By LastCrazyHorn

Word Count:

Rating: PG-13 for brief language, violence, and depictions of abuse

Summary: A disabled Harry comes to Hogwarts story. Everyone expects him to be like his dad, but how can he be with such a different past? A Slytherin Harry takes on Hogwarts in an unusual way.

He had run up to the owlery early the next morning, hoping beyond all hopes that the owl would still be there. When he found her, he had grinned hugely and then gingerly walked up to her. She watched him the entire time with large, intelligent eyes, but didn’t move or fly away despite having all of the opportunities in the world for doing so.

“I could be your owner, if you’d like.” He offered softly, stretching his fingers out to gently touch her feathers. “I could take care of you. We could be a family, if you wanted.”

She had hooted softly at him and cocked her head as though considering the offer.

“My name is Harry and I’m a first year. I don’t know very much, but I’m trying to learn as fast as I can.” He had continued to murmur to her in a soft voice until she had flown over to his shoulder. At that point, he had figured she was his.

Harry decided to name her, ‘Hedwig;’ a name he had found in his History of Magic text. He nearly skipped all the way back down to the dungeons to get Teddy up for breakfast. He slowed down in the corridor that led to the common room, and then came to a complete stop when he saw Professor Snape turn the corner.

“Professor?”

“Mr. Potter,” Snape said, nodding his head in greeting. “What brings you out so early on a Saturday?” His eyes glittered in curiosity.

Harry grinned widely and then immediately got control over himself. There was no way that Snape could take the owl from him since they were allowed and he didn’t have one. Besides, Snape wouldn’t do that to him, right?

“Harry?” Snape prompted softly, stepping closer to him when he didn’t answer immediately.

“I have a familiar now sir,” he finally offered, looking up hopefully.

“What kind?”

“An owl, sir. Moody sent her to me,” Harry said, nearly bursting with pride.

Snape’s lips crinkled at the mention of ‘Moody,’ but he only said, “Well done, Harry. Have you decided on a name?”

“Hedwig. I read it in my History of Magic book.”

Snape was silent for a moment as he visibly pondered what he had been told, and then said, “A good name, Harry. Are you going to the game today?”

“Yes sir. I was just going to get Teddy.”

“Ah, Mr. Nott,” Snape answered with a small uplift of his lips. “I shall see you at breakfast then?”

“Yes sir,” Harry responded with a grin before heading for the Slytherin dorms.

. . .

Severus Snape waited until the boy was safely inside the portrait before taking his leave. He was loath to admit it, but it seemed that Moody had done them both a great favour by giving Harry that owl. He had never seen the boy smile quite so brightly or openly. It seemed that he would have to write the old bastard a letter of thanks.

He made for his quarters first, intent on getting the note off before he changed his mind. It was just as well that he did, given the visitor he found loitering outside his door when he arrived.

“Where ya been, Snape?” Moody gruffly greeted him as Snape walked carefully up to him.

Snape raised an eyebrow at the man’s lack of manners before answering, “Having a conversation with Mr. Potter.”

“Yeah, how is he?” Moody growled, his eyes showing real interest.

Snape hesitated. He didn’t want Moody in his inner sanctum, but he didn’t want to have this conversation in the open.

As though he were reading his thoughts, Moody gestured to his portrait door and said, “You gonna let me in or do you wanna stand here all day?”

Severus pursed his lips and then leaned in closely to the portrait guarding the entrance and whispered the password in a barely audible voice. The portrait of Slytherin swung open immediately, but not before giving Moody a raised brow of its own.

. . .

Moody was waiting for Harry and Teddy when they left the Great Hall after breakfast that morning. Students were giving him a wide berth, particularly the older Slytherins, but Harry had no such hesitations. Nearly dragging Teddy with him, he walked straight up to the older man and greeted him with a soft, “Hullo, sir.” His words were accompanied by a shy and very quick smile.

“Let’s take a walk outside,” Moody suggested gruffly, nodding his head towards the direction of the grounds.

Pulling Teddy behind him, Harry followed along after in silence. Moody veered off towards the courtyard, removing them from the press of bodies all headed for the Quidditch pitch.

“This is my friend, Teddy,” Harry said, presenting his friend to the older auror.

