Six year old Harry Potter was running away. And this time, no body was going to stop him.

Harry had tried to run away once before, back when he had lived in Little Whinging with his Aunt and Uncle. He hadn't gotten very far before one of the nosey neighbours had dragged him back by the scruff of his neck.

This time, the small boy decided as he slipped out into the courtyard of the large castle, things would be different. He was going to run away from Hogwarts and nobody was going to get in his way. Not even...

  “Good evening, Harry!”

Professor Dumbledore.

Stopping in his tracks, Harry slowly turned on the spot to face the old man.

  “Wherever could you be going at such a late hour?” Dumbledore asked, glancing at Harry's rucksack with a twinkle in his eye.

Harry didn't respond. He was fairly certain that the headmaster already knew exactly what had happened. And besides, it wasn't often that Albus Dumbledore asked a question to which he didn't already know the answer.

  “Perhaps, if I might be so bold as to take up some of your time, we could go for a stroll?” the man suggested, stretching out an arm to guide Harry in the direction of the astronomy tower.

Not a word was spoken between them then, until they reached the top of the tower, at which point Dumbledore offered Harry a sherbet lemon.

Shaking his head, the small boy leant against the railings and looked out over the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy, rapidly fading in the dark.

  “This is my favourite part of the castle, you know?” Dumbledore told him, sitting on the wooden bench at the centre of the tower. “I find the peace and quiet is most useful when one needs to think, or perhaps talk about something that is troubling them. Where did you plan to go, if you don't mind me asking?”

Harry just shrugged, his back still turned.

  “It's one thing to run away, Harry. It's another to have no destination in mind,” the older wizard said, though there was no trace of anger in his words.

  “It doesn't matter, does it? I can't stay here,” the young boy said eventually, sounding just as miserable as he felt.

  “On the contrary, it matters a great deal, to a great many people. One in particular,” Dumbledore told him. “That very person is, as we speak, searching this whole castle frantically.”

  “He's not. He's angry.”

  “Quite. And with good reason, or so I have heard. Your father is a potions master who takes his craft very seriously, Harry. There are any number of dangerous ingredients in that laboratory, and what is the one rule he has always had?”

  “Don't go in Daddy's potions lab unless he says I can,” Harry muttered sheepishly, turning to face Dumbledore and averting his eyes to the ground.

  “Ah. If I am not mistaken, child, your father was simply concerned for your safety. You and I both know that he is not the best at expressing his emotions. I am sure that he will calm down, once he sees that you have managed to recall this rule,” Dumbeldore assured him.

  “I didn't...forget the rule...” Harry began, wondering if he was wise to go on.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows above his half-moon spectacles, yet his surprise appeared to be feigned.

  “I see. Forgive an old man, I must be confused. There was another reason for you to venture inside without permission?”

  “I wanted... to... to make the potion like Daddy showed me. So Daddy would... would...” Harry began, kicking at a loose stone on the floor absent-mindedly.

Dumbledore waited patiently.

  “I don't think Daddy wants me anymore. I wanted to show him I can be good at potion making just like him. So he could be proud of me,” the small boy told him sincerely. “Instead I made him even more angry.”

  “With your father's supervision, you will grow up to be a fine potions master if you so desire. Of that I am certain. But might I ask, what has lead you to believe you are not wanted?” Dumbledore asked.

Harry gave another shrug of his shoulders. “Ever since all the big boys and girls came back to school, he's been busy all the time. Even when his classes are finished, he grades the papers or goes in his potions lab and closes the door. Before all the children came, Daddy used to play Gobstones and Junior Wizard's Chess with me every night. But now he doesn't want to, and he tells me to do drawing instead.”

  “You dislike drawing?'

  “No. But he doesn't put my drawings up on the fridge,” Harry muttered.

Seeing that the older wizard was puzzled by this statement, Harry continued.

  “When I lived with Aunt Petunia, she put all of Dudley's pictures on the fridge. Even the really bad ones. She said every single one of them was special.”

  “A muggle tradition, I am sure,” Dumbledore said thoughtfully, more to himself than to Harry.

  “Daddy doesn't put them up, not anywhere. And he doesn't have time to read to me at night anymore. I'm just in his way,” the little boy told him, quietly.

  “I wonder, have you told him how you feel?”

Harry shook his head. “He'll just get cross.”

Dumbledore chuckled. “Perhaps, perhaps... That is the Severus we all know and love.”

