Chapter Text
On the south bank of the Thames, too far east for anyone respectable to consider living, the night people of Cokeworth Lane shared a look and stepped back into the shadows. Pie sellers and drunkards and Mollys alike, all would later attest that they were at home that evening, honest, and though they hadn’t seen nothin ', their cousin’s fiancé’s sister's boy had: Severus Snape, notorious git and local lad made good, was taking a beating.
Severus fell hard to his knees, a drunken chuckle heralding another slicing blow that had him hissing in a breath.
A bottle, his brain provided unhelpfully, skull throbbing from the impact, how unprofessional.
He worked his hands under his body, scouring his palms on the pavement in an effort to push himself up and count his attackers, huffing with the effort.
Truly, it was a testament to the soft life he'd been living that he’d been caught out by such amateurs at all, that he was too comfortable in his second life as an ignoble scholar to stay appropriately vigilant. For it wasn’t the shattering of glass, nor the kick to the back of the knee that took him down. It was the kerb that did it, a mere irregularity of the pavement that was just enough to trip him, his attention on his evening plans enough to forget that the polished regularity of his new life didn’t apply in the slums of his old, and that any stumble would provide an opening for opportunist sods like these wishing to take advantage.
"Oi, oi!" First lout jeered to his second, putting the boot in, "This toff ain't know when to stay down!"
Severus dropped back to the ground and fought the urge to roll his eyes, hugging his arms in to shield his belly from the heavy thump of steel toe capped boots.
If there was one thing he wasn’t, he wanted to snarl, it was posh. No matter how hard he tried.
The blows stopped long enough for him to take a wheezing breath and force himself to think. Think. Whatever the reason for this ill conceived bout of thuggery, whether it be thievery, or deviancy, or murder most horrid, Severus was guilty of it all. He'd always been a dangerous bastard. A fighter.
With a wave of furious shame, Severus realised he hadn't even pulled a weapon. That he was curled up like a child in the gutter outside his old ma's house, dressed above his station in top hat and tails, tripping over his own feet when he tried to walk and check his watch at the same time. In the dark. In the East End.
By god, but he'd been asking for it.
Pathetic , he told himself as the world swirled about him, you're pathetic. Get up.
Being jumped by drunken fools wouldn’t be the end of Severus Snape. It couldn’t. He had places to be and… friends, no people, or rather, money to… extort.
Yes .
Decision made, he spat a gob of blood on the ground and heaved himself to his feet. It took but a moment to fix his sneer in place, another to draw his flick knife against his thigh and turn to glare at the ingrates’ shadows through the thick London smog, the world strangely sour and heavy, bubbling around him like old beer in a barrel.
'Oh, bugger,' gasped the smarter of the two, nudging his friend to drop his makeshift weapon.
Even in his diminished state, Severus could put two and two together. Either the men hadn't known who they'd accosted, or someone had paid them to send a message. Sedition, after all, was too big a concept for cretins like these.
'You'll live to regret this.’
He was quite certain he'd said it aloud, that his distinctive drawl was clear enough to carry down the street as they scarpered. A promise and a threat to each and every person left watching.
You'll all regret this.
Loud footsteps echoed as he turned his back to his audience, the oozing, plummeting darkness of the street swallowed in a blink by the lamplight of approaching growler. He hailed the coach with relief, speaking his destination and hauling himself into the carriage before the driver could get a good look at his face.
“Islington,” he called out, slamming the door before sitting back and closing his eyes against the vertiginous motion as the journey got underway, turning over this latest problem of his own making in an effort to stay awake.
Awake .
A lesson would have to be meted out, of course. To make them regret the day they were born, to make sure word didn’t reach the wrong ears. It was imperative that he put a lid on any rumours before they reached the ears of the Queen's Intelligence. If they were to hear that Dumbledore's pet gangster was back in play only days after the old man had died in suspicious circumstances, then inferences would be made. Inferences that would need to be countered.
