Work Text:
“We have to do what now?” Harry questioned an expression of pure disbelief on his face.
Hermione leveled him with her own disbelieving expression, the one where whoever was on the other end of it had done or said something truly idiotic.
“You can’t be serious mate,” Ron chimed in, breaking the silence that had fallen amongst them.
“How was I supposed to know that was a thing? It’s- I’ve been busy dealing with a bloody psychopath the past few years! I didn’t have time to learn about weird wizarding classifications and what not,” Harry exclaimed, turning pink in equal parts embarrassment and frustration.
“Oh Harry… someone really should have told you all of this. All muggle born students were given a pamphlet and a private lesson from a head of house right before the escort to Diagon Alley, it’s gross negligence on your escorts part if they didn’t complete their duty.” Hermione interjected, softening a bit at Harry’s admission to the tumultuous years prior, no matter how flippantly it was mentioned.
“A head of house? Pamphlet? Hagrid took me and there wasn’t much conversation of classification or really any educational value.” Harry expressed, a familiar insecurity filling him. Ignorance, he was always left ignorant. Left out of the conversation, stumbling to catch up, to figure out just how things worked without letting anyone glimpse in on his vulnerability.
If living with the Dursley’s had taught him anything it was to never show weakness.
Hermione looked aghast, “Hagrid?” She mumbled as Ron peered around at Harry from behind her frizzy hair.
“You know I like Hagrid, I really do, but they let him actually take a student to Diagon? Alone?” Ron questioned, sharing a glance with Hermione.
They always seemed to be doing things like that, silent conversations following the odd confession that was squeezed out of Harry.
Hesitantly, Hermione tried to push for more information. Being careful to tread lightly in fear of Harry shutting down, dissociating she had called it.
“Harry, Haven’t you noticed anything different about yourself, not that it’s anything bad let me be clear, just different. ”
Different, almost everything about him was different. Not that he would want to admit that. Every part of his life as long as he could remember had been about hiding those differences, hiding how much of a freak he really was.
He frowned as a million different memories seemed to come flooding back to him.
Age five, and small for his age reaching up too thin arms to move sizzling hot bacon around in a pan as it spit fiercely at him, hissing like the garden snakes who whispered just outside. Panicking as once pink bacon turned black with too much heat, ears suddenly ringing as his Aunt shrieked in anger, swinging the still hot pan at his head as he dodged. Grease falling onto the pale skin of his cheeks, burning the skin as he cried silent tears over the injured area. Then being shoved cruelly into his cupboard and wishing, wishing, wishing for the raw tightness to go away and the amazed feeling as raw skin healed over and later regret for the action as Aunt Petunia’s keen eyes noticed the miraculous recovery and punished him further with the not yet familiar (not then) burn of starvation.
Different, freaky, magic.
———
Age eight, cool water entering his lungs, he couldn't breathe. Panicking as he slipped under the water, terrified and alone and knowing no sympathy would be shown if he screamed out for help.
Too old, vulnerable, different.
———
Age Ten, Vernon had found the stuffed dog he’d nicked from the park, an abandoned friend left alone on a bench, forgotten and dirty and completely alone. Kinship, kindness, his first friend. Torn apart by the seams as he felt angry; angry to dare care for something. Ashamed as Vernon screamed for him to grow up, comforts of a childhood he never had, could have had destroyed; symbolic and depressing.
Childish, wrong, different.
———
Age twelve, a dampness between his legs as he laid dying on the ground of the chamber of secrets, venom slowly entering his veins as he lay there embarrassed and alone…
Different, different, different.
“I- there is nothing wrong with me Hermione, this whole thing is stupid! I don’t have one of these classifications…whatever they are and quite frankly I don’t see the point. I’m fine as I am now, a stupid test isn’t going to help.” Harry sneered, uncomfortable with the questions and uncomfortable with the upcoming classification test as he marched off to his room to hide from his friends concerned gazes.
***
In the solitude of his office, he knew he was safe.
No dunderheaded students would dare barge into his oasis unless it was a matter of life or death, not even his Slytherins.
Which was why he was surprised by the frantic knocking on his door, his eye twitching at the repetitive noise.
He considered, for a moment, ignoring the sound, but again, no student would dare bother him of all people unless it was life or death. And unfortunately, he was sure Albus would find issue with his “negligence of student safety.”
“Enter.”
