Wonders Never Cease by Hopeless Wanderer

“Our house was a fortress. Not a bad thing, per se. It caged both of us, but he made it seem so different that it took me years to notice. So good, so precious, that at times, I think he barely saw the invisible restraints himself.” Harry held a finger above his steaming tea. Freshly brewed and brought by a nervous dodgy Auror in training, the same idiot who forgot to bind Harry’s hands. He watched as the white swirls bent around his finger, lapping up the warmth against his skin.

They never lived in one place for long, it was laughable to think so, but when Harry was younger he barely noticed the constant moving, the looks Dad threw over his shoulder, then tension on his back as he had to uproot and run in a matter of hours or get caught with Harry and possibly killed.

Harry’s lack of attention to those facts wasn’t because he was a child, it was because Dad never made it seem as if they were leaving their home behind and running away from people. He was Harry’s home, and they were playing a game, so they just needed to change their hiding places every once in a while, and then start there.

Harry used to love it.

He stared down at the cup. He knew he would never drink that tea. He didn’t trust these people enough to take anything from them. Especially food that they could’ve tampered or spiked. He wasn’t a moron. His father was a potions master.

Kingsley watched, unimpressed as ever as the teen finally leaned back and looked up.

“We were playing a game in that cage. Imagine a fortress, a ‘prison’, where you get to make blanket tents, and write silly books, and try crazy foods, and you get to have someone who loves you more than the whole world put together, who would die to protect you, never gets bored of you. Never stops loving you.”

‘Wouldn’t he though?’ A traitorous voice whispered in his head. ‘After all you did to him, he would have every right to abhor the sight of you.’
Shut up.

“You’re talking about a death eater.” Shacklebolt was saying.

Harry glared at the man, but then quickly squashed down the rising anger. “I’m talking about a father.” He said and looked down at the paper bird in his hands.

It was his fault. Everything was his fault. Dad didn’t deserve a son like Harry, he didn’t deserve the life Harry made him have, and now…with this mess. Dad could die because of him.

“I was a danger, not just to him,” he continued out loud, forcefully to push the intrusive thoughts away. He couldn’t afford to be angry with himself. Not now. “To everyone.”

“I was a keg about to explode,” he raised his voice. Shacklebolt had no right to judge his father. Nobody had that right. Dad had no other choice.
“He knew that, and you were all sniffing around for me like bloodhounds after a butcher, so his options were not that much to being with.” He couldn’t help sneering. “He had no other choice other than hiding me, other than teaching me how not to be myself because people could have gotten killed! He wasn’t my jail guard, Shacklebolt. He was a prisoner, just like me.”

He didn’t hear the cup breaking under his finger, rather, he felt the scorching liquid against his hand and clothes, and then watched, dazed as Shacklebolt jumped back from his seat once again and drew his wand. Harry looked down at his hand, vividly crisscrossed with burnt marks and dripping steaming droplets of tea dribbling on the table.

Shacklebolt glared at him and then vanished the mess.

“You need to stop doing that Potter, whatever it is that you’re doing. You’re disturbing the wards.”

‘Control yourself, Harry,’ Dad said, with crossed arms as he stood on the other side of Harry’s locked door. The fourteen-year-old was sulking.

‘I didn’t raise a hooligan, I expect better of you.’

It was one of the few times Harry remembered Dad being stern with him, or talking to him in that biting harsh tone of his that could chill the bones right off of any sane person. Harry couldn’t even remember what he had done wrong, but he was angry, and so was Dad.

Harry’s rage was shaking the walls, but Dad remained unimpressed.

‘Stop doing that,’ he had said.

“Stop doing that Potter!” Shacklebolt exclaimed in parallel to the voice in Harry’s head. “I bloody well mean it.”

Harry raised his chin and stared at the man, only to find him looking at Harry’s bleeding finger with an uncomfortable look on his face. Harry retracted the offending hand and settled it on his lap.

