Chapter Text

The Wish

“Kill the spare.”

The words echoed through the graveyard like a sentence passed by God himself. Harry Potter watched a flash of green light tear through the darkness and strike Cedric Diggory square in the chest. One second Cedric was alive, frightened, breathing, trembling beside him and the next he hit the ground like a discarded puppet. Still, eyes open.

Empty.

Harry stopped breathing. The world seemed to tilt violently beneath him as the truth finally crashed into place inside his skull. This was not a tournament. Not school rivalry.Not childish danger. Not another adventure adults would praise him for surviving afterward. This was murder.

And he was next.

For one terrible moment Harry could not move. He could only stare at Cedric’s body lying crooked amongst the damp grass while horror spread through him so fast it hurt. Cedric had been older than him, stronger than him. Better at magic and everything else than him.

Yet he had died in seconds.

Harry was fourteen years old. Fourteen. Too thin for his age. Half-starved from summers spent unwanted. A child still learning transfiguration essays and struggling through potion measurements and trying desperately to survive school. His biggest issue should be surviving Snape’s class not once again fearing his death. He was not supposed to be here. No matter what the books said, or what Dumbledore seemed to think or actively promote, he was not supposed to fight monsters. He had survived until now through blind luck and the sacrifices of dead people.

Nothing else.

The realization came too late. A hand like rotten claws seized him from behind before he could even reach for his wand properly. Peter Pettigrew tore it from his grip with humiliating ease. Harry kicked violently, swearing, panic finally detonating through him.

“Let go of me!”

Pettigrew only laughed,  wet, nervous, pathetic  and forced him down into the mud with a flick of his wand. Harry hit the ground hard enough for pain to burst through his ribs. The graveyard was drowning in mist.

Cold silver fog curled around broken tombstones and dead grass. For one desperate, stupid second Harry thought maybe he could disappear into it somehow. Hide. Crawl away. Escape.

Then Pettigrew dragged him forward like an animal for slaughter. Harry’s hands scraped across wet earth before he was slammed violently against a towering marble headstone.His breath caught.

Here Lies Thomas Riddle.

The name hollowed him out instantly. No, No, No.

His heartbeat stumbled violently as memories crashed through him dreams that had never truly felt like dreams, whispers in the dark, visions that left him waking cold and shaking. Voldemort. Its had always been Voldemort. Every piece of it. The tournament.  His name emerging from the Goblet. The visions. Cedric’s death. All of it had been leading here. Harry felt something inside him finally crack.

I’m going to die.

Not dramatically. Not heroically. He was simply going to die in this graveyard while adults turned him into a weapon they themselves were too cowardly to become. Terror consumed him completely as magical bindings snapped around his wrists and chest, pinning him painfully against the stone. They tightened every time he struggled.

Pettigrew moved frantically now, muttering through the ritual with trembling devotion. Harry barely understood the words. Blood dripped into the cauldron.

Bone.

Blood.

Flesh.

Then Pettigrew cut off his own hand. Harry gagged. The scream that tore from the man barely sounded human as the severed hand struck the potion and flames erupted violently green. Something small and twisted dropped into the cauldron next. Something that looked horribly like a child. Harry couldn’t breathe properly anymore. The bindings bit deeper into his skin as panic overtook him entirely.He did not want to die. Not here. Not alone. The thought hit harder than the fear itself.

Alone.

Always alone. Every year another nightmare.  Another monster.  Another burden forced onto his shoulders while professors watched from safe distances and called him brave afterward.Then they sent him back. Back to the cupboard,  back to the bruises,  Back to the starvation and silence and relatives who looked at him like something rotten. Anger suddenly surged through the terror so fiercely it almost made him dizzy.

Good.

He clung to it desperately. Anger was easier than fear. Hatred was stronger than grief. If he hated enough, maybe he could survive. Maybe he could run. Maybe he could…

“Harry Potter.”

The voice slid through the graveyard like silk wrapped around a knife. Harry looked up and saw Lord Voldemort step from the cauldron. Pale skin stretched tight across something that barely resembled a man anymore. Serpentine features. Slitted nostrils. Eyes red enough to look wet with blood. Black robes poured around him like living smoke. He moved with terrible grace. Beautiful in the way venomous things were beautiful before they killed you. Harry’s scar exploded with pain so violently he screamed. Voldemort looked at him with reverence. Not hatred.Not rage.