But that would have to come later, once he'd dealt with the pain that seared through his skull with every bump in the road, with whatever it was that had his unfashionably long hair clinging wetly to his neck. Only when he'd made it across town to safety, to, well, whomsoever a man like him could still call a friend, would he be able to rest and make sense of this nonsense - to figure out who exactly would be getting their comeuppance.
For nobody, but nobody, messed with Severus Snape.
*
A few miles west, where there were more streetlamps than pedestrians even during the day, the silhouettes of proud Doric columns and limping erstwhile gangsters were crisp against the unbroken stucco facades of Grimmauld Place.
It suited the street, the smog, which despite dispersing somewhat during the night, still lingered to give the newfangled electric streetlights something to fight against as they did their utmost to illuminate the type of grandeur that only old money could buy. Nothing less would do for the residents in this particular borough - for how else would the plebs know not to take a stroll down their well swept avenues if they were not spot-lit in vivid arc light?
There was nothing families of note cherished more than it being explicitly unspoken that they are better. Nothing, that was, apart from scandal, and the Noble House of Black was holding their end up nicely, providing what was left of the ton with scandal of the highest order behind the serpent door knocker of Number Twelve. A noble family so wracked with impropriety, so very much gone to seed, that the owner of the house should've been ashamed.
Not that he was, of course.
Lord Sirius Orion Black III, Fourteenth Duke of Ravenswood, self-styled marauder and second coming of Byron, wasn’t even there. He never was.
His grandfather, Lord Acturus may have chosen Grimmauld Place back when the street was mere lines on the draughtsman's board, but with the favourite son lost at sea, and old Walpurga dead and buried, it was Sirius, a longtime favourite of the gossips, who now held the dubious honour of the Dukedom, and to the best of society's knowledge the absentee Duke was currently gallivanting on the continent, squandering his inheritance and generally causing a ruckus, leaving Number Twelve in the care of one arthritic butler, an overabundance of hideous taxidermy and, of late, a young man of small stature and ill tamed hair.
A young man, who was at this moment, contemplating how best to pen a missive that expressed his emphatic desire to tell his godfather to sod off whilst also communicating that yes, he was behaving himself, and no, of course he hadn’t left the house, and please, please, please could he and Remus explain why it was so important that Harry had been sent to London at all, given that he'd known the Duke for barely a month before being handed a ticket to Dover - without so much as a by nor leave, thank you very much - and effectively banished to live in his creepy old house.
Harry huffed a belaboured sigh. He knew he was being pathetic, but he couldn’t help but feel put out. He hadn’t been sleeping well, and his search for Teddy's birth certificate was going nowhere. Harry still hadn’t figured out why Remus was so insistent it would be here at all, but with fretting about Teddy and the fact he'd been having that dream again – the one that made his scar itch – he was past ready for a cup of tea.
That’s why he was ensconced on the windowsill of the library, twirling his newfangled fountain pen as he watched the coalman’s cart make its way down the cobbled mews behind the house, yawning in sympathy as a sleepy horse was led by a sleepier lad, his master hefting coal in the feeble half light of dawn.
That's when he saw it - an arm. An arm attached to a body that flopped to the ground like a side of lamb when the coalman kicked open the back gate.
Harry dropped his pen, its ink splattering as he used the heavy silk of his borrowed pyjamas to clear the condensation from the windowpane.
Bloody hell, it was a body.
Harry couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could see the shake of the older man's head, the tension in his shoulders as the young lad shuffled from foot to foot and worried at his cap, the bounce of the gate ricocheting off the arm in their haste to get away.
They'd left him there.
Harry knew he was too curious by half, that it got him in trouble. Even still, he was down the back stairs in no time. Into the kitchen, pulling on the thick jumper that still smelled like Paris, to dive headfirst into what's this, what’s happened, can I help, let me help.
*
Harry skidded to a halt by the body and crouched down to get a better look. Uncertainly, he laid his palm on the man’s cool neck and leant close to check for breathing.
'Sir. Can you hear me, sir?'
