Far From The Tree
In another universe, you sit across from me, wand in hand, ready for my instructions. Your smile is bright and your ink black curls shimmer in the sunlight that floods into my classroom from the angled window. Nothing bad has ever happened to us.
____
It was a late Friday evening when there was an unusual knock on the door.
Aunt Petunia was in the kitchen preparing for dinner and Harry, not for the first time, was absent beside her. He had instead, been sequestered in his cupboard under the stairs for the past week, refused of meals apart from what he made out to be breakfast which was made up of yesterday dinner’s leftovers. There was no way of telling time inside his cupboard, so, he never knew.
This was how Severus, whom he still did not know then, had found him: laying curled into a foetal shape, holding onto his left hand that had been wrapped in an obnoxiously green neon cast, eyes of his mother’s squeezed shut, lids crusted from old tears as he rode wave over wave of throbbing aches that never seemed to subside anymore.
When Severus first arrived, there were three knocks. Then, a man’s heavy footsteps above him as Severus pushed past Aunt Petunia and headed up and then another set of click clacks of Aunt Petunia's who was following him hastily. His vision was swimming and there was a ringing in his ears but soon, there was the click clack above him as both headed back down the stairs and there had been a tingle across his body. Aunt Petunia let out an ear shrilling scream, so loud Harry had brought both hands to cover his ears. She began in a fast paced explanation but suddenly stopped mid-excuse.
Severus, whose sole presence had been commandeering Aunt Petunia, suddenly raised his voice. It was both soft and harsh, languid and guttural. His words were spat out like poison.
“I do not care what you have to say. Show me to him.”
The door unlatched itself to reveal Aunt Petunia who was promptly pushed to the side. The man came front and center, chandelier behind him casting a long shadow across Harry’s body.
Harry stared up at Severus, and Aunt Petunia started in her shrill voice beside the man again until the throb in his hand returned and he cupped it gently into his abdomen, and squeezed his eyes shut tightly.
Maybe this was all a dream, he thought.
Maybe, he would wake up and it would be tomorrow.
But then Aunt Petunia stopped.
And there was silence.
And when he opened his eyes again, Severus was still staring at him. He had his head tilted to the side, as though studying Harry like he had been a very interesting insect. He stared and stared and Harry could see his nostrils flare like when Uncle Vernon was about to burst but the robes that covered Severus’ tall, lithe frame only rose and fell with each deep breath.
“Potter,” he started calmly, hand almost reaching but retracting it just as quickly, as though he had suddenly thought better than to touch the disgusting body that lay in front of him. “Gather your things. You will be coming with me.”
Then, the man took a step back and swept past Aunt Petunia who looked grey and almost petrified. The only thing moving were her eyes balls which had darted around in all direction, following Severus then coming to pin on Harry as if to say 'don't you dare, boy!'.
“Don’t dawdle. I do not have all day,” Severus called from the entryway.
Harry swung his legs over the makeshift bed and reached for his favourite toy soldier with his good hand before emerging from the cupboard. He made his way to Severus who looked at him pointedly.
“Do you not have anything you wish to bring with you?”
As Harry held out his fist to reveal the army green toy which had already created red indents on the inside of his sweaty palms, he looked up at Severus who had a pained expression passing across dark eyebrows that was gone as soon as it had appeared. Severus plucked the toy from his hand and tucked it safely in one of his coat pockets.
“Do you not speak?”
Harry did not wish to speak. He kept silent, stretching it thin and then thinner until it threatened to break.
Severus paid it no mind, he said nothing more, did nothing to fill the space Harry left in the absence of his words.
The door to freedom opened.
Outside, the sun had bled orange and red streaks into the clouds which were shredded and patchy against the darkening blues of the evening. Severus towered over him and considered for a long while before he held out his hand for Harry. His hands were calloused and rough, not matching the slenderness or paleness of his skin. Harry’s hand disappeared into the man’s grip. He studied their connected limbs with great fascination, taking big breaths and refusing to cry.
“Hold. Tight.”
Harry nodded, chin buried deep into his clavicle.
And they spun away from Privet Drive.
____
Home was different.
At Spinner’s End, everything was old and rickety and had seen many better decades. It did not seem like a house Severus would stay in but it was Home, one that Severus grew up in and Harry would now, too.
