responds with a sour look. “I’m Lily Evans and this is Severus Snape”
His name is Harry Price, he tells them, and has recently arrived at the foster house that was several blocks over.
Lily then asks how he had done his trick, saying that her accidental magic is way less controlled. Severus frowns and asks why he did that, isn’t he afraid they are muggles and will tell?
“Muggles are normies, yes?” Normies. Merlin, who was this hooligan?
“We’re normal too.” responds Lily, narrowing her eyes. Petunia had taken to calling anything they did, ‘freekish’ and it is starting to grate on Lily.
“Yeah, sorry. I meant, not magical people. And nah, I knew you both were magical. I felt it in my gut.”
“Is gut-feeling a branch of magic?” Lily asks Severus in hushed tones.
“Do you think he will receive a letter from Hogwarts?”
Lily is talking with Severus while he walks her home after Harry leaves back to the foster home.
Severus contemplates for a moment. He must admit he is a bit surprised by the strange boy, but, well… he has never been known for liking surprises.
He always gets so little time with Lily, so little time outside of his dirty house with his drunk, hating father and his crying, special, sad mother. Lily has two loving and accepting parents and a mean but reluctantly caring sister. She has friends from school, too. She goes to karate and ballet lessons during the week. She is in a different primary school than him.
He already has to share her with so many people. And when they get into Hogwarts, he knows that even when both were living in the castle, he will have to share her with many more people, who would see how brilliant and talented and nice she is and would want to befriend her.
He doesn’t want to share her for now.
Unfortunately, it seems like he will have no option.
“Maybe” he responds, reluctantly.
Harry appears almost everyday in the clearing by the lake. Sometimes, when Severus showed up, he is already there. And he always appears to be alone. He finds himself slowly coming everyday, instead of every other day.
“Can I call you Sev, too?”
Severus frowns. He is reading a Etiquette and Customs book for the Pureblood wixen that he had managed to take out of his mum’s stash before his father caught them. They are waiting by the lake, bathing under the sun. Or at least he is. He lowers his book and stares at the boy.
“Why.”
“Severus is too, well, severe. It feels weird to call you like that when we’re starting to become friends.”
Friends.
He wants to scoff. He opens his mouth to retort something cutting, probably about how meeting sometimes doesn’t constitute a friendship, how he doesn’t need another friend, how Harry doesn’t have to pretend to want to be his friend just to appease Lily, but the open expression on the boy, on Harry’s face, makes him close it again.
Friends.
“I suppose it doesn’t hurt anyone.”
Harry offers him a blinding smile and throws a ball of mud at him.
“I’m going to kill you” he responds, seething “I’m going to kill you dead”
He grabs his own mound of mud and smears it all over Harry’s face.
Two days later, when they are reading about wizarding usual games, Petunia shows up with all her unpleasantry.
She starts yelling -still too far to make sense of her words, yet too close to pretend not to hear her- for Lily to come back home and come have lunch, and upon seeing the two boys with her, she puts her nose in the air and also starts yelling to stop spending all her waking moments with those two boys.
Harry scrunches his nose and runs towards Petunia.
“You’re Lils sister? You look so normal!”
She scans him from head to toe and purses her lips. “I’m Petunia, not that you can call me that. And Yes, I’m Lily’s older sister. She needs to come home.” Then she yells “Lilu! Stop hanging out with these freaks and come home. I’m not setting the table this time!”
“Don’t call me Lilu” their redhead friend chews, with blushed cheeks.
Severus is used to Petunia’s interceptions. He dislikes her and ignores her in the same measure, has made his peace with not trying to purposefully curse her every time just because Lily gets antsy. Harry obviously doesn't have the same training, as he sees when the green eyed boy blinks at being called a freak by the blond spawn.
Severus just smiles and stares when the other boy smiles meanly and takes Petunia’s shoulders “Want to see a magic trick?” he asks her with wide open eyes. He looks a tad freaky, Severus has to admit.
“What? No!”
He clasps her shoulders tighter, closes his eyes in concentration and then proceeds to float two meters into the air and swirl with the girl, who immediately starts screaming and trying to hug him. Harry only cackles at her frightened expression.
“Why did you do that?” hisses Severus, under his breath, smiling but also looking around.
“Sorry if I scared you!” “Harry, let my sister go in this moment or I’ll hurt you.”
“You can't do magic with muggles” he continues
“Do not call me that!” Petunia screeches, pushing Harry and trying to pat her rumpled clothes and ignoring her trembling legs.
“But she’s Lils sister?” he frowns at Severus, as if he is telling him something stupid. “She already knows about magic! And she’s magical too, is she not?!”
They all get silent
“I’m not a-” starts Petunia, but gets interrupted.
“She’s not!” yells Severus, suddenly seething. “She’s normal, a muggle!”
Lily then stares narrow eyed at Sev, while Harry keeps laughing.
“Nu-uh! I feel it in my gut. She’s freaky too.”
