Chapter Text
For Severus, everything felt blurred. It had, in truth, been blurred ever since Lily died.
Thoughts drifted slowly beneath the surface, fractured and dulled. He could barely remember how the old man with the long white beard had appeared at his door, wrapped in robes far too colorful, far too conspicuous for Muggle eyes. He remembered saying no. Or perhaps he only wanted to believe he had possessed enough sense—enough will—to refuse, if only for a heartbeat.
But the instant Dumbledore showed him the child, Snape’s already broken heart finally turned to dust and was carried away by the cold wind.
He had Lily’s eyes—those bright, hopeful green eyes that had moved him so many times before. Snape held the baby in his arms, afraid the child might break under his grip, or that he himself might break and let him fall.
The world blurred further when Dumbledore left. The door closed with a soft, final click, and Severus stood there, staring down at the child who looked back at him with wide eyes and curled his tiny fingers around Severus’s cold, bony one, smiling as though nothing in the world was wrong.
Snape sank to his knees.
He clutched the child to his chest and broke—truly broke—sobbing as he had when he held Lily’s lifeless body, when the last warmth had already faded from her skin. His only friend. His first love. Harry did not understand the grief shaking the man who held him, but he cried anyway, as though grief were contagious.
…
Regret came later.
It settled into him once the tears dried and reality sharpened again. The baby would not stop crying. Severus did not know what to do. He did not know how to care for a child; he had barely managed to stay alive in the weeks following Lily’s death, when he had often wished not to live at all and had sunk into drink and self-loathing.
Harry cried.
Snape tried everything he could think of. Feeding ended with spoons flung against his robes. Play ended with fists tangled painfully in his hair. And through it all, Severus saw James—too much James—in the set of the child’s face.
Changing the diaper was worse. He used magic, nauseated and uncertain, convinced he was doing it wrong. Harry screamed. Severus wanted to scream too.
The cradle was improvised, furniture dismantled without care. Severus knelt beside it, rocking it slowly by hand. As long as the motion continued, Harry calmed—but the instant it stopped, the child’s eyes flew open and the shrill crying returned. Severus wondered, distantly, if stress could truly make one go bald overnight
Not even a full day had passed since Dumbledore had left the boy with him.
“How does he even dare leave him with me? Of all people, me…” Severus thought, hurling a series of insults through his mind.
At some point during the night, he fell asleep; apparently, his hand never stopped moving, because Harry did not wake.
…
Routine followed, awkward and exhausting.
Severus tied his hair back with his wand and rolled his sleeves up. The bath became a disaster of water and soap, magic deliberately unused. Harry splashed, laughed, protested, cried when soap stung his eyes, his nose or his mouth. It was chaos, loud and alive.
The next part of the routine, after the morning bath, was mealtime—another activity that left Severus’s house in ruins. Harry seemed to hate everything Severus gave him: he threw food in his face and snatched the spoon just to fling it at the nearby wall. He cried and blew spit bubbles, and when Snape’s dark, greasy hair was completely covered in porridge, the baby seemed satisfied and stopped crying, laughing instead and eating whatever was left on the table with his hands, kicking his chubby legs and getting dirty all over again.
Sometimes, when Harry was still, Severus studied him.
He focused on the eyes—only the eyes—forcing himself not to see James in the shape of his face. Green. Brilliant. Lily’s green. And every time, his chest ached until breathing hurt. Then he would start crying again. The child yawned, his eyelids heavy.
“No… no, wait, please. Don’t fall asleep yet,” Severus whispered desperately, holding the child’s eyes open far too long. Harry cried again. Severus panicked and laid him down, terrified of hurting him. Always terrified.
At night, Severus layered protective charms over the house until dawn. His greatest fear was that some Death Eater would enter his home unannounced and see the child of the prophecy sleeping in his living room.
He wanted to protect those eyes. He wanted to protect the last trace of Lily left in the world.
…
The breaking point came on a cold night.
Fully aware that he could no longer take care of that baby—of Harry Potter.
Harry woke crying. Severus tried to soothe him. Nothing worked. The sound burrowed into his skull, relentless. The older man did everything he could to soften his screams and sobs. He did not know if the child was having nightmares, if he was capable of understanding how miserable his existence was—an orphan, hunted by the most feared being of his era—or if he cried because he was fully aware of all the reasons he had to do so.
Even so, Snape did not want him to cry. Not that night. He could not bear it. He stared at the baby.
“Be quiet. Be quiet already,” he said, pain rasping in his hoarse voice.
The child did not stop. His tears grew heavier; his screams made the shelves tremble. Snape remembered when he himself was a child in Cokeworth, crying with the stench of rot in his nose. Crying and calling for his mother. She had always been good to him—good, as far as he could define the word.
That night, his tears would not stop. His mother, at first understanding and trying to calm him, grew impatient. Snape remembered it vividly; it felt like a distant dream. He remembered his mother’s hands pressing against his face.
“Be quiet,” she whispered.
Snape cried into her hands, but when the air left him and he felt his lips turning blue, he fell silent. His mother did not stop pressing, and he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. Just before his eyes closed, she released him, and breathing felt like a gift in itself.
Snape snapped back when he realized his hands were pressed over the baby’s small mouth. They were pressing down. The child had turned red; he was no longer crying. Severus pulled away at once, staring at his hands with disgust, with revulsion, and then at the baby, who was coughing and watching him as if noticing a new side of the man before him. The child went quiet, but Severus did not dare look into those green eyes, reddened from crying and lack of air; traces of mucus still clung to his tiny nose.
Severus ran to his own bedroom. Since taking charge of Harry, he had not been back there. It was filled with empty bottles and half-finished ones of firewhisky, and ingredients—some more toxic than others—scattered across the floor. Ever since the baby arrived, Snape slept on the sofa beside the cradle, beside him. There, in his bedroom, the air felt thicker, more toxic, like the summers in Spinner’s End by the river that exuded heat and a nauseating, poisonous stench that seemed to kill everything it touched.
Snape looked at a bottle that was not yet empty and pulled off the cap. He felt the heat settle into his empty stomach—painful, burning. He finished the bottle and felt the urge to open another, fuller one and empty that as well. When his whole body burned, he hurled the bottle against the wall in frustration. Harry began to cry in the living room. Snape did not know what to do; he slid down the wall into a dusty corner, clutching his head in his hands.
He had thought about it before, long before—leaving the child, returning him to Dumbledore. There were many people who could take care of him, many who had loved the Potters, James and Lily, who would care for that boy far better than he ever could. There was even Lily’s annoying, petulant sister, the Muggle. Why did it have to be him?
He had sent a letter to Dumbledore, telling him he could not bear this burden, but he had received no reply. He knew nothing of the old man—where he was, what he was doing. He never knew anything.
He could not take it anymore. Harry’s crying grew louder, heavier. He did not even have the strength to cry; he only covered his ears, trying to shut out the baby’s wailing, which seemed to hammer at his skull, tearing his brain apart. He tasted blood in his mouth. He feared everything and everyone. If he died there, Harry would die too, without his protections; it would only be a matter of time before someone heard him crying, before Voldemort found him. Or perhaps, if Snape died, Dumbledore would come for the boy. He was not answering now, but if there were no other option left… perhaps he would come.
The crying grew louder, more painful, more lonely.
“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” Snape whispered, his hands clamped over his ears.
If Dumbledore did not answer, if he did not care, Snape himself would find another home for that child—someone who knew how to care for him, who would not try to silence his cries with their hands, who would not lock themselves in a room to drink and break things like a lunatic… like a… moony.
Harry was silent.
And Severus finally knew where the child needed to go.