Chapter Text
Prologue/Chapter 1
Author's Note: This is a response to Attackfish's No Difference. Though I recommend you look it up as it is a direct prequel to this, here is a rough summary so you won't be lost if you start with mine:
Warning: No Difference spoilers: When hit by AK during the final battle, Harry was sent back to 1959, landing in the house of Eileen Prince. Stranded in the past, they live together and begin to form a friendship which eventually leads to more. Harry realizes that Severus should be born around the time he is there, and so is confused by Eileen's hatred of Tobias Snape, a local drunk, who is apparently Snape's father. After sleeping together, Eileen casts a spell to discover she is pregnant with a boy. Harry then realizes why he was sent back in time, and is horrified. Knowing he has to return to the present to defeat Voldemort, and that he cannot alter events other than this, he casts a glamour on the fetus, tells Eileen that if she marries Tobias Snape and names the child Severus, he will "die a hero."
Back in the present, his relationship with Severus (who does not die from Nagini's bite) is shaky at best. The man holds great resentment for Harry who does not seem to see the point of forcing a relationship between them considering their mutual hatred and awkward age gap...
And so begins my story...in which Harry gets the chance to be there for the family he left behind...
Prologue:
This first, italicized section, is taken directly from No Difference by Attackfish, Chapter 27.
"You're mad that I came back," Harry gasped. "You can't stand me, you hate me, but you're still mad I left you there."
Snape regained his calm before Harry could run away with his idea. With a snort, he brought his student back to the present.
"You are a supremely arrogant young man if you think I wanted-"
Harry cut him off deliberately. "No, it doesn't have anything to do with me," he said thoughtfully, "not at all, not really."
"No it doesn't," Snape returned, perturbed.
With a small sad smile, Harry turned to leave Snape to continue on, resigned that he wouldn't get anything out of the man. Something strange pinched at his stomach as he said, "Well, bye then." He'd messed something up.
Perhaps he hadn't messed it up that badly. It was Snape's turn to call him back, "I will not allow you to run away with such an erroneous impression of me, Potter," he called snidely.
Surprised, Harry trotted back. Snape gritted his teeth in a sullen grimace. "No doubt if you had raised me, I wouldn't consider you to be a malicious half-wit." He paused before adding snidely, "Of course, I might have gained your measure anyway."
"I'm sure you were a very clever child," Harry sniped irascibly.
Snape jerked, pulling his hand up sharply as if he wanted to slap him across the face.
"You are so very much like your father, Potter, intelligence is something to admire, Potter, not deride, even if you cannot comprehend it."
"I didn't mean intelligence anyway," he grimaced, pausing to think. Snape probably had been like Hermione, only many times worse, brilliant and knowing it, frustrated that everyone else wasn't brilliant too, and at the same time scornful of everyone who wasn't. Harry bet he let everyone else know he was brilliant too. "It's just that you still treat people like we're all idiots." He shook his head. "Besides, none of this has anything to do with me or my father."
They stopped abruptly at the door to Severus' office. Only then did he realize that his feet had carried him there instead of to Minerva's office as he had planned when he had left the Great Hall. He opened the door and ushered the boy in, bowing and smiling mockingly. Potter strode across the threshold calmly, but his eyes didn't leave Severus' face. He pushed the door shut with a hard push, still watching his student, grabbing one wrist behind his back. "You were saying?"
Harry wanted to ask him if he knew how conversations worked, because it was his turn to reply, not Harry's. Awkwardly, he shrugged his shoulders.
"Well?" snapped Severus, growing more and more annoyed with the boy's persistent crypticness.
"I just mean that you're not angry with me because I'm your dad, or because I didn't raise you," Harry said softly, suddenly nervous.
"No," Snape hissed deliberately, his lip curling. "I'm furious with you for not going away and following me around like a lost puppy!"
"Then why did you call me back?" Harry shot back, hands trembling.
Severus jerked forward and then halted, rattled. "Don't be ridiculous, Potter; I didn't call you back," he denied at last. "I simply refused to let you walk away with such idiotic notions in your head."