Something worse.

Something holy.

“The Boy-Who-Lived,” Voldemort whispered softly. “Look at you now.”

The words sounded intimate. Loving. Harry wished he would scream instead.

“Bound. Helpless. Awaiting my mercy.” Voldemort tilted his head slightly, red eyes gleaming. “And still they call you a hero.”

Harry could say nothing. Pain consumed him. Fear consumed him. Death stood ten feet away staring at him like a long-awaited prayer finally answered.

Please.

The thought appeared instinctively.

Please somebody help me.

Not magic. Not courage. Just the terrified plea of a child moments from execution. Yet nothing came. Only masked figures emerging from the mist one by one. Silver masks.Black robes.

Death Eaters.

They gathered around Voldemort like worshippers before a dark altar while he spoke to them of victory and resurrection and destiny. Harry barely listened. His body shook too hard. Still, somewhere beneath the terror, bitterness remained alive enough for sarcasm. So he spat back at Voldemort when spoken to.

Defied him.

Mocked him.

And somehow that only amused him more.

“Don’t worry, Harry Potter,” Voldemort murmured with something dangerously close to affection. “I shall offer my condolences to your friends after I kill you.”

Then he returned Harry’s wand. The duel began instantly. Green light screamed toward him.Harry reacted on instinct alone.

“Expelliarmus!”

Their spells collided. Gold erupted between them. The connection slammed into Harry so hard his teeth rattled. He could feel Voldemort’s power through the beam, ancient, monstrous, and impossibly vast. For the first time Harry truly understood how insane the adults around him were.

Dumbledore expected him to fight this?

He was a child standing against a god. Spectral figures burst from Voldemort’s wand.

 Ghosts.

Victims.

The dead whispered around him in fractured voices while the golden connection trembled violently between the wands. Harry’s arms shook. His knees nearly buckled. If he lost  concentration for even a second, he would die.

“I don’t want to die,” he thought desperately. “Please… somebody help me…”

And finally something answered. The air changed first. The mist thickened unnaturally. The fire beneath the cauldron darkened from green to black. Then the graveyard itself seemed to shudder. Like reality had inhaled sharply. A sound rolled across the cemetery distant thunder mixed with screaming metal. The Death Eaters shifted uneasily.

And space tore open.

Darkness split the air apart like a wound. Not shadow. Not absence but something deeper. Something alive. It poured through the rupture in slow liquid waves, swallowing moonlight whole. Even Voldemort went still. Then someone stepped through.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Draped entirely in black stained with ash and blood. A sword hung loosely in one hand. A wand rested in the other. Sharp green eyes swept across the graveyard in a single glance, taking in everything instantly: Harry holding tightly to his wand against the power of the dark lord. Tears, grime and blood staining his face. Voldemort. The Death Eaters. Pettigrew.

Recognition flickered across the stranger’s scarred face. Then he smiled. Violence exploded. His wand slashed once. Pettigrew collapsed before he could even scream.

Another flick.

A Death Eater’s throat opened in a spray of blood. Panic detonated through the graveyard. The stranger moved forward calmly while chaos erupted around him. He fought like death itself had learned magic. No wasted movement. No hesitation.  No mercy. Death Eaters fell around him one after another, either disarmed, mutilated, or butchered.

Harry stared in horrified awe. Even Voldemort seemed momentarily stunned. Then the screams finally snapped him from whatever trance held him. Voldemort looked toward the approaching stranger. And for the first time that night fear crossed his face.

“Later,” he snarled toward Harry.

Then he vanished into smoke. The surviving Death Eaters fled instantly after him. Silence crashed over the graveyard. Harry collapsed to his knees the second the gold thread of magic released him. He stared at the stranger standing amongst the bodies.

He looked carved from war itself.

Black combat clothing hung scorched and blood-soaked from his frame. Silver runes crawled across skin marked by scars old enough to have healed badly. Dark hair shaved close at the sides while longer strands fell messily across his forehead. Exhaustion lined his face so deeply it looked permanent. The stranger kicked a corpse aside with casual irritation. Then he laughed quietly. Harry flinched.The sound was wrong.

