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Chapter Text

Privet Drive was known for two things: perfect lawns and utterly average families. Every yard was manicured to perfection, every hedge trained and trimmed into perfect shapes, every garden blooming with flowers of every color during the spring and early summer. The men worked their perfectly average office jobs, the vast majority of the women were house-wives, and all of the children went to the various private secondary schools in the area.

All of the families and all of the children were normal except one.

The Dursleys tried very hard to be normal, to fit in, to not draw attention to themselves. All of that had shattered though when they had taken in their nephew. For years, they had shouldered on, determined he wouldn’t be a drug addict like his parents. Petunia made sure he was fed and dressed, and Vernon made sure he was well disciplined. But, despite their attempts, it was quite obvious to anyone who saw them that the Potter boy simply did not fit in. He was smaller, more wirey, and rather shady in the way he acted around other children.

Something about him wasn’t right, despite all of the effort the Dursleys put in.

But around the time the young Potter boy turned nine, he started to struggle. It wasn’t obvious at first, but eventually the neighbors began to get worried.

He had always been much smaller than his cousin, Dudley. Now Dudley, that was a fine young lad. While he was quite overweight, he was routinely seen out with his friends riding their bikes and playing with his cousin. ‘Baby fat’ was what his parents called it, and he was active enough that those who knew the family believed it. And he was a good kid! The Potter boy was always finding himself in some sort of trouble and Dudley was always there to help him out. Potter obviously looked up to his cousin greatly, even going so far as to refuse to wear clothing that fit him in favor of wearing his cousin’s cast-offs, which unfortunately for him made him look so much smaller.

When he began to become ill, these clothes helped to cover it quite well. It wasn’t until his cheeks began to sink in that it became apparent the child was not as well as he appeared.

While he had previously been able to complete much of the yard work on his own in one day, he was noted to have to sit down frequently while doing tasks. He was often seen wobbling on his feet while walking to the porch to sit. He started to have to come out later and later in the day to avoid the heat and sun, yet would still be found gasping for breath and sweating with even the simplest activity.

As he began to go outside less and less, his skin began to lose its golden tan. His eyes also began to lose their luster, the emerald color which enthralled the women of the neighborhood dimmed and dulled into a murky and dull grey-green. Where once he looked small, he now looked like an absolute waif of a child. Something was very wrong with him, and the neighbors knew.

By the time the Potter boy was around ten, he was hardly ever seen outside. He was never seen doing any chores, but would occasionally be seen sitting on the front step at odd hours of the night. Not that he was doing anything; he was just sitting, staring into the darkness as though he could see or hear something others couldn’t. Whatever the case may be, he would simply sit, staring into the darkness with nothing more than the oversized clothing he wore and an increasingly bedraggled blanket which he wrapped over his shoulders for warmth even on the warmest of days.

Then one night, the neighborhood was awoken to the sounds of ambulance sirens. The Potter boy was being taken away on a stretcher with Petunia riding pursed-lipped in the back of the ambulance as well.

Agnes Tuttle, the neighbor in Number 2, had stopped by the next day to “check in on things” and found that he had indeed had to be admitted for multiple tests. He had apparently been found barely breathing, having passed out on the floor by the cupboard under the stairs. He had been ill for several days, unable to keep any food down, and was found to have almost no blood in his body when they poked him to get access.

“It’s probably cancer,” Agnes could be heard telling Margaret of number 5 over tea. “The poor boy was trying so hard to make his aunt and uncle proud of him, he kept pushing himself to work even if he wasn’t feeling well.”

After word of the Potter boy’s ‘cancer’ spread, the neighborhood banded together in their pity and support and would periodically bring over food or various baked goods. Acts which were initially pushed away but eventually accepted as Petunia clearly struggled to keep up with the demands of having such a sickly child in the hospital and managing a household. This was especially the case when the Potter boy finally came home from hospital.

He still did not look well, but his cheeks were certainly more rosy, and that alone was enough to give hope to the neighborhood that he would pull through. And pull through he did, though he would periodically have to go to hospital for infusions and eventually was seen with a tube in his nose.

“It’s for feeding,” Petunia had explained when questioned at the neighborhood book club. “If he can’t keep food down, he may have to get one put in through his stomach.”

And when the tube finally did disappear from the boy’s nose, it was obvious to the keen observer that was exactly what had happened. He still didn’t look well by any stretch of the imagination, but at least he was getting some form of nutrition.

‘Poor boy’ was a common phrase heard around the neighborhood for months following the revelation he was still unable to eat.

The Dursleys were saints for all they put up with with that boy.

________________________________________________

“I HAVE HAD IT WITH YOU BOY!” Uncle Vernon roared, ripping open the cupboard under the stairs and looking at his bleary-eyed nephew.

Harry struggled to sit up, gingerly rubbing where his GJ-tube sat. Thankfully it hadn’t leaked last night. It did that sometimes, leaving bile colored stains on his clothing and bedding which he was punished for. It wasn’t like he could control that, but the Dursleys didn’t care about that. He was spreading his freakishness around and it was visibly staining their belongings.

“Wazz-it?” Harry mumbled, trying to stop his head from spinning.

“YOU LAZY FREAK!” Uncle Vernon continued to yell as he snatched Harry out from the cupboard. “YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ALMOST DID?! YOU ALMOST LOST ME MY JOB!”

Harry blinked in confusion trying to track the conversation. Being rudely awakened and screamed at was not something he was physically or mentally able to track. The doctor had said he may have some difficulties with comprehension when his haemoglobin levels were low, but he hadn’t been to a follow-up appointment in months and had no idea how low they were now. He knew they were low, probably critically at this point, but he couldn’t even begin to guess a number.

Honestly, counting was hard enough as it was when he was like this.

“Vernon, what has the boy done now?” Petunia said, looking at her rather limp nephew in disgust.

“There was a specially ordered drill, ordered by the Masons, our biggest client, which was made incorrectly. The only reason it could have been made so badly was if someone had interfered with it!” Vernon continued, shaking Harry until Harry started to turn rather green from the dizziness. “And do you know who that came back on?! ME! I have to deal with enough of your freakishness when I’m home, in the one place I should be able to rest and relax, and now I have to deal with it at work too!”

“Wha-?” Harry tried to ask, attempting to follow the mad ranting and swallowing the acrid bile that rose in his throat. “What happened?”

“You did something freaky, didn’t you boy?!” Vernon growled, picking Harry up and slamming him into the cupboard door.

Harry weakly shook his head, still extremely unsure as to what was happening.

“He’s been awfully quiet today,” Petunia sneered, wiping her hands on her apron. “I was hoping to invite Agnes over to see him; you know how she gets when he’s like this. But if he’s doing … that… again, well, Agnes can wait. He knows the rules.”

Harry just shook his head mutely. He hadn’t done anything ‘freaky’ for years, not since he started to get sick. That didn’t stop his aunt and uncle from blaming any mishap on him. In fact, it was almost like they expected him to do something ‘freakish’ at any given moment.

“This is the last straw, Pet. I can’t risk him ruining my career,” Vernon said, opening the cupboard door and throwing Harry back inside, not caring when Harry’s head made contact with the underside of one of the stairs. “Sod being watched by the freaks.”

“He’ll be turning eleven in July and we’ll be rid of him by September. We can wait…” Petunia started before Vernon cut her off.

“Now. I want him gone YESTERDAY!” he roared, before stomping into the kitchen. “Now where is my bloody whiskey?”

Petunia just scowled at the door to the cupboard before following her husband into the kitchen. If it hadn’t been for all the attention and affection the neighbors had given them since the boy had first gotten ill, they would have gotten rid of him long ago. He was too much like her “darling” sister. She would play up being ill to get more attention too, but not to the extent her son was. How were they supposed to explain to the doctors that he was faking when he was clearly changing his results using his freakishness. The doctors believed him to be ill, but she knew better.

Quickly, she penned a brief missive to the school of the freaks: Hogwarts. How she had wanted to go there when she was younger, she had no idea. She had seen what those people could do, and do to each other, and was thankful for the life she now had without… magic. She was certain Albus Dumbledore would want her freaky sister’s son back.

Angrily, she folded the letter and shoved it in an envelope. Now to find a way to mail it to the man. Finding an owl was never an easy task.

Chapter Text

Severus Snape was in a rather jovial mood. He had finally done it. He had finally found a short-cut to the brewing of Wolfsbane which would shorten the brewing time by two weeks, use half the ingredients, and make the potion significantly more affordable for the damn wolves that haunted his nightmares. It had only taken four years of research, hundreds of hours of experimentation, and the vast majority of his savings account to do it. Sadly, his salary as a professor was continuously stretched thin as Hogwarts did not provide funding for research and as a former Death Eater he was unable to receive funding for any and all experimentation. But it had been worth it! He had finally done it! Funding or no, he had done something other potions masters had chosen not to pursue for the exact reasons he struggled with the project.

But those were all problems of the past. He could now focus on relaxing, teaching the dunderheads of Hogwarts their last lessons of term, assigning summer homework that would be difficult to complete and encourage his students to continue their studies, and enjoying his summer. In all likelihood, he would come across another potion which would need its brewing process streamlined and his work would begin again. For now, however, he would enjoy the feelings of freedom project completion brought him.

Removing his heavy, black, brewing robes and switching to a far more comfortable and casual robe, he sat heavily in his navy armchair with a glass of dry red wine and his latest book purchase from the apothecary in Hogsmeade.

Celebrations were in order.

He was only halfway through his glass of wine and a chapter into his book, however, when the fire roared as a visitor flooed in.

Severus sighed, his mood immediately ruined. There was only one person who could floo into his quarters, and his arrival was bound to bring more trouble than it was worth. He didn't have to even look up from his book to know who it was. Whatever it was the man wanted of him, he knew it was going to ruin any and all plans he had for the evening.

“Ah, Severus my boy! Just the wizard I was wanting to see!” Albus Dumbledore said, casually transforming a feather into an additional, pastel pink, armchair and sitting himself on the other side of the briarwood coffee table.

“You are in my quarters, who else would you expect to see,” Severus growled, rubbing the bridge of his nose, trying in vain to continue reading the chapter he was on.

“Yes, yes,” Dumbledore said. “Now my boy, I have a request from you.”

“No,” Severus immediately said, closing the book with a snap, his lips pressed into a line. “I am not your errand boy.”

“I need you to come along with me as I go retrieve a … future student… from their house. There apparently have been some… problems… with this student.”

“I am also not a baby-sitter, security officer, or whatever other nonsense you want me to be.”

“Severus,” Albus looked over his half-moon spectacles, eyes devoid of their normal mischievous twinkle. “It’s Lily’s son.”

Severus immediately froze. That was a low blow. The boy was not just Lily’s child, but also the spawn of the damned James Potter. Albus knew this; he knew of the history between them all. He knew of the hatred Severus harbored towards his long-dead school rival. That man had destroyed so much of his life, he could only believe the man's son would do the same.

“Why would the son of James Potter need to be retrieved from his doting relatives,” Severus sneered slamming his book onto the coffee table and downing the last of his wine.

“Severus, please,” Albus stated, voice devoid of all its normal playfulness. This got Severus’s attention. “His aunt sent a letter. The boy is ill and she is afraid he may pass away.”

“He is faking it,” Severus attempted to dismiss these statements, his eyes narrowing.

“Per her letter he has been in and out of the muggle hospital for several years, yet there is no diagnosis.”

Severus’s blood ran cold. A wizard having to go to a muggle hospital? No diagnosis? What in Merlin’s name was wrong with the child?

“Fine, but you owe me another bottle of wine,” Severus sighed, pulling his boots back on with a flick of his wand and grabbing his cloak.

Albus rose from his chair and with a flick of his wand transformed it back to the feather it had come from, a small smile coming to his lips though it did not make its way to his eyes. Eyes which had lost their inherent twinkle as he worried about the young boy they were to go fetch.

“What information did Petunia give you in the letter?” Severus asked as they left his quarters, robes swirling around him.

“Something about his blood, I wasn’t sure I understood," Albus frowned, leading the way with the speed of a man 50 years his junior. "Severe malnutrition despite having a feeding tube placed. Again, I am not too sure I understand, but he has been getting progressively weaker over the last two years with no true diagnosis. And his accidental magic has been causing rifts in the family to the point of endangering their safety.”

“And have you notified Poppy?” Severus asked as they quickly walked past the Slytherin common room, ignoring the students who were milling around.

“Naturally.”

Severus knew he must have looked utterly terrifying as he and the headmaster sped through the dungeon and out of the large front doors of Hogwarts. Students were parting like water on the Red Sea and were staring at them as they passed, whispers of confusion and worry followed them until they left the grounds.

Albus grabbed Severus’s arm and side-long apparated to the alley behind Privet Drive.

As soon as they landed, both men started walking around the corner to Number 4, skillfully ignoring the dizziness and nausea such a transportation method brought. As they passed Number 2, a set of beady eyes peered out from behind the curtains and watched as they approached Number 4.

‘Oh dear, the poor lad!’ Agnes thought to herself, tearing up slightly. ‘That priest must be coming to give him his last rites. Though I wonder who the other man is?’

Once they reached Number 4, Albus knocked politely. Almost immediately, the door was flung open and Petunia was beckoning them inside.

“You want the neighbors to see you?” she admonished them quietly, sneering at the man she immediately recognized as her sister's childhood friend.

“Hello to you too Petunia,” Severus sneered. He could’ve swore she muttered ‘freak’ under her breath as they entered the house.

“He’s in here,” Petunia said, leading them to the living room.

Upon seeing him, both Severus and Dumbledore let out an involuntary gasp.

Lying on the sofa was likely the most emaciated child they had ever seen covered in a thick blanket. He appeared no more than seven years old despite being nearly four years older than this. Nearly every bone was visible with the skin stretched taut over them. His hair, while it certainly would have been wild like his fathers, was shoulder length but tucked into a blue knitted cap that was pulled over his ears. Sitting on a table next to the child was a small machine which occasionally would make a small whirring noise and had a tube running from a bag of light brown fluid into the machine. There was a matching tube which ran from the machine under the blanket.

Severus quickly cast a diagnostic spell on the boy. It took all of his willpower and spy training to not gasp in shock at what he saw.

“Petunia, how long has this been going on?” he asked in a low voice.

“Long enough, get him out of here,” she responded curtly. “We can’t take care of him any longer.”

Tears could be seen in Albus’s eyes as he too cast a diagnostic spell on the sleeping child.

As calmly as he could, Severus reached down and picked the boy up, shocked at how light he was. Even with the blanket he couldn’t have weighed more than 3 stone. The boy’s skin was as cold as ice and small tremors wracked its frame.

As Severus picked Harry up, Petunia poked a few buttons on the machine and momentarily uncovered Harry’s stomach to undo the tube from the machine from the tube coming out of Harry’s stomach. She quickly clamped the tube and capped the tubing from the machine, and put the machine and its tubing into a pre-prepared bag then handed it to Dumbledore.

“These are his belongings,” she said briskly. “Get him out of here.”

“Thank you for caring for him all these years, Petunia,” Albus said, ignoring the distinct lack of any truly personal effects which should have gone along with a child of his age.

Petunia just sneered at the two men and motioned towards the door. The sooner they were out of her house, out of her life, the better.

“Albus, I’m afraid he may not be stable enough to apparate,” Severus said, gingerly holding the small child against his chest. The boy was so weak he could hardly hold up his own head.

“We will go to Arabella’s. Quickly!” Albus said, exiting the house and raced down the street at a speed which was shocking. Had he not witnessed it, Severus would have assumed the man had apparated the block or so towards the old squib's house.

Severus followed suit, noting the child in his arms moaned slightly as they exited the house and entered the sunlight street. Despite his obvious weakness, he still made an effort to tuck himself away from the light and warmth which the summer sun brought to southern England.

Mercifully, it was a very short walk to the cat-loving squib’s house. Even more fortunately, she saw the child in Severus’s arms and let them use her floo with no offers of tea or photo albums of cats. She had known the boy had been doing poorly, but the Dursleys had seemed as though they had this all well in hand. Clearly, she had been mistaken and could only hope that her lack of passing this information along to Dumbledore hadn't harmed the boy.

“Floo directly to the hospital wing, I’ve set up an emergency ward,” Albus said, wiping his eyes quickly as he tried to remain calm about the situation, not knowing if Harry would truly withstand the floo any more than he would apparation. “I did not know he was this bad.”

Severus nodded in agreement and tightened his grip on the small boy in his arms.

“Hogwarts Hospital Wing,” Severus called out as he threw his pinch of floo powder in the flames. As he and Harry spun, he felt himself instinctively hold tighter to the bundle of blankets and child in his arms.

Quite quickly, Severus found himself being spat out of the floo network into the empty Hospital Wing of Hogwarts.

“Poppy!” he called as he felt the blanket shift. Gingerly he sat the bundle of blankets and child on the bed. “Where are you, woman!”

Chapter Text

Harry felt as though he were in a fog. He could hear voices around him but try as he might he couldn’t respond. He could feel himself being lifted by someone with a deep and quite soothing voice. He could feel when the tube feeding was turned off. He could feel the burning of the sun on his pale skin. But he couldn’t rouse himself even if he tried.

Until they started spinning that is. The position he was being held in kept his body near the center of the spin and his head further away. It was just enough force to pull what little blood he had to his brain. Just enough to bring him more into consciousness.

“Poppy! Where are you woman!” the deep voice called out as he was laid on the bed. It wasn't one of the normal paramedics he knew, and something about the man smelled strange. Rather than the smell of antiseptic he had grown used to from the medical field over the years, this man smelt of herbs and spices and mysterious animals.

Unfortunately, he couldn't spend much time sniffing out who it was that was carrying him as the spinning had another side effect: nausea.

Harry wasn’t new to nausea. He’d had nausea ever since he’d first noticed he’d started getting ill. It had become such a common problem for him that he could honestly say he had rather forgotten the feeling of not feeling ill. This nausea was something new, however. Foreign almost. He hadn’t been moved in such a way in years.

Feeling the bile start to rise in his throat, Harry used what little strength he had left to roll onto his side to avoid choking on his own vomit. He'd done that before and regretted it almost instantly, though Aunt Petunia used his illness to garner further sympathies from the neighborhood at large.

It wasn’t much that came up, but it hurt for his stomach to jolt in such a way. If he had had the strength and wherewithal, he would have just used his tube to drain his stomach, but that required so much effort. Effort and strength he did not have.

As consciousness began to evade him once more, he briefly opened his eyes and looked around.

Ah, another hospital.

A weak retching and an angry potions master were what greeted Poppy Pomfrey as she walked out of her office. Dumbledore had warned her to expect a severely ill child, but he had not stated when nor had he warned her of Severus Snape’s presence for any of this. Severus was by far the worst patient to have. He was almost worse when he was acting as a head of house and had someone else under his care.

Poppy glanced briefly at the pile of blankets, thinking they were just that, before realizing there was a human wrapped in them.

“Severus, what…” Poppy started as the floo roared to life again and Albus stepped out and quickly dusted himself off.

“Poppy, this is the child I told you about,” Albus said.

Poppy quickly cast a diagnostic charm, gasped, and immediately cast a more advanced version.

“Severus, I need a blood replenisher,” Poppy barked. Severus immediately ran to the potions cabinet and grabbed a vial of the requested potion while the matron cast a warming spell over the bed and the boy on it.

