Chapter Text
"What're you doing, sir?"
Severus didn't look up. He was lining jars along the counter in a narrow row: burn-healing paste, Pepperup, a small vial of pain-relieving draught. The Skele-Gro gave him pause. Including it bordered on forethought—on concern. Still, nothing in the Weasley household ever went unused. He added it anyway.
"Preparing a hostess gift for Mrs. Weasley."
“My aunt said you’re meant to bring wine,” Harry said carefully. “Or… flowers.”
He began wrapping the jars in brown paper. "Practical things serve better."
"Yes, sir, but… what are they?"
"Medicine," Severus said.
Harry frowned. "Like… medicine medicine? Or… magic medicine?"
Severus's mouth thinned. Petunia Dursley had a great deal to answer for.
"Potions," he said. "Magical medicine. But the word is potions."
He slipped the parcel into an inner pocket and drew his wand.
"The sooner we go," he said, extending his hand, "the sooner we return."
The lurch and pressure of apparition, and then ground underfoot—rutted earth, a few chickens moving without purpose across an untidy garden. The house listed slightly to one side, as though it had been meaning to straighten up for some years and kept putting it off.
The grip on his hand loosened as Harry's attention moved to the house.
"It won't fall," Severus said.
"I know," Harry said, in a tone that suggested he hadn't been certain until just now.
They had not reached the door when it opened—Molly, wiping her hands on her apron. Behind her, the kitchen was warm and smelled of roasting meat.
"There you are." She stepped back, smiling down at Harry. "Come in."
Severus stepped inside and felt the low, specific pressure of being in someone else's house. Things hung from the ceiling. The clock on the wall had too many hands. A pair of knitting needles moved by themselves in the corner.
Harry pressed close behind him.
"Oh, Severus." Molly took the parcel before he could offer it. "This is very kind. We go through these faster than you'd think."
"I've met your sons," he said.
Molly laughed and turned toward the stairs. "Boys! Come down and meet Harry."
The ceiling shook, then the stairs—a long unbroken percussion—and two identical boys arrived at the bottom, already talking.
"Is it true that you survived—"
"Mum said not to ask him that—"
"I know what Mum said, I was only going to—"
"Fred. George." Molly said, flat. "Let Ron through."
Ron squeezed past them, slightly out of breath, in a collared shirt that had been washed to softness and corduroys that had been someone else's first.
"I'm Ron," he said. "That's Fred and George. They're the same."
"We're not exactly the same," said Fred.
"We are a bit," said George, agreeably.
From the kitchen doorway a small red-haired girl appeared, looked at Harry with large serious eyes, and retreated until only a portion of her face remained visible behind the doorframe.
"That's Ginny," Ron said. "She won't come out yet. She's five. D'you want to play Quidditch? I've got a broom. It's only a toy broom but it goes quite fast. I once went into a wall."
Harry looked at him. "Did it hurt?"
"Loads," Ron said, with some satisfaction. "D'you want to have a go?"
Harry glanced up at Severus, who gave the smallest nod.
"Okay," Harry said.
"We'll come—" "—we're playing too—" "—George knows a better game anyway—"
Severus watched them go. Harry's shoulders loosened with each step away from the adults.
When he turned, Molly was waiting. "What can I get you? There's elderflower wine, or—"
"Tea," Severus said. "Thank you."
She pulled out a tray, set a jug of milk and sugar bowl on it. "How are you managing? Have the suggestions helped at all?"
"The shepherd's pie was well received," Severus said. "I've not seen him eat like that before."
"That's good." Molly spooned the leaves into the warmed pot and poured the water over them. "And what I said before—about comfort." She set the pot on the tray to steep, not looking at him. "Has he come to you at all?"
"He doesn't—" A pause. "No."
Molly said nothing for a moment. She lifted the strainer and poured, the tea coming out dark and steady into the cup, and handed it across.
"He might," she said. "When he's ready. It would be all right if he did."