Too tired.  Too broken.

The stranger looked up. Everything stopped. His hair shifted slightly. And Harry saw the lightning scar. Saw green eyes identical to his own.

Older.

Ruined.

Dead inside.

Recognition flickered across the stranger’s face.

“Oh,” he muttered darkly. “Well… fuck.”

He approached cautiously now, every movement still painfully alert, like he expected another ambush at any moment. He paused only to glance down at Pettigrew’s corpse.

“Have fun in Hell, you disgusting piece of shit.”

He kicked the body once more before finally crouching in front of Harry. Up close he smelled like smoke, blood, and rain. Harry recoiled instinctively. The stranger noticed. Regret flickered briefly across his face.

“My name is Abbadon,” he said softly.Then, after a pause that felt unbearably heavy:

“Though once…”

His eyes locked onto Harry’s.

“…I was Harry Potter too.”

Chapter Text

The Answer

“Though once…”

The stranger’s eyes locked onto Harry’s as it started to rain. A fine drizzle that seeped into their clothes.

“…I was Harry Potter too.”

Harry stared at him.The world seemed to tilt sideways.

No, that was impossible. The man crouched before him looked like something dragged out of a war that should have killed him years ago. Blood soaked through black combat gear that seemed to have been torn apart by claw marks and burns hung from a soldier’s frame . Silver runes crawled over pale skin like scars carved by moonlight. His face looked too old for the body wearing it though not with age, but exhaustion. The kind that hollowed people out from the inside.

But his eyes…

Harry felt sick looking into them. Because they were his but older and emotionally destroyed. Harry scrambled backwards violently through the wet grass until his back struck another gravestone. His breath came too fast, sharp and painful in his chest. The stranger who had called himself Abaddon froze immediately. Not to be soothing nor gentle.

Just still.

Rainwater dripped slowly from the ends of his dark hair. Somewhere nearby the cauldron continued bubbling thick black liquid, the sound wet and obscene in the silence left behind by the fleeing Death Eaters. Harry had a fleeting thought of how it was impressive the flame stayed alight in the rain. Bodies of death eaters littered the graveyard though their masks remained in place. Harry could smell blood and burned flesh.

Magic.

His stomach twisted violently. Abaddon slowly lowered the sword in his hand until its point rested harmlessly against the mud. His gaze never stopped moving. Tree line, fog, ruined headstones. Harry shot the sword a brief glance making note that it seemed familiar.

“Easy,” he said quietly.

His voice was rougher up close. Tired enough that every word sounded dragged from somewhere deep. Harry’s wand shook in his hand as he pointed it towards him instinctively.

Abbadon noticed. Again, that flicker of regret crossed his face.

“What…” Harry’s voice cracked badly. He swallowed hard, trying again. “What are you?”

The question lingered in the mist between them. Abbadon looked away first his jaw tightening slightly. For a moment Harry thought he would refuse to answer. Like all the adults in his life who refused to answer his questions. Told him that everything was fine. That it didn’t concern him.

Then:

“What they made us into.”

Something inside Harry twisted painfully. The answer crawled beneath his skin.

The words felt too heavy.  Too truthful.

The mist shifted around them strangely. Curling low against the ground like a living breath. The black flames beneath the cauldron hissed suddenly higher before settling once more. Abaddon noticed. Harry saw it immediately how his eyes flicked toward the darkness surrounding the graveyard as if tracking something unseen. Not fear. Recognition. A hunter looking for prey. Then he looked back at Harry again.

His eyes moving quickly over Harry quickly, clinically, like assessing for damage. Not much. Just enough to hurt.

“You still look soft,” he murmured.

Harry flinched before he could stop himself. Something ugly crossed Abbadon's face, not guilt but something dangerously close to self-hatred. He looked away as the silence stretched for a while. 

Harry said nothing. Because he understood somehow. Soft didn’t mean weak. Soft meant untouched. Not ruined yet. 

Innocent.