“He had no other choice,” he repeated, with more confidence this time. “I was a child, I didn’t know any better. No child was supposed to be born with that much unrestrained power. It was wrong . Every little thing set me off, I could hurt everyone around me with a single glance…Even Dad wasn’t exempt from that.”

“I hurt him, unintentionally, constantly, over every little thing that would have been deemed ‘normal’ for other toddlers. So much so, that I wasn’t allowed to touch people.” Harry spat the word as if it was an insult. “He never complained, he never punished me for it, he never stopped loving me.”

He should have, and he could have, but he never did. Harry didn’t know whether to love him all the more for it or hate himself for causing him this much pain and misery.

“I didn’t know I was doing it, he never showed the pain I caused him,” it was something that had plagued Harry’s mind for a while now.
How much did Dad really hide from him?

**

When Severus began, his voice was lower than a whisper, and it needn’t be any louder. Harry was a rapt listener. The child’s bed was a little cramped for Severus’s long adult limbs, but he made the effort to get in and-Merlin forbid he ever use that phrase out loud- ‘cuddle’ at storytime.

He laid on his side, face to face with the seven-year-old, his legs awkwardly stuck out of the bed, but he didn’t mind. Storytime was Harry’s favorite part of the day. Harry grinned weakly back at him, he was particularly worn out that day, and it was almost nine anyway, an hour past his bedtime.
Harry wanted a new story tonight, and he didn’t want Severus to ‘cheat’ by grabbing a new book.

Unfortunately, Sev wasn’t that imaginative or talented, so he just laid on the small, cramped bed and stared at the seven-year-old boy whom he loved as if he were his own child by blood. Harry stared back, in that eerie way that he did sometimes, but Severus didn’t mind it at all anymore. He knew that with him it was different. He was just observing Severus, carefully cataloging each line and crook of his face to memory. The child did that to a lot of things around them. At times, Severus found his son staring at the floor for a full hour, or scrutinizing a fork for minutes and minutes until Severus called his name.

Storytime was a favorite, precisely because Harry got to accomplish his daily ‘observing session’ with Severus and the changes that might have come upon him each day, and get to use his imagination to flourish the story he was hearing at the same time. Severus made a point of adding something subtle but silly to his face each time before bedtime.

Harry would point to the small mole, or the tiny potion vial or an inkblot hidden in Severus’s face with the expression of utter joy and pride on his face and then throw himself in Sev’s arms for a celebratory hug. That night, there was a small feather under Severus’ chin and Harry had yet to find it.
But Severus started the story regardless.

“There was once, a little fawn who lived under the valley, in a magical forest with his parents and all their friends.” He didn’t know why he was telling this particular story. He could hear the sound of his own heart hammering against his ribs, like a frightened bird’s. This could go very badly.

He reached a hand and smoothed it over Harry’s hair, just to comfort himself. “The little fawn was too little to remember, too young to know, but he adored his Mommy and Daddy and they loved and cared for him in return.” Harry nodded with a smile.

“One night, when the little fawn was asleep, a bad man found their home.” Severus swallowed and readjusted the sheets around Harry. Should he really be telling this to a seven-year-old?

“He wanted to hurt the little fawn, but Mommy and Daddy were awake, and they loved the fawn so much that they couldn’t bear to let the man take him away,”

Harry finally moved his gaze to Severus’ eyes with a thoughtful hum. “Did they stop him?”

“Yes they did,” Severus should have stopped, but Harry was enthralled, even though Sev’s way of unaided storytelling sucked. “But he-he had to take Mommy and Daddy with him, forever. However, the little fawn wasn’t alone. Um…a raven…a friendly raven, who was friends with the parents, arrived just before they took the fawn’s father, and he made the raven promise that he would love and take care of his little baby.”

“I like ravens, Daddy.” His son murmured with a yawn.