He plucks a wild flower bud and reaches to her, while she stays paralyzed with an incredulous expression. She lets him deposit the bud on her hand, and even lets him close her hands around it. Later she will tell herself she didn’t stop him because she was scared. But that would be later.
“Imagine the flower it will be. Probably white and with a lot of little petals” he whispers and looks her in the eye. She is startled upon finding his are the same shade as her baby sister’s, and she feels… she feels the boy is desperately trying to tell her something.
She again looks at her own closed hands and ignores both Lily and the other gloomy and mean boy in the background, who she’s sure is grating his teeth. Jokes on him, he will probably make them even uglier. Squaring her jaw, she closes her eyes and imagines what she wants to happen.
She waits and then she blinks, jumping at the flutter inside her closed hands. She opens them, to reveal the little blossom.
It is white and has a lot of little petals.
She widens her eyes, remembering the image of a bird living in captivity all its life noticing that the cage is now open. She looks at Lily, who is speechless, with bright eyes and a rapid heart.
“It's not possible!” The Snape boy screeches. “You must have done something, she’s not special! Not like us!”
She feels her expression souring and she readily opens her mouth to spout something about his clothes or his hair before Harry beats her to it and scowls at Severus.
“She doesn't have to be like us to be special. There,” he points at a flower that has two other buds. “Pick it yourself so you know I’m not doing anything. Try again.”
She does without questioning after studying his face for any hint of mocking. It feels harder, in a way, now. Sweat covers her forehead and she feels a bit faint, as if she just went a while day without eating. She wants something sweet.
The bud flowers again. Her eyes brighten and she looks at her sister.
“Tuney” she gasps and makes a little fist on her dress, as she did when she was a baby.
“It's not possible. She would have shown some accidental magic by now. She would have received a letter.”
What if they don't receive a letter, Severus thinks. What if there was a mistake with her and now there will be a mistake with them?
“Why not? In your book we read about squibs. People who are magical and can see but can’t use a wand.” Harry then grabs the taller girl’s shoulder and starts shaking her, transforming her overcome expression into a scowl once again.
“Oi Petunia, why don't you try to give the other bud to the most ordinary and boring person you can think of and see what happens?”
“Are you crazy?” She bites at him. “They will look at me as if I was a freak”
He shrugs. “It's worth it isn't it?”
And that’s the thing, she thinks it might.
And it is.
Sometimes, Harry's gut feelings make him restless, like now. He has been frowning at Severus for a minute already, about to say something but not letting himself do so. They are walking both Lily and Petunia home, the older girl now showing with Lily from time to time to act as if she couldn’t care about anything they said but at the same time attentively hearing them. She still doesn’t show up as much as the other Evans, with her being older and having her own friends but she hasn’t called them a freak since that time, nor has said anything particularly mean to them.
Dahlia Evans, Lily and Petunia’s mum, invited them for dinner. Sev sits uncomfortably on his chair, anxiously observing the sky through a window in their drawing room. It is starting to get dark. He thinks he should start walking back home to Spinner’s end and opens his mouth to say goodbye, when Harry takes his wrist and frowns with an almost confused look.
“Stay longer” he mouths to him.
Severus feels a swoop in his stomach but accepts.
They finally say goodbye to the girls and also Mrs. and Mr. Evans who came back from work while they were having biscuits and starts walking to where they will have to part ways. The moon is up, the air crisp and the sky is dark.
“You won’t get into trouble for staying late?” he asks Harry, remembering the curfew in the foster home.
“It doesn’t really matter. I had a good time.” And he glances at him one more time but doesn’t say anything.
When Severus arrives home, tiptoeing, he is almost blasted by the stench of fresh whisky coming off in waves from the entrance.
There are pieces of glass everywhere, where Tobias surely threw a bottle against the wall. There are some pieces of furniture in disarray and he sees some pictures that used to be hanging on the wall, laying on the ground, with the glass cracked.
A snort paralyzes him and makes his heartbeat feel loud and up his throat, followed by a snore. He lets the air in his lungs slowly go out and his heart starts to calm. His father fell asleep in the telly room.
He slowly steps up the stairs, one by one, carefully avoiding shards of glass or any sudden movements so as to not wake him. He stands in front of the main room door. He opens it, willing the hinges not to cry.
His mum is laying on her side, her face swollen and her left eye shut. Her other eye is boring into him.
He feels himself tremble and steps closer.
“Mum” he murmurs “Mummy. Are you okay?” It's a stupid question. He can see she’s not.
“Sevvie” she responds, soft and weak. She lifts up her hand and caresses his cheek, her eyes brimming with tears “My baby. I’m so glad you weren’t here. I’m so glad.”
“What happened?”
“Your father…he had a bad day at work, today” she responds, as if it’s a novelty, as if he didn’t regularly have more bad days than not.
“Mum.” he starts, feeling desperate once again. “You have magic. I have magic! You can leave him. We don’t need him! Please mum.”
She looks at him and he already knows what she’s going to answer.
“I can’t.” she murmurs, even quieter, as if she’s ashamed.
Severus is fighting his own ugly, cruel shame at her.