Harry snorted, folding his arms. "Of course."
"If you're so sure you know everything about me," he snapped defiantly, "then you can tell me."
Harry looked down guiltily, but then fixed his gaze steadily on Snape's face. "You're mad that I told Eileen to marry Tobias Snape."
"I won't deny that you impressed me with your sheer heartlessness," hissed Snape, his nails digging into his wrist so hard that they left little bloodless half-moon shaped indentations in his flesh when he let go.
Harry's face heated. "I didn't want to…" he stopped speaking, catching his breath. "I didn't like doing it."
"Of course not," Severus sneered, sensing that at last he had the upper hand, "but you did it anyway," which was what mattered, after all.
"I had to!" Harry shouted, the last vestiges of calm draining away. "I... I already knew that I… couldn't stay, and when… I knew who you had to be."
Severus snorted and held back a burst of cold laughter. "You are not soothing my resentments, Potter," he jeered. "You are trying to force me to soothe your guilt!"
"Don't turn this around-" but Severus cut him off.
"You left my mother and me in an untenable situation, because you had to, yes," a smile tugged at his lips as he continued brutally, "but you still were the one to do it."
Harry clutched the edge of Snape's desk, nails biting into the wood. "I don't need you to absolve me of anything!" he roared. "I knew what I was leaving Eileen and you to, but I couldn't do anything else!"
"You're fool if you think you know anything about what-"
It was Harry's turn to cut Snape off with a sharp gesture. "That's right, you think I'm spoiled that I've never had a hard day in my life," he threw his head back and laughed, seething.
"Can you tell me that your every action hasn't borne out that assumption, Potter?"
"You knew my aunt; you knew how much she hated magic; do you really think she spoiled me?" Every time Aunt Marge came to visit, Harry had found himself envying Ripper. Aunt Petunia hadn't liked Ripper any more than she had liked Harry, but she didn't want to antagonize Aunt Marge. "And then she married someone as bad as she is!"
"Did they make you do chores then?" Severus mocked, "treat you like a normal boy?"
"Normal boys don't live in cupboards," Harry pointed out, biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted the metallic tang of his own blood.
A vein in Severus' head throbbed. "Don't exaggerate Potter! You weren't beaten. You never watched someone you loved beaten."
"How would you know?" Harry snapped back furiously. "My uncle used to shake me or drag me places, but he never really hit me. My aunt slapped me or tried to hit me with frying pans, but I could usually dodge her, so no, they didn't beat me, but it wasn't like they stopped Dudley from beating me either." He stopped to catch his breath and glared at Snape, a pair of pink spots sitting like little burns on the top of his cheeks. "And there wasn't anyone I loved to begin with, and they all liked each other just fine."
"So you did know exactly what you were sending me into," Severus whispered darkly, his voice soft with surprise and calculation.
Harry nodded defiantly.
"But that just makes it worse," Severus' lip curled, false sympathy dripping from each word.
[End of No Difference Excerpt]
For a long time, Harry just stood there, letting the truth of Snape's words crash over him. His initial instinct to snipe back at the man, respond acerbically in kind, vanished as something central shifted within him.
Numbly, he spun on his heel and made his way to the office door. Reaching out to grab the heavy iron doorknob, he paused and said, almost inaudibly, "Maybe it wasn't worth it after all."
He looked back at Snape, passively noting the snarl forming on the man’s lips.
Harry looked at the sallow-faced, messy-haired man. As crazy as it was, this angry, bitter wizard was his son, and suddenly it hit Harry with the force of a train that for all of Severus Snape’s faults, it was Harry's fault the man had turned out like this.
"I wish it hadn't had to be this way."
Snape's scowl became even more pronounced, but Harry was hardly conscious of him any more. It was as if he were talking on a different, separate plane, suddenly seeing things with greater clarity.
And then Snape snapped back into focus, front and center. Harry looked him straight in the eye.
"I wish I could have been there for you."