Gently, she pulled off the blanket and cap. She then cast a charm which allowed her to see continuous readings of the child’s vital signs. She sighed in frustration as she looked at the numbers. Blood pressure: extremely low. Pulse: dangerously low. Oxygen saturation was ok, but he still looked almost blue. Respirations were also very low.

Most of these could be countered with one thing. Blood. The child needed blood in his system. It was odd how low his heart rate was, however as ill as he seemed, she wasn't overly surprised. Looking briefly at the lab results the previous scan had brought up, she almost started crying as she looked at the emaciated figure in front of her.

Haemoglobin: 35. Barely enough to sustain life. He simply had no blood in him. His blood was more water than anything else.

Quickly, she spelled a bubble of oxygen around the boy’s mouth and nose. He needed all the extra oxygen he could get.

Severus quickly returned with the potion then paused as Poppy spelled the shirt off the young child. There were bruises all over the boy’s torso, but no active bleeding had been shown on the scans. The feeding tube also stood out like a beacon on the concave stomach.

Poppy and Severus looked at the tube momentarily, looking at the three small ports at the end of the larger tube. Poppy quickly read each label and sighed in relief.

“He was on tube feeding?” she asked quickly.

“Yes, he was receiving a feeding when we picked him up,” Severus said quietly.

“Were there any syringes?” Poppy said, looking between the men.

Albus pulled out the tube feeding machine from the bag he had been given then unceremoniously dumped the rest of the bag’s contents on the bed next to Harry’s.

“Aha!” Poppy exclaimed, pulling out a syringe and drawing up the potion into it. She then quickly attached it to the port labled “J” on the tube and pushed the potion into it. She then conjured some water, drew that up as well and flushed the rest of the potion into the boy’s stomach.

They waited thirty long seconds, then Poppy recast the spell to see the boy in front of her’s labs.

Nothing. No changes. Nothing had happened.

“What in Merlin’s name?!” Poppy exclaimed, frantically drawing up another dose of the blood replenishing potion and giving it in the same manner.

“What is it?” Albus asked worriedly.

Poppy didn’t answer him until the next thirty seconds were up with no changes to his lab results.

“He needs a muggle blood transfusion,” Poppy said, not answering the question she had been given.

“But his magic…” Albus started.

“His core is diminished to the point his magic is nonexistent,” Poppy snapped. “He can’t reject someone’s magic because he simply doesn’t have enough of his own to reject it with.”

Quickly she cast one spell to check the boy’s blood type quickly followed by another to check the blood types of the adults in the room.

“Severus, I hate to ask this of you, but can you donate? You are a universal donor,” Poppy asked quietly.

Severus stared at the child for a moment then nodded and rolled up his right sleeve.

It took only a few minutes for the blood to be donated, but the blood itself would have to run much slower as it was going into its new recipient so as to not shock his system.

“Why didn’t the blood replenisher work?” Albus pondered as they all sat and watched as the blood slowly dripped into the young boy’s vein.

“The only explanation is his body doesn’t produce blood cells any more,” Poppy said.

“What would cause that?” Severus pondered out loud, his own face becoming rather ashen with the implications.

All of the adults sat in quiet contemplation for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts. It was obvious the boy was only alive because he had been using his magic to sustain himself. But as he tried to grow and survive, he was expending more magic that he was able to recuperate. If they hadn’t picked him up when they did, he would have surely died. In all likelihood, he had been on the cusp of death for sometime and was only just surviving as it was. It wouldn't have taken much to push him over the edge.

Had blood magic been performed on the child? Severus hadn’t picked any up when he initially scanned the child. What could possibly have caused his blood to be unresponsive to a blood replenisher?

“Poppy? Why didn’t you spell the blood replenisher into his stomach?” Severus asked suddenly.

“The scans were showing little to no movement of this stomach, or really any of his intestines. But the stomach doesn’t absorb nutrients, the small intestine does. When I spell potions into someone, they go directly into the stomach as it is a larger and frankly more static organ, not the intestines. But if there is no movement in the stomach the potion wouldn’t make it there. His tube has one port for putting things in his stomach and one which bypasses it.”

Severus sat there pondering this development for a minute before looking at the face of the sleeping child.

“Does he have any facial deformities you can see on your scan?” Severus asked, obviously operating on a hunch. Something about this case seemed... off. Cancer hadn't been mentioned in any of the diagnostic spells, and was exceedingly rare in the wizarding world to begin with, but the boy was simply not producing any of his own blood. There had to be some sort of condition which was causing this, however not one which would be commonly scanned or tested for with standard diagnostics. And most diagnostic spells would ignore magical creatures as their inherent magic would alter the way the spell worked.

Poppy did a focused scan on his head and shook her head slightly. “Only impacted canines.”

Severus went over to the still sleeping boy and gently lifted his upper lip to expose his canine teeth. Gingerly he felt around the gumline of the canines then jumped back slightly to the surprise of the others as he felt something vaguely sharp lying just beneath the boy's gums. Directly above the canines, he could feel a small swelling which he easily traced back to directly under the boy's sinuses, noting how, even on the boy's emaciated face, this area seemed to be ever so slightly swollen.

“I am almost positive I know what’s wrong, but it will bring more questions than I care to answer.”

“Well?” Poppy stated, rather perturbed she missed a diagnosis. “What do you think?”

“Vampire. He is a vampire with no sire to train him.”

“Excuse me? A vampire?” Poppy gasped, looking back at the boy. The boy who was exceedingly pale and had no blood in him. The boy who clearly hadn't grown in the last few years. The boy who was instinctively hiding himself from the sunlight streaming in through the windows.

“Possibly.”

“Albus?” She asked, looking horrified at the child laying in front of her when she finally snapped out of her shocked stupor. “Who is this child? Why did you have to bring him here and not St. Mungo’s?”

Albus had quietly walked over to the head of the bed and was gently stroking the boy’s hair. It was long enough it had covered the scar well. And with his current state, he looked nothing like either of his parents. He was far too pale, far to thin, and far to ill to ever appear to have been related to either Lily or James. If what Severus said was true, they would need to use this level of ambiguity to their advantage. Harry Potter was still the boy-who-lived, after all, and to force a child such as this into such a politically charged position could be disastrous. Not only that, but there was still the overarching question of how this had happened in the first place. The wards clearly hadn't been enough to keep a dark creature out, though they had done a remarkable job of keeping Voldemort's followers at bay during the first few weeks following his disappearance. Had something happened to the wards? Had something happened in the house to negate them?

Whatever the case may be, Harry Potter would not be returning to the Dursley house any time soon.

Albus quickly warded the hospital wing and looked his trusted healer in the eye.

“Poppy, what I am about to tell you does not leave this room,” Albus said with an intimidating timbre to his voice. Poppy nodded, her face paling slightly at the intensity of her employer and long-time friend's words.

“This is Harry Potter. The Boy-Who-Lived.”

Chapter Text

The fog of Harry’s mind was slowly getting less dense. He could just make out bits and pieces of a conversation going on around him. Something about “relatives” and “vampires” and “the Dark Lord.” It all felt rather nonsensical; almost as if Dudley was watching some sort of fantasy show on the telly. Not that Aunt Petunia ever would have allowed him to watch such a show, especially one which seemed so dark. No, magic was a word which long ago had been banned in the Dursley household.

But Harry had more important things on his mind. Like how cold it was. And if he had the strength to get to the bathroom rather than soiling his clothes. It wouldn't have been the first time that had happened, but it was never fun and he always got in trouble when it happened whether he had any control over it or not.

He felt as though he were suffocating; something cold was covering his face. He could breathe fine, but the feeling was unlike any oxygen mask he had ever had on and it was rather unnerving. His arm was also rather sore from where the IV had been inserted making him wish once again that Aunt Petunia had allowed the doctors to put in the port that they had offered last year.

Harry knew all of these feelings too well. Even in his slightly delirious state, he knew one thing was for certain: he was back in the hospital. Again. This would be the fourth time this year and it was barely June. Or it was last time he could remember anything. It had been early June when Uncle Vernon had thrown him into the cupboard. Or at least, he was fairly sure it had been June. It was always hard for him to keep track of the month when he was getting too sick. The days kind of blurred together into an amorphous blob and even knowing the time of day was a struggle.

How long had it been this time? How many days had the Dursleys left him unconscious in his cupboard before they finally brought him in? How many days had it been since he had last been conscious? Which one of the neighbors had inquired about his welfare and prompted the Dursleys to do something?

How much longer did he have?

Every hospital visit was worse than the last. His body was simply giving up. The tube feeding wasn’t helping, it was only making him feel worse and giving him horrible stomach cramps. The only thing that helped was when he would be given blood transfusions, but those were only when his haemoglobin was less than 70.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were not ones to want to take him to his follow up appointments though. The paediatric haematologist was in London and that was far too far away for them to take a freak like him, so they stayed with the nearest physician to them in spite of his insistence that they go elsewhere as he clearly needed a specialist on his case. The tube feeding could be sent to the house, but the blood was a different story. Besides, the longer he was in the house and the sicker he got, the more attention the Dursleys received. When he would go to hospital, the neighbors would fret for a while, but eventually they stopped coming by with their gifts and ‘support.’ When he was home, however, he was easy to put on display.

And Aunt Petunia did a good job of that. Any bruises he had from Uncle Vernon’s treatment of him were easily explained away as a simple symptom of his ‘condition.’ In fact, the more small bruises he ended up with on his body, the more the neighbors would come by and show their support. And the more the neighbors would come by, the more luxuries Aunt Petunia would allow him to have, especially if it made him seem even worse off than he was. So long as the bruises weren’t obviously caused by something, such as a handprint, she could explain them away.

“Oh, the poor boy,” Agnes had tutted one day a few months ago. “Does he pass out often, Petunia dear? He has another knot on his head.”

“Unfortunately,” Aunt Petunia had said, giving him a warning glare while gently tucking a heavy blanket around him and placing an icepack on the large bruise forming on his head from where his head had hit the underside of the stairs the last time he was thrown into his cupboard.. “He fell on the stairs the other day while he was going up to see Dudley.”

“Aww, the poor lad!” Mrs. Tuttle said, holding her hand to her heart. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can do to help you out, Petunia? You must have your hands awfully full with him!”

Groggily he reached out and tried to grab for a blanket as the memory filtered through his head. Aunt Petunia had made sure Uncle Vernon had laid off of him for a while while she languished in the help offered by the neighborhood. Mrs. Tuttle’s son had begun coming over to help with yard work and Mary’s granddaughter volunteered her time to help clean the house for a few weeks. Harry had needed to be put on display, so he had to be pampered.

Shivering, he opened his eyes slightly and looked around the ward for the nurse. He was so cold all the time, why couldn’t they remember that? It wasn’t like he wasn’t a regular at this point. And who was touching his hair?

As he reached out, his fingers trailed along the sheets. Odd, they were much softer than normal. The mattress itself was also much nicer than he was used to, softer than his mattress in the cupboard and with none of the normal indentations the normal hospital beds had. Nor did the pillows have the distinctive feeling of plastic under the pillowcase. What kind of hospital was this?

Harry moaned softly as he groped around for a blanket. He was too tired for this. He was tired and he could tell he had been given tube feeding recently as his stomach was beginning to cramp and he was cold. Even the tips of his ears were freezing. Where was the cap he had been given? It wasn’t much but it helped keep his ears warm. Warmer than his hair alone anyway.

Harry finally gathered the strength and opened his eyes fully with a wince at the bright light.

This wasn’t the hospital.

‘Hospice,’ he thought to himself sadly, tears filling his eyes. He was finally dying. He had felt in his heart that this day would be coming soon. The doctors had kept talking about different services offered such as 'hospice' and 'palliative care' for a while now, but Aunt Petunia had turned them all down. Clearly, that time had come. No doubt word of this would already be spreading through Privet Drive. He could only imagine the pity and support his relatives were getting.

“Oh, the poor dear!” Mrs. Tuttle would say as she poured yet another cup of tea for herself. “You know, my Augie loved working for hospice…”

She was always on about “her Augie” and how wonderful of a son he was.

He moaned again as the stomach cramps wracked his abdomen, interrupting his thoughts of home, and weakly tried to roll to his side and pull his knees up. He didn’t have his glasses on so he couldn’t make out very well what was going on around him, but he was fairly certain there were two people standing a few feet away speaking in low voices to each other.

The hand touching his hair pulled away and started gently rubbing his back. It felt good to have someone actually seeming to care for him. Actually care for him, not do it the way Aunt Petunia always did when she was putting on her show.

“Harry? Can you hear me?” a voice said from behind him. Possibly from the person rubbing his back?

Harry just moaned in response as the cramps came and went. Oh how he hated those cramps. They were a horrible part of his everyday life; one which he wished he could do away with. Some days were better than others, but most days he felt nearly incapacitated by them. He knew they were because his stomach wasn't passing things through to his intestines and even those weren't working well, but why did the cramps hit so bad after he got any kind of food? It was almost as if the cramps got worse when his haemoglobin had dropped, like his body didn't want the kind of food he was giving it. But what kind of food did he want?

Nothing with garlic in it, that was for sure.

Both of the people who had been talking to each other stopped speaking and rushed over to his bed.

“Are you hurting Harry?” a female voice said, coming from the maroon colored blur standing in front of him.

Harry swallowed thickly and clutched at his stomach as another cramp hit. The cramps always made him feel so cold, even colder than normal, and cold made the cramps worse. If he could just find a blanket.

“Cooooooold,” he moaned, pulling the thin blanket over him more and trying to conserve as much heat as his stick-thin body would allow. Violent shivers were beginning to wrack his body, burning through whatever energy he had.

The maroon colored lady grabbed a thick blanket off the end of his bed, a blanket he recognized as the one he was allowed to use at the Dursleys, and waved what could’ve been a stick at it before gently lowering it onto his shivering frame. It was much warmer than expected, though he still felt quite cold.

The person in black then handed the maroon lady something he couldn't make out in the light of the ward they were in which she then waved her stick at, and gently helped Harry lift his head to slip on whatever it was. It was his hat. At least now his ears wouldn’t freeze.

The maroon lady waved her stick again and started muttering something under her breath in another language. Harry felt a tingle race over his skin followed by a warming sensation in his gut. He suddenly felt… empty. He didn’t feel like he needed to go to the toilet any more, and he was extremely thankful for that. He didn’t know what happened, but it helped. Now that his stomach was empty, the cramping started to die down and he could uncurl himself slightly.

One more wave of her stick and she nodded in approval.

“Much better. Still not out of the woods, but much better than he was,” the lady said.

Harry was confused, if he was at hospice why were they working to make him better? He was certainly feeling much stronger than he had for quite a while, but why? He knew he hadn’t kept up with the medication regime the doctors wanted him on, and it was hard to convince himself to do his tube feedings when he knew he would get sick if he did. So then, where was he?

“Wha-” Harry tried to speak, but his mouth was so dry it was hard.

“Hello, Mister Potter,” the man in black said, his deep voice matching that of the man who had carried him out of the Dursley’s house.

Harry squinted at the dark man, trying to make out his features. Without his glasses it was a struggle for him to see much and pushing himself too hard only gave him a headache. In a brightly lit room, it was even worse as he found he could hardly make out the differences in shades when they were washed out by light. And as he had gotten sicker, the vision problems had gotten worse. He was fine with this, however, because he was unable to work outside during the day anyways without getting incredibly ill and the Dursleys hadn’t liked him using the electricity in the house.

“Hello, Harry,” the woman said. “My name is Madam Pomfrey. Right now you are in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts.”

This statement didn’t help Harry’s still sluggish brain. Hogwarts? What kind of hospital was Hogwarts?

“I don’t think he understands what’s happening, Albus,” Madam Pomfrey’s voice said. “I’m not seeing any obvious brain damage on any of the scans, but who knows how many times he has been like this in the past. He may need more time to recover.”

“Are you warm enough now, Harry?” the man’s voice from behind him said, continuing to rub his back comfortingly.

Harry shook his head slightly. Warmer, yes. Warm enough, no.

Suddenly, the temperature around him increased. It was like magic. One minute he was cold, then next he was warmer than he had been in years. Finally comfortable, he found his eyes beginning to droop closed.

“Rest, child,” the dark man’s deep voice said as Harry drifted off to sleep again, comfortable for the first time in years.

Once Harry’s eyes drifted closed, all the adults in the room let out a collective sigh of relief. Severus’s blood was doing the trick.

Poppy cast the diagnostic spell on him again. Blood pressure was increasing to a more normal level, heart rate was actually quite rapid but that was to be expected as his body was no longer on the verge of dying, oxygen was still stable. As the blood finished running into the tiny child’s body, Poppy set a timer.

“He needs his haemoglobin rechecked in an hour,” Poppy said, explaining to the two confused looks she received.

Both men nodded and continued looking at the small boy in front of them. This was the saviour of the wizarding world, emaciated and very nearly dead.

“Poppy, do you still have the screening potions I brewed for you?” Severus said, heading to the matron’s potion supplies.

“Top shelf. I can’t say I’ve needed to test any students for vampirism the entire time I’ve been here. A few Veelas and one werewolf scare, but those were the only ones I’ve ever had to use.”

Severus quickly found the potion he was looking for, double checking to make sure it was still good. As Poppy stated, there were very few of the screening potions that were used with none of the potions testing for vampirism having been used. It wouldn't do them any good to use an expired potion to test the boy and run the risk of an inaccurate result. They were all fairly certain they were correct in their assumption the boy was a vampire, he was far too symptomatic not to be, but they had to be sure.

Poppy conjured a pair of tweezers and lifted the boy’s hat and plucked one of his long hairs as gently as possible. The hair was then added to the vial and a few minutes later the potion began to turn from a milky white to a dark, blood red.

Poppy closed her eyes as tears welled up in them.

Positive. The test was positive for vampirism.

It was no surprise then why the boy was so sickly. The vampire who attacked him must not have known he was a wizard and would be changed if not completely drained of blood. It was surprisingly easy for wizards to be changed, but it was rare for a child to be attacked and bitten. They were too small to be considered more than a snack for a hungry vampire, especially a child as small as Harry must have been at the time of his attack.

But as he had been living in a muggle neighborhood, a vampire may very well have done just that to him. A small little pick-me-up en route to wherever the vampire was going.

It was well known that vampires would need their sires to be around them to teach them how to hunt and how to manage their new bodies so as not to die. Vampires were classified as magical creatures after all, but they straddled the line between human and creature even more than the humanoid Veelas or even the werewolves as they were constantly in a pseudo-creature state. They were magical beings, though few would consider themselves wizards as they were not frequently able to tap into their magic in the same way. While sunlight would not kill a vampire, it would rapidly drain their magical core and reserves. And without a magical core, any magical creature would be more vulnerable to any kind of … degradation. Biting another being was the way a vampire received its nutrients and magic, which it then processed and removed a small amount of life force from the victim. It was far more than simply eating for them and to try and replace that with what was, in essence, a protein shake? Preposterous.

“He didn’t have a sire,” Severus said, his face stoic but sadness creeping into his voice.

Albus nodded his head sadly. Clearly some crucial details had been missed by Arabella during her yearly reports on the boy’s well-being. If they had known of this … development… there was a chance they could have found a surrogate sire to help the child through the transition. Few vampires existed in the world and even fewer were registered in Britain. Fewer still had been willing to side in the war against Voldemort, and even that single one had cut all ties to Dumbledore following Voldemort's defeat. Finding a surrogate after his initial bite would have been difficult, but now that he was several years in (from what Petunia had reported)? Those chances were even less.

