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It was a long six weeks for Harry while he waited to get his cast off, during which time he had to be plied with treacle tarts, ice lollies and suchlike to keep him from grumbling too much about how he “wan walk, mamas! Wan walk!” There was much wheedling and rather a lot of puppy dog eyes, but to his great consternation, not a single one of his loved ones was willing to be moved by the force of his nearly unbearable cuteness. In a truly Slytherin move, he even offered to procure venom from a runespoor (likely escaped from a smuggling ring) that Hagrid had captured in the forest- a rare potions ingredient- with his parseltongue ability in exchange for being allowed to walk on his own. Severus, however, was not swayed.
“Nice try, little monster, but your health is far more important than any potions ingredients,” the young potions master told him, and Harry stuck his tongue out at him.
“Sevvy boring,” he declared loftily, his air of regal condescension somewhat offset by the chocolate smeared on his face (he’d just come back from visiting Remus).
“Quite so, it would appear,” the man replied, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. Harry had eventually sighed, and, feeling bad about insulting his “Unca Sev” had talked the snake into giving some venom anyway, although Severus had kept him from getting within striking distance of the snake, to which he stuck out his lower lip and crossed his arms.
However, finally, finally, six weeks came and went, and Harry gleefully banished the cast in a shower of sparks as soon as it had been removed. Then, before anyone could help him down, he plonked to the floor, landing on his rump and seeming a bit surprised that his leg was still a little wobbly. Undeterred, he pulled himself up and tried again, and Poppy had to hold back a hovering Severus from immediately rushing to his aid.
“Let him get his bearings, Severus,” she scolded, as Harry took a few teetering steps and fell down again. Severus grumbled but complied, casting more cushioning charms on top of Poppy’s cushioning charms while looking her straight in the eyes.
“Feeling brave, are we?” she responded, looking down her nose at him (quite a feat, since she was shorter than he was). Harry, who had never been on the receiving end of Poppy’s “you’re being naughty” look himself but had seen it directed at Severus often enough, toddled over, now a bit more sure of himself.
“Ooooh!” he stage-whispered. “Sevvy in twouble!”
“He’s not in trouble, dear,” Poppy reassured him, patting his little head.
“Good,” Harry nodded decisively. “Harry wan walk. Sevvy go viwwage?”
“Actually,” Minerva jumped in, looking at her wife. “Since Mummies both have so much work to do and you are so eager to get out and about, we were thinking that Sevvy might like to take you to muggle London for the day. You could go to the toy shop and the muggle cinema, maybe?”
“Movie! Ice cweam!” Harry shouted, using his new freedom of movement to jump up and down.
“Alright, but we’re seeing something educational as well,” Severus said decisively, taking Harry by the hand. Muggle London had a grand variety of museums, and personally he thought that Harry would enjoy those far better than some trite pop-culture drivel in a movie theatre. But the poor boy had never been to either before, and so Severus would suffer the indignity of sitting through a matinee of The Last Unicorn (terribly inaccurate, he’d have to explain to the child) or whatever other luridly-coloured moving picture caught the toddler’s attention.
“Brilliant,” Minverva affirmed, smiling at Severus as they both gave Harry a kiss on the head before they went off to their respective tasks. Just to rile him, Poppy gave Snape a maternal pat on the cheek before retreating swiftly to her office, leaving the 22 year old glowering in place, his eyes following her with a glare that would have had any of his students running for the floo.
Muggle London was very loud and overwhelming, and Harry was nearly glued to Severus’s leg (but he refused to be picked up, too eager to stretch his legs). However, he watched everything with wide, eager eyes, unlike Severus, who found the city distasteful, but whose expression softened when he saw the wonder in Harry’s eyes (only to look up and glare daggers at someone who nearly walked into him).
“Watch what you’re doing, woman!” he barked at her, protectively swooping Harry into his arms despite the child’s protestations (swooping, haha, bat pun).
“Oh, I’m very sorry,” she demurred, peeking up at him through long dark lashes. Twirling a strand of chestnut-brown hair around her finger, she worked her lower lip between her teeth. She was a head shorter than Severus, but still rather tall and willowy, and her flower-print dress showed just enough collarbone that, combined with her natural good looks, there were quite a few men casting furtive glances at her.
Severus, however, was fussing over Harry, looking him over for injuries. “Did the foolish woman knock you over?” he cooed, as Harry tried to arch away from his obsessive mothering.
“Awww, he’s so cute!” the woman squealed, trying to take a step closer, which prompted Severus to skitter back, pulling Harry closer and eyeing her distrustfully. The woman continued on, undeterred.
