Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!
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At dawn the next morning, Severus greeted the light of day sitting at his desk in his empty dungeon classroom, already diligently working on the many tasks he had set aside for that weekend.
A short while after Severus began his work, he heard footsteps approaching his lonely room and as they grew closer, he looked up just in time to see Harriet walk through the door, holding hands with the small toddler who was in her care.
"Good morning, Headmaster." Harriet nodded at Severus.
Severus scowled at Harriet and stood from his chair as he swept over to the omega and the child.
As the tall alpha loomed over them both, Harriet smiled, but Teddy clung to the side of her robes.
Severus Snape wasn't a very approachable sight.
Although many children Teddy's age would have burst into frightened tears as they looked up at the menacing figure, Teddy Lupin didn't cry, but he didn't seem too sure about Severus either.
"Potter……." Severus whispered curtly, "I already have your assignments for the day sorted and waiting. I advise you to hurry if you'd like to spend any of your Saturday somewhere other than this room."
"Is that my work, there?" Harriet asked as she pointed to a huge stack of parchments piled high on the Gryffindor's table in the deserted classroom.
"...Correct." Severus murmured.
Harriet nodded and walked over to the stack of parchements.
Severus kept his eyes on her while she sat down and then helped the small boy up onto the wooden bench to take a seat beside her.
"I trust…. the child…...will not be a distraction from your duties?" Severus asked coldly.
"Oh, no." Harriet replied to Severus as she pulled out some parchment and a few sticks of colored wax from her pockets. Severus looked on as Harriet sweetly handed them to Teddy who sat patiently waiting to begin his activity.
Teddy Lupin seemed to be happy with his entertainment and he began his own task of drawing and coloring a picture on the blank sheet of parchment.
Harriet smiled over at Severus and nodded, "He's very quiet…. he'll be no trouble, Headmaster."
"...See that he's not." Severus snipped.
Harriet didn't say another word as she began her work.
With Harriet and Teddy both silently occupied, Severus scowled as he glided back over to his desk and sat down.
The day passed by delightfully slowly for Severus.
Harriet had spoken truthfully about Teddy.
Severus was pleased that the little boy barely made a sound.
The alpha did notice at one point that Harriet let Teddy lay against her chest for a nap and she did give him a few different toys, all of which he could play with silently, but Teddy Lupin was a polite, well-behaved boy.
Severus eyed the child curiously as he thought to himself……….Remus had been the only Marauder to have offspring, besides James.
It surprised Severus that he found himself longing for James's daughter and thinking that Remus's son may not make a terrible student one day.
Severus kept glancing up to not only keep his eyes on the boy, but to steal unnoticed looks at Harriet when he could.
In between monitoring his two companions, Severus slowly but surely finished his own projects.
The trio paused their work only for lunch and dinner in the Great Hall.
During both meals, Severus and Harriet were mostly silent to each other since she was busy chatting with the little boy on her lap.
After dinner that evening, Severus continued to sit with Teddy and Harriet in the empty dungeon classroom. The surrounding candles burned bright in the darkness as Severus squinted down at the parchment on his desk and tried to study the last document he needed to review for the day.
Severus felt a slight pull on his cloak and he immediately looked over.
He narrowed his black eyes when he saw Teddy standing beside him with a frown.
Before Severus could speak, Teddy reached out his chubby hands and showed Severus one of the pictures he had been working so hard on throughout the morning and afternoon.
Severus took the parchment from the small boy and looked it over carefully before he wordlessly handed the illustration back to the child.
Teddy's frown deepened and Severus blinked as Teddy's large, brown eyes bored straight into his soul.
Sensing that the little boy in front of him wanted an assessment of his work and was intent on not leaving until he received it, Severus nodded at the child and declared, "...Well done."
Teddy cracked a very small smile but when Harriet heard Severus speak, she looked up from her own work and her eyes widened.
"Teddy, no! Don't bother Headmaster Snape, alright?!" Harriet cried as she leapt from the table, anxious that her inquisitive godson would annoy the bristly alpha.
"Calm yourself, Potter." Severus replied smoothly as Harriet raced over and picked Teddy up to carry him back to the table, "The boy was only showing me his work, which he appears to have finished…….. It's a pity that the same can't be said about you….."
