Title:Uncle by blood, family by choice.

Author:Jaylynn

Pairing: None currently but will probably change in the future since my muse keeps flipfloping between two.

Disclaimer: Buffy stuff belongs to Joss, Harry Potter stuff belongs to J.K. Rowling.

I'm also kinda screwing with the timeline some since I want Xander younger, so Buffy came a year earlier making Xander have a year of dealing with the strangeness that her arrival brought. Other changes to the timeline can and will pop up as I go along.

bCHAPTER ONE -Prologue- /b

After finding out the existence of the things that go bump, Xander would have given money on the odds that he was going to die on some vamps fangs, just like Jesse. It really came to no surprise to him that he was wrong, hell he was used to it growing up with a best friend like Willow. He just wished it didn't hurt so much this time.

Curled up in a fetal position, Xander tried not thinking about his mother's limp form laying not two feet away or the fact it was his father that seemed so determined to be the one to send him to an early grave, no instead Xander thought of the only family he actually liked, his uncle. Not the loser that was his uncle Rory, but his mother's brother, someone who actually treated him like family was supposed to.

He remembered the times his uncle would visit when he was younger and he'd always have some small gift for him, even if it was just a book. Xander wasn't any more studious back then as he was now, but he loved those books because they were from his favorite uncle, and not wanting to disappoint him Xander would read them cover to cover several times until he had them memorized. That way when the next time his uncle came to visit and asked about what he learned, he could actually discuss it with him. Willow would have been so proud if she knew, but he never told her about it and he hid his books and only read them when he knew his father was out of the house for fear he'd do something to them.

Xander's arm brushed against the silver pendant his uncle had given him when he was younger. He'd been told if he was ever hurt or in danger for his life, he just had to have the pendant on him and say his uncle's full name and he would be safe. He'd worn it every day for a year, before Larry had started making fun of him for wearing something so girly like a necklace. After that, Xander had put it away and pretty much forgotten it until just about a week after Jesse had been killed.
At the time he had started wearing it under his clothes to help him connect with someone who cared for him. The lose of Jesse had hit him hard and Willow seemed to just want to forget, so the pendant was almost a life line for him and helped him to carry on. He didn't think there was anything magical with it at the time but now he was having second and third thoughts since it was radiating way too much heat to be mundane.

Hope was building as he slowly grasped the nearly hot pendant in his bloodied and broken hands and whispered through bloody lips his uncle's name...

The one and only Severus Snape.

b End chapter one/b

Reviews are loved and can help inspire my muse, the fickle thing that she is, but seriously tell me what you think. I could also really use a beta since I try but I don't seem to catch grammar errors very well and there is only so much spell check can do. I have the next few chapters already written but plan to go over them again before I transfer them over to here.