No sooner had the words left his lips that a tug in his gut wrenched him forward, away from Snape. The man's expression was caught somewhere between a snarl and uncharacteristically open shock, and then everything went black.
Chapter 1
When Harry opened his eyes, he was no longer in Snape’s office. Nor was he in or anywhere near the stone-walled halls of Hogwarts.
He was splayed flat on his back in a hard-packed sandbox, staring up at a grey overcast sky. It looked like it had either just rained or like a downpour was imminent.
His back hurt from the sticks digging into it but he was dry, so he assumed the latter was the case.
Harry sat up and looked around. He was in the middle of the worst playground he’d ever seen–the monkey bars were half disassembled, the tire swing was punctured and lay flat and filthy on the ground, and the ground itself was all hard stones and mulch. It was bleak, and it smelled of coal dust and river silt.
The only indication this place had once been a place for children was the lone slide.
With a jolt, he realized he knew this place; he had passed it many times before.
But how had he gotten here? And how was this park even still around? It had looked nearly as broken down the last time Harry had seen it, and that had been years ago.
How–and why–had he apparated here from the Potions Master's quarters?
A noise got his attention. It sounded like a small animal sniffling quietly. Standing up and brushing off the worst of the sand and debris from his robe, Harry went to investigate.
He immediately spotted the end of a ratty, child-sized trainer poking out from behind a bush.
Presumably there was a child attached to that shoe.
Slowly, not wanting to startle the child, Harry crept forward until a little boy came into view.
He was tiny–probably three or at most four years old—with long, matted dark hair that covered his face.
Aside from the occasional sniffle, the boy was completely silent, but it was clear from the way his shoulders shook that he was crying.
Harry looked closer at those quivering shoulders. They were thin—almost terrifyingly so. His arms were bony things poking out from his ill-fitting floral shirt, wrapped protectively around miniature knobby knees.
He was clutching a filthy gray stuffed animal to his chest.
Harry took a step closer and snapped a dry twig beneath his shoe.
Immediately, the little boy’s head snapped up and at the sight of Harry, he flinched and hid further behind the bush.
Harry took a steadying breath. In the instant he had met the little boy’s eyes, he had seen overwhelming fear.
Harry was no stranger to the reasons a child might have that look in their eyes and it made him indescribably sad.
Harry didn’t know what he was doing here, but he couldn’t just walk away from this kid.
Making sure his voice was as gentle and non-threatening as possible, Harry spoke, very quietly.
“Hey there. I’m sorry for scaring you. I thought I heard something and thought maybe it was an animal that needed help. I really didn’t mean to surprise you.”
Silence.
Harry bent down and moved closer until he could see the little boy in his hiding spot.
The child didn’t bolt this time, which Harry took as progress.
Harry gave him a gentle smile.
The boy just stared back, eyeing him warily.
The little eyes narrowed, whether in suspicion or confusion Harry wasn't sure, before he dropped his gaze. The child hugged his knees tighter to his chest, somehow making himself appear even smaller.
Harry swallowed the lump in his throat and said, as softly and gently as possible, "Are you okay?"
The boy didn't answer, and just continued to stare at him. He seemed to relax one percent, however, when Harry didn't rush to make another move.
"I won't hurt you," Harry then said, slowly lifting his hands out to the side and showing them to the boy. "See? I promise."
Harry noted the panic that had flickered in the dark eyes when he’d lifted his hands, but then a blank mask slid over those childlike features, transforming the boy.
Harry's throat constricted in sudden, painful recognition.
He knew that look.
He looked the boy over once again.
That expressionless face, that pale skin, the long, dirty hair and those fathomless dark eyes…they were all just too familiar.
But no. It couldn't be. This little boy couldn't be him…could he?
It had hardly been five minutes before that the adult, exceedingly bitter wizard had been laying into Harry in his office.
How could this little boy be him?
Well, Harry mused, it wouldn't be the first time he had managed to inadvertently travel through time, would it?
Harry shifted his focus back to the boy. He had never really been able to imagine Severus Snape as a child.