“Go to your room. Ward it like I taught you. If he comes up and you’re here…”
Severus doesn’t plan on being there.
He’s quiet for the next few days, when Harry shows up and Lily a few hours later. He tries with all his might not to snap at them. He tries to distract himself, thinking about the upcoming summer. They are already 11. If what his mum told him is right, their letters should be about to arrive. He tries with all his will power to smile and tell them about Hogwarts and about the houses, while part of his brain is still seeing his mum with a swollen shut eye and thinking if there was anything he could have done to stop it from happening.
One day, he simply fails.
Lily has gone running already, Petunia had come looking for her reminding her about their ballet classes for that day.
Harry and him spend a few more minutes after the girls have gone, to laze around the lake. Severus is trying to laze around the lake. But as he simply can’t, stands up.
“I will get going.”
Harry quickly stands up after him and, as last time, he has this look. Severus feels himself tense and squares his jaw.
“I will walk you home” he tells Severus.
“No need. Don’t you need to get back home before curfew?”
“They don’t care about that” he huffs and shrugs, smiling, but it falls flat. “I’ll go with you and then I’ll go back.”
“No” he exhales “Thank you.”
Harry looks at him, anxiously. Then, he tries to smile again and shoves him “Come on, It will be quick. I’ll just walk you-”
“I said no.”
“But-”
“Can’t you listen?” He fails, he always fails because he is not nice. The words come running out of his mouth. “Even among freaks, you take the cherry, Price. Are you deaf, too? I said I will walk home by myself. I do not need a babysitter.”
Harry still has the gall to grab his wrist and try to explain something to him.
“I just want to-”
He wants to beat him, he wants to tear him apart. He wonders if that’s how his father feels as he looks at him. “Maybe if you had kept your mouth shut last time, my mum would have been okay. Maybe I could have done something, if I had been there. But I wasn’t. Just because you don’t have a mum to worry about-”
He stops himself, heaving. He clicks his mouth shut and starts stomping in direction to his house. He feels his heart in his stomach, but decidedly doesn’t turn around to see Harry’s expression.
His mum's not home.
His father is.
…
That day, he had a bad day at work.
…
He stays in bed, because it hurts less like this.
He hears shuffles in his window. It’s really early in the morning. He heard his father leave for work, and his mother shuffling for a moment in the kitchen, before laying down again.
He belatedly realizes it is officially summer. He lost the last week of school. Not like he will need the qualification, but it would have been almost nice for him to go. To not stay cooped un in his dirty house.
Something clacks on his window and he directs a bleary eye to the glass. Surely, he sees an owl on the window, calling to his attention for him to open and receive his admission letter, and something warms in his chest (something that felt like it broke a week ago).
He will have to unite all his willpower to rise from the bed. In the early mornings and with the heater off (they can’t afford it) the mornings are a bit cold and his broken arm and collarbone don’t not cooperate. His ribs also feel bruised and he can barely breathe, much less jump from the bed.
He is still strategizing how to get up when a hand smacks the glass and his glucose level spikes down.
“The devil” he murmurs.
The hand in the glass slides to the side and in its place a face plasters to the cold window, scanning the rooms with eerie eyes. The eyes spot him and the person smiles, showing all their teeth and then starts messing with the window lock.
He stays in bed, observing.
Finally, Harry manages to open the window and starts trying to climb up when a voice calls from outside.
“Why do you have to be on my shoulders?”
Severus closes his eyes. He wonders if the virgin Mary was real. He feels like praying.
“Because I don’t want to see your knickers. Who told you to wear a dress to a heist?”
“Shut up and help me up”
Harry starts looking around his practically bare room and then spots his bed posts.
“Excuse me” he says, before grabbing the sheet covering him and tying it to the post and then, his waist. He goes back to the window and practically hangs half body out to grab Lily.
“Oof, you’re heavy”
“I exercise. You, on the other hand, are built like a twig”
Both of them finally manage to get to his room without dying and both try to get their breath back.
The black owl hoots again and lets the letter fall in his face before flying off.
“We got our letters too! You were right Sev!” starts Lily, not mindful at all of his mum in the other room.
“What are you doing here”
“We came to see you” Harry cheerily responds.
“We were worried” then says Lily, sweetly.
They study him. He squirms. He wants to ignore their inquisitive gaze, especially Harry’s.
“We can help” Lily says. “Magic works with will. If we and Harry will for you to be better at the same time…”
He doesn’t think magic will work like that. And definitely not healing magic. Honestly, maybe they will hurt him worse. But he nods anyway, because they are his friends and had just broken into his house to see him and share their letters and help him.
He tries to breathe in. They are his friends.
“I’m sorry” he whispers, without looking any of them in the eyes.
In the corner of his eye he sees Harry shaking his head no and his stomach sinks. He told him awful things. Of course a simple sorry-
“You told me no”
He looks at him.
“You told me no a lot of times and I insisted. I insisted because I care about you, but you told me no and I should have respected that. And honestly I should have followed you anyway without you noticing”
He breathes in and for the first time in one week he laughs. His lips tremble.