“My name is Meghan, by the way,” she told him, her voice adopting a flirtatious lilt. “May I ask yours?”
“Snape,” he grumbled. “Severus Snape.”
“Oh? Like Bond? James Bond?” she teased, and the potions master looked at her as if she had grown a second head.
“I’ve not the foggiest idea what you’re nattering on about,” he told her, searching the crowds for an escape route that would leave her unable to follow.
“Oh,” she blushed, a little surprised. Well, it stood to reason that he was probably too busy with his son to watch a lot of films, she supposed. “Anyway, forgive me if I’m being a bit bold, but would there happen to be a Mrs. Snape?”
Severus blinked at her, confused. “Why the bloody hell would there be a Mrs. Snape?” he growled.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Handsome lad like you, likes kids. Quite a catch,” the girl replied, smiling at him, still bound and determined to pursue his affection.
Handsome? Severus thought, dumbfounded, although far more concerned with the second thing she’d said. How dare someone accuse him of liking children!
“I hate most children,” he sniped at her, his vehemence at odds with the tender way he held Harry. “I like this child and this child alone, and I’d thank you not to slander me like that again,” he hissed, wondering what it would take to get her to go away. To his blatant horror, she only laughed and placed a hand on his arm.
“I like you; you’re funny,” she declared, and then pulled out a pen and scribbled something on Severus’ hand before he could stop her. “Anyway, here’s my home number; I’ll hope you’ll give me a call.” Severus, meanwhile, glared at her and resolved to cast a scourgify at the earliest opportunity.
“Not bloody likely,” he grumbled as she slipped away with a wave and a final flirtatious wink. Meanwhile, some bum with a fag hanging out of the corner of his mouth siddled up to them.
“You’re bloody mental, mate,” he told Severus, mouth hanging open. “Bird like that, and you just chase her off. Mind, you’ve really not got much to boast about, with a face like that.” Severus simply glared and gave a good stomp to the top of the man’s foot.
“Get that cigarette away from the baby before I beat you with it,” he growled, as the idiot wisely skittered away and Harry’s little voice scolded him for being so rude to the nice lady and the stinky man. Honestly, the nerve of some people…
__________
Harry had a wonderful time in London, and by the time they’d left the V&A museum of childhood (full of toys from the fifteenth century to the present day, although funnily enough, although he’d enjoyed it, Harry seemed to prefer the science museum, which they’d visited immediately before), the toddler was fast asleep against Severus’ shoulder. Gently, the potion master used his thumb to wipe some caramel sauce off the child’s eyebrow. A few more young, attractive women (and a few men) shot the pair tender looks, but Severus warded them off with a glare.
Getting the boy home, Severus cast a few gentle cleaning charms on a sleeping Harry, looking around to make sure none of the portraits were watching before kissing his head and laying him gently in his crib in his mothers’ quarters. Stepping out into the living area, he was greeted by the Poppy and Minerva, sharing a night cap.
“How was it?” The medi-witch asked him, smiling fondly.
“Harry had fun,” Severus responded, cursing the softness in his own voice as he reached for the firewhisky and conjured a third glass.
“And you?” Minerva asked with a knowing glance, casting a smirk at his right hand, which still had the faded phone number of the girl from earlier on it.
“Ugh, don’t even bring it up,” he groaned into his hands. “The insolent creature must have used some sort of permanent ink; I couldn’t cast any more scourgify charms without risking flaying my skin off. I’ll have to get a potion to get it off.”
“Have you thought perhaps that it might be good to make a friend?” Poppy asked, clearly enjoying his discomfort. “That’s what Harry would suggest.”
“Don’t you dare start with me, woman,” Snape growled, downing his firewhisky in one gulp. He silently resolved to unshrink the packets of gifts and little trinkets he’d purchased for Harry later, deciding that he’d ruined his reputation enough for one night.
The next morning, Severus was woken by an insistent knocking on the door of his quarters. Normally, he’d be irritated, but in this instance he was blessedly pulled from a terrible nightmare of being chased by women through the London streets as they all tried to lay their manicured hands on Harry’s cheeks, all the while cooing about what a good “daddy” he was. He groaned and swiped a hand (now blessedly freed from that cursed phone number) over his tired eyes.
“Albus, that had better not be you, or I swear to Merlin…”
“It’s me, Severus.” A voice that was unmistakably Minerva’s called from behind the closed portrait hole. The slight tremor of fear in her voice jolted him fully awake immediately.
“Do you think you could grab a few things from your potions stores? Harry’s running a fever.”