Moody looked over at the small boy standing besides Harry and gave a jerky nod. “You’re in Slytherin then as well?”

“Yes sir,” Teddy answered stiffly.

Teddy remembered his father talking about the crazy auror Moody, and he wasn’t sure whether to be scared or just wary of the man. Of course, his father went on rants about many people, but Moody was one of the few that had been mentioned more than once.

Narrowing his eyes thoughtfully, Teddy looked up at the auror and said bluntly, “My father doesn’t like you.”

Beside him, he heard Harry let out a slow breath. He didn’t like being this open about his family, but he also wanted the man to understand that he wasn’t his father. Harry was his best friend, and if that meant going against his father, then he’d do it.

Moody smirked at his words and gave a chuckle that sounded more like a cough than anything else. “Can’t say I much like him either.” Something shifted in Moody’s eyes and Teddy held his breath. “And what do you think, Mr. Nott?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” he answered, pleased that the older man understood where he was coming from.

“Try not to make it up too quickly then, lad,” Moody said with a rare wink.

“Yes sir.”

“There’s a Quidditch game today, sir,” Harry offered from beside them. “Would you like to come with us?”

Teddy glanced at Harry and gave a minute nod. He could handle that. He could feel Moody watching them and knew that the older man had seen his approval. He had a feeling that not much made it past the gnarled auror.

“If you’d like,” Moody answered, gesturing them towards the pitch again. “And maybe you can tell me a bit about how you two are getting on here.”

. . .

“Severus? A word?” Dumbledore called out to Severus on his way out of the Great Hall.

Instantly he doubled his occlumency shields and then slowly turned to look at his employer.

“Here?” He asked mildly.

“Let’s walk,” Dumbledore said.

Severus knew it wasn’t a suggestion.

“Tell me about how Mr. Potter is doing,” Dumbledore prompted as soon as they were a bit farther away.

Severus forced himself to take a deep steadying breath before speaking. He knew better than most that there were far too many ways to foul this conversation up.

“It has taken a while, but I believe he is finally starting to adjust to life at Hogwarts,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully.

“And as a Snake?” One of Dumbledore’s white bushy eyebrows raised in question.

Severus nodded. “He is fairing adequately.”

“Good, good!” Was his employer’s more than jovial response.

And relieved, if I am not mistaken, Severus pondered with sharp eyed interest behind the safety of his occlumency shields.

They walked in silence for a few more classrooms before Dumbledore spoke again.

“Severus,” the old man began, looking strangely uncomfortable. “I wonder if you know where Mr. Potter is going to be spending his holidays?”

Severus felt his heart rate quicken slightly at the question, wondering once more exactly what the old man knew about his Snake’s home life.

“I believe he is planning to stay here at the castle,” was his softly spoken answer, even though the boy had indicated no such thing to him.

The smile that Dumbledore bestowed upon him was most definitely a relieved one and Severus felt his insides knot up in response.

“Every child should spend at least one Christmas here, don’t you think, Severus?” Dumbledore said, glancing out the window towards the Quidditch pitch.

“At least once, sir,” Severus answered automatically, knowing what to say in order to be left alone.

Neither of them mentioned that Severus never had gone home during the Christmas hols either, and looking at Dumbledore now, Severus wondered if his employer even remembered that.

As Dumbledore swept away from him in a flurry of brightly coloured robes and twinkling eyes, Severus continued to stare out the window for a while longer, deeply lost in his own thoughts. He couldn’t imagine that Harry would want to spend his holidays anywhere else other than the castle, but now he would need to make sure.

. . .

“GO SLYTHERIN!” The students sitting around Moody screamed together as one of their Chasers scored again.

On one side he had Mr. Nott and on the other, he had Mr. Potter. They seemed intent on shielding him from the crowd of students, and he found himself more than a little amused and perhaps even a bit touched at the action.

“Miles Bletchley is the best Keeper Slytherin has had in years,” Nott was currently explaining to them both. His eyes shone with more animation than Moody had ever seen out of Nott Sr.’s own.

“I prefer the Gryffindor beaters’ style to the Slytherin ones though,” Nott added, looking to Harry for an opinion.

Harry nodded thoughtfully, his eyes lost among the players in the sky as he formulated his response.

Looking back at them, he said, “Derrick and Boles are hopelessly idiotic. They don’t have any imagination at all.”