Severus looked at his tea. He had decided a long time ago that he didn't need to be touched. That no one would want to. He had been very certain of it. And then a child had locked his arms around his neck and pressed his face against his collar and wept without making a sound, and Severus had stood there and felt the sharp knobs of his spine and had not put him down, and it had been—
He didn't finish the thought.
"I'm not his father. This is a temporary arrangement."
Footsteps in the hall. Arthur appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on his trousers, and extended one. "Severus—good of you to come."
Severus shook it. The man's goodwill was entirely indiscriminate, which he had always found faintly disorienting.
Lupin was with him. Severus hadn't known.
He had aged. Grey at the temples already, his robes worn to the cuffs—the look of a man who had spent years making careful choices and ending up with very little to show for them.
"Severus," Lupin said.
"Lupin."
"Remus is staying with us for a bit," Molly said, as though she hadn't noticed that they hadn’t shaken hands. "Supper's nearly ready. Why don't you all sit, and I'll call the boys in."
Severus took the chair at the end of the table.
Arthur asked him questions about the school with genuine interest and no discernible agenda, which should have made it easier and didn't. Severus answered in brief, sufficient sentences. Across the table Lupin sat with the particular composure he had always had, as though nothing in the room required him to be uncomfortable.
Lupin had been a prefect. He'd had the authority to intervene, and he had not used it, and he had smiled that careful, diffident smile whenever James had—
No.
He wasn't going to do this here.
The boys came in loud and pink-cheeked, Ron explaining at length that Harry had gone quite fast actually and hadn't fallen off even once.
"I fell off once," Harry said, as though this were something worth correcting.
"Yeah, but you got back on," Ron said like he was awarding points.
Harry sat down next to Severus. Molly set a plate in front of him without fuss. Harry looked at it for a moment before picking up his fork.
Another boy—older, with the same Weasley colouring and an air of self-importance that seemed incongruous on an eleven year old—settled on Harry's other side. "I'm going to Hogwarts in September," he said. "I've already read the core textbooks."
“Oh,” Harry said.
"He's not going to be impressed, Perce," George said.
Fred was staring at Harry's forehead. "Does it ever—"
"Fred." Molly, from the end of the table.
"I was just going to ask if it itches," Fred said, to his potatoes.
"No you weren't," Percy said.
"Leave him alone," Ron said, and stared Fred down.
Harry's hand went to his forehead, then back to his lap. A moment later, without looking at anyone, his knee found Severus'.
Severus did not pull away.
Lupin's expression hadn't changed. But he had seen it, and Severus could tell.
Severus watched him work through the rest of it—Harry flinching when Arthur laughed too abruptly, the quick recovery, the glance at Severus to see if it had been noticed. The way he thanked Molly when she refilled his water, too carefully for six years old. The way he hadn't asked for anything, had simply waited, hands in his lap, until Ron pushed the butter toward him.
"Harry," he said pleasantly. "Have you been enjoying the summer?"
Harry looked up. The flicker toward Severus was brief but present.
"Yes," Harry said.
"Cokeworth's quite different from Surrey, I'd imagine."
Harry processed this with care. "A bit."
"You were in Surrey before?" Lupin said, easily, as though this were barely a question. "With your aunt?"
"Yes."
"Petunia," Lupin said. He looked at his plate, something moving behind his eyes. "I met her once or twice. When Lily was at school." He left a space. "She must have been glad to have you."
The silence that followed was not long. Harry said "Yes, sir" in the voice he used when the correct answer was expected of him.
Across the table, Severus met Lupin's eyes. Lupin looked away first.
He went outside after the washing up to find Harry and Ron still at the far end of the garden—Harry watching while Ron demonstrated something on the toy broom, explaining at length, crashing gently into a hedge.
The evening was cool. He lit a cigarette and did not think about anything in particular.
Harry looked up once, found him at the back step, and looked away again. Ron had not registered the glance. Ron, so far as Severus could determine, registered very little that was not directly relevant to whatever task he had committed himself to. It was a quality Severus would have found maddening in a student. In a child assigned to distract Harry Potter for an afternoon, it was nearly ideal.
Behind him the door opened. He didn't turn.