Severus physically gasped, feeling like an ice pick had been driven through his chest. Some horrid hooligan in London had gotten his boy sick, and Minerva sounded more worried that she would if it were just a bit of a cold.
The door to his quarters was open before Minerva could get in another word, and she stepped in to see that Severus had haphazardly spelled his clothing on, his hair in disarray.
“How bad?” he asked tersely, in lieu of greeting.
“38.2,” she responded tightly. “Poppy’s with him trying to lower it now.”
Severus swore vehemently. That was a very dangerous fever for a young child, especially one whose health was still threatened by a significant period of malnutrition and abuse.
“I luckily have some modified fever reducers in stock in case of something like this,” he informed her, leading her briskly back to his stores. “Have you been able to get him to eat anything yet?”
“He kept pushing food away and whimpering that his throat hurt, but we did manage to get him to take a bottle with a nutrient potion,” the Gryffindor informed him, and Severus nodded shortly as he grabbed a toddler-sized dose of pain reliever and carefully started mixing it with a fever reducer. He had his med-kit strapped in a bag over his shoulder in no time at all, and was leading more than following Minerva to the hospital wing.
“Good morning Harry,” he told the child softly, for once not caring about his image as he knelt gently in front of the crib Poppy had transfigured from one of the beds in the back corner of the room. “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.”
Harry blinked at him, whimpered quietly, and squeezed one of Severus’ fingers with his tiny fist. This small gesture worried Severus even more than the concerning heat radiating from the toddler, as Harry was normally talking at them as fast as he could get the words out of his mouth.
“I’ve got some potions to help you feel better,” he informed him, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. “Do you think you could take them for me?”
“Mmph,” he mewled, turning his face away, his normal vocal objections to taking his medicine absent.
“I know that your throat hurts, but the potion should help with that,” Severus continued, trying to ignore the uncomfortable strangeness that came with the unfamiliar experience of having only a one-sided conversation with Harry. “If you take it for me now, I’ll buy you any toy you want as soon as you’re feeling better,” he wheedled, laying all his cards on the table.
Harry still would not budge. Severus sighed.
“Pleaaaaaaseeeeee,” he tried again, dangling the phial in what he hoped was a tempting manner, all the diplomacy and negotiation skills he’d learned through spying nigh on useless when it came to a sick toddler.
Harry’s eyes widened slightly, surprised by his use of that word, and, sensing his desperation, reluctantly opened his mouth a little. Gratefully, Severus carefully cradled his head, softly tipping the potion into the child’s mouth and gently encouraging him as he swallowed painfully.
“There’s a good boy,” he praised. “Now you can go to sleep, and you’ll feel better soon. Harry’s eyes were already fluttering closed, but he fought sleep for just a moment longer.
“Mamas stay? And Sevvy?” he begged, voice nearly inaudible, as all three promised that they would, even conjuring chairs to placate him as he finally, blessedly drifted off.
__________
Over the next few days, Harry’s condition only worsened, and they had to put an IV in and put Harry back in nappies, as he was in no shape to be getting out of his crib at all; indeed, they could barely get him to wake up. His fever would not budge- indeed, it only inched higher, and the child began to have trouble breathing around the third day of his illness. They had to enchant a muggle oxygen machine to work in the castle and connect it to Harry’s nose with a cannula, as the spell that wizards normally used to breathe for a patient was too strong to use on a small child.
Desperately, Severus brewed and brewed and brewed, and Minerva and Poppy called in second and third and fourth opinions from outside healers specializing in small children. The looks of concern on their faces only deepened each time, and finally, one pulled them aside about a week after Harry got sick.
“Everyone’s doing everything they can, but I think you need to face the fact that you might lose him,” the wizened healer told him solemnly. “Whatever flu this might have started as is clearly long past what it started as, and with his immunity and respiratory system compromised by earlier malnutrition, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do but keep doing what we’ve been doing and cross our fingers.”
If Harry weren’t sleeping fitfully nearby, surely the windows would have shattered and the lights would have gone out, and even as it was the room shook just slightly with the overwhelming rage and despair of the three adults. Poppy let out an inhuman wail, and Minerva stumbled back into a nearby chair, her feet no longer able to support her.
Severus, however, stayed upright, and it felt as if the whole room were spinning around him while he stood rooted to the floor. “No,” he declared vehemently. “He can’t die. I won’t let him.” This was all his fault… if only he hadn’t taken Harry to London, where he must have caught it…
“It’s nothing you did, Severus,” Minerva rasped, barely able to make her voice work. “Nobody could have seen this coming.”
