After the dishes were all washed and put away, Harry waited anxiously to see what his father would do next. Snape, not catching on to his son’s excitement, walked from the kitchen, his son in tow, and merely sat down in the parlor, and began to read a small book. The boy frowned in disappointment. He had thought they were going to do something…well, more exciting than this!

“I thought you said we were going to go explore the town,” Harry said, hoping that he did not sound too disappointed with the turn of events.

“We are,” the Potions Master nodded, not even bothering to look in the boy’s direction.

“Then why aren’t we going?” the young wizard asked, hoping this was not some sort of trick. Despite Snape being his father now, Harry knew that the man had a quirked sense of humor.

Looking up completely undisturbed, if not a bit annoyed, the professor closed his book and stared at the boy with a raised eyebrow. “I had thought you would want to change first,” he nodded to Harry. “Had I known you wanted to walk around Wales in not but your night attire, we would have left directly.”

Looking down at his own clothes, Harry blushed, realizing that he was indeed still in his pajamas. He had been so excited waking up to what he suspected would count as a normal morning for most, that he had completely forgotten about changing first. “Oh,” he muttered sheepishly. “I’ll, uh, be right back.”

Harry was so embarrassed with the events that he fled from the room, and did not look back. If he had, he would have seen a smirk of amusement on the stern, older wizard’s face. Despite what people tended to say and believe, Severus really did have a sense of humor, a fair one at that. But it was also true that he did indeed have a slightly…odd sense of humor that always got him in trouble. He still had a scar from Minerva to prove it.

In his room, Harry rushed in and shut the door before he rummaging through his clothes. He did have a few pairs of nicer clothes that he wore around Hogwarts, but the majority were from Dudley, the cow. But what should he wear when walking around in Wales? Or more importantly, when walking around with Snape!

Grabbing a pair of school pants, the young wizard decided that he should wear a pair of black slacks and a red, Gryffindor color shirt that he had bought to wear the day before a Quiddich match. But when he looked at himself in the mirror, Harry realized with some horror that he would be parading around like the perfect Gryffindor Snape always sneered about. The Potions Master hated Gryffindor, but Harry did not have any Slytherin green colors to please the man. What if-

“Pardon me,” the deep voice caught Harry by surprise, causing him to jump. When he turned around, the young wizard saw Snape standing in the doorway. When in Merlin’s name had he gotten there?

“Oh! Um, come in?” the fourteen year old looked around nervously, hoping things did not look too messy.

“Is that a question or given permission?” Snape frowned at the boy, who stood in the middle of the room.

“Permission?” Harry took a stab at a guess. Who knew what the wizard really wanted. Everyone knew that this professor was an enigma. No one ever knew what he wanted.

Nodding his head, Severus proceeded into the little bedroom. “You realize you will have to clean this when we get back?” he asked, looking at all the clothes thrown everywhere in slight disgust. 

Blushing again, Harry nodded. “Yeah, I know. I was just looking for something…nice to wear.”

Glancing around the room, taking in the condition of all the clothes, Severus realized that the child really did not have anything nice to wear. It was a sad business when the boy had to revert to his school clothes in order to make himself look passable to the rest of the world. Painful memories of his own childhood stood out in the Potions Master’s mind, but he promptly shoved them aside.

“Understanding,” the older wizard replied, not wanting his son to feel inadequate in front of him. “But now that you are dressed, I need you to come with me.”

Swallowing hard, Harry nodded and followed his father out of his bedroom and into the hall. They ended up back into the parlor where Severus ordered the younger wizard to sit, as he paced the room. This was not going to be easy for him, he realized, with him having a short temper, and Harry being a child that needed a lot more than just food and water. But he was determined to prove everyone wrong, and do what he could.

“Before we leave, I want to set up some ground rules,” the Potions Master stated, hands clasped behind his back. “First, please get ready before breakfast. There is no use in you wandering around all day in your pajamas.” Harry blushed again. “Along with that, you will wake up at a decent hour every morning. I have no patience for a slothful person that sits about all day doing nothing.”

“I don’t sit around all day,” Harry mumbled, feeling a little hurt at the statement.

“And you will not become one under my care,” Severus reassured. Some how, it did not make the younger wizard feel any better. “Second are chores.”