Severus didn’t let himself be affected by the metaphorical meaning behind the words. “Me too.” He muttered back at Harry without really meaning it and then sighed.

Lily’s eyes were like vast rain forests as she stared at him, lively and mysterious especially when she smiled. Harry’s were the very definition of spring, and the young father found himself startled nearly every time he gazed deeply into them. It felt as if his lungs were filled with fresh crisp air as he stood at the edge of a cliff. It was refreshing, especially when his son smiled. Severus felt as if he was on the verge of falling down the precipice.

Harry really did love him.

“The raven took the little baby with him but he was scared.” Severus was terrified. “He wanted to bring the little fawn to the great white owl in their forest, so he would know what to do with the baby, but what he didn’t know was that…The little fawn was a gift.”

“A gift?”

“Yeah, he was special, and he could do extraordinary things that no one ever could. And the raven found out that maybe…the little fawn was a miracle, his miracle, and he had to be cherished and loved, and the raven had to be honored and privileged above all the other animals, to get to care for him.”

Harry frowned and pushed off his blankets, and then attempted to prop himself on his elbows. “What does…pri-privi-.”
Severus gently pushed him back down. “Privileged means grateful,” he said with a smirk. “It’s when someone thanks somebody else for receiving a great gift.”

“Like the raven?”

His smirk broadened and Severus shrugged. “Yeah, like the raven. He was very thankful, and he wanted to show that by always keeping the little fawn happy, no matter what. Because when the fawn got upset, his incredible power got the better of him and…lashed out. But that was always all right with the raven because he loved the little fawn and the baby loved him in return. It was just them against the world.”

“Like us?”

Well, it is the story of our lives. Sev thought dryly but didn’t let the emotion slip onto his face.

“Kind of like us.” He admitted reluctantly. “But we’re not fighting the world, just playing a game, remember?” it was an important differentiation to make, and Severus was hoping to install the concept into Harry’s mind early on. They were playing a game, the two of them. They were playing hide and seek with the world, and no one else was allowed to play. “We’re a team, you and I. and everyone else is on the other team.” He reminded James’s son yet again.

Harry stared at him and shifted in his cot. “Were the raven and his baby playing hide and seek too?”

Severus raised his head and pushed himself off Harry’s bed with a grimace. “Maybe,” he said, ignoring the crick in his neck to lean and tuck Harry in. “But I’ll tell you all about that later.” He ruffled Harry’s hair and the boy squawked, laughing and wriggling under Severus’s hand. “It’s time to sleep, you little brat.”

Harry batted Severus’ hand away with a pout. “I’m not little!”

The pout resembled the ghost of James’s sneer for less than a moment before it dissipated. Severus shook his head at himself with a firm scold.
‘He’s not his father. He will never grow into that man. Even though he had loved his son with the last breath he took, I’m not about to let Harry make the same mistakes.’

‘Tell him I loved him,’ Severus didn’t see how he could. James might have been Harry’s biological father but Harry was only seven, the concept couldn’t be explained to him. He was too young and too volatile to hear the truth, too immature to understand it. Severus will tell him, he had to tell him someday, but that day wasn’t going to arrive any time soon.

Severus let the Occlumency shields firmly congeal themselves in place and then tilted his head at Harry with amusement. “Oh really?” he crossed his arms. “So you are a brat?”

Harry shrugged. A yawn stretched his face wide and his eyes watering by the sheer force and longevity of the pull on his facial muscles. Really tired out now, Severus thought with a smirk. With any luck, Harry would sleep in tomorrow, and give Severus some extra time to finish his latest batch of blood replenishing potions with no interruption.

As he turned to leave, however, a small hand closed around his sleeve.

“Can you stay?” the tiny voice asked.

“Is everything alright?”

Harry nodded with narrowed eyes but looked conflicted. His eyes distractedly drifted to his chin. “Yes Daddy, I just-.”

