Snape had just finished a well-researched essay on Fingerprinting Potions when the wand in his hand began to tremble. A person had just entered the Locator radius. Closing his book, he performed a succession of quick spells that allowed him to see where the person was moving, and how fast. They were not running; not yet, anyway. And the dogs were not quite close enough. Snape had to allow the hunters to catch at least a glimpse of their moving prey before he intervened.

He stood, grabbed his knapsack and swung it onto his shoulder. Of course, the Wiltshire woods held more than dogs and Death Eater hunting parties. It was a magical place, inhabited by the kind of beings that were drawn to such places. He’d lost a Muggle last year when the Red Caps had reached him before he could.

Snape cast another spell, monitoring the Muggle’s progress. There was a faint bark in the distance, followed by another. The dogs were getting closer. No doubt the Muggle had heard them too, for they were picking up their speed. The hunt had begun.

###

Harry’s breath felt like fire in his throat. Twice he had fallen down, and twice he had picked himself up again, ignoring the pain in his scraped hands and knees as he ran and ran. Branches of low trees whipped into his face, and he batted them away. Brambles clung to his trousers, and he tore himself free. He ran.

The dogs were closer now. Their barks sounded like laughter… as if they were people, laughing at someone. And there were many of them, Harry could hear that. They’ll tear you to bits, the kidnapper had said, and Harry knew it was true. He could hear it in those laughing barks.

He stumbled, and scrambled back to his feet, and bled and sobbed and ran.

###

Snape waited at the edge of a small clearing, hidden under a disillusioning charm. It wouldn’t be long now. In the distance, he could hear the hounds barking, horses crashing through the underbrush and the occasional cheerful shout from one hunter to another. They knew the ‘fox’ could not be far.

The Locator spell showed him the Muggle’s position. They were coming directly towards Snape, closely followed by the first of the dogs. The beasts were literally nipping at his or her heels. Come on, Snape thought. Just across the clearing. Come on.

If the Muggle crossed the clearing, the hunters would see him. That was all Snape needed. Just one glimpse to show the hunting party that their prey was still alive.

Come on.

He waited.

###

He had lost his shoes. The dogs must have torn them apart; he had heard their snarls and the sound of ripping plastic. He didn’t turn around. He ran.

Cry baby, cry baby, those barks laughed in his ears, Harry is a cry baby. He was no longer sure those words were just in his head. Maybe it was Dudley and his gang back there, barking and laughing. Maybe it was them who would pounce on him when he fell. Their teeth would tear into his flesh like they’d torn into his sneakers, rip him apart like the kidnapper had said.

Another branch slashed across his face. The thicket scratched his arms. The dogs were panting wetly, barking their ‘killkillkill’ behind his back. And there were voices, voices that did not belong to the dogs or to Dudley. There were grown-ups. Grown-ups, just behind the dogs.

“Help,” Harry tried to shout, but all that came out was a gasp. Help me, someone, someone.

He couldn’t make a sound, not even when the first dog snapped at his ankle. He was going to die.

###

The beast sprang just as the Muggle burst into the clearing, and Snape barely had the time to realize that it was a child, Malfoy was hunting a young child. The dog was on the boy in a matter of seconds.

“Stupefy!” His spell went inches past the dog’s head. The boy was on the ground now, those fangs were going straight for his throat… and closed on empty air.

Snape stared, unable to believe what he was seeing. The boy’s body seemed in the grip of a strange convulsion, molding his torso and limbs into shapes that were distinctly not human… and then, wriggling and squirming, it freed itself from the dog’s paws and shot straight across the clearing.

It.

The creature.

The fox.

For half a second, Snape stood frozen. Then he cast another Stupefy, felling the dog with a direct hit before he swung his wand around, pointing it in the opposite direction.

“Accio fox!”

###

In the end, all Snape could do was use brute force on the little animal, who fought him with all the power his small teeth and claws possessed. The rest of the pack was closing in, with their masters in hot pursuit. Snape could hear the dogs’ panting, the shouts as the hunters drove their horses into a frenzy. The fox in his arms was trembling.

Snape didn’t stop to think. He had come here knowing what he had to do, and even if this was… unexpected to say the least, it changed nothing. There was only one way to get both of them out of here alive.

He reached into his pocket and took out something black and bent, something a certain Knockturn Alley vendor had sold him out of a hidden box under his counter, after much coaxing. Human fingers, even decaying ones, were hard to come by these days.

