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Left For You	By : Araea Swiftwind Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Slash - Male/Male Views: 24795 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and in no way reflects the views of J.K Rowling or the affliated companies that own Harry Potter. I make no money from the writing of this story and do this of my own volition for my own pleasure.

Chapter List
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Title: What Lies Beneath

Author: Araēa Swiftwind

Pairing: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, Neville/Luna

Rating: M as precaution

Warnings:Language, adult themes, AU, slight OOC, slightly against Dumbledore, slight Weasley bashing, Hermione bashing, pureblood idealism, evolution of feelings in preteens and the discovery of sexual activities by minors, and probably some other stuff I haven’t through of yet. You have been warned.

Notes: This story is one of those Snape-Is-Harry’s-Father sort of fics, only this has nothing to do with Lily being unfaithful or James boning Severus. This is a legally plausible way for Severus to gain custody of Harry. I feel like this story line could have happened, in an alternate reality where Petunia gets fed up much easier and isn’t as afraid of Dumbledore. Also, I don’t have a beta for this story, so you’ll just have to put up with any errors or possible plot holes you find. (For the plot holes, please let me know. I wrote the prologue and the first four chapters of this in one sitting, on very little food and no water. I’m dizzy and probably not thinking straight.)

< @ @ @ >Prologue< @ @ @ >

“Where’s my Ickle Diddydums?” Petunia crooned, her mouth turned up in a sickening smile.

A chubby blonde boy, no older than five, came careening around the corner into the parlor where his mother was kneeling with his coat. The boy had chocolate all over his face and was sucking on a chocolate-coated finger. Petunia smiled wider and hugged the boy close to her chest, regardless of the fact that he was a mess. She grabbed a handkerchief from her dress pocket and made a token effort to clean the gooey mess from her son. After a few moments of rubbing ineffectually, she gave up and simply stuffed the blonde child into his coat. As soon as his fingers were exposed again, he resumed sucking on them.

A few feet away, another child sat in the parlor, watching the woman interact with her son. This child was jealous of the attention his cousin was getting. The raven-haired boy never had a mother to wipe the chocolate off of his face—not that he had ever had chocolate before to get on his face. The slender child also never had anyone worry about him getting cold, and so never owned a coat.

“Petunia, dear, best be off. Don’t want to catch all the traffic, now do we?” A large whale of a man, Vernon, said to his wife. He smiled down at his blonde offspring and gave the boy a firm pat on the head. Turning ever so slightly, the smile fell off his face to be replaced with a frown. “Get in the car, freak. Figg’s gone and busted her leg again on one of her damned cats. Can’t leave you hear unattended, might come back with the house blown up. Won’t have you slowing us down either. Move!”

No one could ever say that Vernon Dursley was a nice man, though one could argue that he loved his family very much. In his eyes, the black haired child that could theoretically call his own son ‘cousin’ wasn’t family at all. Just because the thing’s mother was related to his wife didn’t make the abomination family. Only thirteen more years, Vernon old chum, he told himself. Thirteen years was an awful long time.

After chasing the raven haired boy and his own blonde child into the car and making sure that at least Dudley was buckled in securely, Vernon got behind the wheel of their old Ford Anglia. Petunia slid into the seat next to him and they were off.

It had been weeks since Petunia first brought up going to Spinner’s End to visit the graves of her parents. Though she usually harbored a resentment against them for always favoring her “perfect sister,” she thought it due time to show some respect, seeing as they did raise her and love her. Vernon was quite against it and had spent a good three weeks trying to talk her out of the walk down memory lane. However, being a headstrong woman, Petunia put her foot down on the issue, and so they went.

Harry, the small child with raven black hair, had never been told much about his grandparents. He had no idea what their names were, what they looked like, or what kind of people they had been when alive. And until he heard his Aunt Petunia angrily declaring that they were going to visit the dead people’s graves, he hadn’t even known they were deceased. So Harry was very much looking forward to going along, and was glad, to some extent, that Mrs. Figg had tripped over another of her cats and once again broke her leg.