Clutching at his damp lapels, Harry watched the man’s features, uncertain what to do, making to slap the man’s cheek before realising with a start that his fingers were sticky with blood.
'Regulus,' the man groaned.
Harry’s breath stuttered in his throat. The mumble was so faint and unexpected that he couldn’t be certain, but all the same it had him springing into action, rolling the man carefully onto an old tarp he found in the shed, speaking soothing words of comfort as used all the strength he had to heave him towards the house.
Only when he got there did Harry question his logic. There were steps up to the back door and then what? He hadn’t even considered where you’d put a bloodied man in such a posh house. The parlour, the smoking room? For goodness sake , said a voice that sounded a lot like Hermione, and let him bleed out all over the Abyssinian rug?
He needed help. Kreacher would be displeased but Harry's blood was up. He could put up with the extra mumbling. The butler was as bad a sleeper as he, and he liked Harry well enough, underneath it all. Probably. Regulus was the key here, the link between the not-dead body and the old man. Kreacher had loved Regulus. Harry heard Sirius complain about it once, in one of his rages before Harry was packed off to England. He wouldn’t tell. Kreacher might even know this man, might tell him about him, about Regulus. If the man knew of Regulus Black, then it was only right that Harry should help him. Harry would take any crumb.
Get him in, clean him up, get some answers. It was as good a plan as any. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. Time to find Kreacher.
*
Kreacher was decidedly not happy, holding a candle to the stranger's face and crossing himself like a papist, calling the not-dead man 'The Prince’ and muttering about befouling the House of Black. If it wasn’t for the fact that Kreacher was always saying things like that, Harry would be worried, but Kreacher helped him all the same.
They laid the man down in the old housekeeper's room that adjoined the kitchen, Kreacher fetching linens and iodine while Harry boiled water, knowing fine rightly that Kreacher might be setting him up for a trap.
'The Potter brat brings things on himself,' was all Kreacher said when he asked.
Harry checked for injuries with careful fingers, cleaning away the blood and grit on the Prince’s face and neck to find the source. The man smelled like money underneath all the grime. Expensive, like fine wool and spicy cologne. Harry was unsure of why this prickled at him, even as he and Kreacher bared him to the waist. He supposed it was that since coming to London he'd been all too aware he wasn’t classy like that, that he dressed like an orphan from one of Mr Dickens' novels and smelled of the lineament that he used on his chapped hands.
He kept his touch light, his calloused fingers careful as he teased back the man's limp hair from where it was stuck to his neck, tying it out of the way with a ribbon Kreacher procured from nowhere. Harry tutted to himself when he saw that he would need to trim the blue-black hair close to the skin to get a better look at the wound behind his ear. A few stitches, Kreacher confirmed, before Harry got to work. He'd seen worse.
He pondered the man as he sewed him up, working quickly while the man was still unconscious. His boots were fancy, all buttons and polish. Harry wondered if he had a man for that. It helped him to not think about the expanse of pale skin in front of him, the shallow rise and fall of the man’s thin, scarred chest, and a face that was stark compared to the blandness of the Englishmen he’d encountered since his return. Maybe he'd been on the continent too long, but there was something about the man's hooked nose, his frown, something like spent matches about him that cut through the fetid London smog that clung to everything, everybody. Something exciting.
Harry tied off the last stitch and wiped away the blood that lingered, crusted at the temples and in the shell of his ear. He had to resist the urge to draw his finger down the man's crooked nose, wondering how many times it had been broken. Such a man would make for an interesting subject for one of his paintings, for it wasn't just his features, nor even the man's injuries that spoke of danger. Kreacher had been rifling through the man's pockets as Harry worked, and had laid out his finds at the foot of the bed, each item sending a prickle further up Harry's spine: Money, pocket watch, cigarettes, a cosh, flick knife and an empty holster for a gun. Harry was no expert, but what with the familiar looking tattoo on his arm, Harry would wager a half a crown that the man gave as good as he got.