Oh, he'd seen the pensieve memories, of course. But a child like this—so young, so scared, so damn innocent. It had never occurred more than peripherally to Harry that Severus had been a child like that once.
Despite the resemblance, Harry had no proof his suspicions were right.
The boy was still watching him, but presumably because Harry had been staring into space doing nothing for the last minute and a half, he looked more wary and curious than terrified, now.
Harry got a better look at the ratty thing the boy was clutching like a lifeline. As he’d thought, it was a stuffed animal—a little deer.
Why was an innocent little child hiding away in this rundown park, looking as starved and wary as a wild animal?
Harry suddenly decided he was going to learn more about this boy, regardless of who he turned out to be.
Keeping his voice as soft and unthreatening as possible, he said, "You've got a beautiful friend, there. Is he a deer?"
The boy's eyes widened and he hugged the stuffed animal closer to his chest. Biting his lip, he lifted his eyes to consider Harry again before finally nodding, hesitantly.
"Well I think he's fantastic," Harry continued, scooting a foot closer as he did so. When the boy didn't flinch, he moved another few inches closer until he was only about 5 feet from the boy, give-or-take.
Harry noticed the child tensing up once again, and he looked about ready to bolt, much as his little stuffed animal might have done had it been a real wild animal.
And at the prospect of the boy running away before he knew more, Harry suddenly felt the desperate need to confirm the boy's identity.
Staring into those black eyes that projected wary curiosity and the desire to flee in equal measure, Harry made a split-second decision. Just as the boy began to push himself to his feet, Harry blurted out, "I won't hurt you, Severus," and the boy froze.
Looking back in surprise, he said softly, "Y-you know my name?"
Harry struggled to maintain his composure as the boy's response washed over him.
The boy had not corrected him.
He had not denied who Harry both hoped he was and desperately hoped he was not.
But as it was, Harry was faced with the undeniable truth.
Regardless of how or why, he was crouching before Severus Snape as a child.
And then it hit him with such force he was nearly blown away. The little boy sitting before him, shivering in his threadbare rags, was his son.
Realizing he had yet to answer the boy, Harry swallowed the lump in his throat, smiled gently and said, willing his voice to stay steady, "Yes, I do. I'm a…friend…of your mum's."
The boy looked surprised, and narrowed his eyes as if he didn’t entirely believe Harry.
But as he held his gaze, perhaps trying to gauge his sincerity, Harry had the strangest urge to laugh as he remembered all the times the adult Severus had looked at him this way, as if he were a potions ingredient to dissect.
The boy finally said, somewhat doubtfully, "M-my mum's?"
Harry nodded. "That's right. I'm an old friend of your mum's, Severus…from before you were born." He paused there, inwardly grimacing at how loaded his words truly were.
Severus looked to be working out a puzzle, his little brows furrowed and then asked, his voice just above a whisper, but his eyes far too wise for his years, "Before pa?"
Harry forced his jaws shut before nodding, watching Severus closely. "Uh, yeah. That's right."
But the boy just nodded decisively, as if Harry had just confirmed something he'd already understood. "That makes sense. Cause…because mummy's not allowed…” he cut off abruptly and clapped a hand over his mouth.
Harry's mind instantly jumped to fill in the blank spots in the boy's admission. Keeping his voice soft, he pressed, "It's okay, Severus. It’s just us here. Your mum's not allowed to what?"
Severus nervously looked over his shoulder and Harry just knew his conclusions were right. He decided to help the boy out. "To get out and see people, you mean?"
Severus nodded. "Pa got mad and…"
Harry felt a rush of red-hot anger well up in his chest. Anger directed at Tobias Snape for being an abusive bastard. Anger that this little boy, his son, had to deal with it, anger that Eileen had to deal with it…but no one was he angrier with than himself for having indirectly caused all of it.
Harry looked up and noticed Severus eyeing him warily again, and Harry forced the scowl from his face. "I'm not angry with you, Severus. You didn't do anything wrong. I'm just sad, and mad, that your, uh…father…" He found himself having to choke the word out, "was so mean to her. He shouldn't have been."
