Severus padded into the living room towards the boy, thinking it would have been much easier if Fenrir Albtraum Svartálfar had turned out to be his nephew. There would have been fewer problems. He wouldn't have to worry about keeping Henry out of the Fenrir's sight, or worry that Fenrir would awaken thinking he four years old. No, there just would have been the awkward, 'Hello, I'm your father's magical half-brother. For the next seven years I'll be your Potions Professor at a bizarre, homicidal boarding school. Oh, and I need to know: has your Da ever bitten you?'

He sighed as he stopped before the chair. The child laid in it was frightfully small. Severus doubted he was nine years old, let alone eleven. The professor frowned. Why had the school chosen him—and, come to think of it, why was it being so bitching adamant that he come? Severus seemed to recall an era where a series of Slytherin headmasters had managed to keep most Muggleborn students out of the castle for over a century. Why hadn't stairwells tried to grind their bones to dust?

The boy began to tremble. A nightmare. Severus raised his wand. "Envenerate."

Fenrir's eyes slid open, and he breathed raggedly, as though he had been underwater for a long time. He shook his head softly, and looked around in a confused way. Severus came into his bleary view, and he yelped, eyes snapping open. He shrank away until he was pressed up against the chair back. "Wh—Who are you?" he stammered.

'Dark hair, pale skin, slender hands, stuttering voice, an abject terror of people—is Henry absolutely certain this boy isn't his son?' Severus bit back the accompanying smile to that thought and replied, "I'm Henry's—the man you're staying with, do you remember him? Yes? I'm Henry's half-brother. He called me in when you blacked out without warning. Tell me the last thing you remember."

"I—" Fenrir paused and put a hand to his head. "I was on the porch. This owl was yelling at me, saying I had to Hogwarts or she'd eat me."

As Severus's brows snapped together with worry, a chuckle came from around the corner. "Oh, yes. The boy can speak to owls, Sev. Translate for them too."

"Henry?" Fenrir called, his neck craning.

"Stay there, kid," Henry said. "Let Sev make sure you're all right."

Severus waved two fingers to the side. "Look at me, Fenrir—" he stopped as he felt Henry stiffen.

"H—his name is F—Fen—r—rir?" his brother choked, sounding of anguish and old fear.

The boy turned about, one hand resting on the chair arm. He said, "Henry? You sound strange," and then vaulted over the chair arm before Severus could stop him. He turned the corner of the room, and then jerked back when he caught sight of a bestial man standing in the doorway to the kitchen. The man all but yelped. Severus's hand curled around his wand. The word Obliviate was on his tongue despite his loathing of memory charms.

Fenrir stared at the half-man with eyes large, round, and bulging; he could have been mistaken for a House Elf. He watched the creature before him put a furred, slender hand over its face, which was already obscured by a curtain of black, scraggly hair. "Henry?" the boy asked, aghast.

"Didn't want you to see me like this," the Were sighed. "Didn't want you to know. That's why I"—he paused then, as if belatedly remembering something—"You should just go. Sev will take you to Hogwarts; he teaches there; he can—"

Fenrir asked, "What are you?"

Henry looked up. Some of his hair fell away, revealing a short, lupine snout that jutted from his mostly hairless face. His yellow eyes looked away. "I'm a Werewolf, kid," he growled softly with self-hate. "Ugliest bastard creature on the face of the planet."

The boy cocked his head, looking Henry up and down. "You've obviously never seen a House Elf before."

Severus, who had come up behind the boy, bowed his head in mirth as he bit back a laugh. Henry only looked confused. "House Elves are wizards' servants," Severus patiently explained to his Muggleborn half-brother. "And the boy's right. They're downright ugly. Like mummified heads with bodies attached and large, wrinkled ears."

Fenrir, for unknown reasons, pulled at one of the ears hidden by his hair. "W—They make you look like a cute puppy," he said, though.

For some reason, this soothed Henry. "S—so, you're not afraid of me?" he asked.

Fenrir told him point blank, "Henry, I'm afraid of everything," forcing Severus to bite back the umpteenth smile. "But there's things lots more frightening than you, like"—he stopped, preferring not to use Narcissa Malfoy spooning as an example—"well, let's just say I have perspective. And besides, I like you," he added. "You're the first human to ever to be nice to me." Then he froze, realizing what he'd just said. He had called Henry a human, implying that he, little Fen of the Malfoy House Elves, was not human.

Henry took his words a completely different way, though. Looking at his monstrous hands, he stammered, "He—he called me human."

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. The moment had officially become too poignant for him to stand. "You, go to bed," he ordered, pointing at Fenrir, "And you, go out and eat something before your metabolism turns on you."

Henry turned on him. "And you?"

Severus couldn't help his pained look as he reached into a pocket of his robes, pulled out a thick wad of rolled parchments, and declared, "Me, I have papers to fail."

XXX

The night wore on as Severus blearily reviewed the last few Potions essays. The owl had woken and picked herself up off the floor, shaking her head violently. She had swooped out of the house hours ago, just missing Henry as he came back in. The Were had nodded to Severus, ignorant of his blood-slicked muzzle, and stumbled off to bed. The boy curled up in the living room had gone through a round of nightmares before settling down to more peaceful sleep.

All in all, it was very similar to the all-nighters he pulled grading written homework in the Slytherin Common Room—only there weren't any couples trying to sneak past him. He tried not to think about what the students would be getting up to without him. He also prayed that, three months from now, he wouldn't have quartets of parents demanding to know 'how could he let this happen; he was supposed to watch over them; did he have any idea how many years of careful planning they had put into marriage alliances, only for him to ruin them by letting their children get pregnant!' But of course, that wouldn't be half so bad as 'I don't care if your daughter got knocked up; my baby girl is pregnant, and that boy is going to marry her—then the next party's rant—now wait a minute, our family has more honor to lose over this mess than yours could ever dream of—and then both families in tandem—Professor Snape, how could you do this to our daughters—as a Slytherin boy, sitting very timidly in the corner went, 'Meep!'

Severus's quill had begun to drip ink on a Hufflepuff 5th year's essay. He sighed and pushed the scroll aside.

XXX

Albus Dumbledore looked up from his midnight snack of lemon drops as his fireplace roared to life with green flame. Severus Snape's haggard face appeared, said 'I found Svartálfar—and Albus, while I'm gone, could you please keep the Slytherin genders separate?' and then winked out.

The headmaster smiled and held out a bowl of candy to the Slytherin students locked in his office. The boys and girls were sitting very far apart with red faces, trying to pretend they had absolutely no idea what the opposite gender was.

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled as another surprised, levitating couple zoomed into the room, plunked down into waiting chairs, and turned around just in time to see two mismatched socks disappear down the stairwell, skipping. Blinking, the dazed pair turned back to face front.

"Lemon drop?"

…Um, sorry, I know it's short (AGAIN), but I just have to end it there. Seriously though, anything else I write would just pale in comparison to the magnificence of the words "Lemon Drop."