The night James and Lily Potter died…
The hearth glowed low in the darkened office, casting long shadows across the polished stone floor.
The portraits of past headmasters hung in respectful silence, as though even they dared not speak in the wake of what had occurred.
Professor McGonagall stood stiffly near the desk, her lips pressed thin, hands folded over her tartan robes.
Dumbledore moved more slowly than usual, his expression unreadable as he placed a small silver instrument back on the shelf with care.
The air between them held the weight of unspoken words.
"So… that's it then," McGonagall said, her voice tight. "You've left him with those people."
Dumbledore nodded slowly, fingers laced before him. "It is the only way. The blood wards will keep him safe."
"Safe," she repeated bitterly. "You truly believe Petunia Dursley will show him kindness?"
"She is his aunt," Dumbledore replied gently, though the weariness in his tone betrayed him. "She will accept him—however reluctantly. That act will seal the magic."
"Reluctantly?" McGonagall snapped. "Albus, I've seen how that woman speaks of her sister—spoke of her. And her husband—" she cut herself off with a tight breath. "That house is no place for any child, much less Lily's child."
Dumbledore's eyes met hers, ancient and sad. "He must grow up away from fame. Away from our world. If he survives—if he lives to come back to us—he must do so as Harry. Not as The Boy Who Lived."
He hadn't meant to come. Not truly.
But the castle was familiar, and pain had nowhere else to go.
He moved through its corridors in a grey, endless haze—every step meaningless, every breath a fresh wound.
The grief was total. Devouring. There was no plan in his arrival, no thought beyond the crushing weight of what had been lost.
He reached the office. Somehow.
He thought—perhaps—to demand answers. To curse Dumbledore for breaking the promise.
To beg.
To be punished.
To be ended.
But at the door, he heard her name.
And his fury crumbled.
His knees nearly did, too.
The sound of her name in Dumbledore's voice scraped across his soul like a blade.
And then he heard the child's.
The boy.
His mind had not dared to hold that truth—hadn't let itself imagine that the child had survived.
That a part of her still lived.
He went still. Every part of him.
And he stayed.
Not out of curiosity.
Not out of obligation.
He stayed because, for the first time since she'd died… something had shifted.
The boy—her boy—lives.
From behind the wall, muffled by old stone and wards that didn't quite hide everything, he listened.
"So… that's it then," McGonagall said, her voice tight. "You've left him with those people."
"It is the only way," Dumbledore answered. "The blood wards will keep him safe."
"Safe," she echoed bitterly. "You truly believe Petunia Dursley will show him kindness?"
"She is his aunt," Dumbledore replied gently, though there was weariness in the words. "She will accept him—however reluctantly. That act will seal the magic."
"Reluctantly?" McGonagall snapped. "Albus, I've seen how that woman speaks of her sister—spoke of her. And her husband—" she paused, "That house is no place for any child, much less Lily's child."
Snape's fingers curled into fists, his chest burning, breath hitching with something sharp and cold and furious.
Petunia.
A bitter memory surged—Lily, her face twisted with frustration, slamming a letter down on the bench between them.
"She called me a freak again, Sev. She won't stop. I tried to explain about the spells, and she just—she said I'd been corrupted. That I wasn't even human anymore."
That simpering, bitter woman who spat at Lily's letters. Who called her a freak. Who recoiled from her own sister like she was filth.
He had seen what safety looked like in that woman's face.
Cold disdain. Tight-lipped silence. The silent snub at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.
That woman—who sneered at her own sister for being magical—that woman now held Lily's son under her roof?
Dumbledore left him there.
He left her son—Lily's son—in that house.
And called it safety.
Snape felt the burn of bile in his throat—the kind that came when grief snapped into rage and tried to claw its way free.
He had come to fall apart.
But now he burned.
The boy lives.
And they had left him in that house.
Alone.
Snape stepped silently back, deeper into the shadows.
He would not confront them. Not now.
But he understood something then, as his heart twisted with grief and fury:
If Lily's boy was to live through this—and he would, because Snape had sworn it so—
He would need more than blood wards.