A/N: Edited March 11th, 2015.

Chapter 25: Leave the Darkness in the Night

The nursery was dark and quiet when Snape walked in. The oldest Weasleys were placed in their own rooms but the twins, Ron, and Ginny, joined Harry in the nursery, and surprisingly even Fred and George were little angels when they slept. The nursery was a magical place in itself, even though no actual magic went on there. It was a dreamy comfortable place where even a muggle child could believe in the beautiful things that a child like wonder might think of when magic was perfect and pure. Snape, however, saw the deception in the space, but knew that the gentleness, the bright colours and the fairytale creatures were a comfort to the children. They didn't need to know the dark side that lurked in the magical world.

Harry was tucked snuggly into his trundle bed, having graduated from his crib when they arrived at Willow House. He was fast asleep and peacefully perfect in every way. Snape knelt down next to the slumbering child's bed. Harry sucked his thumb and clung tightly to a stuffed teddy bear as he slept.

"One day you'll not be afraid anymore, Harry, I promise. Magic isn't all that dark. there is so much beauty to be found in it, if you understand it. One day, you will learn to embrace it. You are a wizard Harry, but for now, I need you to just be a child." Snape whispered and kissed the child's forehead before moving off to his own bed chamber.

Snape had tried to be kind, tried to set boundaries and give some freedom to his guests but he knew that Sirius would forever hold dark feelings toward him. Snape knew he would never be James, but he had been placed in the middle of all the animosities and, in a way, he was thankful because he was determined to make Harry's young life happy and care free, unlike his own. Snape didn't want to be James, he had seen the flaws and the darkness that even James Potter possessed, and Severus had planned never to be negative about Harry father to the child, but he would also never allow those dark behaviors to become Harry's, and if that meant banishing the one man that would one day tell Harry all there was to know about his father, so be it, for now it was his job to become that father figure.

Snape knew that in the dark haunts of the world there were still forces looking for the child. He knew, in his deepest fears that someday Harry would have to face the magical world and all the darkness that awaited him there. For now, however, Harry could be sheltered. He could live a happy simple existence. He was loved, and Severus understood what that child meant to him in that moment. There was a fear and an anger that had arisen because Harry had felt threatened, and Snape in the pit of his soul, felt the undeniable urge to fight, to the death, to save this child from one more moment of discomfort. Severus saw the change in himself, in the dark man that he had been, and the man of life and light that he had become. Severus Snape, the potions master, was no longer the creature that he had been but a man, a gentleman, and a father to a perfect, innocent, and defenceless little boy, with eyes as beautiful and joy filled as his mother's.

That night, as he paced the length of his dressing room, Snape stopped occasionally to write something hastily into the journal that he had started for Harry. This night's entry was composed of a solemn promise. A promise that so long as Harry lived, so long as Snape could be around to protect him from the darkness reaches of the magical world, Snape would do so and no one, not even Sirius Black would stand in his way. He vowed to be kind, and good, and just, to all the people that he came into contact with him and he vowed to put judgement aside to give Harry the best possible life. Snape, in that night's lurking of his own bed chambers, swore to give up magic until Harry could fully understand it and he would embrace the muggle way of life, and be happy, as he had a whole new world to learn about and live through. He placed his wand in an oak box on that night and set it on a shelf in his bed chamber where it would remain until he and Harry were ready. Harry and Dumbledore had made him rich and respectable, now Severus must live up to that idea.

Severus Snape paced long into the night, and into the early morning hours, as his house remained peacefully silent, oblivious of the nocturnal lurking of the master of the house. Finally, after leaving the nursery, for fear of waking the children with his brooding, Snape found his way through the halls, found the portrait of Lily empty, and sulked off to his study and the solitude of his books and his journal.

May 18th, 1982.

I hardly know what to write, and yet it is all that I want to do. What else can be done. I've already lost my temper and thrown a man out. I've already made a fool of myself, though my guests seem to think me justified in my behaviour, and why, for God's sake, am I worried about what Sirius Black thinks of me. It never bothered me before. It never mattered, and yet that is where all the darkness came from. I cannot let him goad me like that. I cannot let the darkness, and above all things, I cannot let there be magic around Harry in the capacity that Sirius Black would find appropriate for a scarred little child.

I am sorry, perhaps that is truly what I am feeling, but I truly believe that I am sorry that Sirius and I could not see eye to eye for Harry's sake. I don't want everything in Harry's life to change, though it has all changed very much and we cannot look to the past to fix it, we must look forward, but I wanted Harry to have at least someone he was familiar with.

Why, then, did Sirius have to be so stubborn? Because he's Sirius Black, and even though time, years, battles, whatever has passed between us, has changed us so very much. Have I not done enough to merit his trust? What have I really done for him. What I have done was for the good of our people, and for Lily, but not to benefit Sirius personally. And who should be that selfish to think that I should do anything for him? Does he? Is he still that pompous, selfish, child he was at Hogwarts? Perhaps, but he doesn't have the support of his best friends, one of whom is a true traitor, another who is dead and a third who has taken my side. Would I have every imagined it possible? Perhaps in my darkness, I'd wished it, but I don't think I would have ever asked for this to have happened to any of us. Is it my fault, and has it been my fault from the very beginning? Could I have been the factor in all of our lives on which balance was weighed? How could I ever know that, or any of us, and how much of this is actually left to chance, or fate, or us at all?

My mind is so troubled tonight, and yet my house is quite. My guests know nothing of my discomfort, and the man who caused so much of it is gone. So why can I not finding comfort in that? Why has Sirius Black gotten so under my skin? Because he frightened Harry. That is the reason. He disobeyed me and he scared Harry.

But what do I expect of Sirius? This, this is exactly what I expected, exactly what I had feared would happen. I had, perhaps, hoped that Sirius would be able to break the spell of fear that is on Harry, but that is not what happened. Why couldn't he just listen to me, as a guest in my house, as a man who saved him from ruin and a lifetime of despair? Because, he's Sirius Black. Do I expect him to come to me and fall to his knees with gratitude for saving him from a lifetime locked away in Azkaban? No, when I found the Rat, I was not thinking about Sirius Black, not at all. I was thinking of Harry and his safety, so I was never looking for Sirius to be grateful, but I also didn't expect him to come into my house, where I am entertaining my guests, only to have him misbehave. I suppose time changes some of us, but not others.

Harry, for you I am truly sorry. I'm sorry he did that to you. I am sorry that you are afraid and that, that fear is in your life. I am sorry that you do not have your parents. I am sorry we had to come together in this way, and I am truly sorry that one day, when you are old enough to read this, you will know how much I have struggled. Until that time, I hope, against all hope, that you do not see me as such a hateful and scattered man. I hope that you can feel safe and happy with me, and I hope I can learn to hide all this darkness from you. But, tonight, darkness is closing in on me, once again...

Snape threw down his quill, stood from the desk he usually took comfort at, and once again paced the length of his study. He would not be calm, or collected, so long as the darkness was with him, and he feared that his figurative darkness would not end with the coming of the light, but he would fight to hide his discomfort from his guests. For not, he would be sleepless and dwell on the darkness, but by the morrow, he would mindful of his failings and he would hope that it would turn out to be another day, brand new in its beginnings, and hopefully good.

The lateness of hour seemed to make the darkness deeper, but Severus knew that he would have to try to rest. He took himself off to his bedchamber, as the embers in his study fireplace died away to the faintest of glowing, in the hopes of shutting off his own imagination. Once there, he finally settled himself into bed and set his mind to starting a fresh in the morning, he drifted off to sleep, leaving the darkness in the night and the hope of lightness with the coming of the new day.