“Lemon drop?” 

“No thank you, Albus.  Harry won’t be needing one either; so don’t bother asking him,” Severus very nearly growled. 

The child was curled up in his lap, facing the headmaster, holding his bear tightly against his chest.  The lad was very nearly completely terrified; an emotion that showed through in his tense posture and slightly trembling limbs, not to mention the thumb that was being very insistently worked upon within his mouth. 

Severus held the boy close to him, thankful for the hidden wand holster he had up his sleeve.  

“Can I get you two anything?  Tea?  Coffee?”

The old man was infuriating in his calm disinterest in the clear and present fear of the tiny boy in front of him. 

“Albus,” Severus warned; his anger implied in the gaze he had affixed to the old man’s face. 

“No?”  Dumbledore asked innocently.  “Ah well, I felt that I had to try.  I suppose you’re wondering why I called you boys here today.” 

Severus kept himself from rolling his eyes, but only just so.  He did nothing to restrict the sneer from showing on his face though. 

“It’s a simple enough thing, I suppose,” Albus said, presenting his palms to them with slight a shrug of his shoulders.  They watched carefully as he reached into his desk, only to pull out a large sheaf of papers; all of which looked very official and pristine—a direct contrast to the headmaster’s typically scattered and unkempt desktop. 

“Sign these documents, Severus, and you’ll have custody of your young Mr. Potter,” Albus said with a small smirk upon his wizened face. 

Severus’s eyes narrowed in disbelief at the simple process that he had just been presented with. 

“Full custody of the lad, Severus; yours will be the final decision in every situation he encounters.  Do you suppose you can handle that?”

He wanted to hex the man for the contempt he could see in those blues eyes of his, but he managed to still his wand hand. 

“Certainly, Headmaster,” he stated formally, purposely putting emphasis on the man’s title in order to separate himself from the old man that much more. 

“Harry, do you understand what’s going on?”  The headmaster asked; turning sparkling blue eyes to the boy perched upon Severus’s lap. 

The child shook his head quickly and then scooted back even farther into his embrace. 

“Severus is going to be your new guardian.  He is adopting you.  Do you understand what that means?”   The old man asked, leaning in with a slightly predatory grin upon his face. 

The boy turned his head and glanced back up at Severus, the fear palpable in his wide eyes.

“You are to be his son and he will be your father,” the old man continued, not bothering to wait for the lad’s response.  “This means that you and he will be together from now up until you at least reach your majority, and perhaps past then.”  Albus leaned back in his chair, folding his hands together as he looked at the child. 

“Things will change, young man, and perhaps not for the better.  Severus will be in charge of you—for better or worse—and will be overseeing the choices to be made in your life, as well as meting out the necessary punishments.  How do you feel about all that I have told you, Harry?”  An anticipatory look was on the old man’s face and it was all Severus could do not to scream obscenities against him. 

“You’re bein’ mean to my Tall Man,” was the stouthearted accusation spoken around the small thumb that still occupied the lad’s mouth.  Green eyes stared angrily up at the bearded man before them, and Severus allowed a small smirk to momentarily grace his face at seeing the old man’s sudden surprise. 

However, Albus was not the man he was by accident, and the look of discomfort was quickly replaced by one of casual politeness.  

“As you said, he is a very tall man.  He is much bigger than you.”

“He’s s’posed to be,” was the lad’s quick response, green eyes glinting in slight warning. 

“He could hurt you, quite badly even, if he wanted to,” Albus predicted seriously.

It was his turn to look at the old man across from them in surprise. 

Just what did Albus think he was doing?  Was Severus’s furious thought. 

“He wouldn’t,” the child argued, taking his thumb out of his mouth and crossing his arms over his bear in front of his chest. 

“But he could,” Albus said, leaning forwards in a semi-confidential manner, never mind the fact that Severus was sitting right there in the room with them! 

“So could you,” was the lad’s hesitantly soft spoken addition. 

“Why do you say that?” Albus leaned back in his chair comfortably. 

“Because you already did,” Severus interjected with a hiss. 

“I don’t believe I asked you, Severus,” Albus emphasized with a dark glower that he adjusted before looking back at his tiny boy. 

“As Harry’s guardian, it would not behoove either of us if I did not stand up for his rights by telling you that this conversation is a pointless effort on your part to make him fear the only person who has ever dared to have his best wishes at heart.  Damn it, he is but a child, Albus,” Severus said in a low voice. 

“Something I am well aware of, Severus,” the twinkle in Albus’s eyes turned flint-like in the older man’s unflinching stare. 

“I’m not quite so sure that you are old man.  Why not just ask the lad for his choice?  And then the sordid topic will be over and done with,” he sneered. 

“Yes, perhaps you are right,” Albus turned calculating eyes on them both.  “Harry, you can help us decide.  Would you rather go back to your relatives, where you understand the situation that you are in?  Or would you rather choose to venture out into the unknown and take your chances with Severus?  Please do enlighten us.” 