He threw it onto the ground. “Corpora Ingemino!”

The finger exploded under the spell, growing, lengthening, sprouting appendages until the naked form of a human lay on the forest floor. A dead human boy, to be exact. Snape did not quite recall what the fox had looked like in his human form, but it didn’t matter. After the dogs had finished with the body, there would no longer be a face to recognize.

“Vestigo!”

Clothes appeared on the fake body just as the next dog came sprinting onto the clearing. The fox in his arms began to struggle again, squirming frantically as he tried to free himself. Tightening his grip, Snape turned on his heel.

The pack descended on the body a mere second after man and fox had Apparated out of the clearing.

###

It was almost comical, the look on Dumbledore’s face when Snape set the fox pup on his desk. The little animal had trembled all the way up to the castle, head buried in the crook of Snape’s arm. When he was suddenly removed from the comforting warmth, the pup yipped miserably and tried to make himself as small as possible.

Dumbledore blinked. “Severus?”

“You requested that I return all rescued victims to the castle for treatment,” said Snape, who was beginning to enjoy himself. “I am merely following your orders, sir.”

“Malfoy was hunting an actual fox this time?”

Snape sat down in one of the chintz armchairs. “No… at least he didn’t intend to.”

“No? Then what-”

“It seems that Macnair didn’t catch a Muggle this time, much as he was convinced that it was a Muggle,” Snape said. “The boy transformed just as the dogs came down on him.”

Dumbledore’s white eyebrows rose half an inch. “A spontaneous Animagus transformation…”

“So it would seem. I was rather surprised myself.”

“Indeed.”

The fox yipped again, his green eyes seeking Snape’s as if trying to ask why he had been banished so rudely from his safe perch. His tail – brush, Snape corrected himself – was tucked firmly between his legs.

“I believe our young friend has had quite a scare,” Dumbledore said. “He might not feel safe enough to change back into his human form.”

Snape restrained himself from rolling his eyes. That much was obvious, given that a fox and not a boy was sitting on the headmaster’s desk.

“What I mean,” Dumbledore continued gently, “is that he would benefit from returning to where he seems to feel safe.” He looked pointedly at Snape’s arms.

“I do not as a rule comfort children, Headmaster. Or foxes,” he added quickly. “That would be your area of expertise, rather than mine.”

Dumbledore didn’t say that he, too, had never comforted a fox; for all Snape knew, maybe he had.

“There is a first time for everything, Severus. Here you go, little one,” and without much ado, he picked up the pup and deposited him in Snape’s arms.

The fox did seem much happier, now that he was back where it was warm and safe. He buried his head in the folds of Snape’s robes, snuggling as close as he could. Under the velvety fur, Snape could feel the tiny heart pumping wildly.

“There,” Dumbledore said, leaning back in his chair.

Snape frowned. “And now? I do not see how this is an improvement to our dilemma.”

“He seems to think it an improvement,” Dumbledore said, smiling at the fox. “If you would, Severus, I’d like you to give me your report of tonight’s events while we wait.”

“Wait for what?” Snape asked impatiently. He did not like it when the headmaster spoke in riddles.

“Wait for him to fall asleep,” Dumbledore said. “That should relax him enough to resume his human form. Oh my.”

Snape followed Dumbledore’s gaze. On the polished surface of the desk was a small puddle, slowly spreading towards the latest issue of Transfiguration Today.

Snape smirked. Who knew, he might actually come to like the little bugger.

###

Dumbledore might be the most annoying man in all of wizarding Britain, but his theories could usually be depended on. The fox began to relax in Snape’s arms almost immediately, his brush untucking itself from between his hind legs only to be wrapped snugly around Snape’s wrist. The little snout found its way back into the crook of his arm. As he related the evening’s events to Dumbledore, Snape began to stroke the soft fur without really noticing what he was doing.

“… I did not actually see any of them this time; they were too far away. After I had cast the Corpora Ingemino, I had to leave immediately to avoid detection.”

And the dogs, he added silently. He didn’t mention that detail to the headmaster, having no wish to see that worried look on the old face.

“Spontaneous Animagus transformations are very rare,” Dumbledore said thoughtfully. “The boy must be powerful. Of course, fear of imminent death can trigger strong accidental reactions…”

Snape felt the pup’s breathing grow even under his fingers. “I’m surprised Malfoy didn’t notice that he had a wizard in his dungeons.”