Harry was boarded into a small bedroom on the second floor, bigger than the cupboard with a full bed to stretch out his limbs and some more but still much smaller than Dudley’s second bedroom. It smelled of old books and mothballs. When Severus opened the cupboard facing his bed, there were stacks of dusty faded jumpers that were fraying at the seams. Severus picked out a forest green jumper in his size and a faded pair of pyjamas pants.
“This will have to do until tomorrow,” Severus said to no one but himself.
There was a bathroom across the hall where Severus stuck Harry onto a small stool and wrapped Harry’s cast in a plastic wrap and pointed a stick to it, mumbling something under his breath. He then instructed Harry to go into the shower and stood to the side, eyes peeled on the white tiles of the bathroom wall. When Harry had emerged awhile later, his father’s inky black hair still stiff from sweat and neglect, black wet streaks of unwashed grim tattooing his skin, Severus promptly ushered him back in and dragged the stool into the shower before sticking Harry onto it again. Then, he poured out a generous amount of shampoo and lathered it into Harry’s hair until the black became invisible through the bubbles.
When he was done, he continued the same treatment across Harry’s body and bottom limbs. He left the privates to Harry, instructing sternly for him to clean them properly lest they drop off completely from bad hygiene. Then, Severus sprayed him down with the shower head until the soap suds swirled into the drain and the water turned clear. Harry stood trembling, teeth chattering in the residual warmth of the shower. As Severus towelled the beads of water off him, he finally dared a glance at the man. Severus’ face was creased with solemn responsibility and had a nose slightly too big for his thin angled face. Water had beaded up on his wool clothes too but he paid no mind to them as he patted Harry down with the mint old shaggy towel.
The plastic wrapped came off his cast and the green jumper chosen earlier was pulled over his face but his casted arm got caught in one of the jumper sleeves which was too small for it to fit through.
“Damn it.”
And the jumper came off the same way.
The man left the bathroom with haste and returned with a white undershirt and another jumper, grey this time with green trimmings along the v-neckline. It was much larger and his casted arm fit through the hole, no problem. Severus knelt down then and made Harry hold onto his shoulders for balance as he lifted his small feet, one by one, into the pant holes and when those were on him too, stood up.
“Breakfast is at eight. Do not be late. I trust that you can navigate your way to the kitchen?”
Harry nodded.
When they entered into Harry’s bedroom, his toy soldier that was still missing its arm and the gun held in it had been set on the small bedside table next to his bed. He reached out for it and held it between his short tiny fingers. Severus had mended it, one arm now fashioned into a cast and splinted across his abdomen, just like Harry's.
“War,” Severus shrugged, “Injuries happen.”
Severus gestured for him to sit on the bed and he pulled out a hairbrush from thin air and begun to brush the knots out of his hair.
“How awfully like your father you are.”
Harry looked up at him. He had not really looked into Severus’ eyes until now. They were dark as twilight as though no light could ever reach them. He stared and stared, not breaking their contact.
Severus’s face fell a fraction of a millimetre and he turned quiet, gaze zoned out, as though in a far away memory. He said nothing more. The room was quiet apart from the hum of electricity that reminded Harry of his cupboard.
After one hundred brushes (Harry counted), the wooden brush was banished from the room.
“Goodnight, then, Potter.”
The single fluorescent bulb in the middle of the ceiling went out with a wave of Severus’ hand.
Not daring to move, Harry laid in completely stillness on his bed, he looked out at the window above his head where in places, the sky was bare and blue-black while in some others, grey clouds moved rapidly, covering and uncovering constellations Harry knew not of.
At some point later in the night, Harry woke to a weight dipping in the mattress around his waist. He had learnt quickly as a child to wake to such movements. It was better to be prepared.
Severus was here. Harry could smell him, of herbs and carbolic detergent, just like the smell of his jumper. He curled into himself even more and kept his breathing even, as though he had not been waked. Harry wanted to cry again but settled on praying in his mind to a God he did not know heard him.
“Lily’s child,” Severus whispered throatily into the stillness, voice rough, heavy and deep, “Lily would have never allowed anything to happen to you.”
Then, he rose and left.