They try to squeeze around him in his one person bed and close their eyes. He feels the magic rumble and, and maybe magic does work like that-
His bedroom door opens, and his mum is standing there, with a closed up expression in her face, so similar to his.
Lily stiffens on his side, and Harry tries to stand up.
The three children look at her, expectant.
She sighs, as if she’s carrying the weight of the world and her lips tremble. She looks at him and whatever she finds makes her sigh again.
She looks both at Harry and Lily.
“Help me find my wand.”
His mum used magic! She fixed his arm and his collarbone and even fixed breakfast for the three of them. Severus tried to ignore the gnawing feeling that she wouldn’t have enough food to feed his father. Instead, he focuses on how relieved and happy and special his mum looked using her wand. She even used it to clean the mess they made looking for it.
(It was hiding in the same box his father’s shotgun was. He tries not to think about that.)
“How are you here? You have school.”
Lily gulps around her glass of milk “Tuney is covering for me! I owe her a favor eh, she will probably forget”
Harry gives a thumbs up and winks. “No one cares about me!”
“I do”, say both Lily and him at the same time.
They are in the metal swings in the sandbox. Lily is stern.
“When Tuney didn’t get a letter, she wrote one back to the Headmaster, saying that although she doesn’t have strong magic, she can study hard. He responded back by the next day and told her that it wasn’t possible and that only I could go to Hogwarts. She didn’t see me reading it but… she’s not talking to me.”
Her bottom lip quiver.
“I’m afraid that she’s going to hate me.” She sniffles “I don’t know what to do”
“I think it’s kind of normal. To be jealous. Suddenly this amazing thing happens only to your younger sister and not you and bang! But I don’t think that that’s the same as hating you.”
Sev doesn’t know what to add. He relates with Petunia, although he finds the thought horrifying. He is, too, a jealous and vindictive person, after all. He wants to tell Harry that of course that could easily become hate.
“She has always been the perfect one. Perfect at ballet, perfect grades, perfect hair. Now this happens to me and it’s as if she doesn’t know whether to love me or hate me.”
“I’m sure she thinks the same of you.” he tries to console her, but it falls flat. He doesn’t have brothers or sisters, but he is familiar with the seething feeling of coveting what others have. He is sure he would hate Lily if he was Petunia.
“Don’t let her know that you’re aware of the letter the headmaster sent back. Or that we know.” says Harry.
“Do you think we can go together for our things? I really don’t want to go with an adult I don’t know.”
The day to go to Diagon finally arrives. He convinced his mum to go with them, and so, Eileen, Severus and Harry knock on the Evans residency door.
Eileen moves with robotic and tense movements but every time she looks at them she tries to smile.
Mrs. Evans opens the door and greets the boys and then warmly looks at his mum.
“You must be Eileen! Your son is lovely and has been a great help with all this magic shenanigans. You have raised him well, you must feel very proud.”
Eileen blushes but also raises her face, a pride he never sees in her.
Harry frowns and looks inside the house, after greeting Mrs. Evans.
“Tuney? You’re not going?”
Dahlia sighs.
“Why would I want to go? So you can show off?”
Harry frown deepens. “What the-” he looks sheepishly at Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Snape and clears his throat. “What are you talking about? You’re most likely a squib you…silly gal. They won’t let you go to Hogwarts but you can still see Diagon and buy all the things we’re buying. Well, maybe not a wand but all the textbooks and stuff.”
“And why would I do that?” she responds to him, nose in the air.
“To learn? About this whole world you’re a part of?”
Eileen interrupts them.
“The child is a squib? You know you can still learn potions and buy supplies, yes? You can learn magic that doesn’t require a wand, dear. Books in Potions, Runes, Arithmancy… I’m… familiar with Diagon Alley. I can show you.”
She narrows her eyes but then gives an embarrassed look at Eileen. She is not usually rude where any adult can see her. She then runs up upstairs and yells for them to wait for her.
Petunia is holding a titillating gem stone in her hands, cradling it as if it’s her heart. And maybe it is, maybe she’s holding her own beating heart.
Her lips are wobbling, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes are wide, bright and blue and full of tears.
“Mum…” she breathes out, looking for Dahlia like a baby bird. Lily herself holds tighter to her mum and even Severus gets closer to Eileen.
“You have always been magical, my baby girls.” She crouches down, caring little about the shop owner looking at their group of misfits, and puts a hand over each of her daughters shoulders. She moves the fringe on the face of the elder of her children. “You have always and will always be special. Now you can see it, too.”
Lily squeals and catches her big sister in a bear hug.
“We’re magical, Tuney!”
“Told you, didn’t I.” says Harry in the background smiling at Tuney with a glint in his eye.
Harry gets a little snake, a hognose that likes hiding in his robes and playing dead from time to time, who he calls Robert (you look like a Robert!) while Lily gets a tabby cat called Red (“She's mostly gray Lilu, don’t be dumb” “So what? It's funny”) and Severus gets a black owl called Merlin. (What? It can be my familiar and deliver my letters. I’m being practical.)