“Severus, in your opinion, what would your former associates do if they knew about this?” Albus asked, knowing in his gut what the answer would be.

Severus looked the headmaster in the eyes and shook his head slightly, lips pressed into a thin line. “You know exactly what would happen to the boy, Albus. Don’t even try to feign ignorance on that.”

Albus nodded, looking every bit his age. The boy himself would be classified as a dangerous and dark creature, but he was still the Boy-Who-Lived to the wizarding world. If any of the former Death Eaters knew what had befallen the child, it would immediately put him in incredible danger. What he needed was a guardian who, himself, was considered grey at best. A small twinkle came into his eyes as he looked at the sleeping child barely visible under the covers.

“What if he wasn’t Harry Potter?” Albus asked.

“What are you getting at, Albus?” Poppy responded, knowing from the look in his eyes he had formed a scheme already.

“What if he was the child of someone else,” Albus said, looking directly into the potion master’s eyes.

“You can consider this my resignation then,” Severus said, raising an eyebrow. “I can barely stand the brats I teach here. I don’t need, want, or desire in any way a child of my own.”

“Severus, did you or did you not just finish your version of Wolfsbane?” Albus said, continuing to smile slightly.

“I did, but I don’t see how this has anything to do with my completion of that project,” Severus glowered, his lips pressing into a line as his eye twitched. He knew where this was going to go.

“You’d have a vampire living with you," Albus's smile grew. "You’ve already done such a great service to the werewolf community, why not assist the vampires next?”

“Albus, no. Absolutely not. I do not want to take care of a child! Let alone a vampiric one!”

“Severus, please. It would keep him safe. And after all he’s been through, it would be nice for him to have a father.”

Severus glared at the barmy old man in a way that could easily melt through steel. He was certainly not fatherhood material, what with his own loathsome upbringing and personal history. Not only that, but he also had the law to contend with. If he were caught with a dark creature, especially one as potent as a vampire, he would immediately be placed in Azkaban. There would be no way to escape the accusations, especially with the still quite obvious Dark Mark present on his arm.

“But would you be able to keep me safe, Albus?” Severus asked, dropping his voice. “Would you keep me out of prison if I get caught?”

Albus immediately nodded, “That would be a non-negotiable part of the deal.”

“I do not wish to discuss this at this time, especially not with a key player in this being unconscious. ”

Severus stood up and began to stalk towards the door, knowing his robes were billowing behind him for effect and not caring that this effect would win him no points with his coworkers. However Poppy stepped in front of him, preventing him from leaving.

“Severus,” she said, her piercing grey eyes staring into his with a ferocity he rarely saw from the woman. “I normally do not care for Albus’s schemes, but I must admit I agree with this one a bit more. You are the same age as his actual parents, and quite frankly the only professor on staff who could feasibly pull off having a child. You are a known recluse who spends hours doing Merlin knows what in your private lab. It really wouldn’t be a stretch to say the hours you spent in the lab were partially you spending time with your ill son.”

Severus folded his arms across his chest and flared his nostrils. She had several good points, points he himself had seen, but it still felt wrong to pretend the boy was his. At his current size and weight, defining features which would make him look more like one parent over another were less obvious, so they wouldn't have to even use a potion or glamour to hide the boy's true parentage. And if he kept the hat on, as he was want to do, it would be even easier to cover the single marking which would allow even the most foolish of wizard to know who he was. It would be simple truthfully, however it was honestly not his decision to make.

“I do not approve of us forming these plans without Potter’s consent.”

“Is that a yes then?” Albus said, grinning.

“No, it is not,” Severus said. “I will not consent to any of this until it is discussed with him. We would be turning his entire life upside down. More so than what we will be doing already in informing him he is a vampire. He deserves to have a voice in this.”

Poppy nodded in agreement. Harry had had so much upheaval in his life, he deserved to have some form of choice in this matter.

“Fine,” Albus said, rising from his seat. “We shall discuss this matter further when Harry is awake and able to communicate his wishes with us. Poppy, if you would please notify us the next time Harry is awake or if there are any changes.”

Severus looked on the pile of blankets on the bed one last time before leaving the hospital wing. Lily’s child, a vampire. His heart ached at the unfairness of it. How could this happen to her child?

Chapter Text

It was several more hours before Harry woke again, his head feeling much more clear than it had in over a month. He didn’t know which hospital he was in, but wherever it was they were doing a fantastic job. Normally he had to stay in hospital for several days to feel this way. Or had it been several days already and he didn’t know it?

Whatever the case may be, he felt stronger than he had in a long while. After moving his head experimentally, he found he was less dizzy as well. Nowhere near where he had been before getting sick, but it still was a drastic improvement. And any improvement was cause for celebration.

Slowly, he sat himself upright. How odd, there were no true bedrails to assist him. Nor was there a call light. Or an IV pump or pole. What an odd hospital this was.

“Oh good, Mr. Potter. You’re awake!” a voice sounded from a desk near the other side of the room. The maroon lady from earlier came over. What was her name again?

“Whe-” Harry started hoarsely before swallowing and rubbing his mouth, trying to get some sort of moisture in it. “Where am I?”

“You are at Hogwarts in the Hospital Wing,” the lady answered, pouring him a very small glass of water and holding an emesis basin up for him to spit into.

Harry quickly rinsed his mouth, being careful not to try to swallow any of the water. The last time he purposefully tried to swallow any liquid, he found himself extremely nauseous for several hours followed by an episode of violent vomiting as his stomach simply did not want to move anything through and simply couldn't handle keeping anything in it for long. Since that last experiment, it had only gotten worse, especially with cold liquids. Anything less than slightly warmer than room temperature entering his stomach would cause him to immediately vomit. If anything, the closer the liquid was to body temperature, the more likely he was to be able to keep it down and he didn’t know why.

No one did, really.

“Hogwarts?” Harry asked, he’d never heard any of the doctors speak of such a place. They had spoken at length with Aunt Petunia about different specialists and hospitals around the nation when he began to require more frequent transfusions. She, of course, had turned most of it away with the exception of one haematologist in London, a gastroenterologist, and a dietician. She only wanted the attention and pity for herself and her family, so the sicker he was the better. And the fewer specialists on his case, the easier it was for her to manage keeping him that way without drawing too much attention to her care for him.

“Yes dear,” the woman continued. “You know about Hogwarts don’t you?”

“No, ma’am. I’m sorry. This is a beautiful hospital though,” Harry said, looking around the wing in wonder, squinting into the brightly lit corners of the room trying to see the details. Surely this hospital had to be several hundred years old at the least! The beautiful stone arches made the room feel more like a cathedral than a hospital.

“No, no, darling!” she said, both sadness and mirth in her eyes. “This is a boarding school for people like you.”

“Hospital school?” Harry asked, continuing to be confused. He had briefly attended hospital school before, but that was in the hospital he was admitted to at the time. He had never even heard of a hospital boarding school.

“I’m sorry dear, for young witches and wizards,” Madam Pomfrey said, surprised when Harry immediately raised his eyebrows and looked at her like she was crazy.

“What?” Harry asked in utter disbelief, a frown darkening his face as he blinked at her in confusion. There was no way! Wizards and witches didn't exist!

“Didn’t your aunt and uncle tell you about your parents? Or about yourself?” she gasped, covering her mouth as her face paled slightly.

“My parents were drug addicts who died in a car crash. I’m a freak who could easily go down that same path,” Harry recited, knowing his lines from memory after having had them beaten into him when he was very little.

“Oh my, no! Lily and James Potter were heroes who gave their lives to save you from the most evil wizard of the modern era! You are the boy-who-lived!” Madam Pomfrey exclaimed. How could this poor boy be so uninformed about his own past? About his family? Dumbledore had assured them all that he was being well cared for, yet the more she saw of this boy the more she realized this was certainly not the case. Clearly, whoever was assigned to watch the boy was not doing a very good job of it!

If they had been, he certainly wouldn't have ended up in the condition he was in now.

Harry shook his head in confusion, bracing himself as the dizziness raced over him for a thankfully short period of time.

“Harry,” Poppy was looking at him slightly concerned. “Are you ok.”

“Just a bit dizzy. I’m much better though!” Harry said, smiling slightly, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact everything in his life had just tilted sideways and conceptualize what being a wizard would even mean.

“Your eyes seem a bit unfocused.”

Harry looked around for a second, when he was unable to see the glinting of the light off his glasses frame, he looked back at the matron.

“Have you seen my glasses anywhere?” Harry asked quietly. “It’s really hard to see without them.”

Poppy quickly looked through the bag of medical supplies Harry had been sent with and was dismayed to find a pair of glasses which had been rather crushed under the cans of tube feeding he was sent with. Easy enough to fix, though the fit wouldn’t be right if the boy wasn’t wearing them at the time they were repaired.

“I’m sorry, they seemed to have gotten rather crushed. Put them on and I can fix them up for you!” Madam Pomfrey said, handing them over.

Harry took the glasses and looked at her in confusion before gingerly unfolding them and placing them on his nose as she pulled out the stick she had been waving around yesterday.

“Oculus reparo,” Madam Pomfrey said, flicking her wand right in front of Harry’s nose.

Harry’s eyes were so wide they looked almost unearthly on his gaunt face as the cracks in the lenses repaired themselves and the frame retwisted back into its proper position. Slowly, he removed the glasses and started turning them over in his hands.

“What?…. How?” Harry stumbled over his words as he put them back on his face and reveled in the clarity of having non-scratched lenses for the first time in years.

“Magic, dear. And soon you’ll be able to do that and more. We just have to get you feeling better,” the matron said, waving her wand over Harry’s body and casting a plethora of diagnostic spells.

“What did you just do?” Harry said in utter amazement. “Was that to make me better?”

“No, child. Those were diagnostic spells. They make it so I can know what your body is doing so I can make adjustments in your care.”

Harry nodded. Vital signs: he knew them well. He was just glad he wasn’t hooked up to a machine to get them done. He always hated when the blood pressure cuff wouldn’t read right and would keep puffing up. And the nurses would have to check them all the time. Day or night, if he were asleep or awake, they would come in and strap the machine on him.

With magic, however, it seemed he didn’t have to get woken up each time at least! And if it was that easy to fix his glasses, maybe it would be that easy to fix him!

“Are they ok?” Harry asked, hope shining into his voice.

Madam Pomfrey smiled, “They’re much better than when you came in. And your haemoglobin is now in a safe range. Your blood was essentially water when you came in.”

“Sorry,” Harry said, ducking his head. “Aunt Petunia doesn’t like taking me to my appointments unless I’m really bad off.”

Madam Pomfrey had to reign in her temper almost immediately. There was definitely something more going on than she initially thought. Severus would be good for the boy. He always had such a gentle touch with the abused and neglected children who came in.

“Harry, do you think you will be awake for a little longer, or do you want to go back to sleep?”

“I want to go to the toilet,” Harry said, blushing a bit. “But I don’t know where it is.”

“The toilet is all the way in the corner. I would prefer if you didn’t get up just yet, however. You are far too weak and I cannot keep my wand trained on you and help you walk at the same time,” Madam Pomfrey said, another flick of her wand and his lower abdomen had the strange sensation of suddenly being empty.

Harry gasped and looked down at his belly.

“Did you just...?” Harry asked, motioning at his groin.

“I made the contents disappear, yes.”

“They won’t reappear will they?” Harry looked at her warily, gently poking his lower abdomen with a finger as if expecting everything to suddenly reappear.

“No,” Madam Pomfrey laughed at the thought. How miserable would that be?

Harry sighed with relief. He was worried as soon as she said the toilet was on the other side of the room. This ward was enormous compared to the other wards he had been in. There had to be at least twenty beds with plenty of space to move around each of them. He knew from experience that, even though he was feeling better, he would have to stop several times on a trip of that length in order to catch his breath. Walking any real distance had become exhausting for him.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I don’t remember your name,” Harry nearly whispered.

“I am Madam Pomfrey,” Poppy said gently. “You were still quite confused when I first introduced myself.”

“Thank you, Madam Pomfrey,” Harry said courteously, leaning back on his arms as his stomach was starting to ache with the effort of holding himself up. “I think I can stay up for a little longer. Can you make the bed so I’m not laying down? Sitting like this makes me tired, but I don’t want to go back to sleep yet.”

Poppy smiled sadly and with a flick of her wand, the head of the bed cranked itself to a more natural sitting position.

“Thank you,” Harry said, relaxing back and pulling the covers up to around his neck. He was starting to feel cold again.

“I shall return shortly. I need to call the headmaster and our potions master. They both want to speak with you about the future and your… illness. Please stay in bed.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry said politely as he snuggled down more into the blankets until only his eyes were visible between the cap and the blanket.

Poppy smiled at him before walking into her office and quickly sent a note via floo that Harry had finally woken up and was somewhat stable. No more than a minute later, both men were standing in her office. Quickly she filled them in on what she had learned from her brief conversation with Harry and what her beliefs were as to the Dursley’s treatment of the boy.

Albus had a grim look on his face when they finished and Severus was utterly flat in his expression, but one look at his eyes and you could see how enraged he was. How dare they treat this child like he was a free meal ticket! The fact Petunia had even sent the letter she had was a damn miracle.

“He can never return there,” Severus stated murderously.

“He isn’t safe here in his current state either,” Albus reminded him. “But I concur, he will never return to their house.”

“Will you draw up the charges against them with the proper authorities?” Poppy said brusquely, her arms crossed over her chest as she stared the headmaster down. “Or would you prefer I did so?”

“I shall do it,” Albus said with a sigh. “I will have to go through the muggle authorities if we don’t want word of this reaching the papers, and we all know how long that will take. Especially given that he has been removed from the situation already.”

Severus sighed and rubbed his face. He had been up most of the night stewing over the idea of hiding the Potter boy in plain sight. It would work, Poppy was right about that. He was enough of a recluse to have hidden an ill child, especially during the years where he had been working so diligently on the Wolfsbane modifications. Not to mention the boy was so thin he really did look as though he had some Prince blood in him. The Potters and the Princes were actually quite closely related after all.

Taking a deep breath, Severus stepped out of the office and looked into the green eyes of the waif-like boy in the bed.

“Hello, Harry,” Albus said, exiting the office immediately after Snape. “My name is Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. I am the Headmaster of the fine school you are currently in. And this is Professor Severus Snape, our esteemed potions master. Welcome to Hogwarts.”

Harry was fighting to keep his eyes open by the end of the discussion, but he knew it was important for him to make a decision soon. The Headmaster and the Potions Master had spoken with him for a long time about everything that was going on. He was famous because he had survived a killing curse, his life was now in danger because of the man who killed his parent’s followers, and he was apparently a vampire.

It felt like he was in a weird dream, but pinching himself didn’t wake him up and the world didn't really have the same feeling it did when he was actually dreaming.

The Headmaster thought it would be safer for him to pretend to be the son of the Potions Master than to be his famous self because the Potions Master would be able to defend him better. Or something like that.

As crazy as the idea sounded, Harry rather liked the idea. He would have a father who could help him and would talk to him. Maybe not even call him a freak and punish him by making him clean until he passed out! Maybe, one day, they could even play catch together!

“Are you ok with this, sir?” Harry asked sleepily.

“I believe I may have to be,” Severus said softly. He still wasn’t 100% sold on the idea, but so far there had been none of James Potter which had shown through.

The boy in front of him was Lily through and through. He could clearly see the green eyes the boy had inherited from his mother, but the waif’s figure looked nothing like his brawny, Quidditch playing father. Sure he had the black hair, but it was hard to gauge the texture of it under the hat and it was unlikely to be the same Potter rat’s nest simply due to its length. He had been a quiet, respectful child as Albus explained who he actually was. He had asked appropriate questions when Severus was explaining how they discovered the vampirism.

It was much easier to swallow the idea of being the “father” of Lily’s child than it was to even begin to think about caring for James Potter’s spawn.

“Do I keep my name?” Harry asked as he yawned for the sixth time.

“It would probably be better if you didn’t. There would be less likelihood someone would make the connection that you appeared at the same time Harry Potter disappeared,” Severus said.

“Can you choose one for me? I’m rubbish at making up names,” Harry yawned again, eyes at half mast.

Severus was mildly taken aback. The boy seemed to have no qualms with the idea of having him as a parent. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he thought of names. Why would a child be so willing to give up their family? Would he really want to be Snape?

“Are you sure you want me to choose a name for you?” Severus finally asked, names running through his head that Lily had mentioned off hand as they had jokingly planned a future together the summer before their fifth year.

Harry nodded, eyes fluttering as he struggled against the sandman’s call.

Severus sat in silence for a few moments as he pondered the repercussions of names. It couldn’t be difficult to say, nor could it be overly simple to make fun of. Even if a cure for vampirism was found, he still would likely need to keep this name for an extended period of time.

“Julian,” Severus said quietly. “Julian Marcus Snape.”

“I like it,” Harry said, smiling at the professor’s emotionless face, before he lost the battle against sleep and dozed off for a moment. “I’m sorry sir.”

“Go to sleep, we’ll talk more tomorrow,” Severus said, removing the boy’s glasses and pulling the thick blanket up over his shoulders with a flick of his wand.

When Severus looked up, he saw Albus smiling that horrible, twinkling smile.

“What?” Severus snapped.

“I believe, my boy, you are now the proud father of one Julian Marcus Snape. Congratulations are in order.”

Severus sneered, rolled his eyes, and stalked towards the door. This was not how he wanted to celebrate completing his passion project from the past four years.

Did he want to have a child? Absolutely not. Did the idea of Lily’s child being sent to yet another “family” following Albus’s manipulations worry him? Greatly. And it was that idea which spurred him into making this decision.

This was his chance to prove his worth. He couldn’t save Lily, but he had a chance at redemption in this boy.

Chapter Text

Harry wrapped his threadbare, hand-me-down t-shirt around him as he desperately tried to stay warm. The temperature had dropped dramatically in the last few hours with dark clouds rolling in from the north-west. As the sun set, Harry could only hope the Dursleys would get home from their party soon. It wouldn’t be the first time they had locked him out in a storm, but he was already so cold.

Harry nestled himself against the back of the house and absentmindedly picked at a scab on his knee. Maybe, just maybe, the rain wouldn’t get him absolutely soaked. He knew he would dry off quickly once he got inside, but he was afraid to be wet and stuck outside for too long. If he got sick, there’d be hell to pay.

Looking into the distance, over the rows of houses whose back faced the houses of Privet Drive, Harry could vaguely make out the outline of a building… no, castle... hidden in the sky. Much of its walls and towers shrouded in the mist of the clouds that were boiling towards him. From the castle, he could hear the sound of a motorcycle flying through the air.

A sudden burst of green lightning shot from the clouds and struck the telephone poll up the street, the crack of thunder loud enough to make Harry’s ears hurt. Immediately, all lights in the neighborhood were lost as the power was cut. Turning instinctively to look at the now decimated poll barely standing out in the moonlight, Harry could see a pair of slightly reflective, animalistic eyes peering at him from the other side of the fence.

Another bolt of lightning flashed through the sky, temporarily blinding Harry. When his vision returned, the eyes were gone. Slowly, Harry stood and looked towards where the eyes had been. The eyes had been too far up to be an animal, even a large dog. And he could have sworn he had seen a human face surrounding those eyes.

But human eyes aren’t reflective like cat’s eyes.