____
When he awoke the next morning, he felt the telling cool dampness of his pants that had stuck to the insides of his thighs. Immediately, his cheeks lit up, red and hot with scalding embarrassment. How could he hide this? Where did Severus keep the new sheets? Would Severus find him disgusting? Would Severus do to him what Vernon would when he found out?
Severus walked in right in that moment. His big roman nose scrunched at the unmistakable scent of ammonia that lingered in the air.
“What is that smell–” but stopped mid sentence at the sight of Harry’s wild and wide emerald eyes, the sheets bunched awkwardly around his waist to hide his terrible sin.
Harry’s teeth chattered and his bottom lip quivered.
Severus walked over to him and Harry steeled himself for a beating. Severus was thin and lanky but surely, he was stronger, heavier, could pin down Harry without effort. And Severus had the thing that made lightbulbs go out and a stick that made things appear and disappear. He could make Harry disappear. Vernon did not have any of these but he had already made Harry do everything he did not want to do. Severus stopped short at the look of fear registered when Harry looked at him, ready to bolt.
“The mattress is quite old,” Severus remarked, his tone casual and almost conversational. He walked over to the edge of the bed, pressing at the sagging springs and the faded fabric. “Yes. It's clearly quite old. We should get rid of it and get you a new one."
Harry could not believe his ears, his gaze shot to Severus who was calmly inspecting the mattress. He had expected, at the very least, a dressing down and at the very worst, a beating or the Big Bad.
"We'll head out today and find a better one," Severus continued, setting his mug down on the bedside table. "Something more comfortable, I think. I’ll take the receipt to Dumbledore who surely has no mind in the pampering of James’ son. Yes. Would you like that?"
Harry did not know what was the correct answer to his question.
“We will do just that and get you appropriate clothes while we are at it,” he said with a small sneer, “Now, wash up and have breakfast. It is past nine. And we must get you a watch too, if only you won’t be late again, I think.”
Then Severus left the room. And Harry felt like he wanted to cry again.
All through the day then, rather than the Horrible Thing that could have happened, Harry plastered by Severus’ side, shuffled down the street teeming with what Severus called Wizards and Witches, from one store to another they trudged, soldiers on a mission. Clothes, furniture, books, cauldrons (Severus spent especially long in that one though he only emerged with a solid gold cauldron), watches, lunch at a place named after cleaning equipment and a store called Quality Quidditch Supplies that Severus had seen Harry dare a fleeting glance at. “Of course you’d be interested in Quidditch,” he had scoffed with obvious disdain but nonetheless pushed open the door and rounded Harry in but the bump of his hip. When they reemerged, there was a baby golden snitch that zipped slowly around them. Harry could see every flutter of its wings as it hovered a bare foot above his head. Severus reached out and plucked it from the sky. “This should keep you occupied at the house,” he had said, handing it over, “A broom when you are older, perhaps.”
The Wizards and Witches in the street held Wands (sticks) in their hands and waved it to make things appear, disappear, small, big, come near or go far away, just as Severus did. It was called Magic, Severus finally explained to him with his mouth curved downwards in a frown when he realised Harry’s wide eyed stares were not from wonder but shock.
They walked into a store where hair was being cut by the waving sticks. Severus asked for Harry’s large curls to be trimmed, soft and round about the edges, with a long fringe to cover his scar. Harry studied himself in the mirror when Mister Etienne was done. He stared at the boy in the mirror, then up where he met Severus’ gaze who looked lost in another memory. “Pay no mind,” Severus said when he shook the blankness from his face, then turned on his heel and expected Harry to follow.
From Madame Malkins, he got two sets of robes (which he now learned are Wizard clothes), one black just like Severus’ because those would be easier to keep clean, another in a shade of blue that Severus had him pick out from the rack. He was fitted with a watch that had a silver face and a green stripped strap at Time Turners which could tell the time while Severus had the watch on his wrist modified to include a watch hand that had Harry's name carved on it which pointed to the left when Harry was on his left, to the right when Harry stood to the right of him, to the front and the behind all alike.
Then, they left the magical place called Diagon Alley and went back to Spinner’s Centre where there were a row of old shops between shuttered ones. Severus went into one and picked at the discounted bin of clothes until Harry left with a decent sized bag of ‘muggle’ wear which was just regular wear like what he wore at the Dursley’s except this bag of stuff fit him much better. There had been one shirt in particular, a shirt with the graphic design of Garfield at the front, that Harry could not stop staring at. He had seen glimpses of the fat orange tabby on the telly at the Dursley’s. Vinyl Garfield on the front was already peeling from the orange fabric and the shirt had ink splotches on it. Still, Severus had seen Harry eyeing it and had set it into the basket before heading for the checkout.
