“And this,” Severus said as he opened the door to his spare bedroom, “is your room.”

Harry looked around the space warily, but everything he did now seemed to be done with caution in exhaustion, so it was hardly anything new.

Severus never once in his wildest dreams imagined himself giving Harry Potter a tour of his home, much less welcoming him to stay there, with a bedroom to call his own. Just the thought would have been more than enough to make a previous version of himself feel ill, but so very much had changed in recent weeks that the idea of such dramatics felt extremely distant.

The possibility of regret barely even wavered through his consciousness.

“It’s nice,” Harry said softly, lowering his eyes down to the floor after taking stock of the room.

It wasn’t an overly impressive space, painted a muted blue, furnished with a bed, a wardrobe, the essentials. Still, Severus thought that it was likely more than the boy had ever been able to call his own. He hadn’t brought much with him to Spinner’s End, only a small bag slung across his shoulder.

The thought brought a painful tug to Severus’ heart.

Severus wasn’t exactly keen to leave the boy alone, even with such a minimal task to occupy himself with. He was still prone to forgetting himself at times and Severus was hoping to have him settled in before having to deal with the inevitable episode. So he offered to help him unpack.

Harry took a moment to process what Severus had said, again, nothing unusual as of late. Things often had to be said to him several times before he really understood.

This, however, seemed not to bear repeating, as soon Harry nodded sluggishly and went over to sit on the bed, slipping the bag off his shoulder. After that he seemed to be at a loss as to what to do next, looking up at Severus with a confused expression settled on his features.

Severus approached the bed and carefully lowered himself down beside Harry, the bag a small barrier between them. Still, Harry seemed to shrink at their close proximity and Severus hurried to unzip the bag to distract him.

Harry made no move to take anything out from the bag, so Severus started the process of removing items himself, all the while hoping that there wasn’t anything condemning stored away in there.

Unlikely, as the healers had gone through Harry’s things at St. Mungo’s and had given Severus explicit instructions as to what he was and wasn’t allowed to have before allowing his removal from the Janus Thickey Ward.

Nothing sharp, nothing long, nothing that could be used as a tool to cause himself harm.

In the past, just mere weeks ago, really, Severus would have been afraid to spend much time in close company with the boy, even overlooking their mutual animosity. It really wouldn’t be good for his career as a spy should he be discovered fraternizing with the enemy.

Maybe that was why it had been so easy to hate him. It was easier to despise him than to look into those emerald orbs and being aware that he couldn’t know them, couldn’t be familiar with them, not anymore.

But now, well. That was all over, now. Voldemort was dead and Severus was a free man. Well, in the general sense of the word. He no longer had to answer to his two masters, but he was still a prisoner of his past mistakes.

He needed a distraction, something to think about, something to care about. He considered getting a house plant but somehow he ended up bringing Harry Potter home instead.

If Severus was surrounded by his demons, Harry was absolutely swarmed by them. Somewhere in between the cheers and the tears at the defeat of the dark lord, his sanity had been lost.

Severus continued to unpack, laying the clothes out on the bed. They all seemed old and worn and far too large for Harry, and he wondered if perhaps he should just throw them all out and get him new things.

Just as the thought came across his mind, he picked up a dark purple hoodie (which the strings had been removed from, of course) and went to set it aside as well, but Harry’s hand unexpectedly darted out in front of him, snatching it away.

It was the first time in the weeks since Voldemort had been slain that Severus had witnessed such a spark of life in him, and before he could really even process what had just happened, Harry was clutching the hoodie to his chest, eyes closed tightly and head hung low over it.

It definitely didn’t seem like a good idea to throw the clothing out anytime soon.

Severus stared at him, unsure of what to do. The piece of clothing obviously held some sort of sentimental value to the child, but should he allow him to fawn over it like this? Well, he certainly wasn’t going to take it away from him. As much as he would like to see the boy wake from his usual state of dissolution, the last thing they needed was to have a screaming match.

He continued unpacking, it was mostly just clothing and a few toiletries but there was a Walkman and a single cassette tape buried underneath the t-shirts.

Funny, he had never taken Harry for the music type. Then again, he supposed that no one at Hogwarts really seemed to be. Every year Muggleborns tried to smuggle in their electronics, but of course they just didn’t work around so much magic. Because of that, it was a bit difficult to picture any of the students just popping an earbud in and listening to their tunes.

There were no earbuds with the Walkman, though. Severus assumed that the healers had taken them away, as the long wires of the headphones could prove to be a hazard for someone in Harry’s… condition. Severus admittedly didn’t know much about the devices, but he was almost certain that the music couldn’t be heard without headphones plugged in, for there were no outer speakers, so it was pretty much useless now. He set the music player and the cassette tape over on the nightstand.

Once the bag was empty, he folded the clothing and put it away in the wardrobe. He glanced over at Harry who still seemed to be residing in another world and left him alone for a moment to put the boy’s toiletries away in the bathroom.

He was gone for less than a minute, but when he returned to the bedroom, the boy was curled up on top of the covers, his head resting on the pillow, fingers still gripping the hoodie like a beloved childhood plushie.

It was still fairly early in the evening, but not too early for bed, Severus supposed. He knew that the boy wouldn’t eat dinner in this state anyway, so he draped a blanket over him and watched as his breathing evened out and he fell into a deep sleep.

He cast monitoring charms and spared one last glance at the broken child he had taken in before turning the light out and exiting the room.

Severus had always been a very perspective person. Discovering flaws and weaknesses was his specialty, pointing them out was a flaw of his own. He had always been a stickler for the details, for as long as he could remember.

But yet somehow he was only just now starting to realize that there was a lot more to Harry Potter than he could have ever imagined.