Albus sends him to collect the letter from the Letter Room—a place that Severus has never heard of before. He’s put in the supremely infuriating position of having to ask Albus where the fuck it is, at which point Albus shrugs and says, “I don’t know.”

Severus stares. He demands, “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I’ve never been there,” Albus says flippantly.

“If you’ve never been there then how am I supposed to find it?”

Albus shrugs again. “I would suggest going to the place where the letters for muggleborns are deposited but, well, Mr. Potter isn’t a muggleborn so the letter won’t be sent there. Your best bet is to find the Letter Room and intercept a newly-written letter.” He pauses. “Or, I suppose, you could snatch an owl already carrying a letter to Mr. Potter out of the air but I suspect that may be more of a hassle than it’s worth…”

“Why am I doing this?” Severus despairs. “Surely someone else would be more fit for the job? Literally anyone else?” Albus is well-aware of Severus’s undying hatred for James Potter and all things related to him. Considering how “James Potter” is literally in Harry James Potter’s name, the boy doesn’t stand a chance. Severus is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt but he has the undying suspicion that the boy has messy black hair and wire-rim glasses and a stupid expression, just like his father.

Albus says, “I’m sorry, Severus, but Hagrid injured his ankle and everyone else is busy at the moment.”

Ugh.

---

It takes him several hours of unfolding, refolding, and un-refolding the Official Hogwarts Map before Severus manages to locate the Letter Room. The problem with the Official Hogwarts Map is that the listed rooms and corridors have a tendency to…move. The actual rooms and corridors themselves are stationary relative to each other, of course, but the Official Hogwarts Map represents the reality of the situation, which is that the corridors and rooms are, indeed, moving, just as they should in any self-respecting castle.

So, when Severus finally finds the Letter Room in an accessible location, he drops everything and rushes toward it. He does not know the Permanent Route to the room but the map provides the Current Route, which should work despite such pesky things like Physics and Common Sense.

The location ends up changing twice more before Severus finally happens upon it. It’s in an ancient corner of the castle, a wing that he doubts has seen the light of day in the past several centuries—or something like that, considering how the windows lead to a pitch black nothingness outside when it should be a sunny afternoon—and when he locates the door, he finds it caked in cobwebs.

Severus stands in front of it for a moment, wondering if this is really all worth it. Maybe he’ll just go back to Dumbledore and tell him that he refuses to go through with this errand. What’s the worst the old man can do? Fire him? Severus would skip out of the castle with glee. Maybe he’ll cut the middleman and just quit.

Bottling away his vivid fantasy of doing just that, Severus vanishes the cobwebs with his wand before opening the door. It lets out a creak of agony, leading into a dark abyss not unlike the one outside the windows.

Severus’s gaze narrows. “Fuck you,” he declares, waltzing in, casting a quick Lumos.

He is confronted with…Things. He is not entirely sure what they are, just that they are certainly humanoid and as short as house-elves but decidedly not house-elves. They’re actually tiny humans—he would think they’re children if not for their distinctly adult-like proportions. They wear clothes with many different patterns and colors, not a single one managing to be have a cohesive and visually pleasing outfit. Worst of all—they have no faces, just a smooth expanse at the front of their heads.

When he enters the Letter Room, they all turn to look at him in unison.

Severus swallows. “I…I need a letter for Harry James Potter.”

There is a moment of stillness before the Things burst into action, silent if not for the sounds of paper and movement. He spies a few bumping into each other, others jumping up and down in what appears to be joy, and others still ignoring him entirely, presumably penning out letters to other prospective Hogwarts students.

One Thing finally approaches him, brandishing a letter addressed to Harry J. Potter. Severus accepts it with a nod and quiet ‘Thank you’ which has the Thing also vibrating in what Severus assumes (hopes) is happiness. He takes the opportunity to take a closer look at the Thing and realizes—

The Thing is not wearing clothes. None of them are wearing clothes. What he had assumed to be “clothes” is actually skin which fuses into the normal-looking skin.

Severus gets the fuck out of there as soon as possible, only feeling a little bad at the Things’ visible disappointment.

---

Because of his horror, he doesn’t actually read the letter until he’s standing on the seashore. The descriptor of “Hut on the Rock, England” is far from descriptive and so Severus had to commandeer a Hogwarts owl after all, following it on the school’s awful brooms right up until it he’d gotten too close to it and it got fed up with him, dropping the letter on the ground and pecking him right on his nose. He’d shooed it off with a snarl and it went willingly. Now Severus—dripping wet because the storm had started before he’d been able to spell himself a barrier—is holding a muddy letter, standing on the shore of a raging sea mere minutes before midnight.