A sinking dread filled Harry as rain began to fall, slowly at first then suddenly in a torrent. Another flash of lightning and Harry saw him. A figure in black, slowly weaving its way towards him as though drunk with eyes that reflected the flash of lightning. Harry tried to scramble backwards, but found he was frozen in place. He tried to scream, but couldn’t speak. It was all he could do to breathe.

Tears rolled from his eyes as the thin, dark figure came towards him and gently stroked his cheek. The long, white fingers then ran under his chin and forcibly tilted his head to the side.

“I etur,” a dark, hoarse voice said in a tongue he couldn’t understand. “Jam shume i etur. Ju lutem. Gjaku.”

Harry tried to look at the figure holding him and found he couldn’t move his eyes. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain in his neck followed by a numbing sensation that travelled along his neck and into his face. His vision started to swim; the castle being swallowed by the storm clouds.

Another bolt of green lightning snapped overhead, jolting the figure into dropping him and running. The motorcycle roared through the sky towards him. A woman screamed as he fell.

He couldn’t move, he couldn’t stop the fall. A pit opened in the Dursley’s yard as he fell, its dark sides writhed with thousands of snakes. Down he fell, words whispered around him in a myriad of foreign tongues, snakes whipping out to try and bite him.

He could feel the ground rushing up to meet him. The bright light of the motorcycle following him into the pit. Seconds before he hit the ground, the motorcycle turned and a pale hand shot out from under a black robe and grabbed his shirt. His head snapped back.

Harry woke with a jolt and looked blearily around the Hospital Wing. His neck still felt numb and the lightning bolt scar felt as though it were on fire. Slowly, he flexed his fingers, relieved when he could move them. Sniffling slightly, he raised a hand to his neck. No scars were there, nothing physical remained of that night. He could still feel the fingers on his cheek and the teeth as they sunk into his neck however.

Vampire.

Harry slid down farther under the warm blankets and closed his eyes tightly. Tears seeped from under his eyelids, running down his cheek and onto the heated mattress below.

He really was a freak.

Harry was awoken the next morning by the sound of murmured voices in the room. They seemed oddly muffled, but it was definitely in the same room he was in. Opening his eyes, he could see the very blurred shape of Madam Pomfrey handing a red-headed child something while another red-head looked on. He could tell that the red-head who was standing was looking at him.

He closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep when suddenly the voices became much clearer and suddenly he felt that strange emptying sensation in his lower abdomen. All of the previous day’s events came rushing back to him: magic, vampire, fame, new name, new family. It was a lot to take in.

“Good morning, dear,” Madam Pomfrey called. He was caught. “Your glasses are on the bedside table.”

He opened his eyes back up and looked across the room at the trio of blurs. Reaching out from under the warm blankets, he was shocked at just how cold it was in the room and snatched his glasses from the bedside table. He let his hand warm back up a minute before he unfolded the glasses and slid them on.

The two red heads looked exactly the same! The only obvious difference was that the one on the bed was covered in a green goo that was proving difficult to remove without removing his skin.

Madam Pomfrey sighed and shook her head in frustration. Of course the Wesley twins would be the ones to have to come to the Hospital Wing for a potions mishap. Those two hellions were going to blow themselves up one day if they weren’t careful. She was thankful that Ha-Julian was stable and she wasn’t having to worry about stabilizing him as well as dealing with these two for the umpteenth time this year.

“What exactly had you added to your ‘portable bog’ before it exploded?” she asked, frowning.

“We had just added an adders fang to the mix to try when it started to boil over,” the one who was standing said. “We were trying to increase the maximum size of the bog.”

“That explains the sticking then,” Madam Pomfrey said before walking over to the potions cupboard and pulling out a variety of potions. “George, pour these two on the worst areas. Fred, I’m sorry, but the hair has to go for a minute.”

“Not my luscious locks!” Fred said in mock anguish from the bed. “How could you!”

“Hush, foolish child. I have a hair growth serum for you as well.”

Harry watched as George take the two vials of potions and begin pouring them on the globs of goo stuck to his brother. It took a few minutes, but the goo started to harden and flake off, taking Fred’s hair with it.

“Into the shower with you! And use this to get the rest of it off!” Madam Pomfrey said, handing Fred a towel and a slightly larger vial of potion. “What do you two need a portable bog for anyways?”

“A ‘You Missed Us’ present for Ronnie,” George said, straight faced. “Who doesn’t like a bog in their bedroom?”

Harry laughed quietly under his blanket. Those two seemed like a lot of fun to be around.

“Oh, don’t you start getting ideas! I can hear you giggling!” Madam Pomfrey said rather sternly, but Harry could still hear some amusement in her voice.

“Who’s the kid, Poppy?” George asked as Fred went to the shower.

“That’s Madam Pomfrey to you,” she responded sternly. “All you need to know about that child is a patient of mine.”

“Fine, Madam Pomfrey, why does he get all the extra blankets? You never give me any extra blankets!”

“You don’t need them, you just want to use them to stage an escape so you can go continue your hair-brained antics. I’m onto you, George Weasley!”

“Aww, but seriously though. What’s with all the extra blankets?”

“Because it’s so cold,” Harry rasped, his voice dry from having no water or mouthwash this morning.

George looked in shock at the pile of blankets. The voice under them sounded so dry it hurt his throat to listen to it. And the speaker sounded so young. He had seen the wrist and hand of the person under the covers, but he couldn’t make out anything other than the kid was painfully thin.

“It’s not cold out here, it’s actually kinda warm,” George said, confused. Summer was definitely on its way in and the hospital wasn’t as cool as it had been in months prior. Besides, there were climate control spells on many of the rooms to make them more comfortable. Poppy normally had the Hospital Wing on the cooler side, so it was nice not being in there when it wasn’t freezing.

“He gets very cold very easily, he can have as many blankets as he needs to stay warm,” Madam Pomfrey said, walking over to where Ha-Julian (she really needed to practice not calling the boy Harry) was laying. A quick diagnostic spell and she was satisfied with how he was doing. It had taken many long hours of slowly running blood into the boy, but his haemoglobin was finally comfortably in the 70’s range. It had, unfortunately, already begun to drop, however that was to be expected.

“Do you want to sit up, dear?” Madam Pomfrey said, once she saw his blood pressure and heart rate were stable for the moment.

Harry nodded; what he really wanted was a shower and to rinse his mouth out. And maybe a bit of tube feeding to get his energy up. It had been at least 48 hours since he had last had any form of nutrition and it was starting to catch up to him.

A flick of her wand and the back of the bed rose to a more sitting position. One more flick and a heating charm warmed the air around the bed to a much warmer temperature than was in the room.

George’s jaw fell open. The child on the bed couldn’t have been older than his younger sister, but looked like he weighed maybe half her weight. Every bone was visible, his face gaunt and eyes sunken in. Even though he was wearing a hospital gown, it was obvious every rib was visible. In his right arm, it looked like a small tube was sticking out of the elbow. The bright green eyes George had seen peeking out from under the blanket were slightly magnified by the thick glasses he wore, making them seem even larger than they already were. The thick knitted cap the boy wore covered his forehead but there was still some long black hair that stuck out from under it.

“George, don’t stare,” Poppy said as she helped the skinny child rinse his mouth.

Harry blushed bright red as the boy stared at him. He had never been the object of this kind of attention before. He swallowed instinctively as the last swig of water entered his mouth. Immediately, his eyes widened in fear.

He was going to vomit in front of someone.

As soon as the cold water hit his stomach he immediately felt his stomach clench and the stomach acid race back up his throat, burning it raw. He felt as though his stomach and throat were being ripped to shreds. He tried to swallow it back down but it wouldn’t stop.

Weakly he grabbed for the emesis basin Madam Pomfrey was holding and started retching, eyes immediately watering and nose beginning to run. The more he vomited, the more he started gasping for air, which caused him to cry more. It hurt so much to throw up, and he had done more than his fair share of it for the last two years.

As the retching finally slowed, he realized Madam Pomfrey was gently rubbing his back and supporting him so he didn’t topple over.

“Shh, you’re going to be ok. Just breathe through it,” she was whispering to him.

He continued to dry heave for a few more minutes before finally collapsing backwards into the bed, completely exhausted with tears trailing down his sunken cheeks. He continued to hold his stomach until he finally passed out from exhaustion.

George, for his part, had stayed silent through the entire thing. He had seen his siblings throw up before, but none so violently or painfully. In his fifteen years, he had never been as scared as he was watching this child gasp and cry as he vomited. He’d seen broken bones from Quidditch, concussions, and scrapes and bruises of every kind, but he had never felt like he was watching someone actively dying in front of him.

And he was terrified.

Madam Pomfrey quickly cast another round of diagnostic spells over the boy, sighing in frustration at the changes she noticed from before his vomiting episode. She then spelled his mouth clean and laid the bed back a bit, covering him up again with the blankets and making sure to cover his neck with them in the way she always saw him pulling them up.

“Is… is he ok?” George asked quietly, more subdued than he had ever been in her presence.

“He will be,” Madam Pomfrey responded before conjuring a patronus. “Go to Severus. Julian vomited. Not tolerating water. Will likely need another transfusion soon.”

George stared in awe as the misty patronus zipped under the doors to the hospital wing.

“What’s wrong with him?” George asked again, clearly worried about the small boy under the blankets.

“He is very ill and has been for many years.”

“He’s not contagious, is he?”

“He is no danger to you.”

George nodded and watched as the small boy breathed. There was so little movement, one would think the child had passed away. And maybe it was his imagination, but something about the boy seemed slightly familiar. Maybe it was just the long, black hair though.

“Alright! I’m all clean!” Fred’s voice came belting out of the bathroom causing George to jump out of his stupor.

Madam Pomfrey got up to see to her other patient and give him the hair regrowth serum leaving George to continue watching the boy breathe. Once Fred was sorted out, hair grown and cut to his liking, he came out to see his brother sitting on the bed across from blanket-boy and looking as though he had seen a ghost.

“What’s up George?” Fred asked, looking at how shocked his brother was.

George shook himself and smiled back at his brother. “Nothing much, the ceiling, the sky, maybe some clouds. The usual.”

“Well I’m ready to go, come on!” Fred said, pulling his brother off the bed and heading towards the exit. George followed, continuing to stare at the boy in the bed as Madam Pomfrey looked over the small child.

As they left the wing, George heard footsteps briskly walking towards them and pulled Fred into an alcove with him. Together they watched as the greasy bat of the dungeons flew into the Hospital Wing.

“Come on,” he whispered to his twin as he quietly stalked back towards the door.

“What’s going on?” Fred whispered back, only for George to hold a finger to his lips to silence him.

George snuck closer to the door and peaked in for a second. He couldn’t hear anything that was being said and quickly realized a silencing spell had been put up, but he had a sneaking suspicion what was going on.

He gave a jerk of his head to signal to Fred they needed to move out.

Once out of range of the Hospital Wing, George pulled Fred into another alcove behind a statue of a centaur.

“I think I know why Snape is always in such a foul mood,” George said.

“Because he smells foul?” Fred said, pinching his nose and laughing. He stopped when he saw his brother’s worried face however. “What’s wrong.”

“The boy under the blankets. I saw him,” George said, voice quivering. “He looks like a skeleton. Not an ounce of fat on him. Even his muscles were tiny. He looked like he would be killed by a strong wind. Then ….”

George turned a little green himself as he remembered the episode he had witnessed. Fred was starting to get worried now too. What had he missed while he was showering?

“He threw up,” George finally finished. “He had a sip of water, on accident because I was looking at him I think, and started throwing up. He could hardly breathe and he was too weak to sit up on his own so Poppy had to hold him up. He was gasping and crying and just couldn’t stop puking.”

Fred could only stare as his twin got more frantic.

“You know how grouchy Mum gets when she hasn’t slept in a while?” George asked suddenly.

“Yeah? What’s this got to do with the blanket boy?”

“Poppy sent a patronus to Snape telling him that ‘Julian’ had thrown up. I think… maybe… Snape is his father.”

Fred laughed for a few moments, thinking his brother was joking. Snape? A dad? He was a known child hater. He wanted nothing to do with any kind of children.

“I’m serious!” George said, no trace of humor in his voice.

“But he hates kids!” Fred exclaimed. “He despises every student who steps into his classroom. Slytherins less than others, but even they get on his nerves.”

“What if he hates what he can’t have?” George asked solemnly.

“What do you mean?”

“He hates kids because his kid is so sick. He has to watch us have fun and go to school and know his kid isn’t able to do that. He doesn’t sleep and gets exhausted and testy because he is up all night taking care of his kid. He doesn’t want anyone to know because he doesn’t want pity. Even the Slytherins say that he rarely sleeps.”

“I heard earlier in the year from some of the upper years that he has been working on some ‘project,’” Fred said, continuing to be skeptical.

“His kid is his project,” George said. “He’s trying to get him better.”

Fred stood in silence for a minute, a frown on his face. It seemed implausible, but at the same time everything fit.

“What do you think happened to his mum?” Fred asked.

“Dunno, weird to think of someone having sex with Snape. Maybe she died?” George said.

The twins stood there a moment pondering the implications of the idea. Snape was foul tempered, sure, but the Slytherins respected the man greatly for some reason. Maybe they knew more about his hidden life?

“Do you think he’d even be able to feed at this point?” Severus asked, looking at the small child in the bed. He had thankfully not been in class when Poppy’s patronus came bursting into the room. It would have been hard to explain and he wasn’t sure if he was ready for the students in the school to begin to find out of his “son”’s existence.

“I don’t know, Severus. I really do not know. We already know he doesn’t tolerate the tube feedings, which we expected. But to not tolerate water? We need to get nourishment and hydration into him. The blood transfusions helped, but those cells will die. The magic he got from your blood helped him quite a lot, but there was a massive drop in his magic levels in his core shortly after he stopped vomiting. His core. He has no reserves. None. His body is using his core as a last ditch effort to survive. But even that is beginning to fail because he simply doesn’t have the energy to survive.”

Severus sat on the bed next to the child he had been tasked to keep as a son. He had failed to protect Lily, he wouldn’t fail to protect her child.

“Is he somewhat stable for now?” Severus asked.

“For now, but for how long? He is far more unstable than I thought. I know Albus may fight this, but he may need to be moved to St. Mungo's.”

Severus nodded. “As his … father… now, I can override Albus’s wishes. Albus got me the paperwork ‘proving’ paternity earlier today.”

Poppy nodded. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but this case was rapidly becoming too dangerous to keep in a school hospital ward. If it had been any child other than Harry Potter who had come in in this condition, she would have immediately sent them to St. Mungo's. No question about it.

“Will he be stable enough for me to speak with my prefects for a bit?” Snape asked.

“He should be fine now that he is asleep. His magic is most stable in this state.”

Severus nodded and in a flurry of robes rushed out of the hospital wing. The halls were beginning to fill with students as they left one class and made their way to another. A flick of his wand and a small ball of green light shot down the hallways searching for the Slytherin prefects, the head boy, and the head girl. They would know it was an emergency when they saw it and would immediately report to Severus’s office.

Severus quickly made it down the back staircases to the dungeons and made it to his office just as the first of the prefects arrived.

Severus unlocked the office door and allowed the girl in. She was followed shortly by the other five Slytherin prefects (several of which were panting as though they had run the length of the castle) as well as the Head Boy (a Gryffindor) and Head Girl (a Ravenclaw). Severus waited a minute for everyone to make their way into the office and find a good place to stand.

“Thank you all for your diligence in coming here so quickly and on such short notice,” Severus began, crossing his arms over his chest. He knew he could pull off a lie, however he hadn’t had much time to think about what he planned to say. “As many of you may know, I have been working on a personal project for the past four years. Unfortunately my project took a rather unexpected turn a few days ago. As such, I may be forced to leave my classroom at random intervals throughout the day. There may even be days where I am forced to use a substitute professor.

“Should this occur, I expect every one of you to continue holding all members of Slytherin house to the highest standard of behaviour. Should I not be in my office for an extended amount of time and it be necessary for you to speak with me about the behaviour of members of the house, please notify the Headmaster and he shall be in touch with me.”

All of the students in attendance nodded. This did not seem like an emergency call, but maybe something had happened and he only had a limited amount of time to speak with them? He didn’t seem frantic, but then again he never did unless a potion was in the process of exploding.

“Questions?” he asked, knowing if he didn’t pretend to answer their questions, rumors would start.

“What kind of project are you working on, sir?” Enida Tetcher, the Head Girl said.

“One which is of high personal importance,” Severus said, the bright green eyes on Julian's gaunt face coming to the forefront of his mind. “In its current state, it is highly unstable and could have disastrous consequences if not responded to in a timely manner.”

Every child’s face in the room paled a couple of shades at the seriousness of his tone.

“How long should we be on this state of alert?” Matilda Green, the 6th year prefect, asked.

“I would expect at least until the end of the year. Should this change, I shall inform you.”

Severus waited a few minutes for anyone else to ask a question. When none were forthcoming, he dismissed the students. As they walked out, he turned and sat behind his desk, steepling his fingers and pondering what he was going to do with the child … his child… in the hospital wing.

Hydration they could give him via the IV Poppy had placed when he first came in. A barbaric muggle device, but it worked to give blood and hydrating fluids in a pinch. Nutrition would be more difficult. If his stomach was unable to move the food through, there was no point in giving it to him. It would cause more harm than good. Potions, too, required a functioning digestive tract. Maybe the muggles had a type of nutrition they could use to supplement him?

If they could get his magical core stabilized, it would be more feasible to convince his core to heal his digestive tract. From there, they were much closer to being home-free. But a magical core was an energy sink. It would always try to protect and repair the wizard, but if there wasn’t enough energy to sustain it, it would pull from “non-essential” body stores to feed itself so it could protect what it deemed “essential systems.”

They needed liquid energy. Not a stimulant, but actual energy.

Severus sighed and opened his desk drawer with the intention of writing out possible potions they could use to increase his energy levels or could slow the degradation of a damaged magical core. He never pulled out a sheet of parchment paper, however, as sitting on top of all of his stationary was the answer to all of his questions.

A confiscated chocolate frog card.

Chocolate. Sugar. Glucose. Liquid energy absorbable through the mouth.

Severus quickly closed the desk drawer, summoning his money pouch and travel cloak from his personal quarters, and left his office in a rush. He ended up blowing past one of the prefects who was just in his office. She swallowed hard as she took in the look of determination on his face. Whatever happened to his project must have been bad for him to be leaving the castle in the middle of the day despite having afternoon classes. Four years of work for it to all go horribly awry, she couldn’t even imagine.

Chapter Text

Severus walked as quickly as possible down the path to Hogsmeade. He needed candy and lots of it. The more pure sugar, the better.

Whether the boy was able to tolerate the physical act of eating when food made it into his stomach or not, the hope was that he would be able to tolerate the simplicity of glucose as it didn’t need to be absorbed through the intestines. Though rudimentary in humans, there were some minor mechanisms for glucose absorption through the oral mucosa. With any luck, what vampiric anatomy he had managed to obtain through the incomplete transformation he was continuing to suffer from would have enhanced this.

Though not an expert on vampire anatomy by any stretch of the imagination, Severus could only hope that his theory on this was correct as, other than the obvious changes to their magical signature, the primary differences between vampires and humans did seem to have a rather…oral fixation to them.