. . .

Little Harry would have been completely lost throughout the decidedly uncomfortable conversation going on around him if not for the presence of his angel.  She had appeared part of the way through, sitting to his and his Tall Man’s left, and had helped him to understand what was being said within the discussion itself. 

Now he paused and listened to her explanation of what the old scary man had said to him, and when she was finished, he realized that they were still waiting for him to provide them all with an answer.  His Tall Man looked about ready to jump in and start yelling, but he headed him off with a heartfelt reply of his own. 

“I don’t wanna go back there!  Ever!”  He cried out to the scary bearded man opposite from them.  “I want my Tall Man.  I want him, please,” he said, turning his face into his Tall Man’s robes on ‘please’.  He wasn’t sure who he was saying the words to, but he knew that he wanted only to feel safe, and he did there in his Tall Man’s arms. 

. . .

Severus smirked back at the dumbfounded old man sitting across the desk from him and the small boy clutching at his robes tightly.  He gathered the lad—and Captain—up against his shoulder tightly, before reaching over to the documents that were still sitting untouched upon the desk.  He quickly read over the fine print, and then after determining that they were what his employer had purported them to be, he began the arduous task of signing each and every one. 

This task he completed with one hand, holding the boy tightly to his chest with the other the entire time.  The silence that filled the room while he did so was decidedly chilly, and so it was to his great—yet hidden—relief when he finally reached the end of the stack. 

He was on his way out the door when Albus finally broke the quiet that had lasted ever since his—his!—small lad’s vibrantly spoken declaration. 

“He needs to be given a full physical by Poppy before the day is out, Severus.” 

He knew that.  After all, it was standard practice for all new members of the staff, as well as any children they might have with them while working at the school. 

However, given that his bitter anger was still bubbling quite near the surface, he felt it wiser to remain silent.  Thus, he gave the old interfering wretched excuse for a headmaster a single nod and then left with the child still draped quite comfortably within his arms. 

The corridors that they walked through were the nearly empty ones that existed during the winter holiday period, and he found himself silently grateful for the solitude they provided for the long walk to the infirmary.  It was a fair assessment that he was in shock over the damnable experience that they had just had thrust upon them while in the headmaster’s office.  His mind was awhirl with the great many changes that had been thrust on him just that very day—not to mention during the week in general! 

And now, it boggled his mind to contemplate it, but somehow it had come to be that he was now a father of a tiny abused boy.  Him!  Not only was that a completely ludicrous concept to try and wrap his mind around, but it was only further complicated by the identity of the lad in question. 

Said lad was still wrapped tightly within his arms; something further emphasized by the feel of a small cold nose pressed against the base of his neck.  True, it was a rather unusual sensation to experience, particularly for such a man as he, but overall, he had to admit to himself that it was not an unpleasant one. 

In fact, he let a brief private smile pass across his face as he recalled the words the child had spoken so candidly to Dumbledore on his behalf.  It was so strange to be stood up for by anyone else around him, but for a child to do it was almost completely unheard of in his realm of experience. 

Children and adults alike feared, if not outright despised him.  It had been this way for his entire existence, and he had grown accustomed to it sometime ago.  It was a perception of himself that he had learned to cultivate over time, if nothing else than simply for the innate protection it afforded him. 

And there was the true paradox of the situation staring him in the face.  James Potter and his friends had tormented him without end, and for what?  Because he was scrawny and badly dressed?  Because he was friendless and alone? 

His father was a cruel and hard man whom he had been more than glad to get away from by attending Hogwarts.  On the other hand, young Severus had quickly learned that certain things can never be gotten away from completely.

James Potter and Sirius Black may have been younger and less inclined towards using their fists on him, but there still were significant similarities between them and his bastard of a father.  Both parties had made his life hellish; in turn, filling him untold amounts of directionless anger against not only them, but also against himself as well. 

It had been with that helpless fury that he had joined the Dark Lord on his quest to hurt those around them.  He had had a need, a desperate need to hurt those so-called perfect and happy people that he found himself constantly surrounded with.  They were the ones who had never stopped laughing at him, ridiculing him for the things that he did not have the power to change.

Certainly not at that time, was his dark thought to himself. 

Worse yet, in the end his anger had ultimately caused him to lose everything that had ever been important to him.  He had been a fool for putting his trust in something so much bigger than himself.  He had tricked himself into thinking that the dark lord was interested in his paltry concerns and desires for revenge, when in fact the man had merely used him to further his own plans. 

Dumbledore was no different.  He could see that now.  On one side stood Dumbledore, and on the other was Voldemort, or rather the Death Eaters, at least for now. 

And in between those two powers was a tiny boy.

Or rather, his tiny boy, to be precise. 

He blinked and realized that they were in front of the main doors to the infirmary.  He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and walked in with his small child, ready to face whatever might happen next.