“Course,” Moody finally added, butting into the non-stop stream of conversation, “None of that matters if yeh don’t have a good Seeker.” Beside him, Nott nodded fervently as Harry simply stared back contemplatively.

“Yeh’ll see what I mean,” he said gruffly, lightly patting the boy on his overly thin shoulder and feeling a concealed flinch as he touched him.

Harry hated that he couldn’t help from flinching when other people touched him. It was bad enough when his teachers did it, but now with Moody his uncontrollable reaction was almost enough to make him scream with frustration.

Seeking a way to change the subject lest Moody do the unthinkable and ask him about it, Harry brought up the subject of learning magic.

“Could you set up some sort of silencing spell around us, Moody?” Harry asked in what he hoped was a soft voice.

Of course, with the amount of noise that’s probably happening out here, it probably doesn’t really matter, he mused to himself.

“Already did, lad,” Moody answered with a wry twist of his scarred face. “When we first sat down.”

Harry relaxed minutely. That was important to remember about Moody; he was always prepared, and it made him feel safe because of it.

With a quick glance to Teddy first, Harry tentatively began to tell the older man about their discoveries regarding signed magic and why it was necessary to begin with. Instead of scorn or boredom, both his and Teddy’s words were met with slightly amazed and very definite interest from the older man.

“And yeh do this with a wand, you say?” Moody asked, looking intently back and forth between them both.

“Yes sir,” Harry said, once he had the older man’s eye again. “And we figured out that some spells work better with the left hand as opposed to the right hand. Sometimes that’s because of what sign has to be signed, but then Teddy realised that some spells simply work better with the other hand, and Snape thinks that may have to do with what part of the brain is being utilized . . .” he yammered on, talking to Moody like he did when he spoke to Teddy and Snape.

He was just promising to write down all of his discoveries and send them in a note to Moody when suddenly the crowd froze around them and he watched as both of his friends looked up to the sky in dawning horror.

Following their eyes, he stared out in helplessness as Terence Higgs, the Slytherin Seeker began to shake and roll on his broom. They watched as Higgs’ broom jerked and swung like a machinated bucking bull, throwing the Slytherin boy from one side to the other.

Beside him, he saw Moody jump to his feet, surprisingly spry, despite what Harry knew about him, and whip out his wand. Muttering some kind of incomprehensible spell, Harry felt the strength of the magic wash past him, making him slump in his seat at the pure ferociousness of it.

Higgs was now only hanging onto the broom with his hands, his legs somehow having lost their purchase in all of the wild jerks and rolls they had been subjected to.

Moving in slow motion from the effect of Moody’s ongoing spell, Harry tried to look for Snape, and saw him doing the exact same thing as the older man beside him. He shivered, suddenly feeling very cold as something much darker pulsed out onto the field around them both, and he could tell that what they were doing wasn’t going to be enough.

Below Higgs, the other players circled, trying to make themselves available should he fall, and dimly Harry wondered why no one was doing anything to cushion the landing. Almost as though reading his mind, he suddenly saw Moody redirect his wand to the ground, and not a moment too soon.

Although Harry was unaware of it, a cry went up from the crowd as Higgs’ fingertips lost their tenuous hold on the broomstick, but he saw the event itself as it happened, his eye frozen in a downwards arc as his housemate fell to the earth in what felt like slow motion.

“Come on lad. Up you get,” Moody was saying to him next, tentatively shaking his shoulder. Harry could feel the cold of the other man’s fingertips through his robe and thought for a moment that he might be sick.

“Is he—?” Harry didn’t quite dare ask.

“Madam Pomfrey’s got him now. He’ll be as good as can be in a bit,” Moody answered, pushing Harry and Teddy out of the stands faster than his legs seemed to be able to move. “We need to get outta here,” Moody growled, none too gently.

Harry felt the pulse of dark magic again as they passed the teacher’s box and his knees buckled as it swept through him. Calloused hands caught him as he fell, picking him up and cradling him against a strong shoulder as they continued to move.

The darkness pressed in against his forehead, against his eyelids, causing him to cry out into Moody’s chest, where it was muffled into near silence. His scar felt as though it were about to burst, and he gritted his teeth against the pain until it passed.