Rounding one of the many bends in the road, he found himself walking behind the friendly half-giant groundskeeper. His long, mole-skin coat brushing just over the tops of the shorter bits of brush which lined the walk to Hogsmeade.

“Oh, hullo Profess’r Snape! I didn’t hear ya behind me!” Hagrid said, continuing to walk towards the village, jumping slightly as the younger man seemed to silently appear beside him.

“Hello Hagrid,” Severus said, falling into step with Hagrid’s large strides.

“Why’re ya goin’ to Hogsmeade Profess’r?” Hagrid said, trying to strike up a conversation as he noticed the crease of a frown on Severus’s forehead.

Severus was quiet for a moment, still thinking over the list of possible things he could get for Julian. Would he be able to find something appropriate for the boy in Hogsmeade or would he need to search farther afield for something the boy could tolerate in his current condition? Would Knockturn Alley be a more appropriate place to look? Did Knockturn Alley even have a candy shop?

What a bizarre thing to be suddenly concerned with…

“I need to do some last minute shopping,” he answered quietly after a few moments, unsure if he should divulge the existence of the vampire currently residing in the Hospital Wing. “Hagrid, you enjoy magical creatures, correct? Tell me, what would you give an ill vampire if not blood?”

Hagrid thought about it for a moment, stroking his beard as he walked.

“Prolly a few blood pops. Or chocolate. Dark chocolate would be better. Blood would be best, o’ course, but chocolate is good too. Some of ‘em like a dark red wine too, but not all of ‘em. Why? Do ya have… know a vampire?” Hagrid asked rather excitedly.

“No, Hagrid,” Severus sighed trying to cover his tracks, knowing the man, while not meaning to, would certainly be unable to keep … Julian’s existence a secret. “It was just a theoretical question. There is very little information on illness within many magical creatures. They must get ill at some point.”

“An’ it is very hard to deal with. Special creatures, the lot o’ them. An’ the more magical they are, the more help they need. Take pixies, fer example. When they get sick, their friends will huddle ‘round ‘em and let ‘em feed off their magic. I dunno ‘bout vampires, solitary creatures they are. Do know they don’t go to muggle hospitals though!”

Severus walked in silence for a few minutes as he thought about what Hagrid had said. It made sense really. Magical creatures did tend to always stay near other magical creatures or structures. Muggles rarely saw them and not just because they were consciously hiding. They needed magic to feed off of. Vampire attacks were more common in muggle communities that bordered on magical ones. Reports from muggles of magical creatures in the wild were rarely far from major magical towns. Even the most vicious of werewolf attacks tended not to include muggles, though these attacks were certainly not a conscious effort on the part of the wolf.

“Thank you, Hagrid,” Severus said sincerely. The man’s insight into magical creatures was always surprising and insightful in ways that belied his education level. It honestly was a pity that the man had been expelled; he would have had an exceptional professional career of caring for magical creatures.

On arriving at Hogsmeade, Severus nodded his head in thanks to the groundskeeper as they parted ways. Hagrid continued on to the tavern while Severus turned and went to the high street, thankful that this was not a weekend and there were no students in town. It wouldn’t do well for his reputation to be seen going into a candy store. Though perhaps the content of what he was purchasing would lend credence to the ongoing rumor mill which perpetually circulated throughout Hogwarts.

The irony of the idea that he himself was a vampire was not lost on him.

Severus sighed as he stepped into the shop and was assailed by the smells and colors of candy of every shape and flavor imaginable. A quick scan of the shop and he found the rather untouched jars of blood pops in the ‘Unusual Flavors’ section. Few people enjoyed their flavor, but they were just what he was looking for. Their sickly dark red color shimmered under the candlelight of the shop, appearing more as solidified blood than simply candy. They weren’t true blood as they were able to be marketed towards a human clientele, but they would do.

Severus looked at the price and scoffed at how much they cost. It cost less for him to buy many of his potions ingredients than it cost to buy a single blood pop! He was going to have to ask the headmaster for a forward on his salary if he was to take care of the child over the summer. This was rapidly going to become an expensive endeavor.

Grabbing a few different dark chocolates and breathing a sigh of relief that they were nowhere near as expensive as the blood pops, Severus quickly checked out so as to avoid small talk with the owner. He had never spent so much on candy before in his life. Six blood pops and four small chocolate bars had cost him ten sickles!

Albus owed him a raise at the very least.

Chapter Text

Poppy was sitting stroking what little could be seen of the boy’s cheek when Severus returned from Hogsmeade, a few tears evident in her eyes.

“What happened?” Severus said, trying to see if the boy was still breathing.

“The poor child woke up for a minute while you were gone,” Poppy said, wiping her eyes and sniffling. “He asked if you had ever come to visit him or if you were just pretending.”

Severus closed his eyes briefly and tried not to groan. He had never wanted to be a father. He had never thought about having a child. He had never planned to be any form of caregiver. But he also couldn’t let Lily’s child be left alone in the situation he was in. And he refused to be like his own father, distant at best and physically abusive at worst.

No, this boy would not know that life. He had already endured more hardship than most and wasn't even old enough to have recieved his Hogwarts letter yet.

“I told him you had come to check on him but he was always asleep. He has so much hope and so little trust, Severus. I can’t even imagine what his family put him through,” Poppy continued with a long, malingering sigh. “Where did you go, by the way. That was quite a long meeting with your prefects.”

Severus conjured a chair and sat next to the head of the bed opposite where Poppy was.

“I had a thought and I ended up discussing it with Hagrid,” Severus said. “He needs something to provide him with energy that he isn’t getting from food. If we give him the tube feedings we were given, he will continue to feel ill because they are designed for humans. Once he gets some form of energy his body can use to function, he can stop drawing from his magical core.”

Poppy nodded, “This is true, but his stomach is mostly paralyzed. We could give him blood, but even through the tube it won’t move very well and we’d risk the blood congealing in his intestines because he needs to feed on whole blood.”

“Exactly, but glucose can be absorbed orally to an extent. And Hagrid mentioned that magical creatures greatly prefer to be around other magical creatures when ill so they can draw magic from those around them.”

Poppy’s eyes widened in understanding as Severus pulled out the bag of candy.

“Severus, I hope you are right. His magic levels are already almost back to where they were when he was first brought in.”

“Is it safe to wake him, or should we let him wake naturally?” Severus asked, looking at the sickly child. His sickly child. He needed to accept he was now the father of this child or he risked breaking his promise to keep him safe.

“You can try waking him up,” Poppy said. “He may not stay awake for long though.”

Severus nodded and held the boy’s hand, shocked at how easy it was to feel all of the bones under the skin.

“Harry?” He called softly before switching to the boy’s new name as the boy stirred. “Julian, can you wake up for me?”

Harry’s eyes flickered slightly as he struggled to pull himself awake. He didn’t feel quite as foggy as he had, but he felt so weak. Even the act of opening his eyes took quite a bit of effort.

“Come on, that’s it. Wake up,” Severus continued, rubbing the back of the hand he held.

Harry blinked his eyes a couple of times before registering who it was standing in front of him. The man in black! Sev-something? What was his name? He had come back! He hadn’t just told him he wanted to adopt him just to get the headmaster to leave him alone! He actually came back!

“Hello, sir,” he said hoarsely, his throat still hurt from the vomiting earlier.

“How are you feeling, Julian?” Severus asked.

“Tired,” Harry said, eyes starting to droop again. He was tired, hurt, and struggling to put two and two together. Was the vampire thing a dream? Was he Julian? He was Julian, right?

“Julian, don’t fall asleep just yet. I need you to try something,” Severus said, pulling out a blood pop.

“Hmm?” Harry mumbled sleepily. “Whazzit?”

“Suck on this please,” Severus pulled off the wrapper and held it to the boy’s mouth.

Harry barely opened his mouth and something sweet was shoved in. It tasted kind of strange, almost metallic, but good. Slowly he sucked on it, trying to stay awake long enough to finish it. He almost nodded off a few times at first, but as he maneuvered it around his mouth more with his tongue he woke up a bit more.

“What is this?” Harry asked the man next to him.

“Do you like it?” Severus asked, handing the boy his glasses. “I have more if you want them.”

Harry nodded faintly. “It’s good. But what is it?”

“It’s called a blood pop. Don’t make that face, I thought you said you liked it,” Severus said, smirking slightly at the disgusted look on Julian’s face.

“Is… is it made with real blood?” Harry said, continuing to suck on the lolly regardless of what the answer would be.

“Unfortunately for you, no. It is just flavoured to taste like blood. But what you need right now is some sort of energy in your system so you don’t keep burning through your magic. Or in your case right now, the magic of mine you got through the blood transfusion.”

“Oh, so like my glucose jellies. I always feel less tired for a while after I use them, but Aunt Petunia doesn’t like buying me many. Says it’s too expensive for the likes of me,” Harry said quietly, hanging his head and pulling out the now empty lolly stick. “Could I have another?”

Severus gave him another and felt rather ill. His aunt had been denying him something that could legitimately help him? Severus had seen their house, he knew there was no way they were short on funds. Besides, they had been receiving a small amount of money to care for him since he was a baby. There was no way they couldn’t have afforded to get the boy the best medical care available.

“Poppy,” Severus asked, turning to the matron. “Could a room be set up here in the infirmary for us? I know you don’t want to come down to the dungeons every time you would need to check on him.”

Poppy smiled and nodded. “Of course I can do that. I take it you are not planning on going back to Spinner’s End this summer? The ward resets itself at the end of the school year if I don’t tell its wards to allow certain changes to remain.”

Severus scoffed. Of course he had planned on returning there, but now that was not going to happen. Maybe if Julian was stronger they would go visit the house and they could visit the house his mother had grown up in, but that would not be happening for a while. Possibly not this summer. Besides, there was nothing worthwhile to do there. It was such a dreary mill town, always had been.

“Not anymore. If we are to make it seem we are father and son, we need to get to know each other better. We cannot ever hope to achieve that if I am there and he is here.”

Poppy rolled her eyes at the rather snide comment and looked at Julian who was watching the adults talk. The hope in his eyes was almost palpable and it broke her heart. Prior to Julian coming into the hospital wing, she had been planning on having a rather bland summer holiday in the Hebrides then spending the last week before school with her daughter. While it was still a few weeks before the end of school, she was hopeful Julian would be stable enough by the end of summer for her to at least do the last portion of her holiday plans.

“I’ll put one off of my office so the door won't be visible to everyone who comes in here.”

“Thank you, Poppy,” Severus said, bowing his head in thanks.

“Thank you, Madam Pomfrey,” Harry echoed, pulling his blankets around him and shivering slightly.

Poppy smiled at the two and went to her office to notify the headmaster she would be modifying the wards to the infirmary.

Severus and Harry sat in silence for a few minutes, the only sound being Harry sucking on his blood pop. Neither one looked at the other for several long minutes before Harry finally broke the silence.

“What’re potions?” he asked.

Poppy stood in the door to her office listening to Severus gently explaining the basics of potion making to the child mostly hidden under the blankets. She had never seen Severus act this way in all the years she had been taking care of him. He was actually trying to be gentle with this child. It helped that the boy seemed to be equally interested in the topic and was asking decently thought out questions, but Severus being this caring was unusual.

Finally sensing a break in the conversation, Poppy stepped out of the door way and made her presence known.

“Alright, your room is all set up. It’s a bit cramped, but I had to work within the original wards of the Hospital Wing. Albus will be coming shortly to get it connected to the internal floo network,” Poppy said, walking over and grabbing the bag of supplies which still sat at the head of Julian’s bed.

Severus looked at the small boy he had been speaking to. There was so much he had to learn about the wizarding world, but if he approached every topic with the same drive he had just been questioning Snape on potions with, he would do extremely well.

“Do I have to walk?” Harry asked quietly as Poppy walked into her office.

“No,” Severus said. “But it would be easier for me to carry you without the blanket. It’s just a short ways into the other room.”

Harry nodded and pushed the blankets off of him. Immediately he felt as though he had been dropped in a bucket of ice. He was so cold! How was no one else freezing?

Severus bent down and lifted the small boy into his arms, instinctively cradling Julian’s head. Holding him for the first time without the blankets was disheartening. He could feel every bone in the child’s back: shoulder blades sticking out like wings, ribs so prominent they felt like a washboard, and down the middle of the back were all the lumps of his spinal cord standing out. It felt more like lifting a replica of a skeleton than lifting a child. Severus cut his musing short, however, when Julian began shaking as his body desperately tried to create heat to compensate for the lack of fat insulation.

Severus quickly strode to the new room off the office of the healer and stopped when he entered the room.

Cramped was a bit of an understatement, but it would do. The walls were a warm cream color with dark wood molding and the floor was a dark wood of the same color. There were no windows in the room, which Severus was fine with. On one side of the room was a rather small fireplace with a fire already glowing in it. On the other side were two beds, one was placed in a corner and the other placed so there was room to walk all the way around it. Between the beds was a bookcase full of books. There was an additional door on the other side of the room which led to a small bathroom, in which Severus could make out a toilet, sink, and very small shower.

Severus pulled back the covers on the free standing bed as best he could and placed Julian in it. He then spelled the head of the bed up slightly so the boy wasn’t laying flat and cast a warming spell on the sheets and blanket that were already on the bed. He then summoned the other blanket off the bed in the infirmary and tucked it around Julian as well.

“Thank you sir,” Harry said, looking around the room in awe, blood pop stick hanging from his mouth which was now blood red. “Are you really going to stay here too? It’s ok if you don’t want to.”

Severus could tell how hopeful the boy was that he would say he would be staying there and how much it hurt to say it was ok for him not to.

“I will be staying here most of the time when I am off. I still have my classes to teach and my duties of Head of House to attend to. However, I have already informed my prefects and the Head Boy and Head Girl that I may be called away at a moment’s notice and they should speak with the headmaster if I am unavailable.”

Harry nodded in understanding. He didn’t know what a prefect was, but it seemed like they were students who could help handle problems.

“What is a house?” he asked, removing the blood pop stick from his mouth and dropping it into the bin by his bed.

“There are four houses here at Hogwarts. Slytherin, which I am the head of. Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor. At the beginning of every student’s time here, they are sorted into a house which best suits them and their personality. Slytherins tend to be resourceful, cunning, and ambitious. Ravenclaws value intelligence, wit, and wisdom. Hufflepuffs: diligence, tolerance, and fairness. Gryffindors are considered to be brave, determined, and daring.”

“What’s a head of house?” Harry asked, yawning. This was the longest he had been awake in a long time.

“My job as a head of house is to look out for the students placed in my house and make sure they are behaving themselves, doing their homework, and not slacking off.”

“Do you like it?” Harry took off his glasses, placed them on the bookshelf next to him, and rubbed his eyes.

“Not in the slightest. All of them are dunderheads.”

Harry chuckled and yawned again. He wasn’t completely sure, but he had a sneaking suspicion he enjoyed calling people that.

Chapter Text

It had taken more than a week of living on a diet of almost pure sugar for Julian’s magic levels to finally stabilize enough they were no longer dropping rapidly when he was awake. They had tried the chocolate after having run out of blood pops, however Severus soon found out that, while Julian’s stomach wouldn’t immediately revolt as it had done with the cold water, it was still too sluggish to properly digest the milk in the chocolate. Even darker chocolate tended to have a few too many additives to it for his stomach to figure out what to do with, leading to the return of the horrible cramping and nausea.

That was a long night, but it provided proof of concept. The energy in the glucose was providing his magical core with the energy needed to no longer try and cannibalize his body. In turn, his core was beginning to actually repair the damage it itself had done to the boy's body.

And as his magic levels stabilized, they were starting to notice other minor improvements. His vital signs were more stable, he was able to stay awake for longer and longer periods of time, and he was feeling consistently less cold. He still preferred having the blankets and hat on, but they weren't quite as much of a necessity as they had been.

There had only been a few times where Snape had had to be pulled out of class due to a change in Julian’s status, a fact he was thankful for. Most of those times were Julian waking up from a nightmare and immediately vomiting, one of which required Severus to again be a donor as Julian had begun to vomit small amounts of blood after a particularly long episode. However, there was one time when he came rushing in only to find Julian and Poppy smiling widely.

“My stomach growled!” Julian had declared happily, poking at the offending area with a finger. “It’s starting to wake up!”

Severus had struggled to keep up his ‘mean professor’ reputation for the rest of the day. If Julian’s digestive tract started moving, they would be able start feeding him blood in the way he actually needed it. And, in feeding him blood, they could hopefully move him beyond the monstrous transitionary period he had been stuck in for far too long. While it was certainly not ideal to be hiding a vampire in the school, it was significantly better than hiding a child who was in such a bad way that a strong breeze could do more than simply knock him over.

Despite the improvement in his magical levels, every day was still filled with massive ups and downs. And with every change in his health, Severus was finding himself more and more impressed with the boy’s resilience, a trait he no doubt got from his mother. No one was meant to remain in such a state for such a long period of time and Julian's body had been trying to finish the transformation for nearly two years with no assistance. If the boy's true sire was ever found, they would undoubtedly be tried and likely staked for their crimes.

Eventually, they fell into a daily routine. Severus would wake early and check the boy’s vital signs, if everything seemed stable, he would then floo to dungeons and get his classroom ready for the day. He would then go to the Great Hall and grab a small breakfast as he had found the smell of human food made Julian’s nausea significantly worse, particularly food with garlic. After breakfast, he would go back to see if Julian was awake. If he was, they would talk about whatever Julian had questions about (generally relating to Hogwarts and what attending would be like) until it was time for classes to start. Severus would teach until lunch, check on Julian once more, then he would teach until the end of the school day.

After classes, Severus would stay in the dungeons and spend time in Slytherin house. He still had to keep up appearances and this was essentially the same schedule he had had while actually working on the Wolfsbane. If he wanted to keep Julian a secret for the rest of this school year, he had to stay on a similar schedule.

Dinner was another quick affair, with Severus generally bowing out quickly so as to allow Poppy a chance to leave the infirmary and get some food herself. Julian would always try to be awake after dinner so the two could spend some time speaking with one another or reading through the various materials on the bookshelf in their room. Once Julian was asleep for the night, Severus would set up the monitoring charms to make sure he would be awakened himself should something go awry during the night. He would then use the infirmary’s office to work on grading the various assignments he had had returned that day.

For Julian, the days were spent sleeping for long hours, reading anything magical he could lay his hands on, and sucking on more lollies than he had ever eaten in his entire life. He had been incredibly thankful to find out magical candies would not cause tooth decay. He had been afraid his teeth would rot right out of his head at the rate he was being told to consume them.

It hadn’t taken them long to find out he wasn’t limited to just blood pops, though those were certainly his favorite. Severus had gotten a rather pained look on his face when he had told him he liked the blood pops the most, so he hadn’t pushed the issue and would happily accept any of the different flavours of lolly. Except grape. Those tasted too much like medication for him to enjoy them.

Madam Pomfrey would come into their room when Severus wasn’t around and she had no patients and, as he got stronger, tutor him on some of the more basic aspects of wizarding life such as writing with a quill or wizarding games. He was utter rubbish at Wizard’s Chest, but it was fun to watch the figurines fight and it was a good game to play while talking. On days when he wasn’t feeling well enough to focus on a lesson or play a game, Madam Pomfrey would read him stories from The Tales of Beedle and the Bard.