Here, Harry found himself becoming very nervous. Was Snape going to make him cook and clean like the Dursleys? Had the past few days just been a trick to get him to trust the older man? Would Snape make him sit on his hands and knees scrubbing the floors, or punish him if he did not clean fast enough?

“You will be expected to keep your room neat and organized,” the professor went on, unaware of his son’s distress. “And you will be expected to help with dinner by setting the table, or helping make a dish, and then helping me wash the dishes.

“It will also be up to you to pick up your things. I am not your maid,” Severus glared hard at the child, wanting to get his point across. “If you make a mess, then you clean it up. Unless you’re violently ill, I am not going to cater after you, but I will help you if you are unable to complete a task. You have only but to ask.”

As he listened to each set of rules, Harry found that they were not bad at all. The Dursleys had never given him guidelines and set rules. He had never known what was considered breaking the rules and what was not. At least Snape was making this a little bit like school, making all of this like an assignment. He could live with assignments.

“Now, along with all of this, you must remember that we are hiding from the wizarding world,” Snape stressed, making Harry feel like a two year old. “And because of that, there will be no magic done in this house hold, except when needed. You are not allowed to use it anyway, but it is twice as important now that you do not use it. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Harry fought hard against fidgeting under Snape’s powerful glare. The boy was convinced that his father could frighten Voldemort himself.

“I mean it,” the wizard went on, his eyes alight with seriousness and anger. “Not one spell, not one charm, nothing. The Ministry would be able to pinpoint our location in seconds. As this has all been improvised from the beginning, I have yet to figure out another place where we could go if found out here.”

Now the Potions Master seemed to be talking to himself, and he began to pace furiously again. “But that is none of your concern,” he waved it off. “I have several options,” he nodded more for himself than for Harry.

“So, we’re Muggles at all times, sir?” Harry spoke up.

The master wizard stopped his pacing and stared down at his child. Those eyes, those beautiful green eyes that made his heart both sing and bleed were looking up at him expectantly, trustingly! It had all been easier to dislike Harry when those green eyes had shown the same dislike back, but now it was all different. Those eyes were showing their tiredness, their hope, their fears. Severus could not hold on to the past much longer, he knew.

He was a fool when it came to Lily, anything about Lily. He had spent the whole night reading her journal, reading it faithfully until the last page. Severus had cried, he had tasted bitterness so fresh, so raw that he thought he would go mad. It had hurt him so much to read of his love’s anguish, her fear, her torment, and knowing that it had all been for nothing at all. He had been alive! He should have sought her out! But it was all in the past now, and all he could do was hold on to the child that she had left behind.

“Yes,” Severus hoped he wouldn’t choke. “Yes. You are to be a Muggle in the strictest sense. And although I will not use magic much, there may be times when I am required to use it, but you must not let on to the neighbors.”

Harry nodded enthusiastically. “I’m use to living like a Muggle, sir. Are we going now?”

A Muggle? More like a house elf, Severus thought resentfully, but he did not say as much. It still surprised the professor that this child had such spirit, such spunk left in him. After everything Harry had been through, it was a wonder the child had not turned out more…well, more like him. But the wizard could only bless Lily for that, as Harry seemed to have her general temperament.

“We will leave soon enough,” Severus snapped. With his growing sentimental thoughts, the wizard became more defensive, and he hid his feeling the only way he knew how; through his temper.

But he instantly regretted his words when he saw Harry’s face crumble and his green eyes look hurt. It looked far too much like Lily for Severus’s own comfort, and he found that he wanted to say something, to apologize even, but his pride and his inability to socialize properly, held his tongue. It always frustrated Snape to no end when he could not even admit to the little things. He had grown up far to quick and bitter than what was normal.

Starting up his pacing once more, the Potions Master tried hard not to look at his son’s deject form. “We need to discuss punishment.” Harry blanched. “If you fail to keep up with your chores, or neglect them all together, I will take away certain privileges accordingly, or I may have you work on some other chore. It will not be unlike a detention,” the professor nodded. “Think of it as a detention.”

Harry gulped. Detentions with Snape had never been good. The man had come up with the most terrible, horrifying, disgusting things for his students to do. Harry’s hands had blistered and burned for days after the Potions Master had made him scrub out cauldrons once, and the time the man made him scrub the potions room floor had been hell. It was then that Harry had vowed never to make the man mad again, though at the time he had used the term “greasy git.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry nodded, hang his head down.

