Chapter Text
Snape didn't exactly care how that happened.
He was so tired; tired, tired, *tired*, exhausted deadly. He had died, actually, but then woke up in his Hogwarts quarters.
The bedsheets were soft and pleasant against his skin. It was barely morning, light dimly seeping through the curtains, just one warm ray hitting the opposite wall. The air was heavy with fumbling winds, refreshingly cool, cool enough to make Severus shrudder softly and curl deeper into the blankets, searching for warmth.
It was so soothing he felt repulsed. It was so peaceful he barely got strengths to get up.
(He startled awake at the sudden clap. Quickly tensed for his wand Severus relaxed the moment he heard it again; the window flopped closed at the sharp blow of wind.)
"Severus, would you kindly not be absent at the staff meeting, please? Despite the fact you consider them the waste of time and empty rambling, that is."
Severus stared at Minerva's patronus. He held the toothbrush in his mouth awkwardly, contemplating her totally annoyed, displeased, hissing, fond tone of voice. He hadn't heard her talking to *him* like this for a long time.
He proceeded with his morning routine before going out.
Severus stared at Fillius playfully betting with Hagrid. He saw their wicked, just slightly tipsy grins. He saw Pomona and Albus giggling in the corner.
He didn't saw Albus, actually; he didn't. He didn't try to pointedly not look at him.
... Was he supposed, Severus thought, picking on his sleeve's loose thread, do something? Plan something? Go to Albus telling him about the future?
He thought against it before the thought could properly form itself. Try again.
*Try again*. That he could. Couldn't he?
Severus went through the last summer weeks mechanically. He slept a lot. He slept a lot and ate a little, just enough house elves - that always provided his table with a meal at the set time - wouldn't try to sabotage him, did things years of habit forced him to do without second thought, and-
Poppy and Pomona stood at his doorstep, angered and worried. He gulped.
Elves did sabotage him in the end. He just couldn't care more to go against nutrition potions in his food, but those potions to appear had to disappear from somewhere else.
They forced him to *go out*. Feel the grass, walk Hogsmeade, do *socials*. If the glare could burn and words were actual acid, he'd be the last living person at Hogwarts grounds.
(Severus couldn't be more grateful that he wasn't. He fell asleep at Pomona's lap at the picnic, was almost gotten to the point of vomiting by sweet pastry shop Aurora brought him to, was laughed to submission playing chess with Minerva. It was home and he found himself breathing, just a little better.)
He got to his cauldron one morning with a ticklish need to create.
(He didn't think how he had only a couple of years of research in advance but the eight he could've had.)
He went to Diagon Alley: to replenish the stock, which he definitely couldn't do by owl, and prepare himself to the busy and cheerful, children filled school year, which he definitely didn't miss.
"... Severus?"
Severus paled. What... what year was it? What time? Too early or too late?
He didn't look, he didn't look, not that little voice and little scrawny form and big green eyes and-
"I am looking at you."
He did *not*. "The fourth to compete in the Triwizard Tournament?"
Harry rushed to smash into him instead.
Severus broke the law.
One stolen kid had agreed to be stolen, and one confuded squib had certainly earned being confuded, but the fact was next: now Severus was secretly hosting one boy-who-lived-who-knows-how-many-times.
He wasn't better himself, honestly.
Harry was a little kid.
Harry was little, very sad, and very quiet when having nightmares; Severus was the same, just not little. It just happened it was very easy to hold someone so little in his arms, and it just happened both got into it immensely.
(It was both *you're alive* and *I'm sorry*. Severus could only muster begrudgingly that he wasn't a bear pillow before melting into the touch.)