“Oh!” Suddenly he shot up from his cot and pulled himself up, using Severus’s sleeve as leverage. The boy bounced on the heel of his feet and tilted his head to peer at Severus’s chin with wide eyes and great interest.

Severus sighed. Of course, the feather. He almost forgot about its presence and was more than glad to let Harry sleep rather than mention anything. There was no need to do that, apparently. The feather was found.

Severus sighed again, and sat back on the bed, pushing Harry back into his cot as the bed dipped under his weight. He raised his eyebrows at his son, and Harry’s grin returned. The boy was jumping on the bed in his excitement.

“I found it!” he yelled again before he burst into a contagious bout of giggles. Of course, he did, Severus thought dryly. A seven-year-old would laugh at a crack in the wall, a feather on his father’s chin that was ‘in no way deliberately put there?’ That must have been hilarious.

“Found what, you little brat?”

“The feather!” Harry gasped. “It looks funny,”

“Are you telling me that there’s a feather on my chin?”

Harry bobbed his head with a groggy grin and pointed at the inked feather with his finger. “There it is Daddy! Look! Someone drawed-”

Sev cut in. “Drew.”

“Drew a feather on your chin!”

“You better hope it’s not you Harry.”

“Or what?” Harry leaned heavily on Sev’s arms to balance himself on the bed.

Severus had to take a deep breath to stifle the urge to move Harry’s hand away from his arm. The touch was burning the skin underneath his sleeve, a result of Harry’s excitement, undoubtedly.

“Or…I’ll sell all your toys.” He said, fleetingly distracted by the pain. He pasted another smirk on his face and gently eased Harry back in the bed. “Sleep now,” he brushed the boy’s forehead with the back of his hand and stood, trying his best to look composed. Push through the pain, he told himself. Pain is never permanent, Harry’s good night ritual is.

“I love you, Daddy,” Harry mumbled just as he was by the door.

Severus hesitated, just for a beat as he did every night. As though he was surprised by the declaration every time. Harry never noticed of course, and Sev always got himself together in time to say “I love you too,”

He felt like saying more, telling Harry that he wasn’t the only one, that his biological father and Lily had loved him even more than Sev, he felt like striding back over to the seven-year-old and hugging him again, in spite of his throbbing arm, but he didn’t.

He was a coward. That’s why Lily left him. He was incapable of showing emotion, and hearing that somebody actually found it in themselves to love him on a daily basis wasn’t easy. Not for him anyway.

He knew exactly how Harry saw him. As a strong unbeatable force that could do no wrong. Severus was Harry’s hero, and Sev felt guilty enough to take the blame for that huge misjudgment on the child’s part.

Severus was all Harry saw and interacted with daily. The other children-even though they were all muggles- could sense Harry’s power pouring in ripples out of him, shimmering and radiant. It bled in the background like a dull ringing. It felt suffocating, overwhelming, even, and it made other people very uneasy. The children avoiding his son, as a result, didn’t come as a surprise to Severus.

He also didn’t fathom that his child was taking it hard either, Harry already had a best friend in his guardian and it was all he had known all his life. He didn’t feel any void, or any loss at not interacting with these people, because he just didn’t know what it felt like.

You cannot miss the things you never had.

In spite of those conditions, Severus had made it blatantly clear that Harry wasn’t allowed to touch other people. In fact, anyone that wasn’t Severus himself was out of limit.

There were…instances before, where Harry had unknowingly hurt others when touched. Once when Severus made the gigantic mistake of leaving him in a local Daycare for a single day as he was too busy brewing an order…the other, was two weeks ago, at the park.

The daycare debacle was enough to convince Severus never to leave his child’s side again, not after the idiotic muggle woman had overwhelmed Harry by forcing him to interact with other children. Harry had been paralyzed, by the attention and the abundance of that many children around him. And had struck out. Unexplainably leaving the damn muggle with a jarring, gushing gash on her arm.

