A/N: This story was inspired by the song Concrete Angel by Martina McBride. However, this story was also inspired by someone else's work. I read a story with this exact premise about 20 years ago, titled Concrete Angel, and have never found it again, nor can I remember where I saw it or who it was by. Whoever you are, wherever you are, thank you. That story inspired me to write this, obviously, but more than that it has stuck with me for 20 years.
Teaching in a primary school had never been Severus' ideal career, but he had to admit that he appreciated the 1 in every 100 children that blossomed under his tutelage, especially when he taught science, his most beloved subject. He stuck to his year 6 classroom for the most part, but thanks to an upper level degree and a headmaster who couldn't help taking advantage of that, he taught the occasional lesson with the lower years.
He loved the 'ooh's and 'aah's he got from the lower years when he'd show them short science experiments that ended in flames, or bubbles, or shattering. But most of all, he loved that every once in a while, a child came along who truly appreciated the art behind the science, the beauty of it.
It was during one such guest lecture that he found a new purpose in his teaching.
The boy was small. Too small. He wore glasses that had been broken too many times and were barely held together with tape. His hair was a mess, his clothes were rags that he practically drowned in they were so big, and his eyes… Expressive, brilliant emeralds that were dull, haunted, in the corridors and schoolyard, but lit up whenever Severus came to the boy's classroom. He imagined the day the small child was old enough to join his classes, imagined showing him what science was truly capable of, and watching him light up, bringing life into those dull emeralds time and again.
For the longest time, he didn't know what drew him to the boy. There was, of course, a sadness that hung around him like a cloud. A dark shadow that dogged him. He was clearly a troubled lad. But he never spoke up during the lectures, never drew attention to himself, forever isolated from his classmates by an invisible wall. And Severus rarely bothered to learn the names of the lower years, since there were two groups and he wouldn't know who he'd have until they walked into his classroom.
Then one day, he saw something worrying, that finally made him act on his deeply buried wish to help the boy. A dark spot, barely covered by the linen of his baggy uniform collar, on the back of his neck. It was a bruise, and his teacher's insistence that the boy must've done it to himself was ludicrous. No one was that clumsy, and Severus had never seen clumsiness from the boy. It was when his teacher insisted he was forever hurting himself, but admitted she'd never seen him do so, that he asked the boy's name.
Harry Potter. Lily's boy.
Severus hadn't seen or spoken to Lily since they were teenagers, but he remembered her, he remembered his mum finding out from her parents that she'd married his schoolyard bully and born him a son. He didn't remember her being violent, and he knew she would never have allowed anyone to hurt her son. So, he considered dismissing his suspicions. Lily's son couldn't be being beaten at home, not with her for a mother, not after she'd spent years patching Severus up after he would escape his father.
But it kept niggling, kept nagging at him. This could not be the son of the bright and vibrant girl he had known. He was too quiet, too haunted, too wounded, and hiding it too well. So, he watched. The child never ate with the other children, never ate at all. He never engaged with his classmates at lunchtime or in the playground. He spent his lunch and breaks hiding in the corner, no lunchbox filled with sandwiches and treats to sustain him during the school day. This could not be Lily's son, so abandoned and forgotten.
And the more he watched, the more he saw what the baggy clothes hid. Bruises glimpsed before the boy discreetly covered them again, a waif of a child who looked like he'd never had a decent meal in his life. And he went entirely ignored. The children never spoke to him, never asked him to play or shared their treats. His teacher insisted he was simply a quiet boy, but Severus knew the signs when he saw them. This could not be Lily's boy.
When his suspicions grew too great, he decided that it was time to confront his old friend. Except when he looked into the boy's records, he was devastated to find that Harry's guardians were Petunia and Vernon Dursley. He was well-aware of the Dursley child, a monstrous little beast who disrupted his lectures and bullied the other children. And he was well-aware of Petunia, who had always hated her sister, had resented Lily, who was pretty and popular, and had gotten the same scholarship Severus had to an elite boarding school, leaving Petunia behind in the slums of Cokeworth. Lily would never have given her son away, never mind to her harpy of a sister. This wasn't Lily's boy anymore; Lily was beyond both their reach.
It took days for him to work up the courage to ask if anyone knew why Harry was being raised by his aunt and uncle. A car accident when he was a babe, black ice on a country road at night, and suddenly the boy was an orphan left with only a scar on his head to remember his parents by. A tragedy, and Severus mourned his friend. He knew he had to do something, but he didn't know what.