And they did, two-thirds of the Golden Trio scrambling into his domain, Granger with a concerned tilt to her brows and Weasley with an odd green tint. Good, he still instilled fear. He was afraid the student body had somehow likened him to Sprout, with the gall the two brats in front of him had to seek him out of all the personnel in the school.
“What recent head injury has caused you two to think intruding on me was a good idea? What could possibly be the reason? Don’t tell me, it’s another one of your ‘adventures.’ But no, if that was the case, your third counterpart would be attached between you,” he mused, observing as Granger tapped her foot impatiently, unusually tetchy for a girl who worshipped authority figures.
“Well, I’ve exhausted my theories. Go ahead and speak, daft girl. I can tell you’re waiting to blurt something out.”
“Harry doesn’t know what classifications are. He... he doesn’t seem to have any of the Muggle-born education, sir,” she blurted out so quickly he barely caught the end of it.
That was an overload of information, not that much had been said, but enough to have his brain overcrowded and overwhelmed.
Muggle-born education; Harry Potter was Muggle-raised.
The first and maybe the most important piece to pick apart.
Harry Potter’s whereabouts were strictly hidden, even to him as a spy for the Light, although he had assumed Minerva knew where the boy lived. He of course suspected that to be the truth when an ignorant little snot stumbled into his Potions classroom on the first day with zero knowledge on the subject, but he had considered it arrogance at the time. He had thought the boy too spoiled to know much of anything, but being Muggle-raised was making a lot more sense.
He was surprised Albus would foist the golden boy with Muggles; ignorance was not a favorable feature in a soldier, for which Harry definitely was or would become in the Headmaster’s eyes, at least one you wanted to survive.
He pursed his lips in thought. Granger seemed unusually willing to let slip her somewhat guarded hoard of Potter-related secrets today; maybe she could illuminate the boy’s whereabouts and whatever poor Muggle family had been saddled with the infuriating boy.
“Would you happen to know where or with whom Mr. Potter resides?”
Weasley seemed to find his voice and joined the conversation. “With his aunt, Professor. Awful bunch, her family seems to be. Had Harry locked away all summer like a prisoner, bars on the window and everything!” Ron blurted out, yelping when a swift kick was delivered by the bushy-haired girl next to him. Obviously not as willing to reveal Harry’s secrets as he had assumed, instead Ron blurting out confessions of obvious long-held concern.
His aunt? Petunia... no wonder he was so oblivious. He doubted Petunia would let slip anything about their world, a world that she could never be a part of, that took her sister, that she scorned completely.
“Do you happen to know who his Diagon escort was? From what you’re implying, an injustice has been committed, and despite my dislike for the boy, a reprimand is due,” he sighed out, sagging into his office chair, already exhausted with the situation before it had really begun.
It was obviously troublesome that a very important part of their introductory course had been forgone and that it hadn’t been remedied in the two, almost three, years since then.
But then again, Harry Potter was never one to trust in adults; he could surmise that much, well, at least adults that weren’t completely brain-dead, Lockhart.
“Hagrid, sir, although Mione’ said a Head of House was supposed to do those sorts of things.”
Hmm, she would know that, boasting about reading Hogwarts: A History in full every year and the unfortunate scenario in which he had to escort an over-eager Hermione Granger to Diagon Alley. Well, after the usual cringeworthy classification lesson with her and her parents, as if reading his mind, she looked at him and looked away quickly, blushing slightly in embarrassment.
Despite his amusement with Granger’s aptitude for being a know-it-all, he was... concerned. Hagrid wasn’t an approved escort, and in no world should he be one.
With one name, the mystery of why Harry Potter knew so little about their world was solved.
And it dawned on him, somewhere in the back of his mind, which he firmly shoved down for the sake of finishing this blasted conversation, that Dumbledore’s child soldier was not intended to survive this war, for he could be the only one to approve an escort. A purposefully bad escort.
“And why, pray tell, did you not go to McGonagall with this?”
Their faces hardened in distaste, interesting.
“We are under the impression that she wouldn’t handle this with the... sensitivity we need, and we’ve heard rumors that you have stood up for students against the Headmaster in the past. We need that,” Weasley paused. “We need someone who isn’t in his pocket,” Weasley finished.
“We are afraid they’ll want Harry to be something he isn’t, like they have in the past. We... want to prevent that this time,” Hermione added.