Robert and Merlin are gifts from Mrs. Evans. Eileen tries to protest but Dahlia insists they were birthday gifts for “her” boys, so she lets it go.
Now they are sitting in the same compartment, with Lily rambunctiously waving to her sister, who is scowling at her display with red cheeks.
“Be sure to take lots of pictures!” Petunia reminds her and tries not to let her tears show.
“I will! I will send you pictures of everything!”
Harry listens attentively to Robert and then, after a few seconds, hisses back.
“Aw, he said he wants an egg. Maybe in the castle I can ask the kitchens for an egg”
“What you have to do is make sure he won’t eat any other person’s familiar. They told you hognoses also eat toads!”
“Who knows?” Severus smiles darkly . “It might be fun. But only if the owner is a pain”
“Sev!”
Severus looks at Harry and then at Robert and hushes his tone.
“Shut it already. Why did you get a snake? You know what they will say if someone hears you hissing around and you are not discreet at all”
“Yeah, whatever”
Two girls open their compartment, making them jump and proving his point. One has deep dark skin and hard eyes and the other blond hair and a lazy smile. The blond one looks at them and asks to sit with them. Lily immediately starts cheerfully speaking, Sev staying quiet unless addressed and Harry asking questions from time to time. Two more people, a blond boy with chiseled features and a dark haired one with cold eyes, opens their compartment too and sneers before closing again.
“And those are Nott and Mulciber” says the blond one, Pandora. “Ignore them”
“Nasty business, those two. Dark wizards, blood purists, the lot of them” adss the dark skinned one, called Dorcas, with a grimace of distaste.”
Sev feels something swoop in his stomach. Harry would call it one of his gut feelings.
The five of them get into the same boat, where Sev tries to keep calm while grabbing the edges with white knuckled hands. Harry keps ‘aw’ ing around at the dark waters (and they are dark, he couldn't even see the end of the paddles when they went in), the castle and the self-rowing boat. Lily is still talking about her squib sister to Dorcas and Pandora and trying to calm Red who constantly hisses at the prospect of falling to the lake.
Somehow they get jumbled around enough to lose Harry for a second.
Sev spots him and calls for him, but the idiot won’t turn around completely.
“Harry! Are you deaf?” he yells once again and grabs the shoulder of the boy, who was apparently too distracted looking to his side.
He lets go immediately when the other boy frowns at him. From his profile, he looks exactly the same. But this boy has a slightly darker skin, looks a bit taller and his eyes are a deep brown instead of jade green. He also has no scar on his forehead.
“I’m sorry” he starts, appalled. “I thought you were-”
The boy lifts an eyebrow and sweeps his eyes over him.
Sev bristles. He becomes rapidly aware that he had to use one of his mum’s old robes while this boy looks like he has never known hunger or patched clothes. A pureblood. Or rich, at least.
“Harry- oh!” Lily stops by his side. “Wow, you sure look like him”
The strange boy looks at her and smiles, offering his hand, first to her, and then to him.
“Merry meet. I’m James Potter.”
“Gryffindor!”
Sev feels a weight on his stomach while he sees Lily timidly walk towards the gold and red decorated table. He knows a little about Gryffindor. He remembers what his mum told him, and he also knows that while the current Headmaster was a Gryffindor in his day (still is, through and through), most of the rumored Dark Lord supporters were or are in Slytherin. He also knows himself enough to predict what his house will be.
He is going to end up alone.
A hand squeezes his, and green eyes just like Lily’s hold his gaze. Harry mouths ‘you’ll be fine’.
“Price, Harry!”
Up in the stall Harry goes and Sev’s heart starts beating furiously in his chest. He can see Lily as a Gryffindor, all brave and rambunctious and he had an inkling on what his sorting will be. Harry is a bit of a mystery for him. He is sneaky enough (and has a snake! Also he’s a parselmouth) and curious enough to want to know everything and brave enough to break into his house, but most of all, he gets the feeling that Harry is stupidly loyal, to the bone, to the soul. Maybe he will end up in Hufflepuff and Severus will end up being alone in the snake nest.
Silence surrounds the Hall for a minute. Sev thinks he knows why and… even more than a Hufflepuff, how fears that Harry will be a Gryffindor. That not only he will end up alone, but that their friends will still keep going as usual, growing closer to each other, while apart from him, making newer, nicer friends in their new house.
“Is that…” one of the boys murmurs and then, more whisper. They looked at Harry, Harry Price, a muggleborn (or at least an unknown half-blood) and then at James Potter, same age, pureblood, heir to the Potter line and on his way to become Lord, already sorted into Gryffindor and with a severe expression.. They could pass for twins. Which means that either Harry is hiding secrets or he really doesn’t know anything about his origin. But it is safe to assume that he is related to the Potters.
And there had never been a Potter not sorted in Gryffindor.
“Then better be Slytherin!” Finally, the Hat yells and Sev breathes out.
He breathes out even better when he gets towards the silver and green table and sits beside him.
“Told you!”