That night, Severus made him shower again but this time, he stood in the peripheries, supervising Harry. When Harry came out of the shower, he inspected his hair, and the back of his nape underneath where his hair stopped above his neck, looked pleased and dried him down with a new shaggy towel. Everything else was thrown into the laundry hamper. Severus washed the clothes himself, with a muggle washing machine and a detergent brand he had used since he was a boy himself, a way of habit, he had explained to Harry.
When they entered the bedroom, Severus made him sit on the bed again and he took the hairbrush and begun brushing again until Harry’s hair was as smooth as silk.
Harry fell asleep almost as soon as his head met with the pillow and when he woke the next morning, he found his pants dry and bed unsticky. Severus had leant against the door frame, sipping coffee from a mug.
“Get dressed,” Severus gestured to the orange Garfield shirt hung on the knob of the dresser, washed, patched and looking brand new. “Do you know how to make your bed?”
Harry nodded.
Severus looked pleased, again.
“Good.”
When Severus left, Harry gingerly crept over to the drawer and pulled the shirt from its hanger and put it to his nose.
It smelt of Severus, of herbs and carbolic detergent.
____
Time passed at Spinner’s End, as it always did at the Dursley’s, day into night and night into day again, but easier, lighter, like he could breathe now. When he first came, he kept waiting for something to happen, something so irrevocably bad that Severus would have to send him away from Harry’s Room in Spinner’s End, right back to where he first found him in that cupboard that Harry had first claimed as his own.
He had broken a vase on the first week, but Severus had said nothing, only swept it up and mended it with his wand, then transported it into his study on the first floor where it sat on the shelf behind his desk now.
There had been multiple accidents involving cauldrons once Severus allowed him into the basement laboratory where he worked for most of the time. One rolled, the other dinged on the side of the table, one burnt to charred but Severus had just been relieved that Harry had not scalded his good hand. All of these, he fixed with the wave of his wand and then tomorrow, they would start again. Severus no longer went to work now, instead, he provided potions for the school he used to work at. Healing potions that Harry now had a hand in, grinding insects and de-legging frogs that were fed by Severus into the softly simmering cauldron.
On some nights, Severus would have company over. It was always the same five people. There was Auntie Minnie and Mister Albus from Severus’ work. And there were his posh friends from Wiltshire, Auntie Cissa and Uncle Lucius and their son Draco who spoke a lot about brooms and his father. Harry was quiet through everything. Auntie Cissa and Auntie Minnie were always giving him kisses on the top of his forehead and on his cheeks and on his ears, tight, warm and chaste kisses, as though Harry had always been theirs. Something bloomed in his heart that he wished would not be there, a feeling that made his body warm and his eyes wet. He did not have a word for this feeling but he knew that he did not deserve it.
One month after Harry had moved in, the cast finally came off. Severus inspected his atrophied arm and watched with a growing worry as Harry continued to favour his right hand out of habit.
“Potter,” he called out one day, across the bench they were working at as Harry switched the stirrer over to his right when Severus had explicitly told him to do so with his other, “Have you ever learnt to write?”
Harry shook his head.
So Severus taught him to write, an ink dipped quill held in his left hand, just like Severus himself did.
He took to it like duck to water, tracing out the alphabets Severus had set him to work on with careful precision that rivalled even Severus’ seventh year NEWT students.
The first thing he taught Harry was to spell his own name.
Four alphabets, five letters.
Harry stuck his tongue out as he wrote his name for the first time, his calligraphy sharp and slanted like his master.
H A R R Y P O T T E R.
When he looked up again, Severus had a curve at the very edge of his lips that was almost hidden, as though he was almost ashamed of smiling.
“Good,” he told Harry, “Good boy.”