It’s almost the Boy Who Refuses To Read His Fucking Letter’s birthday. He better not hope Severus is going to give him a present because all Severus has the physical and emotional capacity to offer him is a stilted silence.

He can make out the outline of the Hut but it’s mostly obscured by the raging sea. Since he can’t get a clear picture of it, Severus can’t apparate there safely. With great reluctance, he bangs on the door of the dock-keeper, who answers with a bleary scowl.

“Whad’ya want?” the old man slurs.

“Ferry me to the Hut,” Severus yells over the storm.

“You with the crazy whale-lookin’ man?” the old man asks.

Severus doesn’t know who he’s referring to but still says, “Yes!”

The old man scowls. “Ferry yourself!” And then he slams the door shut in Severus’s face.

When further banging does not rouse the old man again, Severus stalks over to the dock to figure out what to do. There, he finds a single boat—barely a rowboat, holding onto its last breath of life. It likely won’t survive the night. It’s this or taking his chances apparting.

Severus takes the boat.

As a seven-year-old, Draco Malfoy had a brief phase where he couldn’t get enough of the naval arts. His parents, whipped as they are, had thrown him a ship-themed birthday party, and Severus had been forced to attend. He’d learned many nautical facts against his will that day, but now he finds himself grateful because it’s only due to the party that Severus actually makes it to the Hut.

He stumbles off the wooden death trap, collapsing to the ground and barely stopping himself from kissing the earth. He’ll be able to Apparate back to the mainland, leaving the boat here—just as the wretched dock keeper deserves, dammit.

Grumbling to himself, Severus makes his way over to the tiny Hut and knocks on the door.

No answer.

Severus knocks harder, impatience getting the better of him, only for the damned thing to collapse on him. Honestly, he’s not surprised that the rest of the Hut hadn’t collapsed with it—it’s a flimsy two-room monstrosity that probably breaks every housing code in England. Briefly, Severus wonders why in Merlin’s name the Harry Potter would be in this dump, but then his eyes adjust and he peers inside.

Two children are standing in the first room, shaking in fear. One is a rotund young man that Severus finds vaguely familiar and he almost assumes that is Harry Potter before he turns to the other boy and—

Lanky build. Black hair. Wire-rim glasses. Green eyes.

“You!” he snarls.

Potter flinches away. “M-Me?” he stammers.

“I need to have a word with you, Mr. Potter!” says Severus.

Before he can take a single step into the Hut, though, he hears a voice call, “Not a step farther!” When he turns to look, he finds himself on the wrong end of a rifle, a large (and admittedly whale-ish) man holding it in his direction. So that’s what the dock keeper meant.

Severus scowls at the man. “I have no business with you. I need to speak with Harry James Potter.”

Another figure creeps into view—petit and quivering—and then everything freezes as Severus finds himself making eye-contact with Petunia Evans.

“You!” cries Petunia.

“You!” cries Severus.

“What?” asks the rotund boy.

“At least he’s not talking about me anymore,” says Potter.

“Get out of my house!” Petunia declares, all her fear gone and replaced with rage.

Severus says, “A hovel in the middle of nowhere, Tuney? You really have moved up in the world…”

Petunia flushes. “This—this is just for vacation. I have a lovely house. Tell him, Vernon!”

The whale-ish man—Vernon, apparently—looks confused but still says, “We have a lovely house. Suburban beauty. Won the best front lawn competition three years in a row.” The gun is still trained on him.

“Besides,” says Petunia, “what does it matter to you, anyway? I heard you’re teaching at that freakish school of yours! And you were raised in a slum! You wouldn’t know good housing if it bit you on your abnormally large nose!”

Severus had long since become immune to jabs at his nose but for some reason when it comes from Petunia’s mouth, it awakens an ancient rage that hasn’t seen the light of day since his childhood. “Still bullying people for their socioeconomic status, I see. But enough about me—didn’t you say that you wanted to be a nurse? How did that work out?” Severus pauses. “Oh, my apologies—I forgot that you couldn’t even get into university.”

Petunia goes red. “Don’t talk to me about university, Severus Snape! My husband works in management! He’s respectable! You are just a schoolteacher at a school for nonsense!”

