Somehow Severus did make it out of the house, unicorn and pensieve in hand, and he went straight to Hogwarts and to the headmaster’s office.

“Severus, please do come in. Did you find anything of use in Godric’s Hollow?” Albus greeted the man kindly as he appeared in the doorway.

“James Potter’s pensieve. I don’t know if there are any memories that could help you. I only saw one and it was of very personal nature,” Severus explained, setting the ceramic bowl on the desk. He then noticed that he was still holding the plush toy and seeing Albus’s raised eyebrows, knew it hadn’t escaped the notice of the older man.

“And what was this memory, if I may ask?”

“The birth of my son and the death of my wife… and of my niece.”

“Niece?”

“Lily Potter gave birth to a girl… she was stillborn. Marguerite died while giving birth to a healthy baby boy.”

“Severus, are you saying-”

“I’m saying James Potter switched the babies. Harry James Potter is Harold Elias Snape… my son.”

“Harry Potter is a carbon copy of James.”

“And James is a male copy of Marguerite… but even so, no child of two parents should be a copy of only one.”

“Neither you are Marguerite had green eyes.”

“James put glamours over any trait that could be considered a Snape one. It’s all in the pensieve.” Severus kept his head up and hid any emotion that could be considered weak. “Headmaster… Albus, I will be going to Privet Drive and I will retrieve what is rightfully mine.”

“Severus, Harry is not a possession for you to claim. He is a boy, a young boy that you seemed to despise until just now. How can you care for him with your past relationship being how it was?” Albus asked the obvious question as he circled his desk to stand in front of the troubled young man.

“I-…. I don’t- I can’t despise him.” Severus realized as he tried to find an explanation, “Albus, I don’t know him.” He collapsed into a chair. “I don’t know my son. I don’t hate him… I don’t know him, but he is my son and I will.. I do love him. I just don’t know yet if I will be able to like him. I’m not making any sense.” He buried his face in his hands.

“You will learn to like him as you get to know him. And I am confident that he will love you when he knows who you were and who you can be.”

“No… that boy hates me.”

“Harry is incapable of hate. He merely dislikes his potions master. He will overcome this… Harry has an astounding capability to forgive. I imagine that the knowledge of living family will be enough to start him down that path.”

“No, I can’t tell him. He can’t know until I have gained his trust so that I can explain how it all came to be this way. “

Albus leaned back against his desk and looked at Severus for a minute before nodding his head.

“Very well. That is your decision to make. I will take care of the legalities. I know some… very discreet people. How do you wish to explain to Harry why you now have guardianship of him?”

“I will simply inform him that it is no longer safe at the Dursley house and that it has been decided, for his own safety, that I will be taking care of him.” Severus paused. “It really is safer for him. The blood wards… they never would have worked if there had been any problems… Lily’s blood was never in him.”

“Then we are lucky that you found out now rather than later.”

“Then you agree, it is for the best. I will go now and make a place for him in my home. He will be with me by the end of this week.” Without any further words, Severus nodded his farewell and left the room.

----

At 4 Privet Drive in Surrey, Harry Potter was having a bad summer. Threatening the Dursleys with his newly discovered escaped convict godfather hadn’t worked out quite as well as he’d hoped. Apparently, Petunia had heard at least enough while growing up with Lily to know that wizards sent to Azkaban had their wands snapped. Therefore, she and Vernon feel that the threat of Sirius wasn’t much of one and for Harry’s threat, he was punished by having to move back into the cupboard for the rest of the summer.

The cupboard seemed too cramped at first and Harry realized that he must have grown since he’d been moved from the cupboard. It was a small and welcome distraction as Harry thought he hadn’t grown at all because he was still the shortest in his class. But small and cramped as the space was, he soon got used to it and grew to like the safety that he felt in it’s confines.

A few days after summer started, Harry realized that it would be a bad one. He was ignored and left in the cupboard except for bathroom breaks for the first two days. On the third, he was given a small meal and a list of chores. In between chore/meal days, he was given fruit wedges and he drank water during his bathroom breaks

Any other summer, Harry was used to being mildly neglected and overworked, but Vernon had made Harry send Hedwig away for the whole summer so the Dursley’s knew that there would be no way for Harry to inform anyone of their stepped up mistreatment.