The realization terrified him more than the corpses surrounding them. A distant crack echoed somewhere beyond the graveyard. Abbadon’s entire body language changed instantly. Every trace of exhaustion vanished beneath razor sharp alertness. This was a warrior ready to fight. A killer ready to kill. He rose fluidly to his feet, wand lifting automatically while he stepped between Harry and the sound without hesitation.

Protecting him.

The realization hit Harry so suddenly it almost hurt. Nobody had ever moved in front of him before. Not once. They may have indirectly helped him, but often they had an ulterior motive. This man though, this man did not think, did not question he instinctively stepped between Harry and the perceived danger. 

Abaddon scanned the darkness carefully. His posture screamed violence now. Efficient. Controlled. Ready. Not like Voldemort’s theatrical cruelty. This felt worse somehow. This felt practiced. Not afraid, but prepared. In that moment Harry realised with sudden certainty that this man had killed people before. A lot of people.

After several long seconds Abaddon relaxed fractionally.

“Not close enough” he muttered.

Harry stared at him. Even breathing seemed difficult suddenly.

“You really expect me to believe you?”

Abaddon barked a short laugh at that. There was no humour in it, nor did it sound human.

“No,” he admitted. 

The wind shifted through the graveyard, carrying ash and damp earth with it. Harry’s eyes drifted unwillingly toward Cedric’s body. Still lying where he fell. Still dead. The grief hit so suddenly his chest physically hurt. Cedric was dead. Cedric was actually dead. Cedric who had a father waiting for him, friends who were ready for their champion, Cho…Harry swallowed hard. He could still see the green light. Still hear the words.

Kill the spare.

Something cracked quietly inside him. Abaddon noticed immediately.

“Stop staring at the body,” he said softly.

Harry blinked rapidly staring at him sharply. .

“What?”

“Trust me.” The older version of himself stared into the fog instead of at the body. “First death always stick.”

First death. As if there had been more. As if there would be more. Harry felt nausea claw up his throat. 

“What happened to you?”

The question escaped before he could stop it. Abaddon went silent. The black fire hissed behind them. Far away thunder rolled somewhere beyond the hills. Finally he answered.

“Voldemort won.”

Harry stopped breathing, shaking his head. 

“No.”

Abaddon leaned down slowly, retrieving his sword from the mud before sliding it into a sheath strapped across his back.

“In my world the war never ended,” he continued his voice flat, distant.. “People just kept dying until there was nobody left worth burying.”

Harry stared at him in horror, continuing to shake his head..

“No…”

A faint smile crossed Abaddon’s face. Not amusement. Memory.

“I killed Hermione when I was seventeen.”

The words hit like physical blows.

“Ron at nineteen.”

Harry shook his head instinctively.

“No.”

Harry couldn’t breathe properly anymore. Abaddon spoke about the murder of his best friends the way exhausted people spoke about weather. Like grief had worn grooves so deep inside him there was nothing left to break. That he was so rotten from deep within that there was nothing left but habit.

“You’re lying.”

“Wish I was.”

“You can’t just…”

“You stop counting eventually.”

Silence swallowed the graveyard. Harry hated him suddenly. Not truly. But enough.

Because this man stood in front of him wearing his face while speaking about everyone Harry loved like ghosts already waiting to happen. Abaddon swayed slightly. Harry noticed it instantly, finally taking the time to look at Abaddon closely. Blood dripped steadily from beneath layers of black fabric near his ribs. More blood soaked one sleeve completely.There were burns across his throat. One hand trembled faintly where it gripped the wand.

“You’re hurt.”

Abaddon glanced down like he’d forgotten.

“Oh.”

Harry stared at him incredulously.

“Oh?”

A shoulder lifted carelessly.

“Been worse.”

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

That finally made Abaddon pause. For the first time since arriving he looked genuinely tired. Not physically. Something deeper. Everything about him seemed to sag quietly beneath invisible weight. He finally looked back at Harry and for the first time Harry realised how deeply wrong something was behind those eyes. Not madness but damage.

“Everything hurts but pain stops having meaning eventually,” he admitted softly.

The honesty in it made Harry feel suddenly cold. Sickness rising from within. The mist moved again. This time warmer somehow. It brushed against Harry’s skin almost gently. Abaddon noticed that too. His eyes narrowed slightly.