Lupin came to stand beside him, leaving a civil distance. A moment passed.
"I wanted to—" He stopped. Started again. "At school. There were times I could have said something. Done something. I didn't, and I've—"
"Stop."
The humiliation of it. That Lupin had looked at him across the Weasleys' dinner table and decided—what, that Severus needed this? That he'd been waiting eight years for Remus Lupin to come and set things right?
Lupin closed his mouth.
"Keep it," Severus said. "Whatever you came out here to say—keep it."
Lupin looked at the ground, then back up. Something moved in his expression and was controlled.
"Then I wanted to ask you about Harry."
"I gathered."
"He's very watchful," Lupin said.
"Children often are."
"Not like that."
Severus drew on the cigarette. Lupin had always had good instincts and poor courage. He would get to the question eventually. Severus was content to wait.
"Dumbledore told me Harry was with Petunia," Lupin said. "That he was protected. Safe." He paused. "That was apparently not the whole picture."
"No."
"Is he all right?"
Severus looked at him. "He flew that broom for twenty minutes without checking whether he was allowed. That's recent."
"And the rest of it," Lupin said quietly.
Severus said nothing.
"Severus. I'm not—I'm not asking to interfere. I know Dumbledore made his decision and I'm not questioning it. I'm asking because I knew Lily, and because that boy is hers, and I'd like to know—" He paused. "I'd like to know that someone is paying attention."
The cigarette had burned low.
"Someone is," he said.
"You," Lupin said. Not quite a question.
"You find that concerning."
"I find that—" Lupin chose the word carefully. "Unexpected."
"Yes," Severus said. "I imagine you do."
"He's Lily's son.”
"Yes," Severus said. "He is."
"And James's."
Lupin was looking at him the way people looked at something they couldn't quite bring into focus.
"I think," Lupin said slowly, "that you could make things very difficult for him. If you chose to."
"I think," Severus said, "that someone already made things very difficult for him. Before he came to me."
He dropped the cigarette and ground it out.
"He finds it quieter now," he said. "That's all I'll tell you."
He went back inside without waiting to see what Lupin made of it.
By the time Harry came out of the bathroom—tartan pyjamas, hair damp and combed flat in a way that wouldn't last—Severus had had enough of the day.
Harry stopped when he saw the bed, the cover turned down. Then he crossed the room and got in.
"Ron's got five brothers," Harry said.
"He has."
Harry considered this. "That's a lot."
“Yes.”
Severus cast the chamberstick with a curl of his wrist, the pale flame settling into its steady glow, and moved to leave. Harry's fingers caught his sleeve.
"Will you stay? Just for a bit."
Severus sat down on the edge of the bed.
Harry sank deeper into the pillow. He didn't let go of the sleeve.
"Ron says I can come back," he said. "They've got gobstones."
"A wizard game. Like marbles, but the stones spit at you when you lose."
Harry was quiet for a moment. Then: "Fred and George wanted to play something before dinner. Death Eaters and the Order." A pause. "I didn't ask what it meant."
Severus went very still.
"What's a Death Eater?"
Harry watched him, small and expectant, his hand still curled in Severus’s sleeve.
“Wizards,” Severus said. “Who followed a very dark man. They hurt people. Killed them.”
Harry was quiet, taking it in. "Ron said his parents fought them. That good people did." He shifted against the pillow. "Did you?"
The silence went on long enough that Harry noticed it.
"Ron said you can tell who they were," Harry said carefully. "Because of a mark. On their arm." He picked at the edge of the blanket. "He drew it in the dirt. A snake and a skull."
"That's enough," Severus said.
Harry's shoulders went up.
Severus looked at the wall and made himself breathe. "You are not in danger from anyone like that," he said, quieter. "You don't need to think about it tonight." He nodded toward the pillow. "Close your eyes."
Harry obeyed without argument.
Severus stayed where he was long after Harry's breathing evened out. The boy's hand had gone slack on his sleeve but hadn't let go entirely.
He had not answered the question.
Harry would ask again. Children always did.