"Regulus," The Prince mumbled again, drawing Harry's attention, his sharp tongue testing through tightly drawn lips, parched. The whole man was parched. Drawn tight with pain, harsh drawn lines and years of trouble painted on his face. Harry frowned down at him, stroking back dark hair that was iridescent in the light of Kreacher's candle, like the oily feathers of a bird.
Trouble is as trouble does.
"It’s alright, mister. You’re safe here."
Harry looked to Kreacher, who looked away.
*
Severus dreamt of warm hands and bootblack hair, the smell of air dried linens and wool, the sticky-sweet scent of jam and a soft voice shushing him and stroking his head. It took longer for the urgency to surge, a swift spin of adrenalin bolting him awake to a shock of pain.
"What...’ Severus rasped, wincing as he opened an eye. In the brief light from a highset window, he could see he was lying on a narrow bed, in a stone walled room lined with shelves of preserves and his heart thundered anew. Pausing for a moment to breathe, he took stock. Beside him was an unlit candle and a glass of water, but no matches.
From the chill in his arms he realised that some devil had removed his shirt. Which would not do. He strained to sit, blinking as his vision blurred with a sharp tug of pain, groping blindly for his pocket watch. Fighting the surge of outrage that it was nowhere to be found.
He fumbled instead at the glass, using both hands when it threatened to topple, his neck aching with an urgency that demanded attention. He pressed his head back, wincing, but the iron bedstead was cool on his back,as was the glass where he rested it in his lap.
Grounding him. Gathering his good sense, he probed at his neck, his fingers encountering bandages that made it clear that whoever had patched him up didn’t want him to die. Severus breathed through his nose and tried to marshal his thoughts.
An unlit candle. A glass of water. A hardback chair with an abandoned blanket. Quiet footsteps beyond the door, the clatter of pans.
Basement, kitchen, safety, cold.
Christ alive, am I at Grimmauld Place?
He gulped at the water and made a face at the bitter taste that spoke of the taint of laudanum and long buried memories.
Goddamnit! Severus Snape, master spy, ingesting opiates on an empty stomach, in the home of his boyhood nemesis. Pull yourself together man!
The footsteps were drawing nearer, a hitch of breath as the person paused at the door. Severus resettled himself against the pillows and tried to look as dignified as a man could when an unknown someone had removed your boots. If it was Black he’d have to fight his way out.
The door was pushed open and a narrow shouldered boy stood silhouetted by the morning light, like a cherubim bearing a tea tray.
"Oh," the vision said, before shutting his mouth with a snap and, of all things, a blush around a small smile. Easy and open, like Severus posed no threat to his person. Little twit. Severus glared at him as he set the tray down on the chair, taking the opportunity to study his captor, cataloguing every nuance in a swift glance born of years of practice.
The boy was dressed in an over-large fisherman’s sweater, worn over stained paisley pyjamas that were in turn tucked into thick woollen socks. There were no sign of slippers, nor a robe. His hair was mussed - presumably from the jumper - and his step light and sure, but not proper.
Not like Regulus.
Even with the throbbing in his head, his half remberences were coming back to him. Whatever had happened - and he would find out - had him confounded enough to seek out the childhood home of the only man he had ever loved.
Regulus .
Severus tracked the boy’s movements, noting the similarities, the differences. Though the boy lacked the refinement of his one time friend, a traitorous part of him could not help but find the bashful flush becoming. Bright eyes were hidden behind wire framed spectacles, long lashes that spoke of whispered things casting shadows on high cheekbones as the boy bowed his head to pour tea into the waiting cups.
Regulus had been fine boned too.
The boy turned to him in question and Severus saw it in a moment of illumination from the open door - extensive scarring down the side of his face - before a dark tumble of curls fell back into place. Mystery upon mystery.
‘Milk, sugar?’ The boy’s voice was soft, mellow.