“Interesting.”

Harry frowned. “What?”

But before the stranger could answer…

CRACK.

Much closer this time. Both of them spun toward the edge of the graveyard. Abaddon moved instantly. One arm shoved Harry sharply behind him while his wand snapped upward. Violence rolled off him in suffocating waves now. Harry’s heart hammered painfully. A figure appeared briefly through the fog. Then vanished again.

Aurors maybe. Or Death Eaters returning.

Abaddon’s expression turned lethal. Harry suddenly realised something. He would kill every person who stepped into this graveyard if he thought Harry was threatened. Without hesitation. The thought should have frightened him more than it did. Instead something warm and painful lodged beneath his ribs.

“Why did you come for me?”

The question escaped quietly. Abbadon went still. For several long moments only the bubbling cauldron answered. Then slowly he lowered his wand. His shoulders slumped with sudden exhaustion. When he finally spoke his voice sounded smaller somehow.

“Because I know what happens if nobody does.”

Harry felt the words like a knife sliding carefully between his ribs.

Abaddon finally turned toward him fully again. And for the first time Harry saw it clearly beneath the violence. Not madness. Not cruelty.

Loneliness.

Ancient and endless. The kind loneliness became when it survived too long.

 “What happened to us?”

The question slipped out before Harry could stop it. Abbadon became utterly motionless. Not angry. Worse. Empty. For several long seconds he said nothing at all.

“Don’t ask me that again.”

Harry felt cold immediately. Another crack echoed nearby.

Voices now.

Definitely approaching. Abaddon cursed quietly beneath his breath.

“We need to move.”

Harry didn’t move. His legs still felt weak. Abaddon hesitated before stepping closer again, slower this time. Careful. Like approaching a wounded animal but something about him still felt fundamentally dangerous. Like a wolf trying to remember how not to bare its teeth.  Up close Harry could see fresh blood dripping steadily down his side now. He looked half dead already.Yet he still positioned  himself between Harry and the approaching danger.

Always between.

Abaddon held out one scarred hand. Harry stared at it. At the silver runes cut into skin. At old scars crossing his knuckles.  At dried blood beneath his nails.  This was him. Or what he could become. A weapon shaped like a man. Every instinct screamed at him to run as the thing in front of him may have been wearing an older version of his face but spoke like someone already half buried. Harry should have been terrified. Maybe he was. But beneath the fear something else existed now too.

Relief.

Someone had come for him. Not because he was the Boy-Who-Lived.  Not because prophecy demanded it.  Not because adults expected sacrifice. Someone had come because Harry was scared and alone. The realisation nearly broke him. In the time Harry was considering his options Abbadon lowered his hand slightly as if he had expected the rejection.

That hurt Harry more than it should have. 

He knew this was a mistake, knew he should remember what Moody had said about constant vigilance. 

Slowly…Harry took his hand. Abaddon flinched almost imperceptibly at the contact. Like he hadn’t expected trust. Like he wasn’t used to it. Then he pulled Harry carefully to his feet.

“Stay close to me,” he murmured.Not kind, not comforting but an order. 

Harry nodded weakly. Together they turned away from the graveyard. Behind them the ritual site groaned violently. The black cauldron cracked down the middle. Dark magic screamed through the air like something dying. Mist swallowed the bodies slowly one by one. And Harry Potter followed the older version of himself into the darkness beyond the graves.

Terrified.

Exhausted.

Certain that this was a terrible idea.

And yet he was more afraid of being left behind than of the monster walking beside him. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: The Missing Names

It had been hours since the start of the final task. Hours since the first red sparks have been shot upwards signalling distress. Then an announcement that Cedric Diggory and Harry Potter had both touched the cup. The crowd had roared. Hogwarts students singing the praises of their heroes. It was only after a few minutes had passed that people started realising something strange. Neither hero had come out of the maze, that the professors and officials looked confused, worried. As the minutes turned to hours it became real. Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory were gone. The first thing that broke was not the wards surrounding the maze but the silence when the realisation hit..Then the crowd started to move.