“There is one more thing,” Severus tried to make his voice more gentle, but when the child flinched ever so slightly, he realized that it had come out when he was making a threat, only with a little less venom.

Sitting down next to his son, Severus lifted the boy’s chin. Again, the professor was assaulted with the look of two large emerald eyes staring at him. “I need change you back into a Snape again,” his voice came out more gently now that he could see the boy.

The green eyes went wide again, and for a moment, Severus could identify every emotions that flashed across the child’s face. There was confusion, understanding, horror, anger, shyness, boldness, and still more confusion. “We are father and son,” the master wizard decided to elaborate. “As such, we need to look like father and son.”

Taking out his wand, Severus grabbed Lily’s diary from off of the coffee table, and opened it to the page where Lily had figured out a charm to hide her son. The entire spell was simply genius and Severus found himself very proud for his wife’s accomplishments. He only wished that he could have told her so.

Harry watched as his father brought that terrifying black wand up to his face. There was a part of him that wanted to run away and hide. Having Snape’s wand pointed at him like this had never been something that the young wizard had ever wanted, and quite frankly, had always thought would be suicide if he did allow it. But he did not want to disappoint the man, as his father had been so excited about finding the charm in the first place. It would be wrong to hurt the man’s feelings.

Merlin, I’m thinking of Snape’s feelings, Harry thought ironically.

But the boy held very still, waiting for the Potions Master to do his worst. Snape began by speaking a very long, complicated Latin phrase that Harry had never heard before, nor did he understand. Each time the phrase was spoken Severus moved his wand, tapping first Harry’s forehead, then his chin, then the cheeks before waving his wand over the length of the boy’s body.

“Ostendo sum occultus , ostendo quis est subter supter. Fulsi lux lucis in atrum locus, restituo verus vultus,” the deep voice chanted again and again, until Harry was so relaxed that he thought he might fall asleep.

But as he was about to fall asleep, Harry felt the strangest tingling sensation run throughout his entire body. It felt so strange, like someone was pouring ice water in his veins, only it was not cold, but still held the same effect. There was a moment when he felt as though he was burning, as though his flesh was being scorched off, but it stopped just as soon as it began. His head, his brain, felt like it was being rearranged too, as though his skull were being crushed. But again, it stopped almost the moment it began.

It was all so taxing, that Harry fell back in his seat, panting, as though he had just run a marathon across all of the United Kingdom. He was hot, yet cold, and he thought he might fall asleep at any given moment. It was one of the oddest feelings the boy had ever felt in his life.

When the boy looked over at his father, he found the Potions Master staring at him with the oddest look of satisfaction, shock, and awe. Two of the three emotions Harry did not think were a natural look on the man’s face, but he decided that there must be something to look at. “What?” he asked, finding his throat exceedingly dry.

With out a word, Snape grabbed a hand held mirror, and handed it over to Harry. When the boy took it, he found himself dreading what he might find. Whatever had happened to him, how he looked now was enough to silence the snaky tongue of his professor, and to Harry, that was not a good thing. Holding his breath, he took the plunge and looked at himself.

In the mirror there stared back at him was a boy that Harry had never seen before. Although this boy still had black hair and the same green eyes, the face in which they sat was completely different.

The black hair, although the same in color, was straight and smooth, not sticking up everywhere like it once had. The shape of the face was no longer a round shape, but a sharp, long face with higher cheekbones and distinct features. The lips seemed to be thin, yet full at the same time, giving more character to the face. The nose, heaven forbid, was the same as Snape’s. Almost. On second glance, it seemed smaller than the Potions Master’s, seeming to be a bit of a mix between the Snape side and the Evans side. In the long run, it was a pleasing sort of nose, that added to the improvement of the face. The eyebrows could only be said to have come from Snape as well, as they seemed able to convey anything without the use of words.

Staring at the mirror another moment longer, Harry found himself touching his face, and watching as the mirror image responded with the same movements. Shaking his head in shock, Harry found himself smiling disbelievingly. “No way,” he said to himself.

“You do not like the change?”

The questions startled Harry enough that he jumped. When he looked up, he saw a frown set into the Potions Master’s face. “Huh? Oh no! It’s not that,” the boy quickly covered up. “It’s just that… it’s not me.”

“That is you,” Severus found himself saddened by the fact that his own son wanted nothing more than to be a James Potter look alike. “What you saw before was not you. This is you now. A Snape.”