Then suddenly, it was gone and he slumped boneless against Moody’s arms as his eyes rolled back in his head.

. . .

Harry found his way back to consciousness very slowly. For a moment his mind was blank and then it all came back to him in a wave of emotion.

Gah, did Moody really carry me out of there? He wondered, feeling a strange combination of shame and also some kind of shy thankfulness for the man’s actions. The Dursleys would have just let me fall. The Dursleys wouldn’t have been seen with me anyway.

Carefully, he cracked open an eye and found himself back in Snape’s quarters, in a transfigured bed that was slightly smaller than last time. He saw Teddy fast asleep in an overstuffed armchair beside him, and he couldn’t help but smile at the sight.

“Ah, there yeh are lad,” Moody moved slowly into his line of vision and he fought against the childish urge to hide underneath the bedclothes.

As it was, he blushed under the man’s careful scrutiny and turned his head away slightly, only to see Snape staring back at him from the other side of the room. Oddly enough, the sight didn’t surprise him and he managed to relax a bit with the knowledge that Snape was there too.

Shifting against the mountain of pillows at his back, Harry realised something else very important: his leg had been removed sometime while he had been unconscious. The urge to hide came back with a vengeance and he wondered who had done it.

“Seen yeh without it before, remember?” Moody said; instinctively knowing what his problem was as he sat down on the bed beside him. His greater weight caused everything to dip in that direction and Harry had to shift to keep from sliding that way.

“Yeah,” Harry answered shyly, twisting his hands nervously in the bedclothes as he looked back at Moody.

“Not something yeh have to worry about with me,” Moody added, lifting a gnarled hand up to pat his own disfigured one.

There was a lump in his throat that he couldn’t swallow down around and that he couldn’t ignore, and just as he felt the last vestiges of his control begin to crumble, Snape suddenly sat down on the other side of him.

“You should be resting, Harry,” Snape said, saving him from the moment. Dark eyes looked into his own eye and he nodded in understanding—and thanks.

Looking back to Moody, it seemed that the older man was ready to argue with his head of house, but after a silent but fierce battle of glances and unspoken warnings, the man conceded with a sigh.

“I’ll be seeing yeh then, Harry. Keep me updated,” was all Moody said as he stood with concealed wince.

Write me, was what he meant, Harry knew. He felt a soft flush of pride at the man’s instruction and he hoped it didn’t show on his face. However, speaking of showing . . . the thought suddenly jarred his memory.

“Did anyone see?” He asked hurriedly, looking back and forth between his two mentors.

“Moody was,” Severus rolled his eyes with a glimmer of a smile, “Considerate enough to cast a disillusionment charm on you.”

Harry let out a deep sigh of relief and then realised how Moody might have taken it.

“Not that I’m not thankful, sir,” he quickly tried to explain to the older man still standing beside the bed.

“Reputations, eh Snape? All about reputations,” Moody responded, dropping a wink Harry’s way before ambling out the door.

The two Snakes watched until the door was shut firmly and then Harry turned back towards his professor with another question, “Sir, is Higgs all right?”

Before him, Severus let out his own sigh, his shoulders relaxing in such a way that he only did in front of his own Snakes.

“He will be, Harry. His broom was cursed by a very powerful caster that the headmaster has not yet been able to determine the identity of,” Severus explained, hesitating a bit at the mention of Dumbledore.

“It was someone in the stands,” Harry whispered, his eyes distant as he remembered the cold feel of the dark magic.

A hand on his left one brought him back to the present.

“What did you feel?” Severus asked him, dark eyes peering closely at him.

“It was cold. I could feel Moody’s magic right beside me and it felt strong, but when we started to move out of the stands, we passed the teacher’s box, and I felt it wrap around me like ice.” Abruptly, he shivered and then they both watched as goosebumps appeared on his skin.

“I meant it when I said you should rest,” Severus said, pulling the duvet up around his shoulders and removing some of the pillows from behind his back.

He saw his head of house pull out his wand and whisper something just as the covers around his body lit up with warmth. His shaking limbs relaxed almost immediately and his eye closed on its own accord.

“Teddy needs a blanket too,” he murmured, barely able to keep his eye open.

“Shush, you silly snake,” he thought Severus replied with, but he couldn’t exactly tell as sleep claimed him.

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