She called in a panic. Severus rushed over, erased her memories, and pretended as if nothing had happened. He didn’t ask Harry about it, and the boy had been more than glad to forget the disastrous experience before they had even moved houses again.

It wasn’t a big deal, Severus reassured himself. Harry would be fine as long as Severus was there to protect him. So what if he got a few burns or scrapes along the way? It didn’t matter as long as Harry was safe.
It didn’t matter as long as Harry didn’t mean to cause harm. A child, as innocent and as pure as his son never could, but Severus hoped that his nurturing would also prevent such an occurrence.
The throbbing burn on his arm calmed with that thought and Severus almost smiled.

**

“We used to have storytimes when I was a child.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “It was our thing. It seems hard to believe for you people, that Severus Snape, the notorious death eater, the ‘murderer’ would lay down next to his child every night and tell him stories until he drifted off to sleep. But he did, he did it every single night without a fail.”

“One night, when I was six or seven, I asked him to tell me a new story, one that he couldn’t find in the books on my shelf. He told me the story of ‘the little fawn and his raven’. He left earlier that night, so I sneaked out of my bed, and followed him, I don’t know why.”

“I was so confused when he winced and reached for his potion bag, but maybe I shouldn’t have been.”

He remembered that night the same way he remembered his own name. He remembered shrugging off the blankets that Dad had tucked him in, the floorboards that were freezing cold against his skin. Sending jolts through his body and making him shiver as he quietly trailed the man downstairs to the kitchen.

He didn’t know why he’d done it, maybe to play a game, a late-night round of hide and seek, jump out of the corner with a loud ‘Boo!’ and then throw himself into Dad’s arms and win another story, or maybe somewhere deep down, he knew that something was wrong with the man.

Dad didn’t notice him sitting near the kitchen entrance, with his neck craned over his shoulder to peer at the older man while his knees dug into the cold floor.

He watched then, with morbid fascination as his father peeled back his sleeve with a pained hiss and revealed burnt skin, marred with painful looking blisters and angry red handprints. Harry’s handprints on his father’s sleeve when he had hugged just a few minutes ago.

Harry gasped, he did cry too, silently as his dad winced and groaned and administered a healing balm on his skin without a single complaint. He didn’t know what he had done wrong, or how he had exactly done it, but he knew one thing.

Even then, he knew it was his fault. He had hurt Daddy, really badly, just by touching him. He had learned a valuable lesson that night, on the floor, while eavesdropping; his love hurt his Daddy, and his joy and happiness burnt , scarred and marred the things that he did love.

For a week afterward, Harry had refused to touch his father, long enough for his childlike logic to kick in and repress the memory, long enough for him to miss his father’s arms. But years later, he still remembered.

How could his father tolerate this? Tolerate the pain and the blisters and not make a peep, as Harry had unknowingly been the cause of it?

**

“I still don’t know the answer. I tried asking him once, actually more than once, loving a monster like me couldn’t have been easy. Loving and raising one? It must have been a nightmare for him. Whenever I brought it up though, he told me this particular story, of when I was still an infant and he took me shopping.”

“Shopping?” Kingsley said it in a way that alienated the meaning of the word completely. It was an irritating interruption that was quickly losing its appeal to Harry. He swallowed his anger with a long sigh.

“Yes, in a second-hand store in a nameless town. He’d only had me for a week by then, and he was running very low on money, and well…I was a baby, and babies aren’t inexpensive you know.”

**

Holding a baby for an extended amount of time was an absolute nightmare, Severus had found, and he was more than glad when he found the opportunity to sit Potter in a red plastic cart in a charity shop.

He didn’t think it was safe enough to let go of the child for even more than a second while they were still in London, in plain view, so he had kept Harry close to his chest with one arm and basically id everything with his other.

He had been caring for Harry for seven days now, and the effects already showed. Two distinct sleeping bags were nestled under his drooping eyes, his outfit was disheveled at best and outright shabby at its worst. Severus had spent every second of those seven days taking care of a moody, supernatural baby who could blow things up at will.