While Severus personally agrees with that last statement, he refuses to give in to Petunia Evans. He says, “I am an accomplished academic with papers published in reputable journals around the world! And your husband—what does he do? Boss people around?”

“He does more than that! Tell him, Vernon!”

Vernon, who now looks completely confounded, lowers his rifle and demands, “You two know each other?”

Petunia suddenly goes embarrassed and shame-faced. “This man,” she says with disdain, “used to live on the other side of my hometown—the rotten, ugly part, of course, where the factory workers lived. I lived on the good side of town, with the managers’ families.” She says that bit with pride, as if she has personally accomplished something by being born to middle-class parents rather than the working-class trash Severus was raised by. Petunia continues, “He’s one of those freakish people—just like my sister! He’s the one who dragged her into all that nonsense!”

Lily would have come to Hogwarts regardless of whether or not Severus had befriended her and Petunia knows it.

Vernon glares at him. “I don’t want any of this nonsense in my presence. Get out.”

“I will,” Severus grits out, “after I speak to Mr. Potter.”

Vernon growls, “He’s not going with you and he’s not going to the freakish school of yours. Out!”

Severus, enraged, finally gives in to his temptation and pulls out a wand. “You really want to do this, Tuney?” he calls, ignoring Vernon entirely. “You know that you have no say in the matter! You never did! You’re just bitter that you never had magic!”

And then Petunia goes red and purple and pale white, screeching, “GET OUT!”

“Not until I speak to Potter!”

“Um,” Potter squeaks out then, “you’ll leave if I talk to you?”

“You’re not talking to him!” Vernon spits at Potter. “He’s a madman! A delinquent like your parents! There’s nothing for you to talk to him about and there’s no such thing as magic!”

There is so much to unpack in that statement but Severus focuses on one, very specific aspect of it. He levels a wand at Vernon and snarls, “Lily Evans was not a delinquent!” He spares no energy on defending James Potter, who very much was a delinquent.

Petunia says, “She went and got herself killed! Nearly had the boy killed, too! Off talking nonsense, marrying a freak right out of school!”

Petunia had arguably done the same thing but Severus says, “Her death was not her fault! It’s not as if she was asking to be murdered!”

“Murdered?” Potter asks. “I thought my mum and dad died in a car crash!”

“Car crash?” Severus asks. “They were murdered by the Dark Lord!”

“The one you served!” cries Petunia. It’s the first thing she’s said that’s made sense.

Severus winces and responds, “I was acquitted.”

“You—you called my sister that awful name, too. That name you call people like her!” Another fair point. Severus is losing ground.

He says, “I apologized for that, but that’s beside the point. I have been appointed by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore to give Harry Potter his Hogwarts letter, seeing as he has deigned not to read any of them so far.” Though, from the looks of it, Severus expects that Petunia and Vernon were the ones not allowing him to. “Let me give him the letter and ensure he reads it and I will go.”

“For the last time, the boy will not be going to that wretched school of yours! We’re normal, decent people and—and if he goes then we won’t accept him back!”

And Severus Snape, card-carrying Slytherin, praised by Dumbledore for his quick-thinking and cool demeanor during times of crisis, makes a rash decision in a moment of rage. “Fine!” he spits. “Potter is coming with me and he will not be coming back!” He turns to Potter. “Gather your things so we can go!”

Potter is staring at him with wide eyes. It’s that same dumb expression that used to come on James Potter’s face and Severus is already regretting his decision but he refuses to give in now. As the silence grows longer, it finally occurs to him that, perhaps, Potter may be frightened by the prospect by going somewhere with a strange man he doesn’t know. But then Potter whispers, “You knew my mum?”

Severus, teeth grit, says, “Yes.”

There’s a beat of silence, then, “All right. I’ll go with you.”

And so Severus finds himself holding a conjured umbrella over the eleven-year-old son of his former enemy and ex-best friend, gripping his arm tightly as the boy carries his possessions—all of which fit in a single bag.

Severus asks the boy, “Have you ever been Side-Along Apparated before?”

Potter asks, “What’s Apparition?”

Severus sighs. “Teleportation.”

“Wicked!”

Sealing his eyes shut, he says, “Hold onto my arm and don’t let go. This will be unpleasant. When we land, make sure to aim away from me.”

Puzzled, the boy asks, “What do you mean?”

Rather than responding, Severus simply Apparates. When they reach the mainland, Potter vomits right onto his shoes.

Well, he has only himself to blame. That wretched ego of his, always ruining the day…