"Actually, Headmaster, I'm grading the final essay now." Harriet politely retorted as she walked over, sat back down at the table, and placed Teddy on the bench beside her again.
Harriet smiled at Teddy as she asked, "Then we'll go and have a treat, how does that sound?"
It made Severus scowl jealously to see the happy smile that Teddy flashed Harriet in return.
Severus stared at Harriet while she finished the last bit of her work and stacked up the pile of grading she had finished, exactly as she had promised.
Severus was so bitterly irritated that he didn't even bother to tell Harriet or Teddy goodnight as he glared at the omega.
Harriet stood from the wooden bench and gently lifted Teddy into her arms.
Severus clenched his jaw as he stubbornly turned back to the parchment on his desk.
He was finished as well, but he stared down at the paper in rapt concentration, intent on ignoring Harriet and Teddy.
Harriet destroyed his plan by calling out, "Headmaster?"
If he ignored her call, he would only make himself look foolish.
"Yes, Potter?" Severus asked in his low voice as he lifted his eyes to meet Harriet's.
"We're going to bake some cookies in my chambers……..Would you like to join us? They'll be warm and soft." Harriet asked.
Severus was surprised by how thoroughly the omega gutted him with her kind offer.
If anyone would have been watching closely, they would have seen his body visibly contract under his robes as his insides tightened as if he had endured a great blow.
She was…..inviting him……..to come….to her chambers…...for cookies?
Teddy looked at Severus questioningly as if he were waiting for him to answer.
Severus considered declining Harriet's invitation.
If her statement to Elion had been true and she did have a mate, then he had no business in her chambers, cookies or not.
But…..if Harriet did have a mate, considering her behavior, and what she had just asked him, then her alpha was apparently a pretty poor excuse for one.
"...Alright." Severus nodded, "I suppose I can….spare a few moments."
Harriet and Teddy both lit up in wide, happy smiles and Severus furrowed his brow.
No one had ever invited Severus Snape for warm cookies before, at least, not since he was a child.
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A short while later, Severus found himself in Harriet's living quarters, seated on her small sofa beside Teddy while she bustled around her small kitchenette and prepared the cookies.
Teddy was holding a picture book in his chubby, little hands.
He seemed very keen on leafing through it while he sat beside Severus in an awkward silence.
Teddy felt Severus looking down at him and while Harriet was busy with the baking, Teddy blinked up at the alpha and informed him, "You're sort of scary…..."
Severus couldn't help but let the very edge of his lips be turned into a smirk at the child's honesty.
Teddy flipped to a page in his picture book that showed an illustration of a black dragon with its wings spread wide open and he pointed one of his tiny fingers to it as he explained to Severus, "...Like that, that's sort of scary too."
"The same could have been said about your father on certain nights." Severus replied.
"I don't have a father." Teddy shrugged as he continued to look through his book.
In his chest, Severus felt an unwelcome pang of…...sympathy?
He kept his black eyes on the little boy while he spoke, "Of course you do, he's just not here now."
"I can't see him." Teddy shrugged again.
Severus let the matter drop.
As another silent moment passed, Severus wondered if he could try to pull the truth from the mouth of the babe beside him.
"There's not a man in your home?" Severus asked.
"No, just my Gran and me." Teddy replied innocently.
"...What about when you visit your godmother? Isn't there someone else there with her?" Severus asked slyly.
Teddy looked up and blinked his large eyes honestly at Severus as he replied without hesitation, "No."
Severus's dark eyes softened as he looked at the orphaned child and said in his low voice, thinking of his own father, whom Severus had often wished would disappear, "...Sometimes it's better that way."
That wasn't Teddy's case, but it was the best statement to deflect the situation that Severus could think of as he nodded at the little boy.
Teddy looked at Severus confusedly for a second and Severus managed a small, tense smile at the child.
Teddy warmly smiled back as Harriet finished with the cookies, placed them in the oven, and came over to join Severus and Teddy both on the sofa.
She sat down on the other side of Teddy and together, she and Severus let the little boy show them all of the different creatures in his picture book.