Writing with a quill was hard, but there was a secondary reason it was important he learn the skill: he had to practice writing his name. He had gotten much better at responding to the name ‘Julian,’ but it still felt unnatural at times. The more he practiced with the quill, read wizard stories, and played wizarding games, the more he was able to separate his new life as Julian Snape from his old life as Harry Potter.

His life as Harry had been one of sickness and neglect. Julian had a father, lived in a castle, and was a wizard. It felt as though all of his wishes had come true, though not in the way he expected. And with summer coming up, he had a feeling it was only going to get better.

Chapter Text

Severus sat behind his desk in the dungeons rubbing the bridge of his nose and sipping on the strongest, darkest coffee the house-elves could procure. Finals had finished and he was well and truly behind on his grading. He needed to create an antidote for an exploded potion which had doused the Weasley twins in a foul smelling slime that left them smelling like rotting fish and turned their skin green. And last night had been awful as they had attempted to give Julian a nutrient potion modified for vampires through his tube.

It had worked well enough, that is, until they decided to increase the rate at which it was being given. Even after they had slowed the rate back down, Julian was still having such terrible cramps and nausea they had to stop. Six hours later, the cramps had died down enough he was no longer crying in pain at every spasm. But by that time it was nearly three in the morning.

And now this.

Severus sighed as he read over the letter he had received in the post. He had completely forgotten about Draco Malfoy’s birthday. While Severus and Lucius had never been friends in the traditional sense, Lucius had continued to keep in contact with Severus even after the war was over. While Severus knew this contact was more of a ploy to seem as though he were a spy as well, Severus also saw in the relationship an opportunity to perhaps prevent Draco from entering the same dark path his father went down.

Forgetting his birthday was an inexcusable error on his part, especially as Draco was in love with receiving presents. The boy truly had a good heart but was being spoiled beyond belief by his parents, namely his father.

Lucius, from the tone of the letter, was not pleased when Severus had failed to come to his son’s eleventh birthday party. Nor was he pleased when Severus had not sent any form of letter or card to the boy. Now, several weeks on from the event, Draco was beginning to believe Severus no longer wished to be his mentor.

Severus sighed once more as he cast a warming spell on his coffee. Antidote first, then he would worry about Draco and the massive piles of paperwork he had sprawled around him on the desk.

This was going to be a long day.

Lucius Malfoy glanced up from The Daily Prophet when the floo flared to life in his study. Only a few… select… individuals were allowed access to his home in such a way. Severus Snape, the spy, was one of them.

“You wished to speak with me?” Severus said, soot off his already black robes.

“You missed Draco’s birthday. He has been hoping since opening his Hogwarts letter to speak with you about classes and Slytherin house,” Lucius said coolly, turning back to the paper with mild disinterest. “However, you have not once sent him a letter, a present, or any kind of explanation as to where you are.”

Severus looked at his previous mentor with tired eyes.

“I’ve been preoccupied with my work.”

“You have never been so preoccupied you forget something important. I know you, Snape,” Lucius sneered, throwing the paper onto the desk and striding over to where the potions master stood. “I know you have been grooming my child to go against his pure-blood heritage. I know what you are working at Snape. Do not forget, I can easily get your charges reversed. You break off your ‘friendly relations’ with me and the ministry suspects a thing, we both take the fall. So tell me, Snape, what part of your work has you so preoccupied you forget your other friends.”

“I’ve been working on a personal project,” Severus said tiredly.

“What kind of personal project?”

“One that, quite frankly, could land me in Azkaban for life if the ministry finds out,” Severus said, shuddering slightly.

Throughout the time he was being tried as a Death Eater, Severus had spent several months in Azkaban as he awaited sentencing. Lucius had been there as well, though he had managed to buy his way out long before Albus had been able to get the majority of Severus’s charges dropped or lessened. Lucius had claimed to be a spy as well, claiming to have worked alongside Severus on many occasions. While not an outright lie, as the two men had routinely been paired for raids by the Dark Lord, it was also not quite the truth. But it was close enough Severus had answered a poorly worded question under Veritaserum in such a way that Lucius had managed to walk free as though he had been a spy as well.

“What have you done, Severus?” Lucius reeled back slightly, much of his fury dropping away.

Severus paused for a moment as he quickly tried to put together an origin story for the boy who was likely sleeping in the Hospital Wing. Albus had changed the date of the boy’s birth on the paternity paperwork to reflect the day he had been taken from the Dursley house rather than the actual day of his birth. 11 years and roughly 10 months before that, Severus had briefly disappeared from both the Death Eaters and from the Order of the Phoenix. He had tried to run away, but when Lily Potter’s pregnancy was announced, he knew he couldn’t stay hidden any longer.

“Remember when I disappeared for a few months in ‘79?” Severus asked.

Lucius nodded. It had been a strange time indeed. One moment Severus was there partaking in the revelry, the next he was gone. They thought he had been cursed, likely by Bellatrix. When he reappeared a few weeks later, they laughed it off.

“I ran away, a fact I am not proud of,” Severus said, carefully watching Lucius’s expression. “I ran away and attempted to start a life. However, it wasn’t what I thought it would be like, far too tedious. I had briefly found a girlfriend, however we broke up almost immediately. It wasn’t until a few years ago I found out she had tried to reach out to me and had never found me after I left.”

Lucius crossed his arms and glared at the potions master, nostrils flaring. They had needed him shortly after his disappearance, he was the best potions master in Britain, no matter his age. Without him during those few months, several Death Eaters had been badly injured during a skirmish. His potion skills easily could have saved their lives and possibly changed the tide of the war.

None of this explained what he was risking his freedom for.

“She had gotten pregnant,” Severus continued, his voice stilted as he watched Lucius for a reaction. “I wanted nothing to do with the child, but when she passed away suddenly, I received a letter in the mail from his aunt and uncle stating I was the child’s next of kin and therefore should be his guardian. I turned it down initially.

“I was told he was a sickly child, but I was sure I could cure him with a few potions. He had stayed with an aunt and uncle for a few years before I finally agreed to meet him. I was unaware of how ill he was. I was told he was unable to eat, a fact I believed to have been exaggerated until meeting him. I tried every potion I could think of to help, yet he kept getting worse. When he started showing some strange symptoms, and it finally clicked for me what it was.”

Lucius tried to look bored, but he was enthralled in the story. Severus had a child? He had been hiding a child? It sounded like all of the necessary paperwork had been filed, however, so what was the problem?

“I want to reiterate, I did not know when I picked him up about this. I honestly thought he had a stomach problem or some strange, congenital illness, but that was it,” Severus looked Lucius dead in the eye as if daring him to use legilimency.

“What’s wrong with him?” Lucius asked, his interest certainly peaked.

“He is a vampire. But I fear he may have irreparable damage done to him from the level of malnutrition he has,” Severus said, continuing to look Lucius in the eye.

Lucius visibly recoiled, his face paling dramatically. Vampires were dark creatures akin to dementors in that they could remove the soul of a being if they really wanted to. For Severus to be keeping one, even a child, he risked having all of the charges he had been exonerated of called into question. Lucius himself had dark artifacts stored within his house, but as they were family heirlooms it was considered excusable. The more modern evidence of his dark arts usage was hidden away. But a vampire was a being which was inherently dark. As a known Death Eater, even a spy, being seen performing the Dark Arts, owning any form of dark magical artifacts, or ‘consorting’ with any beings which had been on the side of the Dark Lord was seen as an effort to bring about the rise of a new Dark Lord.

“Where, pray-tell, are you keeping him if he is so ill?” Lucius asked, wondering how this child was being hidden.

Severus smirked rather evilly knowing Lucius wasn’t going to like this.

“In the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts.”

“WHAT?!” Lucius roared, eyes wide in shock. “You are keeping a vampire in the SCHOOL?”

“Calm yourself, Lucius,” Severus said, glad to finally have the upper hand in the relationship. “He has no urge to feed yet, nor would he have the strength to do so.”

“I assume that barmy old man knows about this?”

“It was his idea to keep Julian in the infirmary," Severus couldn't help but let out a dark chuckle. "Albus has a penchant for trying to give all beings access to the same resources. If he were to get any worse, however, Madam Pomfrey has already decided she would send him to St Mungo’s for treatment. We all know what would happen to him if he were to be sent there.”

Lucius stood in silence for a moment, pondering his next move. The boy could not go to St. Mungo’s, that much was certain. If it were known that Severus had been harbouring a vampire in Hogwarts, he would immediately be called to trial. And if Severus was arrested and his status as a spy called into question, Lucius would be tried as well.

“What sorts of resources do you need to keep this a secret?” he finally asked.

“As of right now, what I need more than anything is money,” Severus admitted. His bank account was still … rather shy on funds at the moment. He was thankful Julian could tolerate the more basic lollies as opposed to just the far more expensive blood pops. “I have found myself woefully unprepared for having a child, medically complex or not. I had presumed his relatives would at least send him with some clothing, however that was not the case. Add to that his… special dietary requirements and the fact I am having to do some experimentation in order to find potions which work to stabilize his condition.”

“Does the Headmaster know of any of this?” Lucius asked. “He knows the boy is on Hogwarts grounds and you are a professor at the school, has he not raised your salary at all to assist you?”

Severus sighed. Every time he had tried to bring up the fact that he was needing a forward on his salary at the very least so they could get by until he was able to start doing commissions for the summer, Albus made some sort of excuse or was called away on other business.

“Unfortunately, we have never gotten the chance to talk about this current financial situation.”

Lucius looked at the man in front of him flatly. He didn’t know what to think of the situation. Severus having a child. That child being a vampire. A child who was sickly to the point of needing higher care but not being able to receive it as he would then be marked and tracked like an animal. It all seemed highly improbable.

“I cannot provide you with funds outside of small gifts. Anything more than that and it will cause concern and could flag my accounts for investigation. I can, however, purchase some of the items you may need, particularly those of the more expensive variety,” Lucius said.

“Thank you, Lucius,” Severus said, bowing his head in thanks. This kindness was unexpected from the Malfoy patriarch.

“On one condition,” Lucius added suddenly, causing the hairs on Severus’s neck to stand up.

“Yes?” Severus asked hoping the condition wasn’t one requiring more work from him.

“I would like to meet the child,” Lucius said, picking up black and silver cane and summoning his travelling cloak.

“Now?” Severus said, trying to keep the shock out of his voice.

“Yes, now. I won’t be made a fool of. You say you have a child you’re keeping in the infirmary, I want to see for myself.”

“I would never try to steal your money Lucius. Nor would I intentionally put either of us in this situation.”

“Now, Severus. We are going to Hogwarts now,” Lucius all but growled as he grabbed the man’s arm and apparated the two of them as close to Hogwarts wards as he dared.

Severus gasped on landing as the apparation was unexpected to say the least. The visit to see Draco had officially gone off the rails. He only hoped Julian was coherent enough to know he was in danger if he answered any questions wrong or let on that he lived with muggles.

Lucius followed behind Severus by several steps up to the castle. If anyone had seen them, they would have thought Severus was leading him in. Severus knew, however, that should he try any form of escape or to notify Albus of the visit Lucius would curse him immediately.

Albus, however, met the two men at the front door as though he had been expecting them. In all likelihood, the wards had notified him of their arrival long before they had reached the main door.

“Governor Malfoy, to what do I owe the honor of having a surprise visit?” Albus said rather happily.

“Good afternoon, Headmaster,” Lucius drawled calmly though there was clearly some tension around his eyes and mouth. “I have heard there is a young child staying here who is not yet a student. As it is not common practice for children of professors to stay in the castle, I felt it prudent to check on its well-being.”

Albus nodded and stepped to one side, allowing the men to enter into the building ahead of him.

“You don’t mind if I come with you to the infirmary, Severus? These old bones have been giving me fits, perhaps Madam Pomfrey has something which would help.”

“Not at all, Headmaster. However I do believe Lucius has prior engagements he needs to attend to.”

“Not to worry, Severus,” Albus said, coyly playing the part of the old man. “I’ll catch up.”

Severus nodded to the headmaster as he and Lucius strode down the halls, nearly running over Percy Weasley who was meandering slowly towards the library with his nose in a book.

“Five points from Gryffindor for not paying attention,” Severus snapped as the boy jumped to the side, eyes widening in shock.

The two men continued through the halls to the hospital wing, garnering looks of both fear and curiosity. Some of the older students had seen Lucius Malfoy when the governors of the school would come and do a periodic inspection and walk-through, however this time he was alone and with Professor Snape and they were both striding quickly towards the hospital wing. Immediately, speculation began to flow through the student body with a few even daring to try and sneak behind the men. These few students were not brave enough, however, to follow the men when they did enter the hospital wing.

“Severus?” Lucius growled questioningly as they entered the empty wing.

“Do you honestly think me a fool?” Severus said rather exasperatedly as he continued towards Madam Pomfrey’s office. “Why would I keep a child I’m trying to hide in the hospital wing where he can easily be seen?”

Lucius huffed, he didn’t know which he should be more hopeful for. He couldn’t think of a good reason for Snape to attempt to dupe him into believing that he had a child, but he also couldn’t believe that a vampire was being hidden within the walls of the school. Either way, he followed Severus into the office and immediately noted the additional door.

“May I check to see if he is awake?” Severus asked, hoping Julian was up for having a visitor if he was awake.

“Do not shut the door. I don’t want you casting a glamour over whomever is in there,” Lucius said testily, continuing to not trust the spy in front of him.

Severus nodded. It was a reasonable enough request. He would have requested the same if the roles were reversed.

Severus flicked his wand and unlocked the door, a wave of dry heat escaped the room as he entered, making Lucius immediately back up a step. The heat, while not immense, would have been extremely uncomfortable to be in.

‘Unless you are unable to manage your body temperature,’ his mind reminded him. ‘Snape did say he was extremely thin.’

Lucius could hear some murmuring from the other room for a few seconds before Snape reappeared in the door and beckoned him in.

“Julian, this is Lucius Malfoy. He is one of the governors of the school and wanted to see how you were doing.”

Lucius stepped into the room and had felt his eyes immediately widen. Sitting on the bed before him was the most malnourished, sickly child he had ever seen. Even when he was an active Death Eater, he had never seen someone survive to be this thin. The boy’s magical reserves must have been the only thing keeping him alive, it was the only explanation.

“Hullo, sir,” a rather meek voice snapped him out of his reverie.

“Hello, Julian,” Lucius responded, surprising even himself with how gently he said it. “How are you doing.”

“Better, sir. I can stay awake for much longer,” Julian said, smiling slightly. “It feels good to be able to read for more than a few minutes before needing to sleep.”

Lucius nodded mutely, trying to think of a follow up question. He had always prided himself on being prepared for every situation, but seeing the child in front of him shook him in a way he wasn’t prepared for.

“How old are you, Julian?” Lucius asked softly.

Julian thought about it for a moment. He had briefly discussed with his … father… his changed birthday. It had been strange to start thinking of himself as a totally different person, but he was getting used to it. If what his father had said was true, then he would have been extremely famous if he had kept his other name. He wasn’t too keen on that plan, he just wanted to be himself not some famous person.

Severus had also warned him of people trying to find out who he was and to be cautious around people who were asking questions or came to visit unannounced.

“Eleven,” he finally answered. “I slept through my birthday though.”

The same age as Draco. The same age as his son.

It felt almost like a punch to the gut. True, Snape had been working on instilling ideals which went against what Lucius knew, but Lucius knew that in Draco would need to survive in a world where knowing all sides of an issue would help him survive. Severus missing Draco’s birthday had seemed like he had stopped caring, especially as he had broken off almost all contact with the boy for several weeks prior to Draco’s birthday.

Lucius would’ve done the same thing. His child’s life was more important than a birthday party. If it was Draco in that bed, Lucius didn’t think he or Narcissa would have been able to leave the bedside.

“I have a son who is your age,” Lucius continued, his voice surprisingly soft even to his own ears. “He is going to be starting at Hogwarts in autumn.”

“I’ve yet to discuss with Albus the logistics of Julian starting on time, but if he is strong enough by September there is a possibility of him doing a partial schedule,” Severus interrupted, folding his arms over his chest.

“I just want to do potions,” Julian said, blushing and looking down at the book he held in his hands. “I don’t think I’m going to be much good at anything else.”

Lucius smirked slightly. Like father, like son.

“Did you get anything for your birthday?” Lucius asked.

Julian jolted slightly at the question. He hadn’t even thought about the possibility of receiving presents for anything. Besides, his real birthday was over a month away. He had, however, been removed from his cupboard, given a family, and gotten to live in a magical castle. He had gotten a warm room and bed and people who actually, truly cared about him. But more than that-

“I got to live.”

Albus and Poppy were speaking with each other in her office when Severus and a rather green looking Lucius Malfoy stepped out of the adjacent room.

Lucius briefly nodded to the two of them before continuing into the main infirmary.

“I’ll tell you later,” Severus said to the headmaster, following his former compatriot out of the office.

Lucius stood pensively in the middle of the infirmary, a million thoughts racing through his mind.

“You said he has no clothing?” Lucius said, hearing the door to the office close behind Severus.

“No, nothing other than that blanket and hat. We've been keeping him in hospital pajamas for the time being, but those are far from adequate and honestly are sized for children of normal, healthy weight and stature.”

Lucius just nodded.

“I apologize for threatening you,” he said, swallowing his nausea once again as he thought of the bones protruding under the skin of the boy he had seen. “I cannot begin to imagine the stress you are under at this time. I shall attempt to explain to Draco where you have been however I will not tell him of Julian until you inform me I may do so.”

Severus was shocked. Lucius never apologized for anything. And for him to look as shocked as he was now, something about Julian must have shocked him to his core, be it his size, age, or general demeanor.

“Thank you, Lucius. I shall do so when he is able to properly receive visitors.”

They stood in silence for a few more minutes before Lucius finally turned and walked to the door.

“Thank you for allowing me to meet him,” Lucius said, pausing once more at the door. “I shall see myself out.”

He then opened the door and left before Severus had a chance to say anything.

“What was that about, my boy?” Albus asked, having snuck rather quietly up behind the potions master.

“Lucius asked Julian what he got for his birthday and Julian said he ‘got to live.’ I’ve never seen Lucius so rattled at a statement, I honestly think he was thinking of how Draco is the same age and was imagining his own son in the bed saying that,” Severus said with a sad smile.

“He did seem highly disturbed,” Albus nodded.

Severus snorted. Lucius always had been disturbed, but he also valued family greatly and would do whatever was necessary to keep them safe. While many of Lucius’s morals were questionable at best, he truly did love having a child and would often brag about his son. If ever there was a way to get the man to do something, it was to remind him of his own family.

“I apologize, Headmaster. I had no intention of bringing Lucius here; he was insistent on seeing Julian once he learned he was the reason I had missed Draco’s birthday.”

“What is done, is done. No harm has befallen the boy, though greater care should be taken in the future,” Albus said, eyes twinkling subtly.

“I am dubious he will return for a secondary visit. He did, however, offer to assist with purchasing some items I will need for Julian’s care in the future.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I do believe you are due for a raise, as well as a cost of living adjustment. Especially now that you have a child under your care,” Albus smiled at the potions master.

“Thank you, headmaster. I’m afraid, however, I will be needing to request an advance on my next paycheck.” Severus said, raising an eyebrow. The two salary adjustments would help lessen the burden of taking care of a child, but his money was still going to be stretched quite thin until he was able to start doing more commissioned work. And he wouldn’t have the time to do that until Julian was no longer requiring intensive monitoring. But it would help.