It was a miracle that he was even standing on two feet, really, Severus couldn’t afford weakness. They were on the run, from practically everyone who once knew of their existence.

Severus’s whole life was charmed into a shrunk bag in his pocket, all the money he had-which wasn’t much- outside of his vaults had been traded into muggle money in a shady crook in Knockturn alley at midnight.

Severus had even convinced himself to sell his most cherished potion ingredients for a bit of extra money until he could find somewhere to settle. Now they were out of London, seven days later, in an unassuming town that he had picked at random. In a charity shop, because Severus couldn’t even fathom finding a regular store with the amount of money he currently had and had no idea how to use.

Muggle money was such a pain to handle, and he regretted not learning their system much sooner than this day.

Harry didn’t protest as he was put down in the cart and instead looked around with awed interest. He was a very silent child, Severus had found. The child hadn’t babbled or baby talked with Severus at all in these past seven days, and his most preferred form of communication with the man was either wailing, or silent staring.

Severus cherished the silence, but still couldn’t allow himself to lose composure.

“This is a charity store Potter,” he quietly told the child as he looked around. “I’m hoping that this will be our first and last visit.”

This place seemed discreet enough for a while. Severus might even consider renting a cottage in this place until he figured out how he was going to go about this.

He needed a job. Obviously. And a new name. Also obvious, since he couldn’t find said job with his own identity. By now, almost everyone must have known about Severus ‘kidnapping’ the boy who lived. Severus got to glimpse at one paper or two on his late-night visit to the Knockturn alley.

“Alright, Harry,” he took a hold of the cart and gave it a slow experimental push. What a queer invention, he thought in slight amusement as the wheels rolled the cart forward. Muggles were such strange creatures. “Let’s see what we will need.”

He could have stolen the things they needed, easily, with not an ounce of a nuisance. These were muggles. Not only he could have stolen what he wanted, but he could have easily erased their memory and gotten away with it.

Instead of using his Slytherin cunning, however, Severus found himself pushing the cart once again through the crowded aisles. Harry stared at him in silence, as if applauding Sev’s honorable choice and newfound morals, and Severus glared back, cursing under his breath.

“As if you would know any better if I stole a thing, Potter,” he grumbled, and Potter grunted in reply. “You cannot even tell your toes apart from your thumb.”

Harry made an indignant noise at Severus’s snide jab. Sev rolled his eyes at the baby.

The store was empty, with the exception of a plump middle-aged woman behind the counter, holding a muggle newspaper in her hands. Quaint muggle music was playing from the radio, enhancing the coziness of the cramped shop, and Severus could already see the sun setting from the storefront and let a tendril of anxiety slip past his Occlumency shields.

They had no place to stay the night. He had to find a motel, maybe charm the muggles or persuade them to let him stay and then go in search of a cottage the day after.

Potter squealed in delight as Severus rounded the cart and stood to examine the baby clothes. Potter only had three sets in his diaper bag, and that just wasn’t cutting it.

“You should see what riding a broom feels like Potter,” Severus said with an amused smirk. “This cart on wheels wouldn’t even compare.”

The baby waved his arms and held the cart’s bars with interest to peer at the shelves. Severus left him to entertain himself and then turned to the clothes with a slight sneer on his face. It was bound to get very cold soon, and the baby needed warmer clothes, anything warmer than the overalls he was wearing now. They were also out of diapers, but Severus had yet to see any packages here, he would have to go to a convenience store for that.

He had packed as many clothes as he could have himself, including his robes, and winter attire. The furniture too, Severus had picked out anything that wasn’t too magical and would function as a muggle device later on. He wasn’t an idiot. He had to make use of what he already had.

So, clothes and diapers for Potter, also a cot, for Potter, a winter jacket for himself as all he had were his thick wizarding robes, maybe a few books on muggle etiquette, if he managed to find any, and also one on parenting.