Severus glanced over at Harriet and looked at the content grin on her lips as he debated furiously about whether he could trust the child's honest answer or not.
Harriet couldn't help the smile that manifested on her face.
It warmed her heart and heated her core, the way she had just witnessed Severus sitting and chatting with little Teddy.
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The smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies flooded Harriet's chambers.
Severus learned that night that Harriet Potter was a decent baker.
The cookies had indeed been quite warm and deliciously soft~.
The fire crackled in the hearth and fanned its soft glow around the room as Severus sat reading on the sofa to Teddy, who was cuddled on Harriet's lap with his little arms draped around her neck.
Severus's heart was as full as his belly while he held the weighty storybook in his hands and enunciated the words, in his velvety voice, from the tale that Teddy had requested, "And so, the gray rabbit ran all the way down the lane until he came to the last house at the end of the street……"
Severus stopped reading when he felt a weight shift suddenly onto his shoulder.
He glanced over and realized that Teddy had fallen asleep on Harriet and Harriet had subsequently fallen asleep on him, soothed by the alpha's deep purr of a voice.
Severus remorsefully took that as his cue to leave.
With a frown, he closed the book, and gently stood from the sofa. Before they could wake, Severus gently eased Harriet and Teddy to lie down on the soft piece of furniture and then he covered them both up with a warm throw blanket that he found laid across an adjacent chair.
Severus really didn't want to go.
It felt so cozy there, on the sofa next to Harriet, with the soothing comfort of the lovely evening they had shared and the omega smelled as good as the cookies she had baked~.
Severus was a little surprised at how invigorating he found it to see Harriet cuddling Teddy so naturally.
The thought briefly danced across his mind of how much he'd enjoy seeing Harriet holding his own pups like that someday before he forced the notion aside.
Harriet had a mate, that would never be.
Harriet had a mate……..right?
Before Severus left Harriet's chambers, he peered around her living room and indulged in the guilty pleasure of glancing into her bedroom.
Severus didn't go through her possessions or even pause to linger in either area, he only looked for one object in particular.
A picture frame.
Even if Harriet and her mate were non-traditional and wore no rings or other recognizable symbols of their bond with each other, it was next to impossible that Harriet wouldn't keep at least a picture of her alpha displayed in her living quarters…….in which she stayed alone.
Severus left Harriet's chambers a moment later with a satisfied smirk on his face.
It wasn't firm, hard evidence to refute her statement, but it was a promising start.
There were no photographs in Harriet's personal quarters that showed the likeness of Severus's perhaps imaginary rival~.
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However, across the castle, in the Slytherin common room, Severus's true rival was hard at work devising a way for his likeness to be in one such displayed picture frame in Harriet's room and his ring on her finger.
"...But she said she already has a mate." One of Elion Dacre's friends blinked at him as they watched him brood in front of the massive fireplace.
"She was lying, you idiot!" Elion hissed as he stared into the waving flames, "I watched her strut around for three years…..The Chosen One…...she doesn't have a mate. She thinks she's too good for anyone, especially a Slytherin! She's an arrogant, half-blood bitch."
Elion had spent a large majority of his time licking his wounds since Harriet had rejected him. That evening, he was not in the mood for anything other than overwhelming support from his four friends that sat behind him.
One of those four young men made the mistake of thinking out loud, "I don't understand how that's going to-"
The other three gasped as Elion whirled around from the fireplace and launched himself at the boy to strike him in a quick, violent slap across the face as punishment for his insolence.
"I don't need you to understand, William! I only need you to help me!" Elion snapped.
The boy who had been slapped looked at Elion as if he had been betrayed, but Elion only grinned as he comforted his shocked housemate, "Oh, now, don't look at me that way~. You should be honored to be touched by my hand. Don't you realize?" Elion's grin widened as he held his hand up to the light and looked at it in awe as the boy who he had slapped held his stinging cheek, "It was this very hand that accidentally brushed Potter's the other day, if only for a brief, wonderful second……."
Elion's grin turned into a wicked smirk as he continued to stare at his own appendage and speak his conclusion aloud to his four friends, "That means that this hand touched the hand of the one who touched the Dark Lord~."