There was no mistaking the hurt pride in the wizard’s tone, and Harry, with a jolt, realized that Snape wanted to be proud of his son. That the professor was proud that his son looked so much like him. But what the Potions Master did not understand was that it was a big step, changing ones face.

But then another realization hit the boy. He was a Snape. He had known that for days, but now that there was an almost miniature model of the Head of Slytherin staring back at him in a mirror, Harry truly realize that he was indeed a Snape. He was Harry Snape. No, he would have to be Severin Harrison Tiberius Snape. That’s who he was now. That’s really who he was all the time.

“It’s a good change,” Harry said after a moment, nodding to his reflection. In truth, the boy in the mirror was much more attractive than Harry Potter, or that’s at least what Harry thought. This boy staring at him had character, something about him was… secretive, and yet more animated if he chose. “I think I’ll grow to like this a lot better.” And he meant it too.

Severus had to fight to keep from laughing. Seeing Harry as he was meant to look just made Snape feel… happy. Even though the boy took a striking resemblance to him, Severus could still see features in the child that rang out as Lily. It made him glad to see that Lily had not been left out of her child after all. This was his and Lily’s son. They had made this child together.

But just then, there was a knock at the door. Standing up, Severus put his wand away, and walked cautiously to the door. He opened it, and there, standing on the step, was a woman of about sixty years or so, with graying, brown hair piled messily on top her head. She had a kind face with bright blue eyes, and she wore a long skirt and an old blouse.

“Bore da Mr. Brandon!” the woman exclaimed. “It is very good to see you again so soon,” her voice was light, but held a thick Welsh accent. “Moved in just fine I see.”

Looking a bit annoyed and relieved, Severus nodded to the woman. “Good morning, Mrs. Cadogan,” the wizard nodded again. “Yes, I am all moved in, thank you.”

“And who is that strapping young man behind you?” the woman pointed over to Harry, who sat confused on the couch.

“That is my son, Mrs. Cadogan, Peter,” Severus lied smoothly.

Mrs. Cadogan did not seem to understand Harry’s slight wince, but clapped joyously. “Well, I am very pleased to meet you young Brandon. Come here and let me have a look at you,” she demanded.

Amused, though still tired, Harry did as he was told and walked over to the woman. “Peter, this is Mrs. Cadogan, the woman we’re renting the house from,” Severus gave him a stern look, and Harry supposed he was warning him to play along.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Cadogan,” Harry nodded.

“Oh! Such a polite young lad!” the woman exclaimed in delight. “Like his Da’ I suppose,” she winked over at Severus. “And a strappin’ young lad at that!” she spun Harry around. “Gets that from his Da’ too I think!”

Harry gave Severus a discrete look of questioning, while Severus tried his best to ignore it. Mrs. Cadogan was not the kind of person that you would normally think of Professor Snape keeping company with, but he was an extremely patient man, when it served his purpose, and as of now, he really needed to stay hidden here, and needed to pay his landlord every respect. She was really no worse than Dumbledore.

“Such a fine day out, it is,” the woman smiled. “Are you English just going to sit in there and waste it all?”

“We were actually planning on taking a walk, Mrs. Cadogan, so if-”

“Ach! A walk!” the woman exclaimed delightedly. “You must let me show you around. Now, now, Mr. Brandon, no arguing. You may be half Welsh, but that accent of yours could get you in trouble with some of the locals. Let me show you around.”

Knowing of nothing else to do, Severus relented. “Very well. If you are certain it would not inconvenience you.”

“Heavens no!” the Muggle waved off the concern. “Allow me to show you Llanfair at her best.”

Harry could tell that the woman could potentially get on his father’s nerve, but he was surprised by the Potions Master’s patience. Stepping aside, Severus let Harry go first out the door before stepping out himself. He locked the door behind him.

“Honestly, Christopher!” Mrs. Cadogan scolded lightly. “No need to lock up so tight. This isn’t England!”

Severus was finding it a bit difficult to stomach the woman this morning, but he managed not to scowl. “One can never be too careful,” he offered.

Mrs. Cadogan laughed, and Harry smiled. “Ah, well, old habits and all. Let’s go!” and like a rocket, the old woman took off.

As they walked on, Harry fell in step alongside his father, a smile plastered on his new face. “I think I like it here.” He smiled wider when Severus rolled his eyes.