Not physically but emotionally. People began speaking too fast, too sharply, like sound itself could stabilise what had just happened. There were screams from children too young to understand why everyone was scared but old enough to know something was wrong. The crowd were standing, pushing at each other to see what had happened. A mass panic is imminent. 

The Professors and Aurors who had been stationed to guard the minister and esteemed guests, crossed sigils over where the trophy had stood. Ministry officials argued over containment phrasing. Someone kept repeating Cedric Diggory’s name like it was a password that would eventually open reality back up again.

Harry Potter was also not in the maze anymore. That was the second thing someone said out loud and then nobody liked the shape of that sentence. Because missing meant temporary. Missing meant recoverable. What they were seeing did not feel recoverable.

“All students return to your houses immediately.” Albus Dumbledore called out. His wand to his throat to elevate his voice. There was a furious explosion of denial, of those wanting to watch the macabre but prefects understanding their duty came before anything else started to guide the students away. With the majority of the crowd gone leaving only ministry officials, family members of the competitors and professors the silence was suffocating.

A junior official tried to steady it.

“Portkey malfunction…”

“Was that part of the final task?”

The words barely finished forming before Albus Dumbledore turned his head. Not quickly. Not sharply. Just enough. Blue eyes that often twinkled now hardened and glaring at the young man. The room changed immediately. Even the air seemed to understand before people did.

“No,” Albus said.

One word. Flat. Certain.

Then, quieter:

“This is Voldemort.”

The name landed like something heavy being dropped into water. The ripples did not stop. Someone actually laughed once, short, disbelieving.

“Voldemort is dead”

Dumbledore did not answer that. Not yet. Because he was already looking at something else. The trace map. Residual magic patterns are still bleeding out from the Goblet chamber connection point.  And for the first time since the chaos began, something in his expression tightened, not fear exactly, but recognition so old it had no need for surprise. A pattern he had hoped would not reappear but had been waiting for.

Behind him, multiple footsteps approached. Hurried.  Voices rose. A cacophony of questions and fear.

“Where is Potter?”
“Where is Diggory?”
“Why are the tracking spells failing?”
“Can we re-establish the link?”
“No, the anchor point is corrupted.”

Dumbledore raised one hand slightly. Not commanding. Not dramatic. Just stopping noise. It worked anyway. Silence returned in fragments. He did not look at them when he spoke.

“That is not a failure of tracking,” he said. “That is removal.”

A pause.:

“They were taken outside the wards.”

Nobody responded to that immediately, because nobody liked what it implied. Outside the wards meant: not traceable, not recoverable, not contained.  A senior witch finally asked, carefully:

“Outside… how?”

Dumbledore’s eyes stayed on the trace map. Dark lines branching like fractured veins.

“Ritual displacement,” he said. “But it wasn’t an accident. It was planned.”

That word shifted something in the air again. People stopped arguing. Started listening. Because planned meant intelligence. And intelligence meant intent. Someone whispered Voldemort again, like it was still being tested for truth. Dumbledore finally turned slightly.

“The names are gone,” he said. “That is the first stage.”

Nobody asked what the second stage was. Because Dumbledore’s tone suggested they did not want to know.

Severus Snape had arrived  minutes after Dumbledore, the mark on his arm already starting to burn. He did not enter loudly. He never did. He came through the side of the maze with field dust still on his boots, cloak half-fastened, wand already in hand not raised, just present. Like he had been expecting to be needed before anyone officially called him. Dumbledore did not acknowledge him immediately.

That was fine. He did not need acknowledgment. He needed data. His eyes moved first to the trace map. Then the Goblet chamber readout. Then the missing names on a sheet of spelled parchment. 

Cedric Diggory.

Harry Potter.

Two empty lines where tracking sigils should have been anchored. Something about that bothered him instantly, not emotionally yet, but structurally. He stepped closer.

“Why are the tracking results showing nothing?” he asked.

A junior auror blinked at him.

“We’re still stabilising the feed.”

Severus cut him off gently.“Not the feed,” he said. “The classification.”

That made people pause. Dumbledore finally looked at him properly.Severus met his gaze without hesitation. Then looked back at the parchment.

“Null means there’s no signal,” Severus continued. “But this isn’t no signal. It’s being blocked.”

He paused for a moment, then said more quietly:

“Something is changing the recovery pattern.”