“My fault or not, we’re not going to lose him,” he swore. “Not after everything.”
“There has to be something else we can do,” Poppy declared, her voice shaky. She couldn’t see what else they could do that they hadn’t been doing, and the healer had only told her what she’d been refusing to acknowledge before, the heart of a mother taking precedence over the brain of a medic.
“I’m sorry,” the consulting healer said, well aware that she was intruding on something very private. “Trust me, if there was anything else we could do, we would… I mean, this is Harry Potter…”
“He’s our son!” Minerva spat viciously. “And he’s a child! Damn you all!” The arm of the chair warped under her grip, her barely-restrained magic carving a handhold in the wood.
“Fuck you all and your bearucratic nonsense!” Severus growled. “Either do your jobs or get the hell out!” He then turned on his heel and stocked purposefully away. If they wouldn’t do anything, he would. He would find something.
______________
For the next three days, nobody saw anything of Severus. He would not leave his quarters, and he did not sleep. Only by the insistent needling of the elves did he eat or drink anything. He stood over his cauldron, adrenalin making it so that he could not feel his exhaustion as he tried combination after combination, anything to tip the scale, to make something that would give Harry’s system the ability to help him heal.
News of Harry’s condition worsened, and it only drove him to work harder. A tearful message from Poppy on the third day beckoned him in a broken voice to come up to the hospital wing to see Harry, and the words that she couldn’t bring herself to say were quite clear… she was offering him the chance to say goodbye.
Fueled with the sort of grief and rage he’d never known before- not even when Lily had died- Severus threw another failed brew against the wall, where it shattered and dripped down the stone to the floor. There had to be something….
Picking up the knife to cut more ingredients, his hands were shaking so badly that he accidentally sliced a long gash along his palm. The blood dripped down, hissing against the sliced asphodel and creating an overwhelmingly metallic scent. The young man’s head spun, and then…
Iron! The solution hit him. The missing ingredient wasn’t magical at all, it was entirely mundane. Iron should balance the formula perfectly, turning a useless pile of ingredients into something that could cooperate magically, and he picked up the knife again, ignoring the stinging in his hand. He could do this. He must do this…
______
Seventy-nine hours after they’d received news that they could not accept, Severus came rushing into the hospital wing with a phial of a deep purple liquid held in his good hand. The one with the deep cut in his palm trailed blood onto the pristine white floor, Severus not having taken the time to try to fix it, since it would have taken away time and energy he needed for Harry.
Minerva and Poppy looked at him in barely-concealed horror as he skidded to a stop.
“Severus… what…?” One of them began- Severus could not for the life of him even say which was speaking at this point, but he shoved the phial into the closest set of hands.
“Give him this!” he panted. “Give him this and keep doing what we’ve been doing, and he’ll live.” Then, sick with exhaustion and blood loss, he dropped to the floor, on top of the rapidly-expanding puddle of his own blood.
_________
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he gradually came to awareness, the room spinning and a comforting weight on his chest. He looked down to see Harry, far too pale, having lost far too much weight, and still with the cannula hooked into his tiny little nose, but he was alive and his skin felt only slightly warmer than normal.
The wave of love that hit him then was so strong that he almost didn't recognize it for what it was, having never felt this strongly about anyone before. His father had only hurt him, his mother hadn’t protected him, and for all he’d loved Lily, it was nothing to the iron hand squeezing his chest when he looked at her son. He understood then, why people had children, if they all loved them so fiercely as he did this one specific child. He breathed a deep sigh of relief as Harry drooled on his chest, his tiny foot twitching as he dreamt.
“Oh thank Merlin,” he wheezed, voice raspy from disuse. He wondered how long it had been, noting with some dissatisfaction that someone had placed him in a hospital gown, and that there was a bandage on his hand.
Poppy was on him almost immediately after he had spoken, appearing from Morganna-knows-where.
“You saved his life,” she informed him, and dear lord… was that… pride shining in her voice? “The potion made it so that the treatments could finally start working. It’s been a week, and he’ll make a full recovery. His fever’s nearly broken.”
Severus took a shaky breath, and it was only then that he realized that silent tears were streaming down his face and his chest shook with silent sobs. Even when Lily died, the rage and numbness that came with the grief had kept him from crying more than a few angry tears- he must have been a child, the last time he’d cried like this. He raised his bandaged hand to wipe the tears away, noting idly that it still stung quite fiercely.
“You’d cut it right to the bone,” the nurse informed him. “It’s going to scar; without my intervention you wouldn't have been able to use it the same way at all.”