He started by going to the house, a reunion he would never have desired, where the harpy slammed the door in his face and told him her life was none of his business. He tried speaking to the neighbors, but they only shook their heads and said it was none of their business. Finally, out of options, he went to the police to see what could be done, if anything. An officer agreed to accompany him to the house. New laws allowed police to actually look in on a child when an adult cared enough to report potential harm.
They arrived at the perfect little generic home just as a scream rent the air from inside and the neighbors turned out their lights. Severus was grateful to have the officer with him, as the man didn't hesitate to rush in, baton drawn. He followed on the officer's heels and walked into a hellscape. Harry lay on the floor, broken and bleeding, unconscious, as the officer restrained his foaming uncle. It seemed an eternity before Severus remembered how to breathe, how to move. He darted to the phone, shoving Petunia aside, and called for emergency services as the officer wrangled the uncle into cuffs.
Somehow, he managed to keep his voice level as he requested an ambulance, and more officers at the officer's insistence. The phone was barely in its cradle before he was kneeling beside the boy. Anatomy was a subject he taught, he even instructed in basic first aid, but suddenly he remembered none of it as his hands hovered over this broken, forgotten child. He was even too numb to truly feel fury when Petunia calmly explained that the boy should've kept his mouth shut. The fury would come later. The guilt, however, crashed in on him.
This was Lily's boy, the son of his first real friend, and he was on death's door because Severus had wanted to save him. He should've known better, should've gone to the police first, even though they had never helped him. The world was different now, children were protected more when someone was brave enough to speak up.
He finally found his courage and scooped the boy into his arms when he heard the sirens blaring towards them. Rising gently to his feet, he held the too-small body to his chest as the boy stirred and whimpered. He glared at Petunia, as the officer produced another pair of cuffs for her as well, her beastly child wailing in the corner about letting his parents go.
"He's just a freak," Petunia spat. "Weak, pathetic, useless. I never wanted him. Don't know who would."
Severus held the boy tighter to him, making the broken body squirm and brilliant green eyes crack open blearily. Tiny hands curled into fists in the fabric of his shirt as the boy whimpered into his chest.
"I would," he told her coldly, soothing the boy as he tensed in his arms.
When the sirens finally reached them, Severus ignored the officers rushing into the house to assist their colleague as he rushed the boy out to the ambulance. The paramedics laid him out, so small on the gurney. Blood pressure too low, pulse sluggish, breathing shallow. Broken, bruised, bloodied… dying.
Severus didn't hesitate before climbing into the back of the ambulance, holding tight to the small hand that clung to his fingers like a lifeline even as Harry, Lily's boy, drifted in and out of consciousness. It seemed to take hours to reach the A , and when the doctors said he needed emergency surgery to stop the bleeding on his brain, forcing Severus to finally release the tiny hand and let him go, his heart shattered. He watched helplessly as Lily's boy was rolled away behind doors, out of sight, so small and now so alone.
He stayed and waited, speaking to doctors and nurses and officers. For hours he paced the waiting room where they'd stuck him, praying he hadn't been too late. Reminding himself that this was Lily's son, and he was as strong as she ever was. He had to be to have survived this long. But Lily was gone, she'd left him behind through no fault of her own. Who did Harry have now?
What followed were days of doctors, nurses, police, and social workers. Through it all, Severus sat in agony beside Harry's bed in the little hospital room, praying he would wake up. He answered what questions he could, gave names of those who might've seen something even if they'd all arrogantly ignored it because Petunia put on a good face. Finally, it was a social worker who asked him a question he hadn't known he knew the answer to.
"Who are you to the boy?"
Severus felt tears burn behind his eyes, tears that had been threatening since they'd first burst into that accursed house. "Someone who cares. All he has left."
It was true, even if he hadn't let himself think of it before. Who else did the boy have? Where would he go? His mother was gone, his last remaining relatives arrested for being monsters. And Severus could no sooner abandon Lily's boy than he could a child of his own.
When Harry finally woke, there were more days and weeks of doctors, questions, uncertainty, fear, and tears. Alone. All alone. Yet Severus never left his side. And when the social worker asked if he was willing and able, he didn't hesitate to say yes.
A month after Harry, Lily's boy, was saved a fate no child should face, they signed the papers. This was Lily's boy. And now he was Severus Snape's son.