The trip to Spinner’s End seemed to take forever for young Harry, especially with his chubby cousin sitting next to him, bludgeoning him over the head with a toy robot he was allowed to bring along. Harry was never allowed to bring toys along when he rode in the car. In fact, Harry was never allowed to even own toys. Toys, as he was told, were only for good little boys and girls who had mommies and daddies and weren’t freaks of nature. That always made Harry sad because, by his way of thinking, it wasn’t his fault he didn’t have a mommy of a daddy, and it also wasn’t his fault that strange things always happened around him. By the time Harry and the Dursleys arrived at the graveyard in Spinner’s End, Harry had a very sore head and was starting to get fed up with his spoiled cousin.

“All right, Duddikins, we’re going to go visit Grandma and Grandpa now.” Petunia smiled sickeningly at her son once again and helped the rotund child from the car. She shot a glare at Harry and said, “I don’t care if you stay in the car or not, just don’t. Touch. Anything!” She broke off her last three words as they were their own sentences, presumably to show Harry just how serious she was about his not breaking anything.

Harry frowned, once she had moved away from the car, as he had no intention of touching anything and felt that her warning really was far more suited to Dudley, seeing as the boy tended to be a walking disaster, what with his weight issues. He slipped from his seat and quit the car on the opposite side from the rest of the family. He looked about, noticing dozens of different headstones, several monuments and a couple of simple wooden crosses stuck in the freshly turned ground. He meandered over to one of the new gravesites and looked at the name: Samantha Warbuckle. He had no idea who that was, or if she was important, but he did know that she was dead. The thought made him sad.

“I didn’t know you, Ms. Warbuckle, but I’m sorry you’re dead.” Harry said softly, a few tears falling from his small green eyes, before walking over to a small patch of wild daisies and plucking a couple from the ground. He slowly went back to Samantha’s grave and placed the daisies down as a sort of offering to her spirit, letting her know that someone missed her. Just as the small child was about to stand up and look around some more, a large blob of flesh rammed into him from behind, causing him to fall into Samantha’s marker and tip it over, crushing the freshly lain daisies.

Upon seeing the destruction his cousin had caused, Harry got sad and angry at the same time. Ms. Warbuckle didn’t deserve her grave to be defiled like that; she was dead and alone now, with no one else to remember that she ever lived. “Dudley, look what you made me do. Ms. Warbuckle’s cross got knocked over. Now how’s anyone supposed to know where she’s buried?”

Dudley sneered at his stupid little cousin and shoved him when he tried to straighten the cross, landing the boy back in the freshly turned earth with the wooden cross painfully beneath his chest. When the smaller boy attempted to get up again, Dudley used a foot to hold Harry’s head down in the moist dirt. “Who cares about stinky dead Ms. Warbuckle? We’re here to see MY grandparents, not some other dumb lady who died.”

Harry’s face was bright red, not that Dudley could see if from the older boy’s position on top of Harry. “They’re my grandparents too, Dudley!”

“Yeah, but no one cares about you. Mum and Dad didn’t even want you to come. They didn’t want you at all! Nobody wants a stupid little freak like you. You’re an abonination!”

Dudley’s words were spiteful, and he knew that they would hurt his cousin greatly. He smiled as Harry started thrashing beneath his foot, trying valiantly to dislodge his much older cousin. Once Harry finally managed to get himself free, he stood facing his cousin on the other side of the Warbuckle grave. His green eyes were filled with tears of anger. Dudley’s grin only widened when he noticed the tears and the clenched fists. He loved getting a rise out of the smaller boy, though he wasn’t particularly good at thinking ahead enough to realize that seriously angering Harry was a bad idea.

The large blonde child didn’t know when to quit. “Did you like that dead woman, Potter? Did she remind you of your mummy? Your dead mummy? You don’t have any parents because only good boys get parents. Freaks like you don’t get anything. You don’t deserve to be loved or happy; you don’t deserve to even be alive!”

Harry’s shoulders squared and his eyes hardened in his anger, the tears now long gone. He was tired of listening to his cousin put him down for having dead parents; he was tired of always having to stand there and take it. Dudley was the one who was the freak, not him. Dudley was the one who didn’t deserve to have a mommy and a daddy. Dudley was the one who didn’t even deserve to be alive.

Dudley could feel the change in his cousin and got scared. He began to quickly back away from the black-haired boy, then turned around and ran, afraid of something bad happening to him. Harry gave in to his anger and ran after the fat boy, his hair slightly standing on end and magical electricity crackling along his skin. He was angry, very angry, and everything inside of him demanded he make the fat blonde pay.

