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The night was too quiet.
That kind of quiet always came after a scream.
Severus Snape stood at the edge of the ruins of the Potter home, wind tugging at his cloak, wand drawn, breath shallow. The mark on his arm no longer burned, but the pain in his chest had only sharpened since he heard the news:
*Lily was dead.*
He stepped into the wreckage.
The front door hung from one hinge. The upper floor was half-collapsed. Scorch marks, broken wood, and traces of dark magic stained the walls like blood.
He moved like a ghost through the home, as if walking too loudly would confirm it was all real.
James lay near the entry hall. Dead.
He didn’t look long.
He climbed the half-destroyed stairs.
The nursery was barely holding shape, roof split open to the night. And there—amid shattered glass, debris, and the smell of ash—was a crib.
And in it…
A child.
Messy black hair. Tear-streaked cheeks. A bleeding cut across his forehead. Eyes—green eyes, Lily’s eyes—locked onto Severus the moment he stepped into view.
Harry Potter was alive.
Severus froze.
He had come for closure. For finality. To see the end of what he had lost. He hadn’t come expecting this.
But the baby’s eyes blinked up at him, wide and wet, reaching.
The smallest hand in the world curled toward him, open.
---
Dumbledore would be here soon. That much was certain.
He would send the boy to Lily’s Muggle sister. Hide him away “for his protection.” Treat him like a tool, a symbol. A pawn in a war not yet over.
Severus stared at the child.
He didn’t like children. Had never wanted them. Certainly not *Potter’s* child.
But Lily’s son...
The boy whimpered again. Not loud. Just lonely.
Severus reached into the crib without meaning to. His hand trembled slightly as it hovered above the baby’s chest. And when he lifted him, the child curled immediately against his robes—warm, alive, impossibly small.
A breath escaped Severus. A sound more like a broken sigh.
He’d done terrible things. But he could still do one right thing.
He cast Disillusionment over them both, stepped into the shadow between broken wall and darkness, and disappeared.
---
In a cottage outside of Hogsmeade—one Lily had once told him she thought was “charming in a crooked sort of way”—Severus laid Harry gently on an old armchair, wrapped in conjured blankets. He didn’t sleep.
He watched the child instead.
The scar on his forehead still glowed faintly, pulsing with quiet, residual magic. Severus traced it with his eyes but didn’t dare touch.
*He should give him to Dumbledore.*
He knew that.
But Dumbledore had manipulated too many pieces too many times. He had left Lily vulnerable. He had used Severus’s guilt like a leash.
And now he would use Harry the same way.
No.
Not this time.
The baby stirred. Made a small noise.
Severus reached down, almost without thinking, and brushed a strand of black hair back from the boy’s face. The child’s eyes fluttered open again—green, impossibly green—and fixed on him.
There was no hatred in those eyes. No judgment. Only quiet curiosity.
Severus looked away, jaw tight.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he muttered aloud. “I have no right to you.”
The baby gurgled in response. It sounded like amusement.
Snape almost—*almost*—smiled.
---
A knock at the door.
Three firm raps.
Severus’s hand went to his wand instantly.
Dumbledore’s voice, gentle and grave: “Severus. I know you’re in there.”
Snape didn’t open the door.
He looked back at Harry, who had fallen asleep, one tiny fist curled near his face.
He lowered his voice. Steady. Cold.
“He’s safe,” he said through the door. “And he’s staying with me.”
A pause.
“Severus,” Dumbledore said, calm but with steel underneath, “this is not the agreement we made.”
“No,” Snape said. “It’s not. But I’ve changed the terms.”
Inside, the fire crackled softly. The baby shifted, murmured in his sleep, and Severus sat beside him, just close enough to listen to him breathe.
For the first time in years, he did not feel powerless.
He felt *certain*.