A/n: This was written for Day Five: Spinner's End.
This could almost be considered a cut scene from Lily's Thorn, but it is not.
Not Bound
Severus looked around at the house. Despite all the bad memories it held, he had never imagined leaving it. After all, he only needed it for a couple of months in the summer, and that was it. There was no reason to spend money when he didn't live there. Things were different now, though. He glanced up the stairs towards the second bedroom, the one that remained empty for so long. Now it belonged to another. He forced his fists to unclench as he turned and walked into the kitchen, pouring himself a drink. Merlin knows that he needed one after this day.
Severus poured himself a glass of brandy and took a long swig of it before setting the glass down hard on the dirty table. He would be lying to himself if he didn't say that that he absolutely loathed this house and everything it stood for, and yet. He had been raised in this house. This was the only place he had ever lived prior to Hogwarts, but it was a house of horrors as far as he was concerned, full of demons and monsters. There were very few good memories, and they were always swallowed up by the bad.
His father had been an abusive asshole and a drunk, to put it lightly. He spent of his time yelling and beating on his mother. His mother was so busy yelling back and keeping Tobias from beating on him that it had left Severus alone for the most part. It had been dreary, lonely childhood. It wasn't as if he was going to sit here, moping about how horrible his lie had been. Yes, he still saw shadows of his past in this house, it was hard not to. He would look around and see his parents screaming at each other, with no regard for him. Or he would his father hitting his mother up the side as tears ran down her face. He would see the moments where his father hit him, though those happened less.
Severus could deal with his own demons, but he was not subjecting a child to them.
He downed the rest of his drink, his mind drifting back upstairs to the young man that now slept in the second bedroom. He had a child. He had a fucking child. He had no idea in what universe the powers that be had decided to bestow him with a son, and especially not that one. Yet, Harry Potter was sleeping upstairs in his room, except, he was no longer Harry Potter, was he? Harry Potter was a lie, something that never existed. The fifteen-year old that slept upstairs went by the name of Harry Potter, but the truth was that he was his son, something that had been hid from both of them until recently.
Looking around the room, Severus knew that he could not stay here any longer. While he had no problems living in this house until the day he died, he would not subject a child to it, not even one he had spent the past five years making it as miserable as possible. He no idea how they were supposed to move on from that, but getting out of his rubbish of a shack was one way. He was not going to force Po - no, Harry to live in this house. If you could call it that, of course. He had no idea where the two of them were going to go from here now that they knew the truth, but not living in the shadows of the past was going to be the first step.
Severus refused to be bound by it. He was going to be rubbish at this, and he had no idea if the boy would even want him around. He certainly wouldn't blame him. One thing at a time, though. The first thing he was going to do would be to get them both out of his damned house.
Everything else could come later.