Severus studied him for a while before his shoulders relaxed and he nodded. "Yeah…I don't want him to be mean to mum anymore…"
"He won't."
Severus blinked at him in confusion.
Harry had responded without thinking, but once the words had left his lips, he had no desire to take them back.
He had no idea how he'd ended up back in the past, but now that he was here, he found himself faced with the harsh reality that his son, and the mother of his son, were being abused by a drunken bastard that he, Harry, had told Eileen to marry in the first place.
He grimaced as he thought about how closely he had been emulating the acts he had so resented Dumbledore for orchestrating.
Just as the man had left him in a miserable living situation growing up, and then led him through one dangerous adventure to the next throughout his years at Hogwarts, here Harry was, playing God with Severus' life just as Albus Dumbledore had with his.
All for the greater good? Perhaps.
But in the end, was it really worth the sacrifices?
At the time, Harry had thought so. But at that time, Severus was still the nasty Potions Professor in his mind, a man whose miserable past was long behind him.
A younger Severus had been an abstract concept to Harry, despite what he'd learned about the man's history with Harry’s mother from Severus' memories.
But now, he was faced with a very tangible, very real child. The child he had made that night with Eileen. The child he had forced into a glamour, the child he had forced to take another man as a father—an abusive man.
Somehow until this moment, Harry had not realized how truly evil that was.
What was wrong with him?
Had he hated Severus Snape so much that he had been ok with this?
How could he ever make up for what he’d done?
Well. He knew there was nothing he could do to make it up to the adult Severus. It was no wonder the man hated him so very much.
But here he was with a version of his son who hadn’t yet lived through all that.
Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t too late for this one.
He didn't care if Eileen hated him. That was besides the point.
He had to get them out of the situation he had landed them in.
He would not allow those black eyes, still so full of innocence for all of their much-too-wise, wary sadness, to lose their spark and devolve into the bottomless pits of the Potions Master he knew. Not this time.
"Sir?" The timid voice asked, and Harry felt the strangest desire to both cry and laugh at being addressed as such by Severus.
He gave the boy a sad smile, and then, keeping a close eye on Severus’s expression to make sure he was okay with it, Harry gently moved over to sit right by the boy.
When he didn’t bolt, Harry grinned and said, his own private joke in his head, "You don't have to call me sir, Severus.”
The boy's eyes widened.
"I'm Harry. You're welcome to call me that, alright?"
The boy was silent for a while. Finally, he nodded.
“Great,” Harry grinned, feeling like they’d made progress.
Suddenly, Severus' eyes widened, and he jumped up. "Oh no! It’s been too long. I have to get home to mum!”
"What is it? Can you tell me?" Worried by the panicked look on the young face, Harry leaned forward, putting both hands on the boy's thin shoulders, but the boy flinched and struggled under him.
“You can tell me. Is it Tobias?" Harry's voice had a hard, steely edge to it, and Severus flinched again under his grip.
Harry released him as if he’d been burned. “Sorry, Severus. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The boy nodded.
“Let’s get going then.”
Severus looked at him in confusion.
“I’m coming with you,” Harry said, responding to the silent question on the boy's face.
“Why?”
Harry found himself momentarily speechless. Then, he said what his heart was screaming loud and clear: “Because you matter.”
Severus’s eyes widened.
“What happens to you matters. And that man,” Harry spat, “doesn’t get to have his way with you or your mum anymore. Do you hear me, Severus? I won’t let him.”
The way those dark eyes looked up at him with such hope nearly broke his heart, but then the boy dropped his gaze and shuffled his feet.
“But he’s bigger than you.”
“Maybe. But he doesn’t have a secret weapon.”
Severus’s eyes widened as Harry pulled out just the tip of his holly and phoenix feather wand.
The two exchanged a glance, a conspiratorial smile.
When Harry reached for Severus’s hand, the boy actually took it.
Together they set off towards the old house on Spinner's End.
Thanks for reading! The next chapter will be up tomorrow.