"I'm sorry," Evan whispered tearfully for the umpteenth time, and Snape was tempted to strangle himself with his own tie. They were getting nowhere with this conversation.

They were seated across from each other in the formal sitting room, Evan on the couch and Severus in his favorite recliner. Dinner had come and gone without incident, and Severus had hoped to have a quick conversation with Evan about what had occurred earlier and then put him to bed. Alas, it was not to be. Trying to get Evan to talk about what had happened was like pulling teeth. All he kept saying was that he was sorry, and Severus wasn't even sure if Evan knew what he was so sorry about.

"It's okay, Evan," Severus said. "You're not in trouble. I just need help understanding what happened."

"I'm sorry."

"Evan!" Severus snapped, a bit more harshly than he meant to. "I just need to know what happened!"

Evan whimpered, pushing himself back against the couch so that his little feet dug into the couch cushions. "Papa, I'm sorry!"

Severus sighed. He could definitely use a stiff drink.

"Breathe. Just breathe, Evan. What happened when I left the room?" he asked, his voice more moderate now.

"I'm sorry."

"That wasn't the question, Evan. What happened?"

Evan closed his eyes tightly. Tears glistened in his black lashes and dripped, one by one, down his pale cheeks. "I wanted to feel the wood."

Severus's eyes snapped up in surprise. Were they actually getting somewhere? After an hour of sobbing and apologies, Evan was answering his questions. Finally.

"You wanted to feel the wood," Severus repeated, not even knowing what wood Evan was talking about but eager to keep him talking. Hopefully he would be able to wring a modicum of understanding from the small child's tale. "Then what happened?"

"I reached down ‘n touched the wood ‘n it was real smooth, like plastic, sorta, ‘n I didn't get how it could be. An' I was upside-down so I could hear my heart in my ears, ‘n then I saw there's dirt under the couch."

Severus nodded. He didn't understand how that could possibly be important-there was dirt under most couches-but it was clearly important to Evan. "What about the dirt?"

Evan gave Severus a peculiar look. "It had to go away."

Severus blinked. The words were said so calmly, like it was the only logical answer to the question. "It had to go away?"

"Uh-huh. Bye-bye. So I tried to grab it with my hand so I could get it to go away."Severus winced. He could easily see where that led to. "Did you fall?"

"Uh-huh."

"You hit your head?"

"Uh-huh."

"And then you went to the bathroom to clean up?"

Evan shifted for a moment, uncomfortably. "Well, sorta."

"Did you or didn't you."

"I did," Evan said. "After."

"After what?"

"Well, I made the floor dirty by bleedin' on it. I had to clean that up."Of course he had to clean that up. Couldn't have a dirty floor. Severus felt like slamming his head against a wall.

"How'd you clean the floor up?"

Evan bit his lower lip for a second, and then stood up and reached into his pocket, pulling out... a sock. A sock that had once been white, but was now stained so dark with blood that it looked brown in places. Severus swallowed. Why hadn't he noticed that Evan was only wearing one sock?

"So, you cleaned up the floor and then you went into the bathroom to clean up?""Uh-huh."

Severus massaged the bridge of his nose rather slowly. "Okay. We need to discuss some new rules."

Evan sat forward, looking attentive. Despite that, Severus summoned a quill and parchment to him so that he could write the rules down as he spoke them. "First of all, if you get hurt, you are to immediately tell me about it. If I am not around, then you are to tell whoever is in charge of your wellbeing. Do you understand?"

Evan nodded once, mutely.

"Secondly, you are never to use your clothes to clean things up. That's what we have rags for. I will not become angry with you for accidentally making a mess."Evan swallowed once, his eyes darting nervously to the floor, but he nodded again.

"Third, you are not to hang off of furniture while trying to reach for anything. If you want it and it is out of easy reach, you are to stand up, walk over to it, and get it."

As he spoke the words, Severus had been writing them on the parchment, under the headline RULES. He was quite sure that he would have to come up with more rules for Harry as time progressed. It was only once he had the rules written that he realized the unlikelihood of Evan being able to read at his age. Frowning, he cast a quick charm on the parchment.

"This parchment has a list of the rules on it," Severus said quietly to Evan. "If you touch it with your fingertip, it will read them to you. That way you won't forget them."

"Okay."

