The Nice School of Magic
by Healer Pomfrey
All recognizable characters belong to J. K. Rowling, and I am not earning anything by writing this story.
I am not a native speaker of English. Please excuse my mistakes.
Arriving at The Nice School of Magic, Severus carried Harry into the room in his quarters, which the house-elves had already prepared for the child. He gently tucked the boy into his bed, making sure that his condition had not significantly worsened due to the apparition.
"Let me introduce you to one of the house-elves," he said, lightly, "and then you're going to sleep. It's far beyond midnight already." With that he called Tina, who was not only the youngest of the elves but also the one who had been the first to opt caring for his son, when he had once asked the elves.
"This is Tina," he introduced the elf to the child. "Tina, this is Harry."
"Hello Master Harry," Tina greeted the boy in a soft voice. "Please call Tina at any time if I cans do something for yous."
"Hello," Harry mumbled, already drifting off to sleep with a small smile playing on his lips.
"I need to return to Hogwarts now," Severus informed the elf. "But I'm going to move in here tomorrow together with my son. Please come to Hogwarts and alert me if Harry has any problems." He left a phial each of the potions that the child needed on the night table and instructed the elf when she had to make Harry drink his potions in case he could not get away from Hogwarts soon enough.
HP
With that Severus stepped through the fireplace into his office at Hogwarts. He called Cicero, his personal house-elf, and informed him of the situation.
"Cicero will pack everything, Master Severus," the relatively tall elf replied in determination.
"Please do so - collect all my personal belongings from my private quarters, my office, my classroom and my lab," Severus instructed the elf. "I wonder if Albus will know that I took Harry from the Dursleys," he mused, aloud.
"I'll go and check if the headmaster knows anything," Cicero promised and popped away, only to return a minute later. "Master Albus and Mistress Minerva are sitting in the headmaster's office talking about possible reasons why the blood wards around the Dursleys' home are coming down," he informed his master.
Severus nodded, contentedly. "Very well," he said, smirking. "I'll wait until Albus informs me of the matter before I hand over my resignation letter."
HP
It was an hour before breakfast that the headmaster called Severus into his office. "Severus," he addressed the younger wizard, seemingly agitated. "The blood wards around the Dursleys' residence are coming down for some reason, and I need you to go and check if Harry is all right."
"What?" Severus asked, incredulously. "All these years, you've forbidden me to do as much as go to see my son, claiming that the blood wards would keep him safe? And now this? That's it, old man. This time, you've gone too far. I'll go, but if I find Harry, I'm going to take him with me." He pulled his letter of resignation out of his robe pocket, added the date and his signature and handed it over to the old wizard. "Good bye Albus," he said, before he left the office in a huff, inwardly grinning. 'That went much better than expected,' he thought, when he returned to his quarters to fire call Minerva and Poppy.
HP
"So Albus has to believe that it's his own fault that you left and took Harry with you?" Minerva blurted out in amusement.
"That's brilliant," Poppy agreed.
"Very well," Minerva added, pensively. "I'm going to remain for the week until the end of the school year. That'll give me enough time to speak with the persons who were interested in teaching at the Nice school and inform them that our school is going to open two years earlier than planned, and then I'll follow you to France."
"I shall accompany Severus right away," Poppy decided. "Come Minnie, let's give him our resignation letters before breakfast."
"No Poppy, after breakfast please," Minerva contradicted. "I'm famished."
Grinning, Severus observed how his two best friends left his quarters at Hogwarts, bickering and joking like they always did, before he called Cicero and informed him that he was going to leave right away.
"Master Severus, Misty and Malcolm helped me. All of your belongings are already at the new school," Cicero informed him in apparent excitement.
HP
When Severus arrived at the school in Nice, after making a short detour to the Dursleys' as well as to the British Ministry of Magic in order to gain the guardianship over his son in the magical as well as the Muggle world and to change the boy's name to Harry Severus Snape, his son was still asleep.
'Thank Merlin,' Severus thought. 'I wouldn't want him to wake up here alone, and I doubt that he'll remember Tina, as he was already half asleep when I introduced her to him.' He conjured a comfortable armchair and made himself comfortable, ready to catch up on some sleep as well.
HP
Severus' mind turned back to awareness, when Poppy entered the room, followed by her personal elf, Misty. She handed Severus a parchment, before she turned to the bed. "Awww," she whispered. "Finally, we have our Harry back." Suddenly becoming aware of the fact that Severus eyed her in clear amusement, quirking an eyebrow in expectation, she remembered to tell him, "Oh right, Minerva wants you to change the invitation letter for the Nice school, copy it a few hundred times and place a charm on the parchments, so that those in the hands of students who aren't interested vanish into thin air as soon as they've read them. You also have to place a charm on it that won't allow anyone to speak about the matter with any teacher at Hogwarts."
"I'll do that," Severus promised, before his attention became diverted, as Harry let out a small moan.
Poppy immediately turned into healer's mode and began to wave her wand over the child, shaking her head in apparent annoyance.
"Hello Harry, do you remember me?" she asked in a soft voice, taking a seat on the edge of the boy's bed.