That word, blocked, shifted attention again. Dumbledore’s expression changed slightly. Not approval. Not disagreement but alignment.

“Yes,” Dumbledore said at last.

Severus didn’t react to that. He just kept looking.

“Say it properly,” he added.

A few people frowned. Dumbledore did not. Severus turned slightly toward the crowd.

“You’re calling this a malfunction,” he said. “It isn’t. Malfunctions don’t erase people from recovery enchantments.”

A beat. His voice stayed steady, but there was something sharper underneath it now.

“Where are the bodies?”

Silence.

A senior official bristled.

“That’s not confirmed.”

Severus looked at him. Not hostile. Just direct enough that it made the man stop talking mid-sentence.

“If it is the Dark Lord then we can presume Cedric Diggory is  dead,” Severus said simply. “ So confirm it.”

The room hesitated. Because saying it made it real. Severus absorbed that without visible reaction.

“And Potter?”

“Again if it is the Dark Lord then we shall be finding the body of Harry Potter in a public place.” No emotion was shown other than the tightening grip on his wand. 

Dumbledore stepped closer to the trace map.

““This is a containment breach and it’s already done what it was meant to do.” 

Severus frowned slightly.

“Objective?”

Dumbledore did not look at him.

“Selection,” he said.

That word hung there longer than it should have. Severus processed it immediately.

“Harry Potter was targeted.”

“It appears so.”

“By the Dark Lord,” Severus added.

Dumbledore finally nodded once.

“Yes.”

That was worse. Because confirmation removed theory. It turned it into structure. Severus exhaled slowly through his nose, thinking. Not panicking.

Calculating.

But something in his expression tightened not fear, exactly, but recognition of scale.

“You’re treating this like the plan was just to capture and kill Potter,” Severus said. “But murder doesn’t need this much of a ritual setup.”

He pointed at the trace map.

“This is the kind of structure used for bringing someone back from the dead.”

He looked back at Dumbledore.

“So what did the Dark Lord want with them?”

Dumbledore hesitated for the first time. Just a fraction. As if the answer pained him to say.

“I don’t know yet. However i’m sure that Mr Diggory was not on Voldemorts list.”

That was the most honest thing anyone had said all day.

A noise came from  behind them. Running footsteps. A trainee auror arrived too fast, breathless, clearly overwhelmed as all turned towards him. He was stood before some of the most powerful people in the wizarding world and he felt a bit of trepidation. Severus could see as he steadied himself, relying on training to give important news.

“Sir, there’s a secondary report from a graveyard site, magical rupture detected, multiple casualties…”

He stopped when he saw Severus’s dark glare pinned on him, Dumbledore staring at him with what seemed to be frustration. the minister of magic making nervous motions for him to continue and Mad- Eye Moody, the legend, looking almost gleeful.

Dumbledore didn’t move. Severus did.

“Casualties confirmed?” Severus asked immediately.

The trainee swallowed. “Yes. Multiple Death Eater signatures. One confirmed hostile collapse pattern consistent with high-level curse work. And…”

He hesitated. Severus stepped closer slightly using his height to tower over the young man. His voice lowering that would intimidate even the hardest soldier.

“And?”

The trainee looked down at the parchment.

“There’s… something else.”

Dumbledore’s voice cut in softly.

“Say it.”

The trainee hesitated again. Looking at the minister who just nodded.

“There’s a second signature. Identical to Potters.”

The area went still. Severus’s expression shifted for the first time.Not shock. Focus sharpening. Dumbledore closed his eyes briefly. Then opened them again staring pointedly at Severus. Gaze dropping to his arm

“So it has begun,” he said quietly.

Severus looked at him.

“It seems so.”

Dumbledore didn’t answer immediately. Because he was already deciding how much truth the wizarding world could survive.

Outside the arena, Severus caught up to him. The air was quieter here. Less panic. More controlled damage. Dumbledore walked without urgency, but not slowly either. Like time was no longer relevant to him. Severus matched pace.

“You knew,” Severus said.

Dumbledore didn’t deny it.

“That the Dark Lord would return?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t escalate containment protocols until now?”

Dumbledore stopped walking. Not angry. Just precise.

