Work Text:
Severus tried to fight it. He didn't want Potter's spawn invading his house, much less accompanied by the werewolf he'd hated since childhood. He didn't imagine his life would ever consist of any level domesticity, and therefore the idea that he was now the spawns legal guardian- complete with feeding times and diaper changes- offended his sense of propriety. And whose idea was it anyway, handing the Boy-Who-Lived over to an ex Death Eater without so much as a how do you do? Dumbledore's infuriating twinkle came to mind and burned in his memory, burned him that the man would still seem so aloof and content while Severus' world was shattered and crumbled around him. What right did he have, what right did anyone have, to be glad this was all over now that She was no longer in the world?
So he tried to fight the burgeoning feelings of familial, even patriarchal, pride whenever Potter's spawn did anything even remotely noteworthy. When he laughed for the first time since the ordeal, when his steps started getting more sure, when he said "Snape" for the first time. He tried to fight the swell of emotion in his chest when he put the child to bed, smoothing the boy's hair back and noting how peaceful his face looked.
He tried to fight the softening around that damned wolf. He no longer gagged on his own overwhelming hatred when the wolf walked into a room, he didn't glare at him until he left again or curse at him anytime he spoke to Severus. He even, almost, felt as though they didn't have to be enemies anymore. They would never be friends, he knew that, but he wasn't sure he opposed to living under the same roof anymore.
Potter. James Potter. That name seemed to be the only stain hanging over them and coloring all it touched, but even that seemed to be fading with time and the acknowledgement that- bully or not- the man died so that his wife and child might live. And what sort of person held on to a grudge after that?
It was a Thursday in late June, a month before Harry's third birthday and a year and a half after this unlikely unit was formed. If he was honest with himself he would say that this had brightened his childhood home in a way he'd never seen it before. His childhood certainly hadn't been the golden haze that others had been, but now the weight of the past inside these walls and out of it didn't seem so heavy.
He was coming up the stairs to tell the wolf breakfast was ready, and how long does it take to brush the child's hair he didn't have that much, when he heard Her name pass his lips. Severus froze, there at the top of the stairs, feeling as though he'd been pole-axed. And there it was again, that name that he'd avoided for a year and a half; refraining even from thinking about Her because to do so hurt too much. The child's door was open, and while he couldn't see the whole room clearly, Severus could hear and see the wolf's legs where he sat in the rocking chair. Severus knew that the wolf liked that chair, sitting in it with the child in his lap while he read a story, brushed his hair or even held him.
"She had long, beautiful hair," Severus heard, along with the soft squeaking of the chair. "And you might have her eyes, pup, but her hair was never so impossible. This hair you were unlucky enough to inherit from James. She used to get so exasperated with your hair, she'd pomade it, charm it, and nothing ever seemed to keep it from flying a hundred different directions at the root."
Shaking, Severus sat down on the top stair and listened to Remus tell Harry about his mother. He told him how alike they were, she and Harry, how much Remus missed her, and how much she'd loved Harry. Now that he heard it, he could admit that Harry had long since stopped being Potter's spawn and had at some point become Lily's son. He remembered now that Remus and Lily had been friends too, having remembered seeing them in the library together. At some point as well he supposed Remus had gone from Potter's wolf to the wolf– the inflection of such somehow softer, intimate. Affectionate, even.
They would never be friends, Severus told himself, standing and going back downstairs where breakfast had gone cold.