Because Severus had no idea, what the hell he was doing. It had taken him nearly fifteen minutes to figure out how the diaper worked on Harry’s first change, nearly double that time to figure out what babies could and couldn’t eat and an embarrassing amount of time to bathe Potter without the fear of nearly drowning the baby. At one point after each task, he found himself questioning his intelligence before Potter demanded his attention again.

He could heartily understand the difficulties new parents went through, and he envied them more because of that extra nine months they got to figure out the things Severus had to teach himself in seven days.

He picked out a fuzzy blue overall and held it out to Potter. “How do you like this one?” it looked warm enough, and the price tag was showed a decent amount. At least, Severus thought it did. Muggle money baffled him.

Harry tore his eyes from the shelf he was staring at and reached a hand to pat the overall. Then he looked at Severus for approval. Sev winced. That was a new thing, Potter had picked up ever since the pillow incident seven nights prior.

“Very good Harry,” Severus nodded, somewhat awkwardly. “Do you like it?” as Harry patted the attire again Severus found himself rolling his eyes at himself. He was asking a baby whether he liked a piece of second-hand clothing? What was wrong with him!?

He dropped the overall in the cart and picked out another one, this one a light red with cartoonish birds on it. Potter ‘oohed’ and ‘awed’ at it as it was thrown into the cart and Severus took that in stride.

“Yes Harry,” he said distractedly. “I’ve told you about birds, haven’t I? Their feathers help us make pillows.”

Potter squealed again, and Severus ignored him and went through the aisles with narrowed eyes and a conscious state of mind. He had a very limited budget after all.

It wasn’t until Potter’s squeals shifted to angry protests that Severus bothered gazing at him over his shoulder to check on the boy. There were two rows of purple tinsel levitating above the cart, one lazily wrapped around the baby’s neck as Harry tried to reach for the other.

Severus cursed and dove to catch the levitating spangle and potter’s protests morphed into silence cries. “For the love of merlin Potter,” Severus snapped, with the tinsel twisting in his hands. “Get yourself together.”

Potter’s cries increased in volume, and the muggle woman craned her neck to stare at them. Severus glared her down and turned back to Harry. “Harry, stop crying. Please.”

He handed the tinsel to Potter but the waterworks were already into play and Potter decided that he needed to throw a tantrum, right then in the shop with a muggle woman around.

Severus scooped him up in his arms and prayed to merlin that Harry’s magic wouldn’t act as irrationally as the one-year-old himself. He bounced Harry in his arms and distanced himself from the cart, Harry was stilling gripping the tinsel, and it flowed behind them as Severus walked the boy back to the aisle that held the ridiculous things.

This is why he never wanted children. He thought with a groan. It took them years to put their common sense into some use, and that on itself was a miss or hit opportunity with most.

“Here they are you brat,” he said to a sniffing Harry as the tinsels came back in sight, and the muggle woman was blocked from view.
Harry sniffed again, and pathetically whimpered as Severus handed him the tip of a green sparkly chain. “Oh quit it, you,” Severus grumbled and untangled the green one from the others. “You’re getting what you wanted.”

Severus had to take two other rolls of that deplorable garland and the snow angel ornaments before Potter quietened down and nothing was about to blow up anymore. Hesitantly, Severus put Harry back in the cart, this time surrendered with more than five strings of tinsels in vibrant colors. They made an annoying whooshing sound that Harry seemed very fond of, and Severus closed his eyes to stifle his annoyance.

If this kept Potter from causing havoc and destroying their cover, then Severus really didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

He picked out the first suitable cot he could find in the pile and then rushed to the counter, the winter jacket had to wait then since he hadn’t anticipated Potter’s holiday ‘shopping’ to get in the way of his precise planning.