“Mu~mmy!” Dudley wailed, running towards his mother as fast as his chubby little legs could carry him. He was terrified of his cousin, and thought that only his mother could make the little freak stop chasing him. The larger boy was crying pitifully, tripping several times in his fright. He was fairly certain that if the smaller boy caught up with him, he’s be dead.

Harry didn’t slow, even when he saw the shocked and outraged faces of his aunt and uncle. That angry feeling inside him grew larger; those people deserved to pay too. Those people, his supposed family, were supposed to love him and keep him safe, but they didn’t. Those people made him hurt and cry. They didn’t deserve to be alive anymore either. He closed his eyes and let his magic lashed out, wanting to hurt his family so bad that they didn’t get up, so bad that they couldn’t hurt him ever again.

When Harry opened his eyes again, the gravestones of his grandparents were floating in the air right above the Dursleys’ stupid dumb heads. Harry was shocked at the floating stones, and in his distraction he accidentally let them drop, though they fell just behind where the Dursleys were standing. Dudley began screaming and crying louder, a large wet spot forming in his pants. Petunia and Vernon were terrified of the little freak and wanted their family as far away from him as possible. They grabbed Dudley and scooted away from Harry as quickly as they could, not wanting to be around him another minute.

The three people moved as quickly and as cautiously as they could, trying to get around Harry and make it to their car. Neither Petunia nor Vernon wanted to tell the boy to move, or to get close enough to touch him and move him themselves.

Seeing how terrified his family was gave Harry a slight power trip. He liked knowing that they were afraid of him for a change. He liked being the one on top for once. Somewhere deep down, he felt a little guilty at doing this to them—after all, they were still his family—but the rest of him really didn’t care.

The Dursleys finally made it around Harry and they dashed to their car. Petunia threw Dudley into the back seat; for once not checking to make sure her precious angel was buckled in. Vernon slid as quickly as he could into the driver’s seat and turned the car on. Petunia was barely seated, her door still a bit ajar, when Vernon peeled the car away from the graveyard.

The angry little boy was only slightly surprised that his family took off without him, but he wasn’t upset about it—at least not right away. He was simply wondering what he was supposed to do now. The thought hadn’t really crossed him mind when he was trying to hurt them, but it did now. If he didn’t have a family, or anyone to take care of him, how was he going to eat? The wind began howling around him and he shivered a little. He also wondered how he was going to stay warm.

He looked around to see if there was anything around him he could use for shelter. The graveyard was pretty open, though there were several lanes nearby that Harry could see. Perhaps one of the houses on one of those lanes would be kind enough to take a stray child in for the night. Harry was a bit nervous about going door-to-door looking for charity, but he really didn’t know what else he could do.

Harry stood on the stoop of the fifth house he had come to, waiting for the person who lived here to come open the door. All of the other houses he had tried so far were full of crabby old people. None of them thought Harry was being serious, despite the fact that he was a lonely little four year old begging for a place to sleep. One man even threatened to get out the hose if he didn’t get off his property. Harry was starting to lose hope that anyone would be willing to help him.

The street lamps started coming on, and Harry really started thinking about what he was going to do. He was only four, but he was smart for his age. He knew that his aunt, uncle and Dudley were long gone by now and definitely weren’t coming back, no matter how terrified Aunt Petunia was of a man called “Dumbledore”. He knew that the person who lived here might not be home, and even if he was, he probably wouldn’t help out a scrawny little runt like Harry.

Harry started crying out of sheer frustration. He hated that everyone around this stupid graveyard was self-absorbed and didn’t care about their fellow man. He was tired and didn’t want to have to keep knocking on doors all night. And most of all, he was starting to regret letting his anger at his family get the better of him.

Harry’s tears grew bitterer and his heart was starting to break. After hours of trying to find someone to help him, Harry’s maturity level was starting to drop. He slowly started crying louder and louder, and he could feel himself on the edge of a class four meltdown.

It only took a couple of minutes of wailing as loud as he possibly could before Harry could hear feet on the stairs inside the house. The boy decided that the best way to get help might be to ham it up for all he was worth. He opened his mouth and started adding screams to his wails and sobs. There was a part of him, on the inside, that was smirking. Let’s see him turn me away when I look this pathetic, Harry thought to himself.