“Shut up Price, I wasn’t worried.”
They get a cold, but polite welcome from their housemates.
Fortunately, there are lots of classes they share, which, considering there is just one teacher per signature, makes lots of sense.
What doesn’t make any sense is how Harry was so shit at Potions. He is always rambling about how he knows how to cook and is often delegated to do so in the home.
“It says three petals, what are you doing adding four?” Lily huffs under her breath.
“It says three?” He frowns and then squints at the board. “Sorry, I thought it said eight”
“Pay attention Price, you’re not going to ruin our grades”
“Wait” says Lily with a pensive expression and takes a piece of parchment, scribbles some things and then stands up.
Slughorn stops his ongoing speech and asks Lily what she is doing while some Slyherins snicker. She gives a withering look to them and smiles sweetly at the professor. “Sorry sir, I wanted to verify I had all our supplies.”
“Harry,” she whisper-yells to him. “tell me what you see”
He shrugs and squints again.
“Letter L, P, E, D and then, Um, F, E, D, T, D. What is that supposed to mean?”
Both Severus and Lily stare at each other and then she raises her arm in the air.
“Professor, can we sit at the front?”
Maybe it does make a little sense that Harry was so shit at Potions.
At defense Harry and Severus finally get to practice how to disarm each other. The three of them get house points for being the first ones to manage! They have been practicing the wand movements since they got their supplies and channeling accidental magic into intent one.
They sit in the library and laugh, get scolded by madam Pince and take pictures. They talk to ghosts and Lily poses with nearly headless Nick
“Petunia is going to pee her knickers!”
They discover the niceties of blood purity when a Slytherin calls Lily a mudblood for responding correctly to all questions asked in Potions. She asks them what a mudblood is and Severus tells her with a heavy heart that it’s meant as an insult for wixen who have both muggle parents. She pauses with a pensive look. “Oh.”
The first time she arrives late to the library is when Sev is already in the middle of scolding Harry and his chicken scratch on his Transfiguration essay.
“Sorry! I was talking to my friends in Gryff!”
It happens three more times until the time she simply forgets.
Severus gets quiet but Harry shrugs and tells him that she’s a gal and wants more gal friends. They stand up and sit with their more mild mannered housemates who are also cramming for a quizz.
But it is not only “gals” as he then sees her laughing over with her housemates, hours later. He ignores the heavy feeling. She is a bright witch, of course everyone would want to be her friend!
Severus is walking from the Hall to his common room when he is hit with a spell to the back, and sprawls to the floor. Harry arrives running and yelling and they turn around only to see robes disappearing from the corner. He could swear he saw a glint of gold and red. The Baron tsks at them and tells them to always walk in groups. House rivalry is strong.
Lucius Malfoy, in fourth year, takes a look at Severus’s grades and says he sees potential in him and smiles. He then says that it is a shame he keeps such inconvenient company. It leaves him feeling a pit in his stomach.
In Potions, his favorite subject along with Defense, he gets mad at the loud laughs from the Black heir and throws something in that Potter’s boy cauldron, which then proceeds to explode.
“Sev! That wasn’t nice!” whisper-yells Lily.
He gets mad and bites down a scathing remark.
Two of their housemates taunt them in Defense for being two no names friends with a mudblood. Harry gets a glint in his eyes, the one that reminds Sev he lives in a home full of boys that will always take if he lets them. He smiles back at him to remind him he is not a fan to have anything taken from him.
They beat them as a duo with Harry guarding his back and Severus attacking slyly.
“Laugh all that you want” they spit, in the ground “but Gryffindors are not your friends”
They get flying lessons, finally!
“What is this, Snivellus? A toy?”
Sirius black takes the figurine his mum sent him along with her first letter, and takes off in the air, taunting him to get it. He feels his blood boil and swears to invent a spell for his enemies. To make them bleed. Harry responds by taking his broom like he was born on it and kicking off, chasing Black and catching the figurine in the air. Potter flies off in his broom, trying to stop Harry from pushing Black from the air.
Slughorn comes running at that moment.
“What is the meaning of this?!”
Lily quickly responds to defend them and Slughorn looks impressed . He asks Harry if he had a broom at home, which he toothily responds he doesn’t. He takes him into his office murmuring under his breath.
“He told me I might be able to enter the tryouts for quidditch! Even as a first year student! They might make an exception!”
They don’t make an exception for him.
But they do for the Potter boy.
The three are talking in hushed tones, Harry is crestfallen.
Potter, Black, Lupin and Petigrew enter the Hall, boasting and Sirius winks at them, James grinning with his new quidditch uniform.
“Youngest chaser in 100 years!” he cheers.
“I’m sorry, Harry. You can try next year!”
“I’m okay. You’re right! I’ll try next year” he responds, but sounds insincere to both of them.
Sev can’t bite his remark this time. “Mcgonagall just went crying to Dumbledore and he made an exception for that pest. Mum warned me of the old coot and how he likes to reward mediocrity.”
“Dumbledore is a good man!”
