One morning, not so very long after learning about the Tooth Owl, Harry awoke with a sniffle and a headache.  He made his way to breakfast a bit slower than usual, and did little more than push his food around when he got there. 

Severus, knowing what a voracious little eater his son was, naturally become concerned and put his hand up to the boy’s head to check for fever. 

“Harry, how do you feel?”  He asked when he felt how warm the child’s head was. 

“My head hurts,” the little boy whimpered, leaning towards his father with a sniffle and a small cough. 

That was it for Severus.  Back into bed went his tiny boy, and Madam Pomfrey was flooed directly after. 

“He’s got the Wizarding Pox,” she said after carefully checking him (and Captain) over. 

“What’s dat?”  Harry asked, his little nose already beginning to look red and bothered.  He was sprawled in Severus’s lap, curled up in a ball.

“It’s a childhood sickness that most magical folk get when they’re little,” she answered gently.

“Am not little!”  Harry whined; sticking his purple polka dotted tongue out at her vehemently. 

“Harry,” Severus warned, causing him to turn his face into his Tall Man’s warm chest in embarrassment.  He didn’t like being reprimanded, and especially not in front of witnesses. 

“Severus, I do hope that you’ve already had this particular illness,” Poppy began worriedly, before being waved off. 

“I had it when I was smaller than him.  Thankfully, my mother recognized it for what it was and gave me the appropriate treatment before it had continued on for too long.” 

“Treatment?”  Harry asked slowly, turning his face back into the light with a slight wince.

“Just a series of potions,” Severus answered in a soothing voice, lowering the lights with a well-placed swish of his wand as he spoke. 

“Did you make ‘em?”  Harry only had eyes for his daddy, his voice wavering as his sickness continued to make progress through his system. 

“Of course,” his daddy answered softly, stroking a long fingered hand through his son’s wild mane of hair. 

“Okay den,” the little boy answered, closing his eyes and attaching a hand onto the front of his daddy’s robes. 

Poppy administered the first of several potions and then went over the schedule of doses with Severus before leaving. 

Severus soon discovered that a sick Harry was a clingy Harry.  He cried whenever Severus put him down and screamed himself into a coughing fit the one time that he dared leave the room. 

Wizarding pox was nothing to be laughed at either.  Besides causing a fever, coughing, runny nose and headache, it also resulted in a wide range of other maladies; everything from a purple polka dotted tongue, to coughing up nasty tasting bubbles (which created a foul smell when they exploded several hours later), to changing the color of the sick person’s skin or hair and much more.  Wizarding pox fed off of a person’s magical core, and without treatment, it sometimes resulted in a permanent loss of magic. 

Of course, the potions that the treatment consisted of were absolutely vile in taste—something that even Severus remembered from when he was sick with it as a child. 

“Don’t wan’ it!”  Harry turned his head away stubbornly when Severus tried to give him the fourth dose later that morning. 

“Harry James Potter-Snape!”  Severus growled out, quite out of patience.

Little Harry began sobbing at his words.  He didn’t feel good and the world around him seemed unusually yellow—not one of his favorite colors—and his daddy insisted on feeding him another yucky tasting potion, and he didn’t want it! 

“Oh child,” Severus lamented, pulling him up close and kissing his hot sweaty forehead.  “If you don’t take this, you won’t feel better.  Please take it for your daddy?  I do not enjoy seeing you so out of sorts, and I only want you to go back to your usual loud and obnoxious self,” he said, giving Harry his own special smile. 

Harry sniffled into one of the ubiquitous handkerchiefs that were lying around and thought about what his daddy had said.  Even in the midst of his fever addled brain, he sensed an opportunity for bargaining, and decided to go for it.

“Daddy sing to me?”  He whispered. 

“Sing?”  Severus balked, already shaking his head “no.” 

“I take nassy potion and you sing,” Harry responded with a small decisive nod. 

Severus opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again with an audible snap.  He’d been had. 

“This one and the next,” he informed his son. 

“’Kay,” Harry answered agreeably enough.

“Potion first,” his daddy said, tipping the concoction towards his mouth and not giving him a chance to argue any. 

Luckily for Severus, his son did as instructed and swallowed it obediently, making an unhappy face the entire time.  He handed him a cup of pumpkin juice to wash away the taste, wondering the entire time what exactly he was to sing to uphold his side of the deal. 

“Now you sing,” Harry whispered, poking him hard in the chest with one tiny green finger. 

Severus shifted Harry up higher on his shoulder and petted his head gently as he thought about what to sing.  Just as his son was beginning to make little whining sounds in his throat, he opened his mouth and began.

“Hush little Harry, don’t be daft,” he had a feeling that calling Harry a “baby” right now would probably go over badly. 

“Daddy’s gonna make you a calming draught (pronounced like ‘draft’),” he continued in a deep voice, surprisingly on pitch.

“And if that calming draught won’t calm, Daddy’s gonna make you a healing balm.”  In his arms, Harry was finally beginning to settle down and he let out a tentative sigh of relief. 

“And if that healing balm goes to waste, Daddy’s gonna make you some bruise healing paste.” 

Harry yawned and Severus pressed Captain into his free arm (the one not holding onto his robes with a death grip). 

“And if that bruise healing paste boils over, Daddy will neutralize it with a tuft of clover.”  Harry giggled softly against his neck at that one, no doubt remembering why that had happened last time. 

“And if that clover will not do, Daddy will just say, ‘I love you.’”

“I love you too Daddy,” a sleepy Harry mumbled.