Snape stood, using a permanent sticking charm to paste the list of rules to the wall, low enough that Evan could easily reach it with his fingertips. Evan watched him with jaded eyes. When Snape had finished, he held a hand out to Evan. The boy trotted forward obediently, taking Snape's hand with all the trust and innocence of a child.

"Let's get ready for bed, Evan," Snape said quietly. He brought Evan upstairs and supervised the boy as he washed his face and brushed his teeth. He was glad to see that Evan was potty trained. Part of him had feared that the Dursleys, as neglectful as they were, would have made sure that he didn't have the opportunity to learn.

"I'm all cleaned, Papa!" Evan announced, grinning as he toddled out of the bathroom and into Snape's arms. Snape smiled, chucking Evan under the chin and carrying him to the room he'd set up for him. It was one of the few arrangements he'd had time to do before making Harry's reincarnation potion; indeed, Harry had insisted upon it.

"This is my room?" Evan asked in awe, gazing around him.

"Yes."

Evan's eyes were wide, but after the initial question he fell silent. Snape frowned, trying to see the room from the eyes of a child. It was spacious, with a king size bed and a dresser occupying one corner on the far side of the room. The corner opposite was lined with bookshelves and a desk, with the space between containing two couches. The space between the door and that half of the room contained ample space for Evan to romp around on the floor and enjoy himself.

"Do you like it?" Snape asked, cocking an eyebrow at Evan.

Evan bit his lower lip before replying, "Yes?"

Snape bit back a sigh. "That yes sounded like a no, Evan."

Evan blinked owlishly at Snape, clearly at a loss as to what Snape meant by that statement. Snape swallowed and tried again. "You can tell me if there's something about the room that you don't like, Evan."

Evan chewed his lower lip for a moment before admitting, "It's real big."

Snape swallowed. "Is that a problem?"

"I don't... It's just real, real big, Papa. I don't understand. Why is it so big?"

It wasn't that big, Snape argued in his head. In his mind, it was the right amount of space for a child. He had to remind himself that Harry hadn't been raised in a manor. Evan wasn't used to the grandeur. And, too, he had run away the night prior to sleep in a closet. Snape should have realized that great open spaces intimidated the boy.

"It's big so that you have lots of space during the day to do things," Snape answered calmly.

He walked over to Evan's bed and pulled back the blankets, setting Evan in the bed and pulling the covers up to the boy's chin. He sat down on the bed next to Evan, running a hand through the boy's thick red hair.

"Listen to me, Evan. I need you to hear me say this," Snape said quietly. "You're going to be fine. Let go of your fear. Let go of your doubt. Take the world off your shoulders and put it on me. I won't let anything happen to you here."

Evan bit his lower lip. "I'm scared."

"There's no need to be scared," Snape repeated. "I won't let anything happen to you. My room is just down the hall from yours, next to the bathroom. If you get scared in the middle of the night, you can come get me."

Evan took a deep breath, and then he nodded. "Okay."

"Good boy." Snape brushed the hair away from Evan's head again before leaning down to kiss his pale forehead. "Get a good night's sleep, Evan. I'll see you in the morning."

"G'night, Papa."

Snape slipped out of the boy's room, leaving the door cracked slightly so that he'd be able to hear if Evan needed anything, and then went down the hall to the small study that was next to his bedroom. He wanted to be upstairs tonight, in case Evan did need him for something, but he wasn't quite ready to go to bed yet.

He wasn't surprised when the floo flared to life a few minutes later. He didn't even bother to look up from the papers he was grading. "Come on through, Headmaster."

Sure enough, it was Albus who stepped out of his fireplace a breath later, smiling jovially. Snape noticed that the smile didn't quite reach the man's eyes, but he acknowledged the fact that if he hadn't known Dumbledore so well, he wouldn't have been able to tell.

"How are you, my boy?"

"I'm doing well," Snape said. He was hardly about to relive that evening's activities with the headmaster. He didn't need the old man's knowing looks.

"And how is the child?"

"He's fine," Snape said, "most of the time. Sometimes, he falls down."

Dumbledore smiled. "Yes, well, a lot of young children do."

Dumbledore didn't say anything else, but he didn't need to. Snape was used to the headmaster's presence in his life. He conjured some tea for them both, and they sipped it in companionable silence. Snape thought the headmaster might even be on the way to forgiving him.