A/N: Ah, I decided to try to write things. This is just a short little scene I thought up (it has probably been done millions of times before, but I just wanted to try something) between a six-year-old Harry and a twenty-seven-year-old Snape. I haven't written Harry Potter fic in forever, so I apologize if the characterization isn't quite up to snuff, but I did try. There are a few swear words in the prose, given that it is from Snape's perspective and he is a young, forever emotionally-immature man. Enjoy. :)
What it is
The sky is sodden with grey clouds, the breeze cool and gentle. He feels it on his face, this man, this tall man so pale and angular, draped in black robes and black hair and bloodless skin. The grass is crisp and dark beneath his feet, none of that sorry brown and burnt business caused by too much sunlight.
You need the sun, Severus. Her voice is always in his head. Her hand is always there, a tiny phantom wiping at a child's cheek that is now grown and dry. It will make you feel better, I know it will, when it comes back. It always makes me feel better.
Britain is lousy for sunshine, and they are opposites, always, she is bright and beautiful and he is the ugly shadow that follows her. She is smiles and laughs and he is the imprisoned salt water of jaded eyes. It doesn't fit, it will never fit, the way that she is the shining beacon of vitality and he is the dirt plot of too many unnecessary graves, and yet…
She is dead. He is alive.
He wishes for the cloudy days now. They feel right and good because the sun is gone. When it's not gone, the thickness in his chest is suffocating, and the world is the open mouth of a beast so vicious, so all-consuming that you can't name it anything other than Wrong.
At the moment, it is not Wrong. This isn't to say that it is Right, but this park in which he stands has to the be the loneliest place in all of Surrey, made further desolate by these clouds and this breeze creaking that old, rusted chain of the swing set in a way that is more soothing than headache-inducing. It is not a day for children, but Severus knows that he will come. The boy is always here on lonely days.
He does not disappoint on this one.
Severus hears the crunch of grass as the boy's small feet make their way in oversized shoes, and he's quick about the glamour he casts on his clothes, stuffs the wand in his waistband and bends down, pats at his leg as if there is a stubborn spot of lunch stuck to his trousers.
When he rises, he meets the child's spectacled eyes.
They are just like hers.
And Severus knows now, as he always knows on these days, that there need not be sun for his chest and throat and everything that he is to become thick with emotion so pathetic that it is sickening.
A smile plays on the boy's lips. His tiny hand rises in a shy wave.
Severus does nothing. He wants to sneer. He wants to rip the boy's glasses from his face and stomp them into the ground, grind the lenses to a fine dust with the heel of a vindictive boot. He wants to take that messy black hair on top of the child's head and cut it off with the sharp end of a knife, let the blasted runt scream for help, scream for everything and nothing, until there is no sound left, until he is devoid of all that makes him up that isn't her.
Hesitant steps and then he is standing at Severus's toes, his mother's eyes peering up innocently. Fondly.
"Hello, Harry," Severus says quietly, violence slinking back into that dark place of his mind.
"Hello, P'fessor," Harry replies, and his smile peaks through his mouth like the sun would through the clouds if it dared – it would never, for your information. It would never have the nerve, for Severus would send it racing back with the most scathing of looks. This was a lonely day for lonely boys who hadn't a lily in their lives.
And other such alliterative shite.
"Professor, Harry," Severus chides. "We mustn't get lazy with our speech."
Harry gnaws on his lower lip, casts his eyes to the grass. Severus looks down his long, hooked nose at the boy's chaotic hair, at the clothing so monstrously oversized it might be well-suited for a baby whale, but not this tiny creature with sticks for limbs and huge eyes. He notices for the first time that Harry's hands are brown with dirt, probably from the garden that miserable excuse for an aunt forces the child to slave away in.
The sick part of Severus understands Petunia'sdesire to do this to the boy.
"Professor," Harry corrects himself, and looks up with an expression that is not quite hopeful for praise.
Then again, bloody Tuney.
"Come here," Severus says gruffly, even though the boy is, by all means, already there. Kneeling on the grass, the young wizard takes the child by the hands, and nods in curt appreciation at the lack of fear reflected back at him by those emerald orbs. "How did your hands come to be so dirty?"
Harry scuffs the toe of his shoe in the ground, pulls his eyes away from Severus, indicating something worse than just an inane outdoor chore.
"Harry…" Severus says warningly. The child mumbles something that ends in a rising intonation. "Speak clearly, boy."
"Are you nice today or are you mean today?"
Severus doesn't know what he is today. The boy is more likely to know than he is.
"Does it matter?"
Harry looks up with a question in his eyes.
"Well, does it?" Severus snaps indignantly. "Do you think I would hurt you? I've never hurt you. Maybe tossed a few ill-gotten words here or there, but you keep coming back. You wouldn't keep coming back if I hurt you."
They both know this isn't true, but Harry makes eye contact again, searching for the belief on Severus's face.
Severus sighs, rubs a terse hand over the boy's head. Softly, he asks, "What happened, Harry?"
"I was pullin' the weeds out of Aunt Petunia's garden…"
Severus cocks an eyebrow. "And why didn't you wash your hands?"
"She wouldn't let me back inside."
Bloody fucking Tuney, Severus thinks, for the millionth time in his twenty-seven years. But he says, "Why?" and again, Harry drops his head. Severus's hand falls from the boy's hair, comes up again to cup the child's chin, guiding the eyes back to their appropriate place. "Harry."
"I didn't mean to."
"You didn't mean to what?"
"She was very cross, P'fessor." A plump tear falls down a young cheek. Severus wipes it away with the pad of an impatient thumb.
"Professor," he corrects, as gently as he can.
"Professor," Harry agrees, and sniffles. He's quiet for a beat, sucking in a calming breath, and then, "One of the flowers didn't come out and I picked it."
"She was mad that you picked it," Severus clarifies, stifling the urge to roll his eyes. Of course Petunia was enraged over something so insipid as a picked flower.
But Harry shakes his head, takes another pause. Then, finally, whispers, "It opened in my hands."
Muggles have these things called guns, and inside the guns are these things called bullets. Severus's father had one; he kept it in his typewriter case. What the man did with a typewriter, or its case, Severus hadn't a clue because he sure as bloody hell wasn't a man of words. Who needs words when you have fists? Who needs magic when you have bullets? Who needs anything when a little boy with his mother's eyes can blast your chest full of holes with five words?
"Are you mad, too?" Harry whispers, and Severus sucks in his own breath, realizes he has somehow managed to forget the boy is there, in his hands even, when the boy and how the boy came to be are all he ever thinks about. "I didn't mean to-"
"Harry…" Severus croaks, but Harry misconstrues the tone.
"I'm sorry I'm so freakish, P'fessor- professor. Please don't hate me. Please keep coming back!" The child tries to stifle the quiet sob he chokes on. Severus can see the effort.
His mind is blank. Or its full of things. Awful things and beautiful things, Severus doesn't even know anymore. He just knows the sun left a long time ago and it's not coming back, not really. He just knows that it's cloudy today with a breeze and a creaking swing set, a day when this children's park is a desolate place where the lonely go for company, good or bad, who the bloody fuck knows, it just is what it is.
It just is what it is, Severus tells himself when he crushes the boy to his chest, allows the child weep on his shoulder.
It just is what it is, he tells himself when he breathes the words to her son, the words he never said to her: "I'll always come back for you, love."
It just is what it is, as Harry goes boneless in his arms