Severus sends a glare to Lily. “Dumbledore shows blatant favoritism to his house. Why didn’t he make the same exception for Harry?”
Lily bites her lips and says nothing.
Sev feels a pinch and turns around. Several seats over, Lucius is looking at him with the hint of a knowing grin.
He is reminded of what Trevors and Fawley told him. He pushes it down.
Severus is walking alone again (Harry told him he wanted to talk to the house Elves in the kitchen, for some reason) and gets attacked by two Gryffindors in the same year.
“Slimy snake! Look at this!
He might be a slimy snake. But snakes are fast. And these children…are fools.
He sends an Expelliarmus strong enough to disarm them both and send them flying towards the next wall.
Lily is just by the corner laughing with Lupin- (Remus, Sev, his name is Remus, he’s kind and intelligent and) and carrying her books
She takes just a glance at her two housemates and then her fiery eyes bore into him.
“Severus! What are you doing?!”
He sends an incredulous look to her.
“I was defending myself”
Harry, as always (he must have gotten one of his gut feelings) shows up in time, looks at the two boys who are just beginning to stand up and runs to Severus, quickly scanning him for injuries.
“Are you okay Sev? What happened?”
He feels something brimming but he still manages to push it down and says nothing. Still, he can’t help but notice the accusing looks from Lily and Remus.
Severus, not Sev.
(Gryffindors are not your friends)
“That slimy snake attacked us!”
Robert, around Harry’s neck, hisses at them both.
“I’m a slimy snake too! And really? Did the suddenly attack the both of you? Where are your wands?”
“He took them!”
Harry loses all friendliness and studies them. It’s weird, in a way Severus hasn’t seen before. His friends sometimes gets quiet but he has this air about himself of always being about to smile. Not now, though.
“No issue if we cast a Priori Incantatem right?
“Can you do that?” asks Remus, awed.
“No way! But Sev can. Can’t you?”
“I’m sorry Sev” says Lily, after the two boys have just gone running after insulting them all once again. Her eyes downwards.
“We will talk to them” Adds Remus.
“No need” he responds and turns around.
(Gryffindors are not your friends.)
Lily goes to find him at lunch. Passes him a note.
It’s a magical drawing of her, asking for forgiveness. It includes a flower, pressed in the parchment, a little dancing snake and a single chocolate cauldron.
“She draws awfully” he says under his breath and with a reluctant smile.
“And stingy too! Couldn’t she include a whole box of sweets?”
Robert agrees with a soft hiss and Merlin hoots and tries to take the chocolate.
They promise to go to the lake to take pictures after the Gryffindor- Ravenclaw match.
Harry drags Severus along to see. He wants to observe the strengths and most of all, the weaknesses of the teams.
“I’m going to crush them next year” he whispers cheerily at him.
Lily sits with them in the Ravenclaw stands, ignoring the betrayed gazes from her housemates.
(Some Gryffindors can be your friends)
They go to the lake, they take more pictures and it feels like it's the tree of them again back home. Severus feels something thawing in his chest. He tries to smile for some pictures with them.
“Do you think…” he starts “Do you think Tuney can send some to my mum, when my father is not home?”
On the Christmas break, both boys stay in the castle and hug Lily goodbye.
“Tuney is going to be crazy about her gifts! I can’t wait to see her and tell her everything! Take care of each other, boys. Don’t open your gifts until Christmas!”
Narcissa, in second year, asks them what they will be doing for Yule with a knowing look. She had smiled at him a couple times in the library, when she caught Harry staring curiously at her dark reading material.
Harry is about to respond. Probably some stupid remark about the difference between Yule and Christmas, but Sev beats him to it with a glance.
“Will you perform a Yule ritual? Do you have a circle?”
Robert hisses and dangles his little head at her. She coos at him and smiles showing teeth.
“Meet us in the Forbidden forest at six.”
They chant around the fire, they light the log, they carry their candles and feel Mother Magic bless them.
"In this time of the White Goddess it is time for entering the wilderness and seeking its magical strengths..."
In Defense they finally put James and Harry to duel.
James has grown during the year. Harry…not so much. They still look like two peas in a pod, studying each other as if to see their similarities in a strange mirror. They can hear whispers all around. Who will win?
The bastard or the heir?
James has a wide stance and shows an arrogant grin. Harry seems small and skinny in comparison.
Harry casts the first spell and James bats it with a Protego.
“What is it, little snake?” He taunts him.
“Just warming up, little Potter.”
They move in a circle, two twin predators trying to best each other.
“Heard you didn’t make the team.”
Harry smiles “I didn’t. Not all of us are pals with the Headmaster. Do people always give everything handed to you?”
“Sometimes.” James shrugs “My father tells me I have a winning smile. Yours don’t?”
Ignoring the snickers and gasps around, Harry lets out a laugh. “Taunting me about not having parents? How very Gryffindor of you. Daddy must be proud.”
James sends a curse, decidedly not an Expelliarmus and Harry dodges. As Severus, one doesn’t live running from violent people without learning to run fast.