Dumbledore shook his head. “Malfoy sees what he wants to see, as do we all. He expected an - in his eyes - worthless Muggle, so that was all he saw. As for Macnair...”

“Macnair is an idiot,” Snape said. “He wouldn’t recognize signs of magic if they were painted in red letters on the boy’s forehead.”

“It is curious, that he should come across a wizard when he was obviously preying on children in a Muggle neighborhood,” Dumbledore said. “Unless the boy’s parents are Muggles… still, it is a remarkable coincidence. I believe-”

But Snape never learned what Dumbledore believed. The light weight of the pup in his arms had suddenly become much heavier, and he looked down to find that he was holding a sleeping boy on his lap. A sleeping boy whose pale face was quite visible in the light of Dumbledore’s desk lamp.

And once again, he thought he could hear the universe laughing at him. Because it would, of course, be Harry Potter.

###

The boy was in shock, Madam Pomfrey said.

She also said that there would be no questions, no disturbing him until he had recovered.

She had, in fact, a lot to say on the subject of Harry Potter. Snape stood by as the matron shouted at Dumbledore, telling him that the boy was malnourished, that some of his bruises were too old to be a result of his stay at Malfoy Manor. Someone should have checked on him, she said. Someone had, Dumbledore replied. Arabella Figg had never reported any incidents.

“Arabella Figg never realized that her husband of thirty years had a drinking problem. Do you seriously think she would recognize the symptoms of child abuse?”

Dumbledore admitted that she wouldn’t.

“That boy is not going back there. I don’t care what you say, Headmaster, I’m not sending a seven-year-old boy back to an abusive household!”

In the end, Dumbledore didn’t put up much of a fight. He suggested that he might talk to Petunia, might ‘persuade’ her to treat her nephew decently, but Snape made short work of that idea.

“Petunia Dursley, née Evans, never had a decent bone in her body. She hates magic and everything that reminds her of it.”

So it was decided. Harry Potter would remain at Hogwarts, and Snape realized, belatedly, that his input had actually helped that decision along. That didn’t mean he had to join the rest of the staff in their soppy adoration of the boy.

Potter, meanwhile, didn’t know that an old wizard and a school matron had decided to turn his life on its head. He slept, and wouldn’t wake for some time, according to Pomfrey. It was a natural reaction to the trauma and the general bad state he had been in.

The mediwitch also reported that there were times when she went into the isolation ward to find a tiny red fox curled up on the blankets.

“He seems to sleep easier in his fox form,” she said.

Snape believed her; he knew that foxes – and Animagi - dreamed mostly about food.

###

Then Potter woke, and Snape’s comfortable disinterest in the boy was once again compromised by the headmaster’s meddling.

“You are best suited to the task, Severus,” the insufferable old man insisted. “He knows you; you saved him. And you understand what has happened to him.”

Dumbledore could be very persistent. And so it was that Snape found himself in a chair in the isolation ward, talking to a boy who looked like the miniature replica of his school-day nemesis James Potter.

“There’s no such thing as magic,” Harry Potter insisted, when he finally decided that talking to Snape was a better idea than hiding under his sheets.

Snape transfigured the glass on the boy’s night table into a butterfly. A nice, polka-dotted, completely harmless butterfly. Potter refused to come out of the supply closet for hours.

Madam Pomfrey was not impressed.

###

“I can’t be a wizard,” Potter said.

“Are you calling me a liar, then?”

“N-no, sir.”

At least the brat was polite, if unreasonable. “This place is a school for wizards,” Snape said. “I am a teacher, and have taught young witches and wizards for almost six years.”

“There are other freaks? Really?”

“No, there aren’t. The word is ‘wizard’ or ‘witch’, as I’ve told you before. There’s nothing freakish about magic.”

“Yes there is.”

Snape counted to ten before he replied. “No, there is not. I am older and wiser than you, Potter, and I’m telling you that magic is an ancient and powerful force that a small minority of the world’s population have access to, while the rest continue to deny its existence. Do you really think I would invent all this just to trick you?”

The boy reluctantly shook his head.

“Good,” Snape said. “Now drink your nutrient potion.”

Potter lifted the glass to his lips, but lowered it again without drinking. “Sir?”

“Hm?”

“Why can I turn into a fox?”

I don’t know, would have been an honest reply to that, but Snape on principle didn’t admit that he lacked knowledge on any subject.

“It’s a special talent,” he said curtly. “Now drink your potion.”

