Chapter Text
He's struggling against wakefulness when the soft, familiar pattern of tiny feet against glossy marble echoes towards him. For a few moments, the noise is contained to the bedroom two doors down from, but it isn't long before there is the quiet creak of a door and the tip-tap-tipping draws nearer. He continues to uselessly grasp for more sleep when the noise stops outside his door, which is silently pushed open a moment later. He still wasn't used to this sleeping arrangement, but he'd gotten more comfortable with leaving one of his French doors cracked in case he was needed. It wasn't much compared to sharing a bed, but it would have to do. Sleeping separately would encourage independence. He did not wish to stunt her social development by allowing her to be too codependent.
The tip-tap-tipping resumes, halting only when the little feet responsible are beside his bed. There is a beat of silence broken only by the sound of his even breaths since the little body near his bed is uncharacteristically quiet.
"Daddy…?" whispers her little voice so softly he barely hears her. "Are you awake?"
Her upset tone makes him abandon the notion of catching more sleep. Peeking an eye open to gauge her expression, he lets out a worried sigh. Her eyes are round and glossy, wider than they ought to be as she blinks back tears. They're a crystal-clear azure, and her hair is a shade or two lighter than Malfoy blonde, caught somewhere in between snow and vanilla icing. When she’s calm her features more closely resemble his own, but when she’s upset like this she could easily pass for the daughter Narcissa didn’t have.
Without hesitation, he pulls back the edge of his duvet and she scrambles up like a frightened kneazle before she burrows her warm little body against his chest. He frowns when he realizes she’s changed her pajamas. He’d put her to bed in a dark plum nightgown covered in Chinese Fireball dragons, but now she was in pale jade covered with bubbling pewter cauldrons.
"Did you have an accident?" He asks her gently, his voice gruff with sleep.
She was a very accomplished potty trainer, though she still had the occasional nightly mishap. But she shakes her head, to his surprise. And that’s when he notices several pieces of hair that are stuck to her face that are nearly translucent due to their dampness and the darkness of the room.
"No," she mumbles against his nightshirt. "Dah uder ones was sweaty."
He brushes the stuck pieces away from what he can see of her forehead and smooths the rest of her hair back away from her face. She finds comfort in his gentle tending and relaxes further when he curves his other arm under her to rub the stress out of her neck and back. Her pulse starts to slow against his palm as her hair shows the first signs of going back to normal. The only comparison he could draw for this phase of her transition was thick ink gliding from her roots and slowly slipping down the strands. And her eyes, he knew, were shifting from striking blue to dazzling emerald.
"Why so upset this morning, my Roslyn?" He murmurs, keeping his gentle kneading between her shoulder blades in time with the slow draw of his fingers through her hair.
"Bad dweam."
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks gently. She shrugs against him.
"I dunno." She says a moment later.
His frown deepens. She was extremely advanced - mentally and socially - for her age. To be fair, said her first –jumbled and barely recognizable- words at seven months and had walked at ten and a half. Now, at two and a half years, she could hold an honest conversation with any adult, even if she still stumbled over verb tenses and pronunciation from time to time.
So the fact that she hesitated before sharing her thoughts, rather than blurting out every worry in a fit of incoherency and tears, worried him as much as it surprised him. She was too little to have already picked up his habit of suffering in silence, but perhaps this meant she’d be a natural Occlumens, like himself, which would protect her in the future.
After pressing a kiss to the top of her head, he asks, "Was it that terrible?"
Her hair, now mostly a dark purplish-brown, slowly loses the last traces of blonde at the ends while he waits for her to answer. It didn’t matter that he had seen it happen dozens of times since she was born, he still looked on with the curiosity of a scientist and the awe of a father. She’d tested negative as a metamorphmagus, he'd already had her tested. Only her hair and eyes changed and no one knew why.
"It was dawk," she tells him quietly. "And weawy quiet at furst."
He doesn't fill the silence when she pauses. Prodding her for more information than she was willing to give would only upset her again, and he wouldn't have that.
"Mummy was dere..."
He pulls her a little closer.
Regardless of the fact that he had tried his best to make sure Roslyn knew her mother's personality as well as she could it didn’t change the fact that Evangeline wasn’t here. While questions about the late witch were few and far between, it was clear that their daughter thought of her mother often. Not for the first time, Severus found himself wishing that the swotty Ravenclaw had survived childbirth. And tries to remind himself that he couldn’t have saved her even if he’d had time to make an attempt.
"She was yelling a lot...yelling at Miss Lily."
Lily? That gives him pause, but he doesn’t dare interrupt her yet. Though he would like to know why her subconscious mind seems to think Evangeline would be angry with Lily Potter.
"Miss Lily couldn't heaw her, but she yelled and yelled. She was so mad. And she yelled at Hawwy's daddy, and Misser Black and Misser Remus. And Miss Molly and Misser Awe-thor. She yelled at evewybody but they couldn't heaw."
"Why was Mummy yelling?" He asks hesitantly, praying the question doesn't trigger tears.
"Cause they bes mean to us," she says, angrily rather than tearfully.
"They are," he corrects gently and she nods to signify she understood.
"That's all I 'member..." she murmurs.
Sitting up slowly, he pulls her into his lap for a proper hug. "Don't fret on in," he tells her, leaving a trail of kisses from her temple to her cheek. "As long as I have you and you have me, they can be as mean as they want and it won't change a thing."
She tucks herself against him, snugly wrapping her little arms around his neck as she nods in agreement.
"I jus' wishes they wasn't. The uhder kids nevew play with me."
Hiding his frustration, he resumes petting her curls, which were the same shade of inky black of his hair once more.
"As do I, but neither of us wields the power to change them. They can only change themselves. All we can hope to do is ignore and refrain from mimicking their faults. And we'll set up another playdate with Draco and Theodore soon, alright?"
She nods again but instead of letting go he decides to hold her a while longer to get his previous point across. As long as they had each other…
Damn Molly Weasley for only bringing treats to Order meetings for her brood and Harry. Damn Lily for letting her asinine husband steer his son away every time the boy has tried to offer Roslyn a toy, a treat, or to get her to play. Damn Sirius Black for being too much of a child to hide his disdain for himself and, by default, Roslyn, when she and the other children were present. Damn that bloody coward of a Werewolf for not standing up to his friends even though he obviously felt their behavior was wrong. Damn Dumbledore for not putting an end to the petty, now one sided, rivalry between Severus and the Marauders.
Damn each any every one of those bloody Gryffindors, except perhaps Minerva. And Salazar only knew why the witch saw more of a kindred spirit in the daughter of the head of her least favorite house than with the offspring of her former students.
"Come now, my clever little thing," he coaxes, pulling himself out of his thoughts and shuffling them both out of bed. "Tea and breakfast ought to cheer you up."
She pulls back and gives him a thoughtful look as he heads out of the room.
"May I has Waffle Cwisp?"
He exaggerates an eye roll, but sighs, "If you must."
Consenting to letting her eat dessert disguised as breakfast cereal earned him another snug, toddler-sized embrace.
"I love you," she says against his neck.
Squeezing her back, he murmurs. "As I do you, my Roslyn. As I do you."