“Woah,” Harry breathed, sitting up on his knees as he gazed at the starry illusion above his canopy bed. “It’s brilliant.”

“My wand work has been said to be rather magnificent,” Severus murmured, only half teasing. He had created a fairly beautiful display to act as a nightlight for Harry.

Harry laughed in that gentle and innocent way that made Severus’ heart swell just a little bit more every time he heard it. He was unsure how he could possibly be the one to revoke such a joyful-sounding reaction from the boy, but he didn’t mind it all that much.

The origin cause of this moment, however, did make him frown.

Harry had his first session with the mind healer, Claire, earlier in the afternoon. She was a friendly-looking woman in her mid to late forties, a witch, but one that had chosen to live her life fairly far removed from wizarding society. It had been a little difficult to convince her to come to Hogwarts for Harry’s sessions, but Severus was nothing if not persuasive.

While it was a fair bit awkward to begin with, the boy had started with his endless chattering with little prompting. Severus hadn’t planned on staying but both Claire and Harry agreed that he should stay for the first session while they got to know one another.

She had referred to Severus as Harry’s guardian which seemed to startle the boy, but surely not nearly as much as it did him. He was perhaps still reeling from that causal assumption even hours later.

Claire had started with a simple topic, how school was going and how he was adjusting to his classes. However, it soon became clear that it wasn’t all that simple of a topic to start with after all.

The boy hadn’t been terribly forward about any of it, but by the end of the session, Severus was in the midst of making plans to discuss behavioral issues with his Slytherins. But first, he’d decided to focus on trying to help with Harry’s apparent fear of the dark.

“I’m not afraid of the dark, exactly,” Harry had said as his cheeks began to color. “It’s just… I used to always sleep in a dark cupboard and I didn’t mind it all that much, really, but well, I’ve always just had a bit of trouble falling asleep in pitch darkness and now sometimes if I wake up in the night and it’s really dark I kind of…”

“You worry that you might be back in the cupboard?” Claire had offered gently.

Harry then nodded hesitantly and if Severus was striving to theoretically burn down #4 Privet Drive in Harry’s mind (though doing so literally as well might not be all that terrible of an idea), he thought that he should shed some light on the subject.

So, after first discussing it with Claire to assure himself that he wouldn’t be stunting Harry’s emotional growth or something along those lines, he’d decided to cast something resembling a Lumos in the canopy of Harry’s bed in the Hufflepuff dorms. Though he supposed it was a fair sight off from the Lumos spell, as it did not emit from the wand and perhaps a simulation of the solar system, there was light all the same.

Placing it solely above Harry’s bed where it could hide with the curtains ensured that it wouldn’t bother any other students should they prefer the darkness. Though Harry had already promised him that he would ask his dormmates if they would like Professor Snape to do the same for them because he was such a nice teacher.

Mhm.

“Thank you, Professor Snape,” Harry said sincerely, breaking Severus out of his musings. He had that starry-eyed thing going on once again, even more so now illuminated by the artificial stars above, and Severus gave a stiff nod before making a show of looking anywhere that wasn’t his young companion. His eyes landed on a stuffed bear lying propped up against the pillows near the headrest and his eyebrows furrowed.

“Where did you get this?” Severus asked, picking up the toy. Surely the boy’s horrible relatives hadn’t given it to him.

Harry shrugged in response. “Gary gave it to me.”

It was strange how quickly one could react without really thinking their actions all the way through. Severus banished it on the spot. Harry’s mouth dropped open.

“I- that’s my teddy bear you can’t just-” he sputtered.

“Anything he gave you, I can just,” Severus sniped.

Harry’s eyes filled with tears. Severus sighed. Maybe he had been a bit rash.

“I’ll get you a new bear, just calm down,” he said as the boy turned away to hide his face.

“Why is it okay for you to give me a teddy bear and not him?!” Harry asked, voice wobbling.

Oh. Severus really wasn’t doing great with the good examples at the moment. It was different, though, and Harry needed to understand that lest he be confused about people and their intentions for the rest of his life.

“Harry, it’s not that simple,” Severus muttered. He imagined they would be having several conversations like this before the message would finally sink in, if it ever would. “Here, just- look at me.” he continued when the child turned his face back to him, eyes red.

“It’s acceptable for me to give you a gift because I have nothing but your best interests in mind When… Gary,” he struggled not to spit the name out, “gave you gifts, it was to manipulate your trust for his own gain. I know that it’s difficult to understand, but he didn’t care for you. Not in the way that is appropriate for an adult to care for a child.”

“You keep saying stuff like that, but it’s just not true!” Harry burst out. “He’s the only person who has ever cared about me at all!”

Severus sighed, running a hand over his face. “It seems that way, because of the abhorrent way your relatives treated you. Had they raised you as they should have, you would have an easier time understanding good versus bad intentions.”

“Well they didn’t and I don’t,” Harry huffed.

Severus offered a sad little smile. “I know. I’m hopeful that someday you might see things differently, however.”

Harry looked away yet again. “I just… I don’t see what was so wrong about it all. I mean yeah I didn’t like some things, but he was really nice most of the time…”

Don’t snap, don’t snap, don’t snap. He doesn’t know any better. Severus searched his mind for child-friendly words to help with this conversation but came up with nothing. Besides, it seemed a joke to try to childproof this for a child who had actually been through it.

“Harry, you were taken advantage of and used. Gary Weatherman violated you in the absolute worst way possible, there is no situation in which it can possibly be okay for an adult to touch a child in the ways that he touched you.”

“But he cares about me,” Harry argued weakly.

