Severus cursed Albus Dumbledore for the umpteenth time that night. The nerve of the old man to send him all the way to Privet Drive to check on the spoiled Potter spawn! Jaw clenched tightly as he neared Number 4, his sharp eyes detected a lone figure slumped on the pavement. Eyes narrowing into tiny slits, he slapped himself inwardly as he approached the boy.
"What, may I ask, are you doing out here, young one?" he asked, surprised at the gentle tone his voice carried.
The little boy sniffled and curled up even tighter as the December wind blew. "My Auntie told me to stay here."
"Stay out of her sight?" Severus supplied, lowering himself to the boy's level.
With a slight shake of his head, the boy slowly responded. "No. She told me to stay out of the house. She said that freaks deserved to stay on the streets without dinner."
Reminded painfully of his memories as a child, Severus transfigured a fallen leaf into a wool sweater surreptitiously and handed it to the little boy. Upon seeing the gift, the boy started to reach for it before pulling back abruptly.
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry." The child cried, looking up at him for the first time. Suddenly, memories rushed into his mind. Those round, emerald eyes of Lily Potter - so vivid and so real, in front of him. He reached out to touch the boy's forehead, brushing away the grim and lanky hair to reveal the lightning-shaped scare of the Boy-Who-Lived. Here was Harry Potter... clearly malnourished and small for his age. For the first time since the elder Potters death, Severus was stunned speechless.
The silence that stretched between the two people on the pavement was broken when the smaller of them whimpered in fear. "Please don't beat me, sir. I'll be good, I promise."
The words jolted Severus back to the present, and he shook his head quickly. Obviously, the boy was beaten by his relatives... like what Tobias Snape had done to him and his Mother before the older Snape died. Pulling out his wand in a fashion that was too slow for a wizard of his degree to avoid scaring the boy even more, he cast a Drying and Warming Charm over the shivering child before slipping the sweater on the boy's body. 'My God, what have these people done?' he thought to himself as he gathered the child in his arms.
"Have you come to take me away, sir? Are you an angel?" A hopeful voice asked, and the Potions Master's heart melted at being addressed in such away. "I am not an angle, but yes, I have come to take you far from this place. You are Harry Potter, no?" he responded.
"Yes, sir. My parents died in a car crash when I was little. My Auntie, Uncle and Dudders got me when they died." At the phrase 'car crash', rage filled Severus. Lily? A car crash killed Lily Potter? Infuriated, he strode to the door and opened it without preamble - respect being the last thing on his mind. Instantly, his lips curled in a disgusted sneer at the sight of Petunia, her morbidly overweight husband, and their fat son. "Tuney." he drawled, his vehement repulse dripping from his words.
"What are you doing here?" screeched the woman in address, her horsey face contorted in a mixture of fear and anger. Though fear won over the latter.
"Is that the way you treat your visitors, Tuney? I wouldn't want to be your house guest, then." the man said with a smirk, his temper solidly kept in check as the older male Dursley observed him with a frown. Harry's cousin merely kept to his food, grabbing at the feast before him. Severus had never seen a child so like a glutton than Dudley Dursley.
"You are neither, Snape, and you have no business here. Lily is dead, in case you've forgotten. She has laid in her well-deserved grave for 5 years already." the woman had the nerve to snap at him.
Her words were enough to snap his patience. "Lily died to save her son and the Wizarding world, and you treat him like dirt. Are you still so jealous that Lily had magic that you take it out on her son?"
The three Dursleys gasped at the mention of the forbidden 'm' word, and even Harry squirmed nervously in his arms, burrowing his face into his cloak.
"He is a freak, and nothing more, just like my sister. I was never jealous of her, for I was the only one who saw her as she was. A freak! Always bringing home toadstools and frogs that jumped and whatnot. Mummy and Daddy loved their Lily. She was always the perfect one, the pretty one, and the one with magic. Then she got herself pregnant with that Potter boy, and blew themselves up. We never wantedthe child, Snape. But Lily, though dead, still gets what she wants."
Something flashed in Severus' eyes, and he hissed with fury, putting Harry on the floor. "No more than you are, bitch. Lily didn't wantHarry to be sent here as much as you disliked it."
Vernon Dursley stood and scraped his chair back, raising himself and pointing a pudgy finger at Severus. "You are trespassing, sir! You have no right to talk to my wife like that!"
A jet of light burst from Severus' wand as Harry cowered behind his leg, and Vernon dropped unconscious on the floor. Petunia screeched and rushed to her husband's side, and glared at Snape, draping a hand protectively over her Duddykins, who had stopped eating and was now staring fearfully at him. "Take the brat, then. We don't care what happens to him!"
Severus sneered and charmed the house to always show signs of dirt, and gave Vernon a pig's tail and Dudley a pig's snout. 'How fitting.', he thought. Petunia elicited a horrified sound, and Severus bit out his last words as he relished the expression that passed across the woman's face. "Yes, Tuney, I'm taking Lily's son with me."
With that, he strode out of Number 4, Privet Drive with Harry in his arms once again. "Where are we going?" the little boy asked before his eyes went wide open and he clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes filling with tears. "I'm so sorry, sir! Please don't give me back to them. I promise I won't ask questions no more!"
Sighing, Severus shifted the boy in his arms. "We're going to my home. And Harry..." The boy looked up at him fearfully, and he ran a hand over the child's hair absently. "... It's okay to ask questions. Your Auntie's not here anymore, and she won't be, unless Ihave a say in it."
Wide eyes shining in delight, Harry smiled somewhat hesitantly and stuck a thumb into his mouth. "Thank you, sir." After a brief pause, he continued. "Are you my Daddy now?"
Severus' jaw was tempted to drop in shock, but he controlled himself and smirked at the child instead. "No, Harry. Not yet." He found the words escaping his mouth to be surprising, but he realized he truly didn't mind to raise the boy as his son, after all.
His son. It wasn't so bad. Lily would be proud of him.
... to be continued