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Albus said, smiling as though he had a plan in the works.

Severus sighed and rubbed his forehead. Lucius’s visit was an hour of work time lost which he would have to now make up before the grading deadline. He had so much paperwork to get done and the term was almost complete.

He was going to need a lot of coffee.

Chapter Text

Today was going to be a big day, Julian could feel it. It had been nearly a month since he had been taken from his relatives house and brought to this incredible place. It was still hard for him to even think about how much things had changed for him in the past few days, let alone the past month.

He was finally starting to feel … normal. A normal he had never felt as Harry Potter, the freak under the stairs.

Sure there had been some setbacks, but even those were trivial compared to how bad they had been in the past. He would still get sick from time to time, though even those periods were lessening. His blood counts were much more stable than they had ever been since he became a vampire, and he was tolerating the nutrient potions his … father… was brewing for him.

That was the biggest thing he was struggling with: having a father.

He could tell the potions master wasn’t used to having a child, but he wasn’t used to having a father. It felt nice to have someone actually seeming to care about his well being as he had never had felt that before. However, he often found it to be rather overbearing. Severus had all sorts of monitoring spells set up to notify him of any changes. However, those changes included sitting on the edge of the bed. Or laying in bed with his feet above his head. Or getting too excited about the book he was reading.

These past few days had been different though. The term was coming to a close for the students and Severus had been busier than ever with trying to finish the last of his grading and paperwork. This left Julian with plenty of time to do whatever he could while confined to his bed.

He had read through almost all of the books on the bookshelf between their two beds, though he tended to stray away from the fiction books. They didn’t really hold his interest as well as the more technical books on the shelf did, but mostly because they required a base knowledge of the wizarding world in order to understand them. Potions was rapidly becoming his favorite topic to study, and not just because Severus enjoyed talking about them. They reminded him of cooking and chemistry all rolled into one.

But today he wasn’t going to be getting time to read. Yesterday, Madam Pomfrey said if his magic levels remained stable and he was able to tolerate running his tube feeding they would try something he hadn’t been able to do in many, many weeks.

Today he was going to try to stand, and possibly walk.

Moving around on the bed was getting easier for him and he was ever so thankful this bed didn’t make his bum sore if he laid or sat in one position too long. But bed mobility was still not mobility. And after finishing Hogwarts: A History, he wanted to be able to explore the castle on his own. He wanted to meet the ghosts and see the Quidditch pitch and go up to the top of the astronomy tower and look at the ceiling of the Great Hall.

But today, he wanted to make it to the windows in the infirmary so he could watch the students ride away in the horseless carriages as they went home.

Julian was trying to focus on reading through the first year potions book for a second time and keep his nerves about getting out of bed under wraps when he heard the lock to the door click open. He looked up hopefully, thinking it could possibly be Madam Pomfrey.

“Good morning, Julian,” Severus said as he stepped into the room and saw the boy awake and reading as usual.

“Good morning, sir,” Julian responded quietly. He was still unsure what to call the man as calling him ‘dad’ seemed almost disrespectful to his real father. And the more he was awake around the man, the more afraid he was that he was going to mess something up.

“I know Madam Pomfrey is planning on having you walk today, but I have a surprise for you which may make it a little easier for you to get around,” Severus said, pulling out a fist sized box from his pocket.

Julian looked down at it confused for a moment until Severus flicked his wand and the box resized to a normal crate size.

“You remember Mr. Malfoy coming to visit?” Severus asked. Julian had passed out shortly after Lucius left, so Severus didn’t even know if he could recall the visit. Since that visit, Severus had received several letters from the man inquiring about Julian and his health, sizing, and if any special alterations to his clothing was needed.

Julian nodded timidly. He vaguely remembered the blonde haired man coming into his room, but he had been on the verge of falling asleep at the time. He didn’t seem too mean, just … concerned. He had had an air about him though that made him seem very arrogant, but he hadn't seemed like someone who would want to hurt him in any way.

“Lucius, Mr. Malfoy, was kind enough to send you some new clothes as your old clothing was … sub-par. It didn’t fit you at all. I received this box today. Lucius said he also included a few books for you on vampires as a belated birthday gift, though I would like to check them for curses first as it is hard to come by some of these books from a reputable bookstore.”

Julian looked at the box in awe. Someone sent him a present? A big present? He didn’t think even Dudley had ever gotten a box this big.

It was too much. Why would anyone want to spend so much on him? Even if it was only a few books, books were expensive. And new clothing was expensive too, especially if it didn’t come from a second hand store. And Mr. Malfoy didn’t seem like the kind of person to frequent the thrift store. Did wizards even have thrift stores?

He was scared to open it. What if it was just an empty box? Or a prank.

“Julian?” Severus said, concern leaking into his voice as the boy made no move to open the box.

Julian continued to stare at the box, trying to decide what to do before finally asking, “Is this a prank?”

“No Julian, it’s not a prank,” Severus said quietly. He understood that fear; opening a box and having nothing be there. “What if I open it?”

After thinking about it for a moment, Julian nodded. If there was only an old coat hanger or a 20 pence piece, at least he wouldn’t be the one to see it first. It was easier to have no hopes than to have those hopes high and have them be dashed.

With a flick of his wand, the top of the crate disappeared. Inside, Severus could see a wide range of robes, pants, trousers, socks, gloves, cloaks, and shirts. There were even a few knit caps similar to the one Julian was always wearing to keep his ears warm. Severus picked one up and found it to have a permanent heating charm on it and was fleece lined.

He looked over at Julian, who was trying hard not to look. The child didn’t want to have his hopes dashed so badly he was looking completely away from the box.

Severus smiled gently and handed the boy one of the hats.

“Julian, try this on.”

Julian’s eyes flickered to the hat in Severus’s hand. It looked incredibly comfortable and warm. Gingerly, he reached out and took the hat, holding it as though it would bite him.

It was warm! He could feel the heat emanating from inside the hat. It didn’t take him long to rip off his old hat and slide the new one in place, sighing at the heat that wrapped its way around his ears. The hat itself was a dark emerald green and while it wasn’t overly thick in appearance, it was the warmest hat he had ever owned.

“This is for me?” he whispered, continuing to be shocked at the box before him.

“Yes,” Severus said softly. “This is all yours.”

Julian looked into the box and pulled out a warm looking wool sweater. He could feel a bit of heat coming off this too. Setting it aside, he reached back in and grabbed a pair of socks. Warm. Boots: warm. Pants: warm.

“They’re all warm!” He said, excitedly.

Severus smiled at the boy’s enthusiasm as he continued to pull items from the box. The books must be in the bottom of the crate.

“Are you sure they are all for me?” he said, mood dropping immediately.

Severus rolled his eyes. “Of course they are. You don’t see me wearing clothing this small, do you?”

“And his son won’t want them back?” Julian asked, still worried about the possibility of having to give them up.

“Draco isn’t small enough to wear these either, Julian,” Severus said quietly. Julian had never been sensitive about his size, but he had likely not been around many people his own age for a very long time. Even if other 11 year-olds were his height, he was still extremely underweight.

“Are you sure?”

“Extremely. You’ll meet Draco soon enough. He is thin, but quite tall,” Severus stretched the truth slightly. Draco’s height was average at best, but he would still tower over Julian even if he slouched. “Now let's get you dressed.”

“Do they need to be washed?” Julian asked, making no move to put any of the clothing on.

“Bespoke clothing comes pre-laundered, Julian,” Severus said, continuing to remove items from the box and placing them on the end of the bed. “What would you like to wear?”

Julian watched in horror as the mound of clothing at the end of his bed coming from the box grew. All of these were for him? Why would he need so many clothes? Why would anyone need this many clothes? A jumper and trousers would have been enough, but no there were at least eight jumpers on his bed by the time Severus had removed all of the clothing from the box. There were also several robes of varying dark colors that reminded him of the robes Severus wore.

“Sir?” Julian said, panic creeping into his voice. “Sir this is too much!”

“Julian, it's fine. These are all yours. Do you not know what to pick?” Severus said, watching the boy’s eyes jump around as he looked at all of the clothing.

Julian shook his head. At the Dursley’s, he was always hearing Aunt Petunia making snide comments about how people dressed. He had never had to worry about it before, and now was worried he would look absurd.

Severus sighed. As if the physical health difficulties were difficult enough, the boy was starting to show the stress of being in a new environment. In some ways it was a good sign. The boy was awake enough to begin to process everything going on around him.

“Here,” he said, handing the child a simple pair of grey pants and black trousers. “Would you like help getting these on?”

Julian nodded. Just the idea of trying to pull his pants up was intimidating. It always took a lot of effort to lift his hips off the bed and standing was … shaky at best. He was not expecting the pants and trousers to suddenly appear on him, nor was he expecting them to immediately shrink to fit around his waist properly.

Severus smirked at the boy’s expression and silently thanked Lucius for getting the clothing spelled to automatically adjust to the child’s size. It seemed Narcissa may have had a say in the clothing purchases as well, as the clothing all matched and would look good no matter what pairing was put together. Severus had never been great at creating clothing combinations that matched, and was thankful for this extra thought put in to make his life easier.

“Any preference on shirt?” He asked, looking at the piles of shirts and jumpers.

Julian was still looking at the trousers in shock, but shook his head. The trousers were higher waisted than he was used to, but they were surprisingly comfortable. He was a bit worried about the shirt though. Since his stomach had started to wake up and he was getting the nutrient potion, he was starting to notice a bit more drainage from around his tube. He wasn’t keen on the idea of getting it on the new shirts.

Severus grabbed a jumper which matched the new hat Julian was wearing and was surprised when a small ring of matching fabric fell out of the folds.

“What is this?” He muttered to himself holding it up.

Julian looked up, and immediately smiled. He knew exactly what it was and held out his hand. He had always wanted one of these, they looked so much more comfortable than using gauze.

Severus handed it over, still confused as to what the doughnut of fabric was for until Julian undid the small button on the side of it and slipped it under and around the feeding tube on his stomach.

He had explained in great detail to Lucius that a feeding tube had been inserted into Julian’s stomach while he was in hospital and it occasionally leaked. The man had kept asking about Julian’s health needs and modifications needed to the clothing. Severus knew he was more concerned about spells to prevent sun related problems, but those spells were easy enough for Severus to apply. The feeding tube, on the other hand, was far more prone to getting stuck on and in clothing.

They had tried simply covering it with a gauze pad, but that made it difficult to access. Sticking spells were great too, but they would frequently kink the tube if too much was stuck down or leave a loop in the tubing that could easily get pulled if too little was adhered. The clothing had to be made to accommodate the tubing being there, had to make it easy to access, and had to keep the tube securely in place.

It was crucial to keep the tube in place until he was able to feed enough to no longer require it. If that tube was lost, they had no way to get him the nutrients he needed. While his intestines were moving (albeit extremely slowly) his stomach had yet to have the strength to move things along. They had tried small amounts of warm water or nutrient potion, but several hours later they would find him violently vomiting into the trash can.

The seamstress must have done her research to figure out anything about feeding tubes.

Julian quickly pulled the dark green jumper over his head, immediately relishing in the warmth that encased his torso. While he wasn’t nearly as freezing cold as he had been, he still couldn’t get warm easily.

Severus smiled slightly at the boy on the bed in front of him before spelling all of the clothing into the drawers under the bed, making sure to leave out a pair of socks and the boots.

“What?” Julian said, rather self-consciously as Severus smirked.

“You look like a Slytherin,” he said proudly. “If anyone were to see you, there would be no doubt in their mind who you belonged to.”

Julian blushed and ducked his head.

A knock at the door sent both men’s heads flying up. It was time.

“You ready?” Severus said, spelling the boots and socks onto the boys feet and helping him sit on the side of the bed as Madam Pomfrey came bustling in.

“Oh, good! You’re dressed!” she said as she puttered around the room, making sure there weren't any items littering the floor he could potentially trip on. “You look lovely dear.”

Julian blushed, but sat up a little taller.

“How long have you been sitting for?” she asked, looking at Severus sitting next to him.

“Just sat up,” Julian said, knowing she would check him over before allowing him to walk at all.

She let him sit for a few minutes while she and Severus talked about summer plans. Occasionally, Julian could see her flick her wand at him and he watched as the numbers over his head changed. His heart rate was staying stable and his blood pressure wasn’t plummeting, so after a few minutes, the decision was made.

It was time to stand up.

The floor suddenly seemed a long way down.

Gently, Severus helped lower the boy down so his feet were on the ground. The child's knees immediately started quivering as he held his own weight for the first time in over a month.

“How does it feel?” Poppy asked.

“Shaky,” Julian said, feeling like he was hanging onto Severus for dear life. “Really shaky.”

“Do you feel light headed?” Poppy asked, flicking her wand once more and looking at the vital signs floating above his head. Heart rate was up, but not worryingly so.

“Do you need to sit?” Severus asked, feeling the boy’s hands tighten around his sleeve.

“Not yet,” Julian said, trying very hard to stand up without hanging onto Severus’s arm. Every time he went to let go, he could feel his knees buckle.

Suddenly, his knees couldn’t take it any more and slammed together. If Severus hadn’t been there, he most certainly would have hit the floor. He had never gotten this weak before, but then again, he had very nearly died.

Severus lifted the now panting child back on the bed. “You did well, Julian.”

Julian just sat there and caught his breath. He most certainly did not do “well,” quite the opposite in fact. He could barely stand for two minutes! He had really been hoping to get to watch the students go home, but that seemed like a pipe dream now.

Severus watched as the boy’s eyes filled with tears. Julian had been so calm about most everything, but this pushed him over the edge.

“Julian, what’s wrong?” he asked quietly. “Are you in pain?”

Julian shook his head and tried to wipe away his tears with his sleeve, only to find that more appeared.

“I just… I dunno… I thought…” he started, stumbling through the words trying to find the best explanation. “I thought I could make it to the windows.”

“You want to go to the windows? In the infirmary?” Severus asked, pulling out a handkerchief to give the child. Why a child who was light-sensitive would want to go to some of the largest windows in the castle during the day made little sense to him, but he doubted Julian hadn't already thought through all of the potential issues surrounding this. And if it was something that simple which could bring some joy into the child's life, then by all means he would have it.

“Thought I could walk there. I wanted to watch the students go home. I wanted to see the carriages,” he admitted, cheeks turning bright red. There was no way they would let him do that. They would want him to get back into bed.

“I think that can be arranged,” Severus said. “Poppy, a word?”

Poppy looked at him rather confused, but stepped into the corner of the room with him and through the quick silencing spell he had thrown up.

“Do you think he’s stable enough to go outside?”

“I don’t see why not. He would either have to be levitated or carried down. And it’s quite overcast today. He’ll need a cloak though. And no more than 20 minutes. And spell your watch to read his vital signs and magic levels.”

Severus nodded. It would do the boy some good to get out of the room, even for a little bit. He was weak, yes, but more stable than he had been in a long time. A few quick spells and Severus’s watch was showing a continuous reading of Julian’s vital signs.

Dropping the silencing spell, Severus looked over at the child who was looking at them sadly.

“The carriages don’t leave for another half hour,” Poppy said, smiling. “How about we do some leg exercises and stretch out your muscles a little, then you can go watch them leave.”

Immediately, Julian’s face lit up. They were going to let him out of the bedroom? He was going to get to watch the carriages go? It would be so nice to finally get out of the room!

Severus smirked at the matron, knowing she had deliberately left out the ‘going outside’ part. Julian deserved a happy surprise from time to time.

Chapter Text

“Sir?” Julian asked as Severus approached the doors to the infirmary, clinging desperately to him as though trying to become one with the man's robes. “Sir, the windows are over there.”

Severus snorted as Poppy opened the door for them. Though excruciatingly weak, the boy had tried very hard with the leg and arm exercises he was given. He had been surprisingly well behaved, a fact which relieved Severus to no end. Despite being ill, despite the endless barrage of testing, despite everything he had been up against, Julian was proving himself to be a driven student.

He deserved a surprise.

“Sir? Where are we going?” Julian whispered, noticing the portraits on the walls moving and talking to each other as they looked down at the passing duo curiously.

“You wanted to see the carriages, yes?” Severus said, adjusting how he was holding the boy. Julian wasn’t doing much in the way of helping keep himself in a decent carrying position other than clinging weakly to his lapels and his boniness was making carrying uncomfortable.

Julian nodded, frantically grabbing onto the potion master’s robes as the man shifted him around. He wasn’t used to being carried and his legs and arms were already starting to feel sore from physical therapy. Occasionally, his legs would twitch involuntarily and he was afraid he might kick the man.

“We’re going to go outside and see them off.”

Julian froze, “Outside? But what about the sun?”

“It’s quite cloudy today, in fact it may rain later," Severus said softly as they continued down yet another flight of stairs. "Remember the spells I cast before we left? I made it so all of your clothing is spelled to help shield you from the sun, including your hat. Your cloak has a hood that we’ll pull up when we get to the ante-chamber of the Great Hall. And both Madam Pomfrey and myself will be there. You will not catch on fire, if that was even a remote possibility.”

Julian nodded, but definitely seemed unsure of the plan. Now that he knew what was wrong with him, he was scared all of the stories he knew might be true.

As they got closer to the Great Hall, Julian could hear the students chattering away to each other as they worked out who would be taking which carriage and if they were planning to see each other over the break. Their voices ricocheting off the walls and echoing around him. There had to be several hundred students out there!

His mouth immediately went dry as he whispered, “Are you sure I can go out there?”

Severus nodded then stopped briefly and shifted Julian around so they were face to face.

“I want you to understand a few things before we encounter any students or other professors. First, the only person on staff who knows you are here other than myself and Poppy is the headmaster. Second, if anyone asks who you are, you are my son. I doubt anyone will try to talk to you other than the professors, I … have a reputation with the students.”

Julian nodded and Severus maneuvered him onto his other hip. They really needed to get some meat on the child if they were planning on taking him anywhere else.

Severus took a deep breath as they stood outside of the antechamber. What was he thinking? They could have easily just taken the boy to the windows and let him watch the carriages from there! But it was too late now.

Besides, Professor McGonagall was already asking questions about why he wasn’t going back to Cokeworth this summer. Her questioning had only gotten more intense when Albus had told her to drop it. Her Gryffindor curiosity was peaked and she wasn’t dropping the topic any time soon. And she was spurring the other professors on to ask him as well. It wasn't as though she didn't have reason to ask; as the Deputy Headmistress, renewing and resetting the wards after the student's departure was one of the tasks she was assigned to complete.

This, at the very least, would get them to be quiet. It would also introduce Julian to the world before it became obvious Harry Potter was missing, and the students would most certainly be gossiping about the potion master’s child when they went home.

This was as convoluted as something Albus would come up with. The batty old man must be wearing off on him.

“Are you ready Severus?” Poppy said from behind the pair. “Julian?”

Both males nodded as Severus pulled Julian’s hood over his head, helping hide the boy from the masses as well as any errant sunlight.

Poppy opened the door and the cacophony of noise increased dramatically in Julian’s ears.

Severus entered the room with his normal long, sweeping strides, walking over to where the other professors were standing and chatting about nonsense while Poppy continued on through the throngs of students, checking to make sure no one was hiding an illness or injury that she could quickly take care of. It wouldn't do for a student to go home without being in at least similar health to how they came! Goodness, what would the parents say!