This continued up until one morning in the middle of July.

Harry awoke feeling sticky with sweat as the central air conditioning never really reached inside of his cupboard. He heard a voice coming from the front room and it wasn’t any of the Dursleys. His first thought was that the house was being robbed, but then he recognized the person as the voice got closer.

“Professor Snape!” Harry yelled out. He didn’t care at the moment that the person on the other side of the door usually seemed to hate him as much as his relatives. So far, in the three years that he’s known him, the professor had not tried to lock him in anywhere or starve him. As much as the man seemed to hate Harry, he’d always ended up saving his life at least once a year.

“Potter, where are you?” Severus had come to the house and found it empty when he’d knocked on the door, but the general location charm he’d used said that Harry was somewhere in the house so he entered on his own.

“Cupboard under the stairs.” Harry called out. Severus smirked and leaned against the staircase railing, thinking to himself that things never seemed to change. At Hogwarts, Harry was always getting himself in trouble or running into danger. And here on summer holiday, somehow the boy had managed to get himself stuck in a cupboard.

“How did you get yourself locked in there?” Severus asked as he brought his wand up. He muttered, “Alohamora” and the locks gave way. When the door swung open, the smirk fell from his face. Harry wasn’t just stuck in the cupboard, he was sitting on a worn mattress in what looked to be a makeshift bedroom.

“What is this? You sleep here?” He asked. He saw Harry’s face flush with embarrassment and that was answer enough for him.

Harry was grateful for the fresh cool air that the open door brought in, despite his embarrassment at being found like this, but he couldn’t help but wonder why the professor was even there at all.

“Professor, is there something wrong? Why are you here?” he asked as he crawled out of the small space and stood to his full height.

“It is no longer as safe in this house as was though-” Severus was interrupted for a moment by a small snort form Harry, “and so it has been decided that I am to be your new guardian.”

“My new… what?” Harry asked, dumbly. For a moment he thought his professor just claimed to be his new guardian.

“Are you deaf as well as blind?” Severus asked, pausing to wonder if Harry’s eyeglasses were because of Harry’s own bad eyesight or another spell cast by James. He sighed and shook his head. “Yes, I’m your guardian. We’ll be leaving right away as soon as you pack.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry nodded, obediently. He reached back into the cupboard and pulled his trunk from a corner at the foot of the mattress. Then he grabbed a knapsack and the old beat up pillow from the bed.

“You will, of course, be provided with pillows in your new room,” Severus commented with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, I just… it’s something familiar,” Harry explained as he clutched the pillow to his chest. “Well, this is it. I’m ready, I mean. I like to keep my clothes packed at all times just in case…”

“In case…?”

“Well, summer before second year, the Weasley’s broke me out and I had to pack quite quick. Last summer… well, I had to leave quickly then, too.”

Severus knew of Harry’s stay with the Weasley’s that summer, but was a little wary of how Harry phrased his departure from Privet Drive. He was also pretty sure that the boy’s trouble with under-age magic the year before had to do with his hasty trip to Diagon Alley. There wasn’t much about the boy that the professor’s didn’t know about.

“What of your other belongings?” Severus asked, furrowing his brows at the boy standing in front of him.

“Other?”

“Yes, Mr. Potter. Toys, knick-knacks, anything else that children collect these days,” Severus sighed, “You won’t be returning here, so don’t forget anything.”

“Oh, it’s all here in my trunk. Really, this is it. I’m ready.” Harry was embarrassed by his lack of personal belongings, but was eager to be anywhere that was away from Privet Drive even if that meant staying with Snape.

“Very well.” Severus nodded. He pulled out a wand and shrank Harry’s trunk for travel and handed it to Harry. Then he pulled a can out of his pocked and held it out for Harry to grab onto.

“Irn-Bru?” Harry asked, confused.

“It’s a portkey. Grab hold and don’t let go.”

“Sir?”

“Just-” Severus stopped and grabbed Harry’s hand and place it on the can, activating the portkey.