HP
Harry woke up, noticing that his headache was back full force. He knew that he was not allowed to make any sound, however, he couldn't prevent a small moan to escape his lips. He slowly let his eyes wander around the room, noticing that he was lying in an extremely comfortable bed and that there were two adults with him. One he knew. It was the nice person who regularly came during the night to make him feel better. 'He said he was my daddy,' he recalled, just when the woman who was with his daddy began to wave a stick over him - like his daddy had done during the night. 'Why are they doing such a thing?' he wondered. To his relief, it did not further hurt, however, he felt a tingling sensation run up and down his body that felt strange but on the other hand familiar.
Finally, the woman stopped what she had been doing and sat on the edge of his bed. "Hello Harry, do you remember me?" she asked, gently.
Harry was just about to deny, when the name 'Aunt Poppy' popped up in his mind like by an invisible force. "Aunt Poppy?" he asked, tentatively.
"Yes my child, I'm your Aunt Poppy," the lady replied, seemingly pleased. "I'm so sorry that you had to live with your relatives, but now you're going to stay here with your father and a few other people who all knew you when you were a baby and who love you very much. Now I need you to drink a few potions for me. Do you think you can do that?" she asked, giving him an expectant look.
'Potions?' Harry wondered, however, he knew better than to ask and merely cast the nice lady a questioning look.
"Potions are like medicine," she explained, "and you need them for your concussion to heal before you can get up and play."
"I'm not allowed medicine," Harry replied in a barely audible voice.
"Harry," his father threw in, his voice sounding very soft and soothing. "Please forget everything that the Dursleys told you. They were not nice people. Of course you're allowed potions when you need them. Poppy," he turned to the lady, "I suggest that you spell them into Harry's stomach for now."
"Yes, that's better," Aunt Poppy agreed, and an instant later, Harry noticed that he suddenly felt much better.
"Thank you," he said, smiling at the nice lady.
"You're very welcome my boy," Poppy replied, smiling. "Don't overly move your head though. Otherwise, it'll hurt again," she advised him, before she once again waved her strange stick over him and finally asked if he felt well enough to get up for breakfast.
"Yes," Harry replied, anxiously, wondering where he could make breakfast.
As soon as he sat up, Aunt Poppy pointed her stick at his much too large clothes, and Harry suddenly felt himself being dressed in comfortable jeans and a white T-shirt, on which grey cats were playing with a red threat of wool. Occasionally, one of the cats let out a small miaow. Harry stared at his T-shirt in amazement and happily followed one of the cats' movement with his forefinger, before all of a sudden, realisation set in. 'Aunt Poppy must be a freak like me.'
To his surprise, his father led him into the kitchen and made him sit at the table, while Aunt Poppy left after reassuring him that she'd come back later. Harry complied, uncomfortably.
"Harry, do you remember Tina, the house-elf, whom I introduced to you last night?" his father suddenly asked, causing Harry to scrunch his forehead in thought. "You'll meet her again later on," his father said in a soothing voice. "Anyway, this is Cicero, our personal house elf," he continued and called the name, causing a strange creature to pop up right next to the table.
Severus introduced Harry to the elf, before he asked the elf for breakfast, which, to Harry's absolute surprise, popped up on the table an instant later.
HP
Severus was horrified when his son not only hesitated to eat at all, admitting that he was not allowed to eat at the table, and then was not able to stomach more than a few bites.
"Harry, these rooms," he continued to explain to his son, "are our quarters within a new school of magic that we're going to open here in three months' time."
"Magic?" Harry mouthed, giving him a seemingly terrified look.
Severus quirked an eyebrow.
"But there is no such thing as magic," Harry answered the silent question in a small voice. "The Dursleys told me as much."
Severus let out a snort. "Oh Harry, there's magic, and you're wizard just like myself. Aunt Poppy is a witch like your mummy was," he countered, before he enquired, "Have you never done any strange things? Things, which the Dursleys could not do?"
"Yes," Harry replied, seemingly uncomfortably. "That's why they always called me a freak."
"You're not a freak," Severus replied, firmly. "You're a wizard, Harry. However, I believe that you're not fully back to health yet and should go back to bed and try to sleep a little more."
If he had feared that the boy might throw a temper tantrum at his suggestion, he was mistaken, and Harry obediently went back to bed. Severus gently tucked him in and read a story to him from one of the children's books that Tina had brought for the child, noticing that Harry's breathing evened out after a few minutes.
Severus cast a charm at the child that would alert him if he woke up or was in any kind of distress, before he retreated to his office and worked on the invitation letter.
'Dear student,
herewith, we invite you to our newly founded 'Nice School of Magic'. It is a boarding school right on the Mediterranean sea in France and accommodates students from the age of eight until the NEWTs.
We will teach the same subjects like at Hogwarts plus some additional classes like, for example, Swimming, Latin and Music. However, in contrary to Hogwarts, we won't have houses, so that all students are allowed to freely choose their friends.
The new school year is going to commence on 1 September. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at any time.
Yours sincerely
Professor Minerva McGonagall
Headmistress'
"Wouldn't it be good to list up the subjects along with the teachers' names, so that the students can see that most of the current Hogwarts staff is going to transfer to the Nice School?" Poppy suggested, when Severus came to her office to ask for her opinion.
"Oh right, that's a good idea," Severus agreed immediately. "Has any of you thought of inviting Hagrid by the way?"
tbc...
Thank you very much for the kind comments for the first chapter! If you don't like this story, please stop reading here. If you expect Sirius or Ron to play a role in this story, please also stop reading here...