‘No.’ It was all he could manage with the boy looking at him with eyes that were eerily pale in the low light. Perhaps they would be blue in the daytime, or a cool, stormy grey like all the Blacks. The silence stretched as Severus broke eye contact, cataloguing instead how the boy's bone structure was unusual in a way that should be strange, but instead pushed into ethereal. Not handsome or pretty, but striking. ‘Thank you.’
Full lips gave a little quirk before unleashing a grin that twisted something inside him. Severus blinked, blinked again and received his tea from a small hand. It was too early for such smiles, and besides his head was still throbbing, thoughts slipping, the skin under the bandage pinching in a way that Severus didn’t like. He waited for the boy to pour and sip at his own.
The little cretin didn’t even use a saucer.
‘I take it you have not dosed the cup.’ This gained him a frown, the smallest of wrinkles between straight brows, and already Severus wanted to smooth it away with his thumb. He pulled himself together and drawled in his flattest manner, ‘the laudanum.’
‘Er, that is… I thought you would be in pain, sir. What with…’ the boy gestured helplessly with his cup, tea sloshing.
‘Hmmm.’ Severus used his lowest register and smirked at the thrill of eliciting another blush.
‘Kreacher didn’t think you’d mind. Positively scoffed, he did. Said you were a tricksy sort.’ Severus hid a snort behind a grumble, letting the boy ramble. ‘Think that means he likes you, he’d be much more cruel otherwise. Calls me a guttersnipe all the time, says I’m a nuisance. Like that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.’ The boy’s eye roll was dramatic over the rim of his cup. ‘Besides, he helped me help you.’
So, an old man and this will o’ the wisp were his rescuers. He wondered if Kreacher was responsible for the stitches he was certain were under his bandage. He knew the man had run with one of the East End gangs in his youth, so it was more than likely he would know how. Something must have shown in his face because the boy scoffed as he poured them both more tea.
‘Get over yourself, mister. I found you, I tended to you. You should be grateful.’ He set his chin and looked pointedly at Severus’ neck before meeting his eye. Severus resisted the urge to touch. ‘Least you could do.’
The ‘you bastard’ went unspoken, but they both heard the challenge in his words. Severus wondered again at the boy’s upbringing. His speech was not cultured, his posture atrocious. How did he come to be in Islington?
A pleased curl slowly unfurled low in his belly. It was too dark to tell, of course, but surely it was much more likely that this changeling was a kitchen boy of sorts, or, he realised with a lurch, a lover of the last remaining Black. Severus wouldn’t put it past that dog to bed a servant.
‘Though your ability to speak solely in non sequiturs is astonishing,’ Severus said, swallowing back his resentment. ‘Perhaps, if full sentences are not beyond your capabilities, you could answer me a few questions.’
The boy smiled a slow smile, his eyes flashing with a cheeky gleam, seemingly unaffected by Severus’ tone.
‘Only if I can ask too. Coupe pour coupe - a question for a question.’
Severus tried not to clench his free hand into the bedsheets, reminding himself that he could use the boy’s interest to his advantage. Severus looked purposefully down at his chest and how the sheets puddled around his waist, watched as the boy licked his lips out of the corner of his eye.
‘You will, of course, have catalogued my belongings.’ It was practically a purr.
‘That’s not a question.’ The boy’s spine was more upright, but he’d clearly seen them, held them. The cosh, the blade, the pistol. His things. Severus switched tack.
‘Why did you take me in?’
‘Seemed like the right thing to do.’
A good Samaritan, that was all he needed.
‘Where are my possessions, boy?’
The flinch was clear as day before it was turned neatly into a shrug.
‘Funny thing, tattoos,’ his rescuer countered, with a breezy air. The challenge was back. Evidently Severus had hit a nerve, calling him boy. ‘Not the type of thing you'd normally find under such fancy clobber.’
‘That’s not an answer.'
Seemed the boy was well informed, and had seen the mark, the snake and skull. The little imp knew then, knew that Severus was dangerous. Good.