The thought didn’t scare him like it once would have, when potions was all he had and all he was and all he lived for- when only his utility kept him around in any of the circles he’d frequented. Harry was alive, and while he was certainly grateful he hadn’t permanently maimed himself, it wasn’t his top concern at the moment. The slip of his potions knife was what had allowed him to discover the cure, and he realized with a slight jolt that he would have cut off his entire arm if that was what it took.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and while an outsider might have thought he was expressing gratitude to Poppy for healing him, his eyes were on Harry and both women knew that his gratitude was expressed towards the child, for giving him a reason to live again and for showing him what unconditional love truly looked like.
_____________
A month later found them both completely recovered, and in matching dress robes and bowties (although Harry certainly looked far happier about it). When he’d been informed that the ministry wanted to bestow upon him an Order of Merlin (first class) for inventing a potion that would save so many lives, his reflexive response had been to tell them to go shove it up their bureaucratic arses, that the only life he cared about was Harry’s.
Minerva, however, had interrupted him as he was drafting a very uncomplimentary letter to the minister in response to the news.
“Come now, Severus,” she scolded him. “This is a good thing. Your days as a purported death eater would be all but forgotten with an honor like this, and frankly I think it’s an opportunity you have to take. Morganna knows that your personality isn’t going to go a long way in helping your reputation.”
“Mmph,” he scoffed at her, crossing his arms.
She ignored him and kept on. “And frankly, is it such a stretch to accept that you deserve this?”
“Yes,” he told her bluntly. She’d merely rolled her eyes, swatted him, and told him to either pick some dress robes out of the catalogue she’d brought or she’d do it for him.
Which is how he’d ended up here, at a ministry ceremony in honor of him (shudder) with Harry on his hip looking ever so dapper in a silver bow tie to go with his emerald robes. Severus really regretted telling Minerva that he didn’t want to touch the Gladrags’ catalogue with a ten-foot stirring rod, as he looked decidedly less put together in the damn bowtie. Having his face on a fucking cake hadn’t helped his mood- at least not until Harry had pointed at it and gleefully squaled “Sevvy!!! Sevvy n’ choc-late!”
The minister made a terrible brouhaha of talking about what a service Severus had done to wizard-kind, and how this potion would revolutionize magical medicine, and a bunch of other drivel that he wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to. When called up to receive the award, he reluctantly handed Harry over to Minerva, who was sitting next to him, and slinked up to the stage accompanied by the raucous applause of people who would, in the not-so-distant past, been just as glad to see him thrown in Azkaban (and not entirely without reason, if he were honest).
“Would you like to say a few words?” the minister asked, and Severus bit back a number of things that he couldn’t say in front of Harry and simply barked “no comment” into the microphone.
“Oh… um, alright,” the minister seemed a bit thrown by someone who so clearly did not want to be there, but nonetheless handed over the award and called for more applause (this time somewhat less enthusiastic) as Severus rushed back to his seat like a penguin with his arse on fire.
“Shiny!” Harry clapped his pudgy brown hands gleefully as he saw the award, ignoring the awed looks of people around him, whose idolization clearly wasn’t midgitated by the fact that their ‘hero’ was a toddler. Severus shot them all warning glares and flippantly offered the award to Harry, who promptly put it in his mouth and started sucking on it. Luckily, anticipating this reaction, all three of the professors had cast subtle disinfecting charms on it. It was Severus’ opinion that no sensible mage would trust where the minister’s hand had been, hence why he had refused to shake it (that and general pettiness, of course).
“He seems to like that,” some nosy old witch laughed from behind them. “You’ll have to be careful, or you won’t get it back!”
“So?” Severus challenged her. Harry of course was an excellent sharer and they wouldn’t really have a problem with it, but he couldn’t have cared less if the child kept it forever. It was safe to say that however much an Order of Merlin might have pleased him a few years ago, now he was firmly of the opinion that the little boy currently gnawing on the shiny monstrosity was the real prize.
The witch looked thrown by his indifferent attitude towards the honor, even though he’d been exuding waves of grumpy reticence all night. Oh well- it’s not like he cared, not when Harry was holding his hands out to him and asking if they could have cake now.
“Yes, we can have cake now, little monster,” he told him, the slightest bit of fondness leaking through his cold exterior, reluctantly accepting that him holding Harry would no doubt be slapped all over the front page of The Daily Prophet the next day. “We can have all the cake you want.”
Harry took him quite literally up on his offer, and they went home with cake smeared all over his face and his robes. He was alive, they were happy. All was well.