Harry felt a pull at his navel and colors blurred. He shut his eyes tightly as a wave of dizziness overtook him and he fell to his knees, letting go of the can.

“What the- what was that for?” Harry sputtered angrily, holding his belongings to his stomach almost scared to open his eyes.

“I assume the Dursley house is not connected to the floo network, therefore this was the easiest way to travel with a minor,” Severus explained, watching the child on the ground with mild concern.

“What?” Harry opened his eyes and was surprised to find himself in the living room of a large and unfamiliar house. “Oh…”

“Oh?” Severus’s eyebrow managed to hike up again as he grabbed Harry’s hand once more and helped him up. “Don’t tell me that was your first time using a portkey.”

“Alright, I won’t.” Harry shrugged. He lifted his eyes to his professor and sighed, “Professor, I was raised by muggles. I’ve never heard of a portkey before just now. Everyone expects me to just know this stuff. I didn’t even know who Voldemort was or how my parents died until Hagrid told me… and then you made fun of me because I didn’t know the answers to all those questions you asked during our first class. They certainly don’t teach about bezoars and aconite in muggle chemistry… which they don’t even teach eleven year olds anyway!” Harry brought his rambling rant to an end, blushing at his own little speech.

“Are you quite finished?” Severus asked, sounding almost amused. Harry nodded. “And what of your muggle-born friend, Ms. Granger?”

“Hermione definitely doesn’t count. She not only reads her books, she memorizes them. Besides, her parents probably actually encourage her to learn more about magic. I wouldn’t even want to think of what would happen if Uncle Vernon saw me studying a text book about any sort of magic.”

“Yes… well now that you are here, I do expect you to study during your summer holiday. Maybe you’ll learn enough to finally brew a decent potion.” Severus attempted a joke, not knowing how he could interact with Harry to gain his favor. The joke failed to amuse the young child and Severus belatedly realized that he would have been taken too seriously because of all the insults he’d thrown at Harry in the past. Before retrieving Harry, he’d thought of buying him his affections with lots of presents but he didn’t think it would do any good to spoil the boy more than he’d been spoiled in the past. Now that he’d seen Harry’s little cupboard, he knew the boy wasn’t spoiled at all. The present idea was still no good though because it seemed that Harry owned so little that Severus needed to buy almost all new things for the boy anyway.

“So where is here?” Harry asked, now taking a chance to study his surroundings. He looked around the living room and he could see the second floor hall above him and in front of him was a large sitting area with opened up to a dining room.

“It’s proper name is Salazar’s Sanctuary, but it is my home away from Hogwarts. It is yours now also and you may refer to it as such.”

“Salazar… as in Slytherin?” Harry asked.

“Yes. My wife’s family is descended from the Slytherin founder.” Severus answered stiffly. He knew that Harry deserved to know about the Potter line, but he didn’t know if he could remain emotionally controlled if he were forced to talk about it.

“You have a wife?”

“I did.”

“You did- oh… sorry.” Harry winced. He was curious as to how Snape’s wife could have been a descendent of Slytherin because Harry thought that Tom Riddle was the only one, but he decided to let the topic go for now.

“As am I,” Severus whispered. The, shaking his head as if to clear it, he waved his hand about to motion around the house. “This is the living area. Straight ahead is the dining area. The hall to the left leads to the kitchen and the library. The hall to the right of the dining area leads to my potions lab and storage room. The door to our immediate right leads to a work out room. Behind and to our left is a bathroom.”

He walked in that direction and Harry followed. They turned inward away from the bathroom and Harry found himself following up a spiral stairway. On the second floor, they walked to the end of the walkway and stopped.

“This is my room. That is my office next to it. If that door is closed while I am inside, knock first. If it is open, you are free to enter. The other rooms on this side are spare rooms. The door directly across from my bedroom is your bedroom. You may go and unpack. To resize your trunk, just tap the lock twice. I will leave you now to get your room ready and acquaint yourself with your new surroundings.” There was an awkward moment of silence before Severus slipped into his office and left Harry alone in the hallway.

As Harry started to walk away toward his room, he heard a soft click and turned back in time to see the office door open just a crack and stay that way. He couldn’t help but smirk a little before going to his own room.