Author's Note: I'm glad that people are interested in/like this story so far. :) Also, hooray! A chapter from Snape's perspective!
It wasn't until he had made his way into his quarters and shut the door, Potter's medical files still in hand, that the emotional fog lifted and Severus realised what exactly he'd just agreed to.
Not just agreed to. Demanded. Insisted.
His forehead fell against the polished wood of the door with a thunk.
He hated children. It wasn't exactly a secret. The entire faculty knew that he couldn't stand all the snotty-nosed, sticky-fingered, chattering imbeciles that populated the corridors and attempted, every single class period, to blow the Potions classroom sky high. (Longbottom was the worst he had seen in a while, but he was by no means the only one).
Now he was the guardian of one.
Pinching his rather prominent nose between thumb and forefinger, Severus sighed, staggering away from the door to take an unsteady seat on the sofa. He needed to child-proof his quarters. He needed to fill out the guardianship papers, which had just arrived on the table with a discreet pop. He needed to come up with some semblance of rules for the behaviour of his new ward.
Why, of all people, did it have to be Potter?
When he'd heard the muted sobbing behind the curtain, he had assumed it was a Slytherin, truth be told. They were not in the dungeons, but out-of-the-way corridors and neglected alcoves were his students' forte. When it was Potter instead, he'd wanted to sneer at the child, provoke him into a fit of temper and perhaps even assign him a detention on the last day of school for the sheer pleasure of it-
Potter's eyes gave him pause.
They were Lily's eyes, but they were also swimming in tears and such abject misery, even Severus felt uncomfortable. Not to mention the impressive crack the back of the boy's head had made, connecting with the window glass.
Potter's pleas for his Potions professor to read his mind had been a shock.
What Severus found in said mind was even more so.
Neglect. Painful, punishing neglect. A life growing up stunted and scrawny in a cupboard. A cupboard jammed full of cleaning supplies, it was a miracle Potter hadn't ingested a few as a toddler and accomplished what the Dark Lord could not. Petunia Evans, now Dursley, just as sneering and horse-faced as he remembered. A hulking brute of a man, shoving Potter around and locking him into said cupboard. The cousin- a fat little bully of a boy, neatly growing up in his father's footsteps.
He had promised Albus, for Lily's sake, he would protect Potter. He had thought he could watch over the child from a distance. He had presumed the greatest threat to the boy's well-being would come from the Dark Lord and his fanatical followers.
Where Petunia was involved, he should have known better.
Summoning a cup of tea, Severus began to flip through Poppy's report. Potter was plainly malnourished. A few odd broken bones that never healed properly. While Severus doubted Petunia had broken Potter's bones herself (or let her whale of a husband do the deed), he also had no doubt she would have rather danced naked on the front lawn than taken the boy to get competent medical care. Let the freak fix himself, he could imagine her saying, with that haughty curl of upper lip.
If she'd bothered at all, Severus would bet a year's salary on her doing so grudgingly, resentfully- the bare minimum of medical treatment, and then Potter could manage the rest himself, couldn't he? From Poppy's diagnostics, it seemed that he had. Badly, no doubt. But magic had a way of protecting its owner, Severus thought ruefully.
Now that he was alone, he could also (unfortunately) acknowledge the squirming sensation of guilt souring in his chest. He'd let the public persona of the Boy Who Lived, not to mention his own scathing opinion of the child's parentage, taint his own perceptions. Potter might look like James, but he had his mother's eyes, and if Severus was painfully honest with himself, how fair could it be to heap the sins of the father upon the unwitting child? Potter probably didn't even remember his parents, and Severus had been treating him abominably all year.
It wasn't a pleasant feeling. It was even more unpleasant to acknowledge that had Potter not chosen to show him the dreadful home life he feared returning to, Severus would never had had a qualm doing the same thing next year, and the year after that, and so forth and so on into perpetuity. Potter was reckless. Yet now Severus thought perhaps that came, not from the boy's pompous, puffed up grandiloquence, but from a lack of caring for his own well-being. Why should he, when none of the adults in his life had ever given a damn?
"I will," Severus said aloud. He felt odd, talking to himself like this. "Or- I'll try, anyway."
That sounded easier.