He learnt to write Uncle Lucius’ and Auntie Cissa’s names next. And when he presented the parchments to them, the next night, they reappeared with a set of new titanium quills made of the finest feathers that had Severus rolling his eyes so far back Harry thought he might never see them again. They made him write their names over and over, as though this was proof of his being, that Harry could be taught, that there was hope, even for a child who could not speak. He learnt Auntie Minnie’s and Mister Albus’ names next and that earned him a stack of books. His favourite by far: The Tales of Beedle The Bard, a collection of Wizarding Fairy Tales that Severus now read to him as part of his nighttime routine.
Severus would brush his hair a hundred times and he would sit on an armchair that was a permanent fixture in his cramped room now and they would read a story from The Tales of Beedle The Bard until Harry’s eyes grew heavy with slumber. He could not help if Severus had a sophomoric quality to his voice.
Learning to recognise alphabets and forming them together in what Severus called spelling and phonics, opened Harry to the world of reading. Severus now afforded him free time where instead of sitting by Severus, quietly stoning (Severus did not allow the 'darned little baby snitch' outside of Harry's own room) as the tall man looked through hospital and school orders on potions and replied to owl mail, Harry could pick a book to read and point out words he did not know and Severus would lean over, his shoulder length hair tickling Harry as he squinted to look at the word pointed at by his short, small, neatly trimmed digit and proceeded to read it out phonetically, followed by the Oxford dictionary definition of said word.
This was how Harry learned and learned he did.
One day, he wrote two alphabets, three letters on a spare bit of parchment he had torn off from an old owl mail Severus had set near the floo to be recycled or burnt.
D A D.
He held it up and pointed at Severus who had all but looked at it and snatched the parchment from his small hand.
“No,” Severus said, “You father is James Fleamont Potter. Your mother is Lily Jane Evans.”
He scribbled their names on a new piece of parchment and handed it to Harry.
“James Potter,” he enunciated as he pointed out the alphabets, “Lily Evans.”
Harry pointed at Severus.
And so Severus wrote his name down, on the same piece of parchment that held the names of his father and his mother.
S E V E R U S S N A P E.
Harry copied out the name and kept this piece of parchment as Severus carefully tucked Harry’s initial blunder into a pocket near his heart.
____
One late evening, when Harry was supposed to be in bed, over a hundred days since Spinner’s End had become Home, Harry was instead standing on the least creakiest step which was the third step from the bottom when the muffled voices coming from the parlour became clearer.
“I detected no damage to his vocal cords when he first came.”
“That is a point for even more worrying, is it not, Sev?” A woman’s voice said.
“Potter will speak again when he wishes to.”
“How will he attend Hogwarts?” Another woman said.
“Maybe he doesn’t speak because you call him Potter. It has been over half a year” A man said in a sarcastic sneer.
“Perhaps Mister Malfoy has a point,” another man’s airy voice said thoughtfully, “For once. You ought to start calling him by his given name, my boy. You're raising him, after all.”
“Harry," said Severus pointedly, "chooses not to speak.”
“As a healer myself, I don’t think that this is healthy. It has gone on for too long. Whatever happened at Privet Drive should have been dealt with,” Said another woman, whose voice Harry had not heard before, “Perhaps you should bring him down, to St. Mungos. Have the healers take a look at him. Have him speak to a mind healer, that will be his best chance, yes it will. You can’t not try and say it doesn’t work. You know first hand what good those mind healers can do. If he still doesn’t want to speak after that then, we will all just have to be patient, won’t we?”
There was a noisy sigh.
“I shall consider your suggestions.”
There was then, the telltale zwoop of the Floo as the party dispersed.
Severus was accordioning the parlour door when he spotted Harry in the darkness.
Severus froze like a deer caught in headlights.
“Potter. You are supposed to be in bed.”
Harry bounded up the stairs, two at a time.
He scrambled into bed and what Severus called his accidental magic locked the door behind him promptly.
Severus pounded on the door moments later. “Harry! Harry!”
Harry’s felt his heart beating wildly in his chest before he dove for the wall, head first, smacking his skull against it so hard it was enough to make his brain rattle from the impact, again and again, again and again, the steady sound of bone meeting concrete punctuated the room, accompanied by a chorus of frantic banging of Severus’ fist and shouted names and alohomoras! but the door would not budge and Harry continued, beating himself bloody and blue until his body grew weak and the world spun around him but even then, he continued. He continued because he deserved it. He was a freak. When Severus found out he would never talk, Severus would send him back to the Dursley’s. He would have to go back and he would rather die, Harry thought through the growing fog of his mind.