They didn’t trust Albus. He was curious as to what disillusioned them, but he doubted they’d let it slip before they knew his allegiances, which, by the way, Weasley had stiffened up and looked ready to flee if he started to defend the Headmaster. His attention was caught; he was prepared to glaze over the convoluted ties he had to the man for the sake of knowing where this was all headed.
Besides, no matter what, his oath to Lily... to Harry came first.
“Relax, Weasley. This conversation is confidential. I won’t go running to feed any of this back to the Headmaster if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
Right now, he was not Albus’s spy. Right now, he had to be protector to students, as annoying and Gryffindorish as they were.
On the rare occasion he had opposed the Headmaster, it had always been for the sake of a child in need.
“So you assume I have the sensitivity to deal with remedying Potter’s ignorance? Many would never regard me as such, so what have you two managed to dig up from the Hogwarts rumor mill?” he questioned.
“We heard that you help littles.”
He was startled, first by the implication that Harry James Potter was a little, and secondly that somewhere in the student body whispers of a secret kindness of his were being spread, although he supposed he had planted those seeds in the first place.
His Slytherins knew that he was a protector of sorts, even with the ambiguity around his classification. Many of the littles and children from bad homes were swept under the fold of his care in small, even undetectable, ways.
“You believe Potter is a little? You believe yourselves to be medical professionals? What’s brought you to this diagnosis?” he bit out cruelly, uncomfortable with the idea that he had missed such a crucial detail when it came to the boy.
That he had missed a little at all.
Granger seemed resigned to spilling her friend’s secrets at last, sagging into herself as she shared a heavy glance with the Weasley boy.
“Classic signs, I’d say: daydreaming, short attention span, a pull towards soft clothing and toys, low emotional regulation,” she shot out, one after the other.
Those were common traits in littles, irrefutably, but he wasn’t convinced this wasn’t a case of a spoiled little boy who had been coddled into childish behavior long past its prime.
“Just because someone is immature, Miss Granger, does not mean they’re a little. There are usually physical signs, damning evidence.”
Pink in her frustration, Weasley put a calming hand onto the girl’s arm. He so often forgot how fast who played the voice of reason could switch in that odd triad of theirs. Admittedly, it rarely wasn’t Granger.
“He... oh Merlin, he’s going to murder me. He wets the bed, sir, and sucks his thumb. Is that damning enough for you?” Weasley confessed, shock settling over him and Weasley’s counterpart as well, as she twisted her mouth slightly agape.
Sweet Circe, the boy was a little.
“...”
“Where is he?”
He needed to do this... for Lily’s boy.
***
It wasn’t fair.
It seemed like he was right back at the start, traversing unknown territory, stepping foot into a new world where he would be labeled once again; classified.
He was a freak.
Then he was the Boy Who Lived, the famed Harry Potter.
And now he would be given a new label. He was terrified.
He groaned as the curtains of his bed were torn away, burying his head into his pillow and shutting his eyes as tight as possible in a desperate attempt at ignoring what must be Ron coming up to prod him further.
“Go away, Ron!”
“I think you’ll find the dorm still quite empty, and it’s sure to stay that way until we have a long overdue conversation,” stated the deep voice of Snape, definitely not Ron.
His spine stiffened, and he hesitated to turn away from his pillow and face the reality that Snape was in his dorm. What did Ron and Hermione do this time...
He was so frustrated. They had no right! It’s one thing to tell on him to Madam Pomfrey; it’s a completely other thing to tell on him to Snape!
Finally deciding to brave the storm, he turned to look up at the man, suddenly shy as he scooted back into his pillows, feeling small as Snape’s black robes billowed out and the man’s stern face loomed over him.
“I don’t know what Ron and Hermione said, but I’m really quite fine, sir. It was a misunderstanding.” Maybe if he put off the exchange of harsh jabs, Snape would leave quicker, but he was always infuriatingly adept at sticking his large nose into his business when it wasn’t wanted or needed.
“A nice attempt at civility, Mr. Potter, but there’s not much for anyone to misunderstand about what you confessed,” Snape scoffed. “As uncomfortable as you might find it, there’s a conversation to be had, and one your friends were adamant came from me.”
“Why would they ask YOU of all people? You’re a git!” he shouted back, eyes widening as the man’s eyes hardened.
“Harry James Potter, you do not speak to anyone, especially your professors, that way,” his professor scolded.