Potter obeyed, then set the glass on the night table, leaned back on his pillow and transformed. It was like watching someone let go of a great amount of tension. The pup curled in on himself with a small sigh, burying his snout in his brush, the black-tipped ears moving back and forth as they scanned the room for noises.

Snape noticed that it was very relaxing to watch a fox sleep.

###

A week later, Snape found himself on his way to the Great Hall with a fox pup tagging after him, sniffing at every corner and yipping at the astonished portraits. Fortunately it was the summer holidays, so there were no students to see Slytherin’s Head of House with his strange new companion.

Companion, indeed. Potter had attached himself to Snape like a limpet, and refused to leave the sanctuary of the isolation ward unless he could follow the Potions Master wherever he went. Most of those excursions were done in his Animagus form, which Potter could assume whenever he wished.

“Natural Animagi are quite rare,” McGonagall said. There was some jealousy in the way she regarded Snape, who sat at the teacher’s table with the Fox-Who-Lived curled up on his lap.

Snape fed a piece of bacon to Potter. “Parkinson’s Magical Bestiary says there’ve been about twenty reported cases. Five at Hogwarts, and three of those in Slytherin House. None in Gryffindor, it seems,” he added casually.

McGonagall huffed and turned back to her potatoes.

###

Two weeks later, it was decided that Potter should move into the dungeons.

“Only temporarily,” Dumbledore assured him when Snape protested. “You have a basket for him in your lab anyway, so what difference does it make to put one in front of your fireplace?”

Snape pointed out that Potter, the boy, would benefit from having an actual room, rather than a basket. “His relatives kept him in a cupboard, you know. I have no intention of emulating such irresponsible neglect.”

“Hogwarts will provide,” Dumbledore said blithely. And it did. A day after Potter’s relocation, a new room had appeared in the dungeon quarters, complete with a four-poster bed, a desk, a window into the Black Lake and a shelf full of children’s books and chewy toys.

“That’ll save my furniture, if nothing else,” was Snape’s comment.

He had noticed that Harry was beginning to spend more time in his human form, now that he had a safe retreat of his own, and made no further protests about the addition to his quarters.

###

A month after Harry’s arrival at the castle, Dumbledore decided to pay a late-night visit to the Slytherin dungeons. He frequently roamed about the castle at night; he had been an insomniac for the last fifty years, and it was a useful way to meet some of the castle’s shyer inhabitants.

One of these shyer creatures would probably not appreciate being disturbed at this late hour, but Dumbledore had no intentions of making his presence known. He did not need a cloak to become invisible, and found that it was a talent that came in handy.

In a torch-lit hallway, Dumbledore stopped at the portrait of a portly man in early Renaissance clothing.

“Theophrastus,” he greeted quietly.

“Thou comest here at a late hour, Zaubermeister,” Paracelsus said, glaring at him. Dumbledore took no offense; glaring was the man’s default expression.

“Yes,” he said. “There’s something I need to check.”

“Omniscience is all well and good, whilst it is done in moderation,” Paracelsus replied. “The dose maketh the poison.”

Dumbledore inclined his head. “Duly noted, Theophrastus. But be assured that I have only Severus’ best interests at heart.”

“So thou sayest,” Paracelsus grumbled, but swung open to allow him entry. Silently, cloaked in his strongest disillusionment spell, Dumbledore stepped into the dark quarters. The living area with its squashy armchairs and many bookcases was deserted, and the fireplace contained only a few smoldering embers; Severus must have retreated for the night. On stealthy feet, Hogwarts’ headmaster crossed the room to where a door stood slightly ajar. The soft glow of a nightlight could be seen through the gap. Dumbledore stepped closer.

On the rug in the middle of Harry’s room, a little red fox lay curled up, snout buried in his brush. He was fast asleep, as only a young animal in the presence of its parent can be.

Next to him, his body wrapped protectively around the pup, lay a magnificent silver fox, whose fur was so dark that it seemed almost black. As Dumbledore watched, the adult fox raised his head, sniffed the air and then looked directly at him. Coal-dark eyes closed briefly in disapproval, then the head was turned away, its snout coming to rest on the pup’s back. Ignoring the intruder’s presence in his den, the fox continued to guard his kit.

Dumbledore had seen enough. Very quietly, he stepped back from the door, and for a moment wondered if he should close it. No, he decided. Best not to disturb them any more than he already had.