Severus barged in then, door blasted from its hinge and he thought he had been hallucinating.
Harry who had been wavering dangerously near the wall, squaring himself for a final slam was yanked away from it in an instant but the damage had been done, his head was cracked open by his own misplaced determination and blood spewed from his hairline, drizzling down like chocolate syrup on a banana split. His skin was pale, a sickly blotch of yellow and green.
“Harry, what have you done?” Severus said, voice so close to him as he rushed him into his arms, picked him up and headed for the ground floor where the Floo was located. “Oh, Harry. Harry.” Severus kept saying, “Harry, Harry.” The deep chants of his name his only tether to reality. Harry’s blood coloured Severus’ exposed neck and cheeks where his head rested and dripped onto his robes that would come to dry into a stiff brown patch when morning came, though Harry would not be awake to witness this.
When he awoke, it would be two weeks later.
“Harry,” his name was said in a sharp inhale, “He’s awake! Get Madame Pomphrey!”
“Harry, Harry.”
Harry looked at him with his eyes turned to the side. He could not move his head, it had been immobilised by a splint. “Don’t turn your head,” Severus said and moved to stand, appearing in his line of sight so Harry could see him without having to move too much. Severus’ eyes were darker than they had been on the first night, more pained, more aggrieved. He had lost a great many pounds, cheeks hollowed out, eyes tired and weary.
“Harry, Harry,” he whispered, “You’re alright.”
Harry moved to shake his head but a sharp throb of pain shot through his skull at even the slightest movements. He struggled to breathe, hands and legs tied down onto the bed, neck in a splint.
“Harry… Don’t move, you’ll only hurt yourself more.”
Harry’s own green eyes were glimmering now, brows furrowed, face crumpled, mouth open and strings of saliva visible as he took a large breath and his face contorted with a silent scream.
He thrashed.
There was a shrill scream from Severus as he lunged forward to hold Harry still.
“Where’s Pomphrey!”
“Somebody get Poppy Pomphrey right this instant!”
“Harry, look at me. I’m right here. I’m right here.”
He felt a large hand press against his chest and it reminded him of the Very Worst. He felt his body burn as though he had been doused in kerosene and lit up in flames. Blinds, chairs, anything not bolted down to the ground rattled with wild magic. Harry wanted to cry and so he did. He wailed and wailed, completely mute. Severus unpicked his prison and climbed into the hospital bed with him. He took Harry’s body and held it close against his chest though Harry kicked in his ribs, hips, arms and legs, wherever it was in contact of him. Severus was strong, he held on stiffly, rubbing circles on Harry’s wriggling back. Harry pushed and pushed, kicked and kicked.
“Harry, Harry,” Severus cried out.
“It is okay Harry. I am not here to hurt you. You are safe. It is okay, Harry. You are safe,” Severus kept muttering to him.
Severus held him until the fight left him in one shuddering breath, like a bright candle snuffed out with a cruel pinch. Harry sagged into the embrace, limbs akimbo, tired, panting into Severus' cheeks, resigned that he was weaker than a grown adult, hopeless that Severus would let him go. Trust made only of brittle faith.
Then, he let Severus rock him, card fingers to undo the knots in his curls and finally fell asleep in strong, steady arms.
____
Later that same week, Severus’ sheer determination to bring him Home prevailed and Harry was discharged against healer’s advice.
The infirmary was located in a place called Hogwarts where the wards were heavy and the magic was old. They had walked down four flights of staircases, past three greenhouses, eight classrooms and all the way across two open courtyards before the majestic iron gate came into view, spin away point just beyond. In the distance, students were flying in brooms, like flying insects across the clear, blue sky.
The other students who were between classes and stalking along the hallways stopped to stare at Severus, some greeted him, mostly in gasps and disbeliefs.
“Professor Snape.”
“Professor Snape.”
“Professor Snape.”
“Are you back, Professor?”
“Who is that, Professor?”
“I didn’t know you had a son, Professor.”
Severus nodded at all the greetings but ignored the pressing questions and scathing comments about Harry's lineage, his grip on Harry not loosening, pace just as fast as they marched forth with certain purpose: Home.