Severus Snape was shocked, to say the least, to find a wailing child on his doorstep. The boy was scrawny, looking no older than three or four, with a wild mop of black hair. The boy looked absolutely pathetic and utterly alone. The potions master looked up and down the lane to see if there was anyone who could possible be with the child, but Severus saw no one.

The usually stoic man looked back down at the child crying on his doorstep. Severus knew he wasn’t good with children, especially children who made a lot of noise. There’s nothing for it, I’ll have to at least get the child to tell me where he came from and what he’s doing on mystoop.

“Child,” he called softly, trying to get the boy to stop crying. “Boy, how did you get here?”

Upon hearing the man’s voice, Harry stopped crying immediately. The raven-haired child blinked his luminous green eyes up at the black-eyed man and sniffled softly. The man had jet black eyes, an overly large nose, and shoulder-length black hair. Harry thought, even with his large nose, that this man looked pretty. He wanted to answer the man’s questions, and he desperately hoped that this man would let him stay the night.

“I walked here from the graveyard.”

Severus’ eyes widened. That was an odd place for a child to be. “Why were you in the graveyard? And why did you come here?”

“Well,” Harry began, still sniffling and trying to make himself look as pitiable as possible. “I was supposed to be visiting my grandparents, but I got left behind. I don’t think my family wants me anymore.” The green-eyed boy let a few tears slip out and roll down his face, trying to tug on the man’s heart strings.

The dour man took in the tears and the sniffles and wondered, for just a moment, if everything was an act. He wondered if this child could be a lure for thieves or con men. He felt as though he should tread carefully with this child and not make any hasty decisions.

“Where do you grandparents live? I could take you there, and you could stay with them for the night.”

“My grandparents are in the graveyard, though I don’t know if I can find them again. Their stones got moved.”

Understanding dawned on Severus and he sighed internally. The boy’s grandparents were dead, and that was why he was in the graveyard in the first place. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off a headache. If he couldn’t place the child with his grandparents, then he’d have to figure out where his parents went.

“And where do you think your parents went? They couldn’t have gone far without you, right?”

Harry’s green eyes filled with pain and real tears began flowing much more quickly than the fake ones had. His parents. How he wished that he could just go home with his parents. But that wasn’t an option, and in order for this pretty man to keep him, he’d have to know that.

“My parents are in another graveyard. I don’t know where though. I’ve never met them.”

Severus’ eyes widened once more. This boy had no parents and no grandparents. Who, then, took this child to visit their graves?

“Boy, who were you in the graveyard with today? Who left you alone?”

Harry was getting tired and he wished this man would let him come inside. He was cold and hungry and just wanted to lie down. “Aunt 'Tunia ‘n Uncle Vernon ‘n cousin Du'ley. But when the stones started movin' 'round, they lef' me.” More tears started pouring down little Harry’s cheeks, and Severus knew that he couldn’t let the child continue to stand out in the cold.

He scooped the child up and carried him into the parlor, sitting down in a chair with the small boy in his lap. Harry’s eyes had closed during the short walk to the sitting room, and by the time Severus had completely finished moving, he was asleep. The much older man looked down at the boy and took in more of the details of the child’s appearance.

With his eyes closed, the little boy looked like a dirty angel. His black hair sprung out in every direction, quite reminiscent of a man Severus used to know. He ran his hand through it and felt its silky softness, brushing it back from the kid’s forehead. As soon as he did that, his eyes flew open wide. There, on the child’s brow, was a lightening bolt-shaped scar.

“Harry?” The man whispered softly, shocked beyond most words to find the savior of the Wizarding world in his lap.

At the softly spoken word, Harry’s brilliant green eyes fluttered open and he stared blearily up at the man who was holding him. His eyes were having trouble focusing, so he closed them again, though he didn’t fall back to sleep right away.

Severus held his breath for a moment, but once the child’s eyes closed again, he let it out. “Harry, is it really you? I should have recognized you right away. You have Lily’s eyes, and I thought that hair looked suspiciously like Potter’s. Oh, Harry…”

Harry, even through the fog of fatigue, felt shocked at the man’s words. This man, this cold man, knew his name. Knew his mother, and his father. He liked this pretty man all the more now, and hoped he would keep him. He felt safe with this man.

TBC
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