Harry exhaled deeply, focusing on his feet.

  “Harry, the start of a new term here at Hogwarts is always a tremendously busy time. Take it from someone who knows. But things will settle down, as the weeks draw on. And I am quite certain that you are, and always will be, the most important thing in your father's life,” Dumbledore told him gently.

  “He's going to shout at me for running away,” Harry predicted, sounding increasingly nervous.

  “Undoubtedly. Although I believe that first and foremost, he will simply be glad to see that you are safe,” the headmaster told him. “Come now, let's not keep him waiting.”

* * *

Harry's return to his home in the dungeons was an altogether silent affair.

After he had given his adopted son the once over and was satisfied that the boy was still in one piece, Severus Snape had reverted to a short lecture, followed by icey silence.

Harry had eventually gone to bed, tired of the one word remarks and disappointed looks being cast his way. Part of him wished his father would shout at him. Smack him even, and Daddy never did that. Anything would have been better than this.

And if his father was aware of what had triggered Harry's little adventure, he did not mention it.

Huffing, Harry pulled the covers over his head and closed his eyes. Two could play the silent game, and he wasn't going to take all of the blame for the situation.

The now-mutual silence continued over breakfast the following day, with Harry throwing scowls in his father's direction, all of which went duly unnoticed.

After the awkward meal, Harry's punishment began. He had spent the morning scrubbing several of his father's cauldrons, since he was 'so keen to be in the potions lab.'

Lunch followed in a similar vain to breakfast, and whilst Severus headed out to his afternoon classes, Harry moved on to stage two of his punishment: cleaning his father's study.

There were certainly worse punishments, Harry decided, as he got to work straightening out the numerous items which lay strewn across the potions master's large oak desk.

Moving on to the dust-covered bookshelves, which adorned one entire wall of the dimly lit room, Harry wondered if his father had deliberately avoided cleaning at all over the last year, in anticipation of such a punishment.

Dusting the lower shelves was an easy enough task, but Harry knew he wasn't tall enough to reach those higher up. Glancing around the room, he settled on his father's chair, pulling it across the room and clambering on top of it to give himself some height.

Yet even with the chair, Harry found the top two shelves impossible to reach. Standing on his tip-toes did little to help, and jumping up and down proved just as fruitless.

Frustrated, Harry flung his feather duster at the out-of-reach shelves. This action served only to create a new cloud of dust, followed by something which toppled off the shelf and hit the small boy square on the head before landing on the floor beneath him with a gentle thump.

Wiping the dust from his glasses, Harry hopped down from the chair, kneeling to the ground to get a better look at the offending item.

A leather bound box, black in colour and no more than 15 inches in length. It appeared that the item had once sported a golden latch, but this had long since rusted away.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Harry opened the lid and took a look inside.

The box was mostly full of papers; official-looking pieces of parchment which noted his father's various achievements in the potions domain.

There were several photographs too; an older woman whom Harry did not recognise... a young boy with pale skin, sitting next to a smiling, red-headed girl... a much younger version of his father, standing beside a familiar-looking woman...

“Mummy...” Harry whispered, running his fingers across the picture, almost longingly.

He could happily have stared at that photograph all day, were it not for something else in the box catching his eye. Right in the bottom, a stack of papers in varying shapes and sizes.

Sifting through them, Harry's eyes widened. There in his hands was every single drawing and painting he had done since his arrival in his new home, over a year and a half ago. There were some that Harry could scarcely recall, and others that were not his best work. Yet here they all were, tucked away in a box with pictures of his mother.

He blinked, feeling somewhat guilty, and more than a little stupid.

Granted, his pictures weren't pinned to a fridge, or hanging from every available wall space in their quarters. But they were here, in his Daddy's special box, with all the other important things.

Dusting forgotten, he stood up and ran for the door.

Harry did not stop running then, until he reached the potions classroom at the other end of the dungeons.

The fifth years had just been dismissed and the classroom was empty, so Harry made his way across to the small adjoining office, ready with a huge hug, a million apologies and one very sincere 'I love you' for his father.

And he delivered them all. Right after Severus had finished giving instructions to his prefects on how best to handle the Slytherin House meeting that evening- one that he himself was unable to attend, on account of the fact he had several weeks' worth of bedtime stories to catch up on.

After all, Harry remembered, as he drifted off to sleep against Severus' chest that very same evening, he was, and always would be, the most important thing in his father's life.

In memory of Alan Rickman 1946-2016.