‘Handy though, the way you do it,' the boy continued in an offhand voice, his accent gentle but lilting, London by way of the West Country with a little something else that Severus couldn’t place. ‘Flash it when you’re shifting goods up the canal or what have you. Dead useful in a network where you can’t rely on everyone knowing your face.’
The first point was a dud, but he had him on the second. Why was the boy not afraid? Either Kreacher refused to fill him in, or the boy did not ask. A secret keeper then. Severus would have to tease him out.
‘Ask your question, boy.’
‘How'd you know Regulus?’
Severus couldn’t stop the shiver of the name being spoken and the blasted boy noticed at once, setting down his cup and squirming on the spot in a way that had Severus turning away as he wrestled himself out of his knitted monstrosity. He allowed himself to look when it became clear that the fool had gotten stuck, and he bit his lip as a flash of dark hair on a taut belly indelibly seared itself into his retinas.
Blinking heavily, he wondered if the boy's belly button was half-out because of his clear malnourishment, or if such a trait could be inherited. Not that he’d ever seen Regulus’.
Not that the boy was a Black.
He ran his tongue along his lip in thought, turning his attention to finishing his tea just as the boy reappeared, hair even more chaotic and face aflame in embarrassment. Perhaps Severus would think on it, later.
'Here,' the boy said, thrusting a fist full of cream wool at him and resettling his spectacles.
When Severus didn’t move to take it, the boy folded it reverently and set it down beside him, his narrow wrists now on display, short nails on ink stained fingertips, bitten to the quick on the thumb. The boy frowned and made another bid to get Severus to converse with him.
He must be truly lacking for company, Severus thought, perhaps the Black Duke was still a torturous conversationalist.
'So Regulus, yeah, not Sirius. Who was he to you?'
It was the name of the mutt that got him to answer.
'A Black. A dead Black.' Seeking a diversion, he spotted the monogram and found himself speaking before he realised, indignant. ‘Those are Regulus' pyjamas?’
The boy grinned, and gave a short laugh. ‘Good question, Prince. Lord Black lent me them. They’re a pretty good fit, too.’
The boy held out his arms to show off his ensemble, the ‘RAB’ picked out in shining thread, and Severus fought a trickle of dread down his spine. The boy called him “Prince”.
How much is conjecture, how much does he know?
Severus needed to leave. The boy was discomfiting in the extreme and Severus was still without his shirt. He set down his empty cup on the sidetable with a clink, hiding a wince at the movement.
‘You shall give me my things.’
‘Oh I may, may I?’ I said shall, you little cretin. ‘Or you’ll do what exactly, with your injuries?’
Seemingly unconcerned, the boy hefted an almighty heel of bread off the tray that was slathered thickly with jam, only to cross the room and plonk himself down on the side of Severus’ bed. The press of a warm body close to his bony knee blurred his already muddied thoughts. Bloody hell. The boy tore the bread in two and held half out for him to take.
Imputent, confounding little devil.
In a flash, Severus reached past the jam piece and grasped the boy by the chin, watching how his breath caught, how the boy’s eyes glazed behind his spectacles. Severus shifted his grip and squeezed his fingers against the sides of his neck. Just enough to feel the racing of his pulse. The boy’s eyelids lowered in a slow blink.
‘You will fetch my possessions, child.’ Severus’ mouth was suddenly dry, eyes cataloguing the face laid out in front of him, finding himself holding his own breath at the beauty held in the palm of his hand. Thinking idly, woozily, of how such a delicate little skull could be crushed by someone like him.
The boy remained frozen in place, lips parted on a gasp, a sheen of jam at the corner of his mouth, hands resting limp in his lap, bread forgotten while the room bubbled and lurched around them. Severus layered his voice with as much menace as he could muster before relinquishing his grip, the dratted opium haze drowning his vision.
‘This - is not - a game.’
The boy stumbled to his feet and backed away towards the door, eyes not leaving Severus’ face, his pale throat bobbing on a swallow. Good, Severus thought as he pinched the bridge of his nose, ignoring the scent of blackberries on his numb fingers before the darkness overtook him. It was better that he was afraid.