As much as he was afraid to face Snape’s wrath, he was confused by the lack of criticism toward his character and angry comparisons to his father from the dour man. He was acting different. Different was unpredictable.
He was nervous.
Snape sighed, rubbing at his face in a way that showed his exhaustion and had him feeling the slightest bit guilty.
Conjuring a chair, he sat just beside his bed, an odd figure in the warm tones of the Gryffindor dorm.
“While I can understand your affection for Hagrid, he is not an approved adult for Diagon escorts or introductory courses to the wizarding world. I’m just here to fill the gaps in your knowledge and accurately assess your classification,” Snape explained.
“I thought we were getting tested by Madam Pomfrey next week. Why are you doing it? Why can’t I get tested with everyone else?”
It didn’t make sense. This didn’t seem completely right. First Hermione and Ron seeking Snape out for some reason, and the informal turn this had all taken.
“Your friends were concerned that certain individuals in this school would do you the disservice of giving you inaccurate results, whereas I am willing to assess you discreetly and neutrally.”
He couldn’t really blame them for trying to sniff out an adult that didn’t have some secret agenda, although he wasn’t convinced that was completely true for Snape, but he supposed he had proven himself to not be evil like he had assumed in first year. He still blushed in embarrassment when he would think about all his accusations toward Snape when he had been the one helping him all along.
Still, Snape? An odd choice. He would be sure to badger the specifics out of them at some point.
“Classifications are biological, even psychological, needs someone might have, relating to platonic and or sexual dynamics, but that won’t affect someone until they’re much older. We test at thirteen to catch those classified as littles who need intervention earlier so that their needs are met before the standard maturation.”
He was confused. It was a sex thing, which, gross... and it didn’t matter yet? Had he been worrying for nothing? Why would his friends insist on its importance if it didn’t matter yet?
But there was another pressing question on his mind. “What is a little? If they’re tested early, why haven’t I seen any at Hogwarts?” he asked, fiddling with his hands.
“A little is an individual who exhibits childlike behavior. Mentally, there is a separation. Still, there is much crossover between their headspaces. One being their biological age and a second headspace which is that of a child. And they are... rare,” Snape informed.
What the hell? There were people like that in the wizarding world. That was wrong... freakish.
“Well, I’m not one of those, sir. That’s weird...” he informed. He couldn’t be one. He was probably some other classification. He prayed he was anyway. He didn’t think he’d make it out of the Dursleys alive if they found out he was a bloody little.
Snape frowned, a furrow to his brows that was unfamiliar. It wasn’t disgust, and it wasn’t anger. Any emotion besides those two seemed odd on the man and hard to place.
“How is it weird that some people have certain needs? It’s as weird as some people needing glasses to see. It is just a way in which an individual needs to be supported.”
“It’s... urgh... it’s not normal. It’s wrong! But... but acting like that isn’t okay. It’s weak... and they’ll get hurt. They need to be better,” he tried to argue, baffled by Snape’s casual stance on the matter, like it really wasn’t a big deal when it was.
It’s not normal, Vernon taught him as much, and it was crazy that everyone in the wizarding world was fine with teenagers, adults even, acting like babies. What if they got hurt? Why would they let themselves be vulnerable like that? It didn’t make sense. It seemed like, for the longest time, when he was actually a child, the goal was to strive for higher independence, to never act as weak as a child, as reliant. He was better than that, or at the very least, not good enough for it.
How could you be useful if you were still a kid?
And that’s what really mattered. Everyone he met seemed to have one thought about him, and it was always how useful he was to them, to their cause, to their person.
But that didn’t matter. This wasn’t about him... he was worried for other people like that because he wasn’t a little... he wasn’t.
“You think children will get hurt for being children? Because here, that’s what a little is. In our world, a little is a child, no question about it. They are given the same grace and same protections, so the question is, why do you think a child would be hurt for being a child?”
He didn’t get it. It was wrong, wrong, wrong.
And then he couldn’t deny it anymore. It was about him. Because that stupid fuzz filled his brain, the one that felt like dissociation, like Mione had taught him about, but different, softer. Like the fluff had transported him back in time and left a residue behind that kept him not quite clear-headed.