Harry cooed and held one of the snow angels to Severus with a huge grin on his small face, and Sev closed a hand around his. He couldn’t stay mad at the baby, he couldn’t lie to himself about that.

“Very pretty, isn’t it?” he muttered and Harry hummed. Severus pushed the cart to the muggle woman.

“You’re going to be absolutely intolerable at Christmas, aren’t you?” Severus smiled in spite of himself and then shook his head. It used to frighten him, to have a strong bond with the baby, or grow attached to him, but he couldn’t help himself.

He didn’t see Lily or James in the boy, all he saw was innocence and purity that he had sworn to protect no matter what.

“Single Dad huh?” the muggle woman asked with a raised eyebrow.

Severus paused and contemplated his response. They were strangers, she couldn’t possibly know them, and she didn’t look particularly threatening.
“Yes,” he kept his voice curt, and deftly piled the cart’s content on the cashier’s desk.

“Yeah, I gathered,” the redhead woman said, she had a thick Scottish accent that wasn’t unusual in the area. Severus ignored the woman and eased Harry out of the cart, with the tinsels still wrapped around him.

“It’s obvious you’re new to this you know,” the woman had the gall to say as Severus was coaxing the snow angels out of Harry’s hands.
Sev paused to glare at her. “Isn’t everyone at first?”

The woman’s smile annoyingly remained passed on her face as she checked the tags for the prices. “Oh well, that’s true.” She shrugged and drew out a plastic bag. “What I meant was, that you seemed so enamored with him, it’s cute to watch,” Severus’s scowl deepened at her words.

Cute? He wasn’t cute! Harry looked at Severus with the same indignant look on his face that the man was inwardly wearing. ‘Really?’ his face seemed to be saying. ‘Is cute the word for it?’

She bagged the clothes and the cot and then looked at the baby with a toothy grin and pruned eyes. “And looks like your lad’s started the holidays a bit early huh?” Severus drew back before she could reach and touch his face and then stared at her.

She stared back, undisturbed. “Shall I add the tinsels and the ornaments?”

“Yes,” Severus said through gritted teeth and stared down at Potter. “We should get you off those so she can-”

“Oh there’s no need!” the woman exclaimed, her voice chirpy with mirth. Although, Severus wasn’t quite sure what was so mirthful about their situation. “Let him have them, I can ring up the prices just fine.”

He nodded, his shoulders slumping as the woman hummed and clucked at Harry with that irritating baby voice that some adults did whilst talking to children. Severus ignored her and Harry, he was so tired.

He wanted to hand the baby to the woman, if only for a moment and then sprawl on the ground and just sleep. It was dark outside, they had no place to sleep for the night, Potter was going to get hungry soon, and Severus himself had been ignoring his own groaning stomach for two days now, in a measly attempt to save some more money.

He had to find a motel, find a store to buy other supplies for Harry, make sure the baby didn’t get upset enough to blast the roof down, forge a new identity, and also find a way to make an income without giving his skills or his name away.

When it was time to pay, Severus sluggishly drew out half of the parchment money he had in his pockets and handed them to the woman, whose nametag read Mary.

Mary looked at the money with raised eyebrows, and only took two of the bills. “That’d be enough sir,” she said with a soft smile that Severus abhorred but was too wrung out to complain about. “Here’s the change.” She handed him a few coins and a bill and slid the bags over with a small wave to Harry.

“Have a nice evening!” she said as they were leaving and Severus nodded. Harry actually managed to wave back twice with the snow angel tightly clenched in his fist before he stopped and gazed at it in wonder again.

Sev stepped out into the street with a deep breath and a glance over his shoulder.

Much much later, when he had remembered the incident, he noticed that she must have tricked him while receiving the money and had given the tinsels and the ornaments away for free. If she hadn’t done so, Severus couldn’t have bought Harry his other supplies.

If strangers, such as her, managed random acts of kindness such as this, then who was Severus to complain about getting to love and protecting this child who already means the world to him?