Harry is getting tired, Severus notes. He will need to win fast, or he will lose.
“Lumos maxima!” he yells, surprising everyone, and blinds both James and the nearest spectators. He takes the split second of confusion to charge at the other boy and sweep his feet under him, taking his wand with quick fingers.
James gets up, snarling and ready to fight back.
“What are you doing?” Harry laughs “You lost”
“What- no, they said-!”
“They said, ‘use spells to disarm’. I used a spell and,” He twiddles the mahogany wand around his fingers “you don’t have your wand”
“You cheated!” he yells and grabs the front of Harry’s robes.
“That’s enough, mister Price and mister Potter!”
Severus and Harry sit together on the train back home, waiting for Lily. Packing was a quick affair for them and both children seem itchy to get back. Narcissa comes to greet them and stands at the entrance of their compartment with Lucius in tow. Lily comes running, laughing with Dorcas and Remus, until she spots them.
Lucius puts his nose in the air “Come along, dear. Let’s see your sisters.”
Back in Surrey it’s the four of them again. Both Severus and Harry greet Petunia, while Lily runs and hangs to her neck, letting her sister try to catch her and scowl at her.
Eileen, Dahlia and Marcus laugh at the display and Mr. and Mrs. Evans hug their youngest daughter in a crushing embrace.
Eileen hugs them tightly between her thin arms, first with a quick kiss to his forehead and then with a caress to Harry’s head..
“You took care of each other?” she whispers to them both.
Harry gets red cheeked and nods. Severus grins.
The Evans invite them for dinner but Eileen pauses, shifty, and declines mentioning she has to get back to make dinner before it gets later.
“But you boys can go! Oh,” She looks at Harry and smiles at him “sorry Harry, I shouldn’t talk on your behalf.”
“No! I mean yes! I can go.”
Harry gets walked to the foster home by Petunia, Lily and Severus.
Petunia gives him books.
“What is this?” he says, groaning.
“That is your summer work! You don’t know what you will be when you grow up. You still need to study math”
The three of them groan.
Harry opens the door.
“Hi Mrs. Davies. I’m back.”
She gives him a short smile and then returns to check over the bunch of papers on her desk. “Welcome back Harry. I received your letters, I hope you had a nice time”
“I’ll go put my stuff in the room”
Harry shares the room with three other boys who mostly ignore each other. They had been friendly (even friends!) enough before he started going out almost everyday to see his other friends. Maybe he could be friends with them if he could tell them things. If he hadn't been seeked and shipped to a boarding school he can’t tell anyone about. If he didn’t return with ‘a pet, My school requires all children to have an emotional support animal. Yes, snakes can be an emotional support animal!’ or if he could tell them about magic. But he can’t without breaking the Statute and Harry has never had any friend that didn’t know about magic. He is glad with the coexistence they have, and he promises himself not to forget them. He had enough to bring a few sweets to share with them.
His bunk bed is occupied, which, well, he wasn’t in the home for eight months. It was to be expected. He puts the books Tuney gave him, along with some things that seemed normal enough to be kept in the home.
His smile falls. He feels tired to the bone and something hollow in his chest that threatens to crush him but he swallows the lump in his throat and caresses Robert, in his pocket. Unable to make himself cry in front of his roommates, he falls asleep before his head can touch the cardboard like pillow.
“Harry. Harry!!”
He sits up and instinctively tries to look for his wand.
He is still confused as to where he is for a second, before realizing he’s in the home and just woke up from a nightmare.
He purposefully left his wand with the Evans, as well as most of his magical things. Robert is still with him, hissing soflty.
Rashid is shaking his shoulder “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Was I too loud?”
The other boy who was woken up clicks his tongue and ruffles in his bed “I want to sleep! Get your special arse quiet or go back to your boarding school!”
“Shut it Stevie, or I’ll take those jelly beans back”
He is Harry James Potter, 22 years old, a rookie Auror about to get married to Ginny.
He is Freak, 7 years old, hurrying up to make breakfast before his aunt, uncle and cousin wake up.
He is Harry, without a last name or a past, alone and confused and about to get run over by a truck, with no register whatsoever of even having been born and not knowing what year it is.
He is ‘James’ looking at Sirius go beyond the Veil and casting his first Unforgivable.
His mum loved him and died for him
(Lily is alive, she’s his friend. She will never be his mother.)
His dad would have been so proud. He loved him too. He died first, he didn’t have his wand ‘Lily take Harry!’
(James Potter is a bully, the darling of Gryffindor. The dislike is mutual)
Professor Snape was awful to him, resentful of his dad, obsessed with his mum, died to rectify his mistakes.
(Sevvie is alive and well and is his best friend.)
His aunt always hated him, he was a freak. His uncle too. His cousin bullied him for years.
(Tuney is nice and sends him letters and homework. He doesn’t have an uncle. He doesn’t have a cousin. He will never have one.)
He is still an orphan, though. That never changes.
“Your nose is bleeding, speaker”
“Shhh, Robert”
He wipes his nose and gets to sleep. He has plans.