“I care about you. We have known each other for well over a month now, and have I ever asked you to do something like that?”

“Well, no, but it took Gary a while to get around to it himself.”

Severus decided to take a moment to focus solely on his breathing in an effort to keep from screaming. He should have killed that man. He didn’t deserve to share the same air as Harry. He should have gone ahead and crushed every bone in his body before digging a ditch and kicking his barely breathing body into it. He should have filled the hole with fertilizer full of pesticides for good measure.

“Would you like me to swear an oath to never touch you in that way?” Severus asked once he’d calmed himself with those heartwarming thoughts. “Because I’m more than willing.”

Harry’s head snapped up. “What? No! I’m not- I don’t think you’ll-”

“Good,” said Severus. “Because I will not, ever.”

“Alright, yeah,” said Harry, wrapping his arms around himself. “Okay, so why exactly do you care about me? Do you really not want anything from me?”

“The only thing I want from you is for you to live.” Severus’ endgame really hadn’t changed much even now that he had grown slightly fond of the boy. At the end of the day, his reason for living would always be to keep Harry living. “It is your life, and as long as you are not causing harm to yourself or others, you may do whatever you’d please with it.”

“Well I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone,” Harry responded, frowning.

“I know,” Severus chuckled. “Though refraining from hurting yourself is just as important.”

“I can do that, I think.”

“Just as long as you try… I’ll be proud of you either way.”

“...Proud of me?”

Severus blinked.

He was exhausted. Between teaching his classes, keeping up with grading essays, visiting with unsavory Muggles, and dealing with an emotionally drained eleven-year-old, well, it was all causing him to feel extremely drained himself.

But he was also extremely proud, which he found to be an odd feeling to have, and to have it directed at James Potter’s son… it was unexpected, to say the least. But yet it was there.

The boy was brave but kind, an absolute chatterbox that somehow wasn’t exactly annoying, intelligent without being insufferable and he had been through teetotal hell yet still came out with a smile and bright eyes.

Harry Potter defied all expectations.

“Yes, Mr. Potter,” Severus said. “I am very proud of you.”

Harry started to smile as the door burst open and Justin Finch-Fletchley stumbled into the room. He didn’t glance over at them as he made a sprint towards his own bed where he rummaged through his trunk for something.

“Heya, Harry,” he greeted absently, apparently aware that he was there without looking. “Are you sure you don’t want to come outside and play with Ernie and me? It’s really nice out today and he drug his Wizard’s Chest set out there, we’ve been playing that all day though so now I’m just looking for the card set I brought with me. Can you believe that Ernie’s never played Go Fish? And everyone here says that Muggles are strange… Ah-ha, I found them!”

Finch-Fletchley jumped up from where he was crouched on the floor and spun around to face Harry, though his eyes widened significantly once he took in the sight of Severus sitting next to him.

“Oh- oh my- what- Professor Snape, what are you doing in my dorm room?”

“We’re playing Go Fish,” Severus offered drily.

“But- you- you don’t have any cards.”

Severus raised an eyebrow. “Are you certain about that?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t see them but I guess I couldn’t swear to it…”

“Then you are simply presuming. Now, why don’t you run along from here as you do when passing me in the hallways?”

Finch-Fletchley gaped like a fish for a moment before hightailing it out of there. “See ya, Harry!” he threw over his shoulder.

Harry promptly burst into a fit of giggles. “Professor Snape, you’re so funny!”

Severus rolled his eyes. “Am I?”

“Yes! Justin was all like-” Harry couldn’t seem to finish his sentence and opted to snort to fill the gap. He’d apparently been hit by a laughing jinx as he did not seem to be able to control himself.

Somehow in the midst of all of this, his head landed on Severus’ shoulder and did not retract itself. Severus wondered if there would always be a part of him that’s first instinct was to push it off of him, but he tried to focus on the part of his brain that wasn’t completely bothered by the action. Then he reflected on how strange it was that a part like that existed in him at all.

Harry’s presence in his life had been... unexpected. Of course, he’d known for the past decade that the child would someday soon come to Hogwarts, but he had been prepared to despise his existence. He had despised the very idea of him, but somehow…

Severus was unsure of when and how everything had changed. It seemed the past few weeks were nothing more than a whirlwind, though he distinctly remembered when Albus had asked him to hand-deliver Harry Potter’s acceptance letter, and Severus had griped and groaned about it even if a small part of himself was perhaps curious of the child.

He’d traveled to Surrey expecting to find a prince sitting on a throne in his castle but instead had found a little boy in rags with a cupboard for a bedroom. The tale had spun from The Princess and the Pea to Cinderella so quickly it nearly had given him whiplash.

He was aware that he should have pushed the boy away long ago, but he just couldn’t seem to bring himself to do it. At first, he had kept him around out of obligation, maybe because of Albus, maybe because of Lily, maybe because Severus himself was the reason why Harry lost his parents and grew up the way that he did. At some point, the obligation he’d held had somehow shifted to something along the lines of… fondness.

Severus Snape was somewhat perhaps just maybe slightly fond of Harry Potter.

By the time his mind shifted back to the present, Harry’s giggles had faded and he seemed to be on the cusp of falling asleep while leaning onto Severus if not there already. Seemingly out of his own violation, Severus’ hand reached out to run through a messy mop of black hair.

He still wasn’t completely sure how or why it had happened, but it definitely had and he could deny it no longer. Severus stared wide-eyed at the mustard yellow walls of the Hufflepuff dorm room, wondering how the hell he ended up here and why he truly didn’t seem to mind it at all.