They arrived at the spin away point. Severus looked at Harry, skin still pallid and white, eye bags dark and heavy, hair matted from two weeks of complete bed rest. “If we cannot brush the matted hair out, you will need a haircut,” he said, bent down at the knees and lifted Harry onto his hips and Harry’s body fell into his like it was instinctual. “We will apparate now. It will not be easy on your stomach.”
Harry may well never get use to the pulling sensation just beyond his navel.
“Do not sick up on me, Harry. Vomit stains are stubborn on wool,” Severus said when they arrived at the cobbled streets of Spinner’s End. He pushed Harry’s face away from his black robes, towards the someone’s plants. The prophesied sick up was orange, of the infirmary’s breakfast pumpkin juice. Little chunks colour the green leaves which Severus vanished away without another word.
They walked Home, Harry’s chin dug tightly into Severus’ shoulder.
Harry’s Room was the same as he had left it, though the residuals of brain matter, the cracking of his skull against plaster were gone. It was same as the day he had arrived. Severus set Harry down on the bed and stared at him from where he stood. Then he brushed Harry’s hair until it was soft and fluffy, curls and knots unravelled. “We won’t have to get you that haircut after all,” he had judged, standing back to look at Harry’s hair. He ran a few fingers through them and twirled a few curls back together. “It is a relief it did not matte. I should have taken better care of it while you were warded.” Then, he dragged the armchair close to the edge of the bed and sat so their knees touched.
“Harry,” he began.
He started and stopped a few times.
“Harry,” he said, both hands on Harry’s knees.
“Would you look at me?”
Harry shook his head.
A quill and parchment were conjured next to him on the quilt he had received from Auntie Minnie in the hospital wing, made of old robes and hand stitched patches.
“Harry, tell me. Why did you hurt yourself?”
Harry peeked a look at Severus from between his fringe.
“Help me understand.”
“Please.”
At the pleading of Severus, Harry’s mouth opened. Severus’ face turned hopeful. Harry felt the words at the back of his throat. His chin trembled and his brows grew furrowed. He settled for smacking his lips shut.
“It is alright,” Severus said after it became clear that Harry would not attempt to speak again.
He guided Harry’s head to the pillow.
“Some company will do you good,” Severus said as a teddy bear shot into his outstretched hand. He passed the brown thing to Harry who took it into his arms. He held it like Severus held him, pressed deep and close to his chest. It was warm and had some weight to it.
“Tomorrow,” Severus whispered, “Tomorrow, Harry, we will try again.”
Harry nodded.
In the deepening wake of winter, the ache in Harry’s chest was a powerful and painful feeling. He did not understand it. All Harry knew was that when he woke up, he was in soft clothes under a blanket he had come to love, teddy tucked tight against him and a warm hand on his tummy.
His eyes peeped at the man to his side, raven black hair splayed out. The rise of the man’s chest was almost imperceptible but gentle snores truncated the air. A book was laid face down where it was last read.
He wanted to say.
Severus, Severus.
Severus, Severus.
The way Severus said his name, often twice, with great solemnity.
Harry, Harry.
Harry, Harry.
But when he opened his mouth, nothing escaped him but a strained, harsh exhale of air.
He remembered then, a singular syllable he had heard his cousin say. A word before first words came through. Before Daddy or Mummy or Food or Sauce. Before Harry, before Severus. The syllable he fixated on, an almost instinct. Harry’s lips smacked open and close like a child wanting to nurse. He felt like he was learning to speak all over again and he felt like he wanted to belong to Severus because he was a nice man and he gave Harry food and he gave Harry warmth and he said only nice things to Harry. He held him and protected him, made sick ups go away. He washed his clothes, brushed his hair, read to him every night without fail.
Severus had woken to the stirrings of him, eyes still bleary with slumber when Harry finally managed in a barely whisper, a single yearning syllable.
“Pa.”
Soft, mellowed, muted.
“Pa.”
“Pa.”
“Pa.”
Harry repeated, the sound from his lips like fat rain drops falling onto the rooftop.
Quiet, hushed, fragile.
“Pa.”
“Pa.”
“Pa.”
Severus’ eyes grew wide as the weight of the sole syllable sank in. He nodded, fervently.
“Yes, Harry. Yes, Harry,” scooping Harry up into his arms, inhaling deeply, voice cracking, head spinning, “Yes, Harry. Pa is here. Pa is right here.”