12 year old Harry Potter stared into the dusty mirror in front of him and frowned.

He had, of course, come in to contact with The Mirror of Erised twice before.

On the first occasion, he had spent night after night staring at his own reflection, flanked by the figures of his mother and father, long since departed from his world. And then he had come up against Professor Quirrel at the end of his first years and his deepest and most desperate desire had, momentarily, become the need to stop Voldemort from getting his hands on the Philosopher’s Stone.

But now…

Harry squinted past his glasses, looking into the mirror again.

This was… the strangest thing.

He had stumbled upon the mirror again quite by accident, when a rogue staircase had changed rather too quickly and left him on one of the lesser-frequented floors at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Dumbledore’s warnings had hung in the back of Harry’s head as he’d approached the mirror, which was seemingly discarded in an old classroom with other weird and wonderful items. Still, he had thought, it wouldn’t hurt just to take a little peek.

And so he had, fully expecting to see his parents. Even prepared, perhaps, to see himself defeating Voldemort in one final showdown. But not prepared at all for….

No, this had to be some kind of mistake.

Clearly, this mirror was not the same one he had looked into previously, despite its obvious similarities. It just couldn’t be.

Deciding it was probably wise to get to his next class before he was late, Harry left the room behind, trying to put the strange images to the back of his mind.

OOOOOOO

After a whirlwind of adventure during his first year, Harry had come back to down to earth with a bump when he found himself back at 4 Privet Drive that summer – back to being ‘just Harry’, the inconvenience that was merely tolerated.

He’d been thoroughly grateful when Ron and his brothers had come to liberate him of course, and enjoyed spending the rest of the holidays at The Burrow, although that too had served as a reminder of the one thing he didn’t have, would never have – a family of his own.

 He would never have a mother who fussed over him, or a father who glowed with pride upon hearing his misgivings. Nobody would put his face on a spoon and attach it to a clock to keep track of where he was, because the simple truth of the matter was: nobody cared all that much.

Things hadn’t gotten much better when term began either. First, there was the whole incident with the flying car, swiftly followed by what Harry had now dubbed ‘Snake Day’ and the whole horrible misunderstanding which had left most of his fellow students believing he had set the cobra on Justin Finch-Fletchley, or worse, that he was the Heir of Slytherin.

After that day, things had taken an even weirder turn, and it had all started with a missed study session.

Sick and tired of the hushed whispers and suspicious glances in his direction, Harry had left the study hall prematurely one evening with full intentions of returning straight to the Gryffindor common room. Instead, he had somehow found himself sitting on the cold stone steps which led down to the dungeons.

He wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d been sat there, and he was completely lost in his own misery until his least favourite teacher appeared in front of him.

“Mr Potter,” a soft, silky voice cut the air like a knife and brought Harry to his senses. “Might I ask what you are doing?”

“Oh, uh… nothing sir. Just sitting,” Harry told him, wondering why of all the teachers in the school, it had to be Snape.

“’Just…. sitting’,” Snape repeated, raising a brow. “I do believe you should be in the study hall right now.”

Harry just nodded. “Couldn’t really concentrate.”

“Given some of the recent events that have occurred here Potter, I would have thought that even you might have the sense not to wander the corridors alone past dark,” Snape drawled.

“Why?” Harry retorted, forgetting his company for a moment. “It’s me everyone’s afraid of. Hardly going to set a snake on myself now, am I?”

He braced himself for the tongue-lashing he was surely about to receive, but when met with silence, braved a glance up at the Potions Master.

The look of contempt that Snape usually bore for him was, oddly enough, not present.

“Come with me, Potter,” was all the Professor had said, turning back towards the potions classroom.

OOOOOOO

That was where it had all begun – the unexpected chain of events that was to follow.

Harry had certainly not expected to spend the next two hours in Snape’s office, sipping hot cocoa and talking to the older man about his (limited) experience of being a parselmouth.

Even more unexpected still were the subsequent hours the two of them would spend together over the coming term, in the weeks leading up to Harry’s strange encounter with the Mirror of Erised. Those hours were spent with Snape teaching him how to defend himself and generally, making up for all the things the boy wasn’t receiving from his current and quite frankly useless Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.

As Christmas drew near, Harry was shocked yet not entirely disappointed to learn that the Dursleys had contacted Professor Dumbledore following the incident with Arthur Weasley’s car, confirming that they would no longer be able to house him during the holiday periods. Harry was content to remain at Hogwarts over the festive season, and for then, pushed the gnawing worry about the following summer to the back of his mind.

Very few members of the staff body had stayed at the school that year, and so Harry found himself rattling around the castle with only Professor Trelawney and Professor Snape for company – the latter being preferable, something he had never thought he’d say.

On his brief visits, Dumbledore had simply beamed as he watched the two of them in the library together reading, and even in the Great Hall playing a game of Wizard’s Chess. To Harry, it quickly became apparent that the headmaster had surely been aware of the predicament with the Dursleys for some time, and had perhaps encouraged Snape to mentor him, in the hope of them forming some semblance of a relationship.

And so when this occurred to the 12 year old, naturally, he put his best efforts into pushing the Potions Master away. He didn’t want Snape to spend time with him under duress, and he certainly didn’t want the man’s pity.

Yet try as he might, Harry found that Snape went nowhere. Eventually he was forced to accept the fact that the teacher who had once loathed and mocked him might actually enjoy his company, and perhaps, even, care about him.

Upon the start of the new school term, his friends were at first surprised to observe the obvious thawing in the relationship between Harry and the Professor. And then, perplexed to find that Harry was spending evenings and even some weekends away from the Gryffindor dormitory in Snape’s own quarters.

Harry himself was not sure exactly when and why it had happened – when he had begun to rely on the Potions Master so much. And why, when he received a top mark on an assignment, his first stop was the dungeons to tell Professor Snape.

Nor did Harry know why the man had become a constant source of comfort when he was scared or sick, or why the Slytherin Head of House did not rebuke him when it all got too much and he’d crash against his strong chest, burying his face in the black robes. Snape never pushed him away or made him feel foolish, and over time, a warm hand found its way to the back of Harry’s head on such occasions, carding through the messy hair.

The true gravity of the situation dawned on Harry when he awoke in the hospital wing, hours after killing the basilisk and rescuing Ginny from the Chamber of Secrets.

Three beds down, Arthur and Molly Weasley fussed over their young daughter.

There was no fussing for Harry of course, but he didn’t need it. The strong, silent presence in the chair beside his bed made sure of that. And so too did the knowledge that he wouldn’t be homeless when summer came, but need only pack the essentials for the short trip to the dungeons.

So this is what it was like, Harry had concluded. This is what it was like to have a family.

Granted, Professor Snape did not fuss and coo over him, and nor did he encourage Harry into flying cars across the country. The clock with the spoons remained to be seen, though seemed unlikely.

Yet none of that mattered. Professor Snape had been there for Harry when nobody else had. He had mentored and cared for him with no ulterior motive and had, over recent months, begun to do the things that Harry had always imagined a father would.

And so when he settled down in the dungeons for the first night of the summer holidays - in his bedroom – Harry thought back to the strange images the Mirror of Erised had shown him much earlier in the year, and allowed himself a small smile as he pictured the image of Professor Snape standing behind him with his hands on his shoulders.

No, Harry thought as he closed his eyes, perhaps it wasn’t so strange after all.

OOOOOOO