“I... but they’re too old. Big boys shouldn’t have stupid stuffed dogs, and they shouldn’t... they shouldn’t slip under in the bath like a stupid toddler, and they should do everything on their own! I shouldn’t need help. I shouldn’t be acting like a baby. I shouldn’t be having accidents when I’m scared like some fucking freak,” he screamed, sobbing as flashes of Vernon’s cruel punishments and echoes of his aunt’s harsh words flitted through his fuzzed-out brain.
He felt unreal and disconnected, like he couldn’t quite remember where he was and who he was with. In the moment, it didn’t matter that Snape was his most hated professor. It only mattered that he was there and most definitely wasn’t his aunt or uncle.
So when pale, too-cold hands scooped him up and slid up and down his back, he melted into the foreign embrace.
***
Harry Potter was a deeply disturbed little boy.
And on some level, that wasn’t new information to him. What he once assumed was just an unfortunately perilous school life affecting him did not seem to be the main source of the boy’s woe.
The conversation had taken an unfortunate turn, and while he had wanted to be gentle with informing the boy of his classification, of the social impact of them in general, it had been disturbed by the boy’s own inner turmoil.
It seemed he didn’t really need to tell the boy he was a little after all. After hearing what it was, a subconscious part of Harry had shown up in the worst of ways. The part of the boy’s subconscious that had been scorning his little side in secret now more firmly knew its target due to his lesson, and for that he regretted being here at all.
But no, that wasn’t quite true. As much as he respected his colleagues, he himself was in a similar mindset to Granger and Weasley, as much as it annoyed him to admit that.
Harry Potter being a little did not fit the image Albus was trying to cultivate, and exceptions had been made in the past in terms of the boy, so intervening himself, and in secret, might have been the best thing he could have done, even if he had to deal with the overly emotional aftermath.
The things he was saying, though, the internal hatred, were most definitely taught. No little boy who had a loving upbringing would believe such vitriol about himself.
No, this was a repeated sentiment stemming from cruel words spouted at little ears too many times. While once was enough to truly wound a child, something told him it was a common occurrence.
He sighed as the skinny, much too skinny frame of Harry Potter shuddered in his lap, shaking with violent sobs.
And for now, he was firmly Severus Snape the protector, the caregiver in him pushed to the forefront of his mind as he ran soothing hands down the child’s back. Hands that had been painted in violence once upon a time, now only tasked with comforting a sobbing boy with too much pain to carry on his own.
“It’s okay to be little, it’s okay to be a child. Whoever told you otherwise is wrong, and I promise to help you from now on. I’m sorry you didn’t know that was my intention in the past, but please know that it was... that it is and always will be.”
Teary green eyes met his as the wet, scrunched-up face of the Boy Who Lived, of Harry, looked up at him.
“Help?” the child said in a small voice, much too small, fragile, childish.
“Yes, help. You need help, don’t you? You’ve needed it much longer than I ever knew, and it saddens me you’ve rarely gotten it,” he confessed, exhaustingly vulnerable with the boy but too frayed from the events of today to try to hide it.
“Sad?” Harry whispered, looking concerned, a sweet gesture from a child who most definitely didn’t recognize him in this state, eerily reminiscent of Lily as his eyes lit up with the same concern hers did. Perhaps it was only reminiscent because she was the last person who had cared to show him concern.
He had forgotten the tranquility that comes with another soul caring about you. Even if it was an age-regressed Harry Potter, it was still a nice feeling.
“I’m adequate, Harry. Are you okay?”
Harry seemed to still at that, confusion written all over his face as if it were a foreign question.
As if no one had bothered to ask him in the past, had cared enough to.
And for the first time since Harry had cracked open, exposed and raw, he saw him smile a small, unusual smile, imperfect and not well practiced but very real.
Realer than any expression he had seen on the boy in the past.
“M’ okay,” he whispered, a childish slur to his words as he played hesitantly with the trimming of his teaching robes.
Such a childish, charming sentiment.
The idea of being okay, not even a feeling, not really, not a descriptor he would use anyway.
But yes, maybe they were okay, they would be okay.
The Headmaster couldn’t know about this. As practiced as he was at going against a master, at hiding secrets, he was afraid. But looking down at Harry, watching him indulge a side to himself he had minutes ago shown such contempt for, he thought it would be worth it.
As hard as it would be, he would care for the boy in secret.
He would care for Harry.
Not the Boy Who Lived, not James Potter reincarnated, just Harry.
Someone he admittedly did not know, but he was quite eager to meet.