Professor Sprout was the first to notice him. If there hadn’t been students around, he would have likely burst out laughing at the double take she did in seeing the bundle of robes he was carrying. Her mouth dropped open as she looked between the pale man and the exceedingly pale child he carried. There wasn't much mental gymnastics which needed to be done, however it was still quite amusing to witness the as the realization as to what she was seeing hit.

“Oh. Oh. OH!” She squealed, hands flying excitedly to her mouth, abandoning the conversation she had been having with Professor Burbage and Professor Flitwick. “Severus!”

She was quickly followed by Professors McGonagall, Sinistra, and Madam Hooch each appearing equally shocked. They had known he had been busy with a project, however nothing that he had been doing indicated that that project included caring for a child. A child who looked remarkably like him what with his dark hair and pale skin.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Professor McGonagall said, admonishing the man.

“He had to be hospitalized and technically still is,” Severus said, hefting Julian up slightly as he tried to get the boy's hip bones to stop digging into his side. “He’s been extremely ill for several years.”

All of the women immediately got looks of pity on their faces and began berating him for not taking time off.

“We could’ve helped you with your classes or grading, you stubborn man!”

“Or given you some time off!”

“Or helped you with taking care of him!”

“Absolutely not!” Severus said sternly, his eyes flicking between the three of them as Julian continued to peek cautiously around at the students without lifting his hood. “I would like a classroom to come back to, not a crater in the dungeon! And while I appreciate the offer, none of you are trained even remotely in the healing arts and would have been unable to manage him should his condition deteriorated even in the slightest.”

“Well, are you going to introduce us?” Minerva asked, trying to get a glimpse of the boy under all of the robes and cloak. “You don’t get off with just bringing a child in and having us not ask questions!”

“Fine,” Severus said, shifting Julian around so he could look forward better.

Julian looked up and saw all of the professors staring at him, the women more than anyone, though there was one professor who was extremely short who was looking at him oddly. It wasn’t anger or malice he could see, it was just curiosity beyond what the other professors had. As if he could sense something about Julian.

“This is Julian. Julian, these are some of the professors of Hogwarts,” Severus said, pointing out each of the professors as he named them. “This is Deputy Headmistress McGonagall, Professor Sprout, Professor Burbage, Madam Hooch, Professor Sinestra, Professor Flitwick, and Professor Vector.”

“Hullo,” Julian said, turning rather pink and tucking his head back into Severus’s shoulder.

A quick look at his wrist watch confirmed Julian’s vitals were fine, he was just embarrassed or shy.

“Hello, Julian,” Professor McGonagall said gently, trying to get closer to him to see him better. Severus had said the boy had been ill for several years, but the poor boy looked awful, like he had never eaten a day in his life! “How old are you, dear.”

“I just turned eleven,” Julian said, trying not to look at the woman. He wasn’t ready for twenty questions and he couldn't help but feel self-conscious under her scrutiny. It felt oddly like when one of the neighbors would come to visit. Sure, they sounded nice, but their judgement was never-ending. And if he didn't make the right impression...?

Minerva’s eyes went wide and she looked at Severus who nodded in confirmation. There was absolutely no way this child was eleven. Maybe eight at best. If he was going to be a first year in the fall, the other students would eat him alive.

“Are you excited to come to Hogwarts in the fall?” Professor Sprout asked. The boy may be small, but she would protect him as one of her own if necessary. He would never be cast out of Hufflepuff if that was where he landed, she would make sure of that. Though he did look like a proper Slytherin wearing all that green!

Julian perked up a bit at the thought, but he was a realist. He knew with hard work he would be able to walk again, but by the end of summer? He didn’t know if he would be able to make it all over the castle.

“I hope I can! I feel much better now, and I’m going to work hard, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it to all the classes,” Julian said, his voice fading out by the end of the sentence. He didn’t want to admit he was weak, but these professors seemed different from his primary school teachers.

“Of course you can make it to all the classes, dear!” Professor Sprout said. “You aren’t the first student who is intimidated by the size of the school.”

Julian blushed and laid his head on Severus’s shoulder, not wanting to contradict her.

“Pomona,” Severus said quietly, sensing Julian didn’t want to discuss his current difficulties on his own. “His fear of not making it to class is not based on intimidation of the size of the school but rather the physical demands the size of the school requires of those in attendence.”

Professor Sprout looked confused at the statement, but a glare from her former student was enough to let her know to leave well enough alone. Minerva, on the other hand, took it as a challenge. Why was the boy’s ability to get to class a concern? What was wrong with him that made this a concern at all? She was going to find out.

“Ah, Severus!” Albus’s voice carried over the crowd. “Came to see off the students?”

Severus just scoffed as he readjusted Julian once more on his hip. Really, there had to be some sort of cushioning charm he could use. Julian was extremely small and light weight for his age, but he was certainly not an easy weight to carry.

“Good morning, Headmaster,” Severus said as the old man approached.

“Julian, my boy, how are you?” Albus asked, seeing what all the fuss amongst the professors was.

“G’morning, sir,” Julian responded quietly. “I’m doing well.”

“He was wanting to see the carriages and has been more stable in these past few days that he has been in a long while. I thought it better to bring him down here and let him see the carriages more closely.”

“Marvelous,” Albus said, eyes twinkling. “A very good plan indeed. And perfect timing too, the carriages are just about to leave!”

Minerva and the other professors’ jaws dropped. Albus knew about this child and hadn’t told them?

Slowly, the throngs of students meandered outside, urged on by the professors who followed behind the crowd. The occasional student would catch a glimpse of their potions professor carrying something, but not enough to be curious. Eventually, the entire student body was loaded into the carriages, leaving the professors standing on the steps bidding them farewell. As the students waved goodbye to their favorite professors and the school, many of them noticed their potions professor setting down the object he was carrying on one of the flat stone banisters on the stairs and wrap his arm around it almost protectively.

Molly Perkins said she saw a small hand poke out of the bundle of robes. Octavia Septer knew she had seen a pale face under the hood of the robe. Oliver Wood swore up and down that he saw Professor Snape smile. The Weasley twins confirmed they had seen the boy in the infirmary.

By the time the carriages were at Hogsmeade station, word had spread to all of the students: Professor Snape had a child.

Chapter Text

“Good job, Julian!” Poppy exclaimed as she watched the young boy walk down the aisle between the infirmary beds. “Keep going!”

Julian panted slightly, but turned and made one more pass down the aisle before sitting on bed and catching his breath. This was the farthest he had walked to date. It had taken him nearly a month of exhausting work, but he was now mobile.

Sort of.

He could only make it so far before he had to stop and catch his breath and let his muscles recuperate. But every day he made it a little farther and didn’t have to rest for nearly as long. Naturally, there had been several days where things hadn’t gone to plan, but that was a fact of life everyone could understand. The frustrating thing was, however, that he had worked so hard but was still unlikely to be able to attend a full schedule of classes during the upcoming year.

The fact he was now mobile was still something to celebrate, and he now had people to celebrate with.

“How many was that?” he asked, looking up at the matron who had taken a seat on the bed across from him.

“You managed to walk the length of the infirmary twenty times. Fantastic job!” Poppy said, smiling at the boy.

Julian smiled brightly at his success. He was exhausted, winded, and slightly light headed from the effort, but he had done it! Soon, he could start exploring Hogwarts!

“Alright, laddie, let’s get you back to your room. Would you rather walk, or have me levitate you?”

“Let me rest a bit more, then I’ll walk it,” Julian said, determined to not require someone carrying him any more. Being carried made him feel like he was a baby, and, while that was nice sometimes, it was becoming more humiliating as he got stronger. He was nearly eleven after all!

“Alright, I’ll give you a few more minutes,” Madam Pomfrey said, beginning to putter around the ward. This would be the first time in many years she would have all of her pre-opening tasks done before the start of the school year. “Remember though, we are going to be working on stairs this afternoon.”

“I remember,” Julian said quietly.

Stairs made him shutter. He knew he shouldn’t be afraid of them, but the idea of walking up and down stairs made him more anxious than it ought to have. The idea of falling down them, or not having the strength to climb them was bad enough, but apparently there were moving staircases in Hogwarts. And trick stairs. And stairs that were sometimes there and sometimes not. Getting caught on one sounded like a nightmare situation.

Thankfully, it didn’t take nearly as long to recover from his walk as he had thought and was soon able to make it back into the room off of the office.

He had scarcely made it into bed when a pain shot through his face. This was the third time in the last week it had happened and it was getting progressively worse. It shot from just over his upper lip, under his sinuses, and back into his jaw. It felt as though someone had taken a red hot rod and jammed it into his face. Immediately he felt his eyes water from the pain, his mouth started to water, and his nose start to run.

“Julian?” he could hear Madam Pomfrey saying. “Julian? Are you alright?”

He moaned slightly as the pain started to abate, leaving nearly as quickly as it had come. He was almost glad he still wasn’t eating properly; he didn’t think he would have been willing to eat anything after that.

“Julian, where does it hurt?” Madam Pomfrey said, trying to get any information out of the child. His vital signs were ok, if not a little elevated from stress. She could tell he was hurting, but the question was where was the pain coming from.

Julian breathed a sigh of relief as the pain disappeared. He had been through many different tests and procedures, but never had he had anything that hurt as bad as this pain that kept shooting through his skull.

“My face keeps hurting,” he said quietly, trying not to move his face as much as possible. “It’s gone now.”

“When did this start occurring?” Madam Pomfrey said, trying not to sound overly stern.

“The other day after you had me try the sip of deer blood.”

Madam Pomfrey nodded and sent a patronus to fetch the potions master from his labs.

It had been a long time coming for the young child to try consuming real blood for the first time. They had been hopeful he would tolerate taking it orally as his stomach had finally shown signs of beginning to move. The hope had been to give him some blood and maybe it would speed along the process of getting the child’s stomach to function properly.

Poppy wouldn’t say it backfired, but the poor child certainly didn’t tolerate it well. He had enjoyed the taste despite it being a small amount, but he certainly hadn’t enjoyed the cramping and nausea that hit him several hours later when the blood congealed in his stomach rather than moving on into his intestines as it should have.

And now the poor child’s face was having pain as well? Poppy was afraid she knew what was happening, and it was definitely not something they were wanting to have happen yet.

Julian’s teeth were finally starting to come in, and with that he would start having the drive to hunt and feed.

She had dealt with the aftermath of Remus Lupin’s monthly transformations. She had put up with hormonal Veela students. She had patched up Professor Kettleburn more frequently than she cared to admit. She wasn’t trying to get a full set of magical creatures on her resume and was not looking forward to an untrained vampire being in the school.

A quick scan of his face brought confirmation to her fears. The canines which had previously been impacted within the gumline had begun to move downward with a small fluid filled pocket forming behind them. The swelling which had previous been there, no matter how minute, was beginning to flatten out as the structures causing it moved into their proper locations.

Julian saw the scan results as well and rested his head on his knees. He knew what she was looking for, and knew she saw it. His teeth were coming in. He was officially becoming what Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had always said he would be: a freak. He had just gotten a family too, albeit a small one. Would they want him anymore? Would they be scared of him and kick him out now?

They were shaken from their thoughts by the sound of the floo in Poppy’s office as Severus came through.

“What’s going on?” he said flatly, though concern was evident in his face.

“I do believe Julian’s teeth are coming in,” Poppy said. “He was complaining of some intermittent facial pain that started after the deer blood.”

Severus nodded and sat at the foot of the boy’s bed. Julian was resting his chin on his knees and hugging his legs to him, a position Severus had begun to despise the boy being in as he was less than forthcoming with any information.

“Julian?” Severus said quietly, noticing the slight flinch when the boy registered he was being spoken to.

“Yes, sir?” Julian said softly, running his tongue along the inside of his teeth. Nothing was loose yet.

“Are you still in pain?” Severus asked, not seeing any of the signs he had begun to associate with his child hurting. Lily’s child. Potter’s child. Not his child, he had no stake in that claim outside of a forged piece of paper.

Julian shook his head slightly. The pain, thankfully, had vanished just as quickly as it had come.

“Are your teeth loose?”

Again, a small head shake. Severus could see in the child’s eyes an underlying fear the boy was trying desperately to hide.

“Julian, what are you afraid of?”

Julian wrapped his arms around his knees and buried his head, only shrugging his shoulders in response. Severus could feel his ire rising, but wisely kept it tempered. He wasn’t going to be getting anywhere by yelling at the child; he had learned that quite early on. Julian was always on the defensive unless he was feeling too ill to move.

No, consistency was key with the child, and lashing out was not going to win him any favors.

Severus heard the boy mutter something into his knees and sighed. He was debating having Poppy check his hearing at this rate. Julian would routinely be talking quietly but his volume would continue to drop until Severus could scarcely hear him. When he would mention it to Julian, he would get a shocked look of ‘you couldn’t hear me?’ back.

Gently, he coaxed Julian’s head out of his arms and made him look up. The boy’s eyes were red with unshed tears and his cheeks flushed.

“Once more, please. I couldn’t hear what you said.”

Julian swallowed before answering softly, “You’re going to send me away. I’m too dangerous.”

Severus sat back and sighed. The more they got out of the boy, the more he loathed those muggles. It didn’t seem as though Petunia was truly acting in the boy’s best interest when she sent him away, but rather to make herself look good. It wouldn’t be the first time Petunia had acted this way; Severus could remember many times when he was growing up when she would turn over projects to her sister when they were too difficult. Generally she had only put in the minimal effort to get the project started then would make a show of doing her work before ultimately turning over a destroyed project for someone else to try to finish.

Severus could only hope Julian wasn’t going to turn out like all of the other projects Petunia had done this to in the past.

“You will be dangerous, yes. But this is not an unknown danger to us. We will work to find ways of managing this and mitigating problems before they arise. You are not going to be abandoned for something you can’t control.”

Julian sniffed and turned away from the man sitting next to him. He didn’t really believe what the professor was saying; he knew no one would really want him that badly. Who would really want to keep a freak around?

“Julian, look at me,” Severus said, trying not to let the boy fall into self isolation. “Do you know what I was doing before we retrieved you from your relatives house?”

Julian continued to stare at the wall opposite the professor. Severus had told him he was a potions master and worked with experimental potions during the summer, but hadn’t been overly specific on any of the details. Shaking his head, Julian continued to look at the wall. While he was curious about what Severus had been working on, he didn’t want to look at the man. Hope was poisonous and he didn’t want to feel the pain of rejection anymore. He had tried to be accepted with the Dursleys and had his hopes destroyed every time.

“I had just finished perfecting an alteration to an existing potion that prevents werewolves from attacking people. Before this alteration, the potion took nearly a month to brew, was extraordinarily expensive, and was not widely used.”

Julian frowned. He had read in one of the books in the room that werewolves were extremely dangerous. So much so they were not allowed to be around other people within one week of their transformation. But there was a potion to make them less dangerous?

“It is entirely within the realm of possibility to find a potion which would prevent you from becoming a danger to yourself or others should you be unable to feed for a period of time. And if there exists a possibility, an answer can be found.”

Julian pursed his lips and laid his head on his knees once more. There it was again: hope. He wanted so badly to believe there was a possibility of avoiding biting anyone, but he didn’t know how strong the hunger would be when it finally set in.

“Julian, how about we focus on making sure your teeth don’t cause you too much pain as they come in?” Poppy said, breaking the tension.

Julian nodded slightly, another sharp pain spreading across his face. He didn’t understand why they hadn’t gotten rid of him yet, but he was glad they were still offering to help him manage the pain. A flick of her wand and a small vial flew into the room.

“It’s not a potion, is it?” he asked, worriedly. If it was a potion, it could take hours to get into him depending on the amount needed. And some potions were just too thick to put through his tube.

“No dear, just a bit of clove oil. Rub just a bit on your gums and it should help with some of the pain. It’s nowhere near as strong as a pain potion, but it’ll do. Be careful though, it can make your gums rather irritated if you use too much.”

Julian nodded and put a drop on his finger. It didn’t take long for the oil to make his gums feel a little warm and numb; an odd sensation to say the least. But it helped.

Albus Dumbledore sat in his office pouring over the few applications he had for the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Another year had come and gone, and with it another capable professor. Poor Deirdre Smythe had gone mad shortly before the end of term and had required hospitalization. The cause of her madness was still unknown, but there was a hole in the teaching roster once again that needed filled.

This year’s application pool was different. A total of five people had applied for the job, that was three more than last year. The reason was obvious, of course. This was the year Harry Potter was to come to Hogwarts. Anyone capable of basic math would know that.

Severus Snape, of course, was right out. He had a child to take care of now, he was in no way fit to take on the famed curse placed on the DADA position. Of the other three, there was a retired giant snail breeder, a private tutor from Ireland with no discernible teaching credentials, and a request from a previous Muggle Studies professor to return to “any open position please if possible.”

‘Ah, Quirinus,’ Dumbledore thought. ‘Has it been a year already?’

Quirinus Quirrell had been an extremely bright student, particularly in the fields of Muggle Studies and Defense. He had been on staff for several years as the Muggle Studies professor, though his true passion was for the theory of the Dark Arts. Last year he had asked to take a short sabbatical to gain some first hand experience of the muggle world as well as study the many historical magical sites on the continent.

While Quirinus was a more than competent professor of Muggle Studies, he was an extremely meek man with an occasional stutter caused by stress. DADA was not a class for the meek, however for all that he lacked in confidence he made up for in knowledge.

Quickly skimming through the man’s updated CV, Dumbledore was surprised to see a mention of vampires in the Black Forest. Perhaps Quirinus had managed to learn more about the highly reclusive species? How beneficial would that be for Mr. Potter!

The decision was made then. Quirinus Quirrell would be coming back to Hogwarts.

A few short letters of rejection later (including one which read simply “No, Severus”), Albus stood from his desk and walked over to the floo. Quickly saying the password and throwing in the floo powder, he knelt at the hearth and stuck his face in the flames.

On the other side of the fire was Quirrell, sipping a small cup of Turkish coffee while sitting in the sitting room of a small concrete building. The man reached up and adjusted the large, purple turban atop his head before realizing Dumbledore’s head was in his fire and jumping backwards, knocking the coffee to the ground in the process.

“Good morning, Quirinus. I hope I find you well?” Dumbledore said, smiling. The man’s jumpiness had obviously not abated during his time off.

“P-p-p-professor D-d-d-dumbled-d-d-d-ore!” Quirrell stuttered, eyes jumping around the room. “H-h-h-h-how are you?”

“Quite well, actually. I have a question for you, my boy.”

Quirrell’s eyes continued to dart around the room suspiciously. He was going to be found out, he knew it. Dumbledore knew everything. There was no way this plan was going to work.

‘Silence, you fool!’ a voice hissed in his mind. ‘Answer the man’s questions. He’s here to offer you a job.’

“Y-y-yes, sir?” Quirrell said.

“You stated on your application for re-instatement that you would be willing to take any position, is that correct?”

“Y-y-y-y-y-yes sir,” Quirrell stuttered, struggling to control the twitch in his left eye.

“We do have an open position for the upcoming school year, mind you it is quite a bit more dangerous than Muggle Studies. However, it is the only open position at this time. Would you be willing to return to Hogwarts as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor?”

Quirrell could have cried with happiness. His master ought to be thrilled with this; a much more fitting position for the Dark Lord. And for him.

“Y-yes! Th-th-thank you s-s-s-sir!” Quirrell said, jumping out of his seat as the wind blew a window shutter open.

Dumbledore smiled. This year would certainly be an interesting one.