“Escalation would not have changed the outcome,” he said.

Severus stared at him.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is the correct one.”

A pause. Then Severus said something quieter.

“That’s a child missing. Lily’s Child”

Something flickered in Dumbledore’s expression at that. Not disagreement. Pressure.

“You are correct,” Dumbledore said finally. “And that is why this is not a standard response scenario.”

Severus didn’t look away.

“You think this has all been connected.”

Dumbledore held his gaze for a moment.

“I know it is.”

That landed differently. Because Severus understood what that implied. That they had all been manipulated. That the person Severus had thought had been guilty was not and that Severus had been outdone in being a double agent. That there was someone smarter out there.

 And that pissed him off.

They reached the tower where the professors and minister had been sitting to oversee the entire maze. THey both looked down, watching the aurors moving, wards being reinforced, emergency sigils burning into place. Order being rebuilt around something fundamentally unstable.

Severus watched it for a moment.

“Potter is still alive,” he said.

It wasn’t a question. Dumbledore didn’t respond immediately.

“If Voldemort has taken him,” he said, “then survival is no longer a simple condition.”

Severus frowned.

“That’s not how survival works.”

Dumbledore finally looked at him fully.

“No,” he agreed. “At least not our understanding of it.”

Trying to restore order around something fundamentally unnatural. Severus continued to look down into the maze silently for several seconds. Before Severus could press further, another figure approached from the back of the viewing tower.  Tall. Gaunt. Expensive black coat hanging off a body azkaban had half-starved.

Sirius Black walked like a man held together entirely by fury and stubbornness.His eyes shifting around ensuring no one could see him as he knew that any trigger happy wizard would want to have a go at him. Wanted posters had a habit of doing that.

His eyes landed first on Dumbledore then immediately on Severus. Recognition flickered there old schoolyard dislike sharpened by years. Bitter resentment and pity.

“Dumbledore,” Sirius said flatly.

“Sirius,” Albert replied.

Severust folded his arms loosely.

“Still breaking laws, then? Didn’t think it important enough to stay away?”

Sirius’s gaze snapped toward him.

“And you’re still insufferable.”

The hatred between them felt old. Practised. Neither seemed especially interested in hiding it. Dumbledore cut through it before it could grow teeth.

“Harry Potter has been taken.”

That silenced Sirius instantly. Every trace of sarcasm vanished from his face. Every hint of cruel mockery hidden behind worry and horror. In that moment this was not a broken man but instead a wanted criminal worried about the one person he called family.

“Taken by who?”

“Voldemort.”

Sirius went very still. Not because he understood everything but because he understood enough.

“And where do you think Harry is?”

Dumbledor held his gaze.

“Alive for now.”

That was all SIrius needed.

“When do I leave?”

Severus looked toward him sharply, wanting to reprimand him, mock him. This man was a wanted criminal he couldn’t just show his face in public looking for the saviour.. Dumbledore answered before he could speak.

“Immediately.”

Severus frowned.

“You’re sending him?”

“Yes.”

“That’s reckless.”

Sirius gave a humourless smile.

“Good to know the years haven't damaged your personality.”

Severus ignored him completely.

“He’s hunted in half the country.”

“Which makes him difficult to track,”Dumbledore replied calmly.

Severus understood immediately. A fugitive searching for a missing child vanished into the cracks easier than aurors ever could. HIs animagus helped with this. Being on the run himself, Sirius would have the same mindset of those doing the same thing. Severus exhaled slowly through his nose. Though it galled him to agree that Sirius may have his uses.

Then Dumbledore looked at him next.

“You’ll return to Voldemort.”

Severus’s eyes narrowed. Not in surprise but in dislike.

“As what? Any of the death eaters will tell him that I was your spy? It’s suicide” Severus tried to reason with him. 

At the end of the first war, when Severus had been held for crimes against the wizarding world, Dumbledore had pleaded his case. It was made public that he had been a spy for the side of the light. That he had never been faithful to the dark lord. Severus knew if he went back without a good story he would be killed on sight. 

“Tell them you were a spy, but the dark lords spy. That you believe he would return to acted faithful to me to be in a prime position on his return.”

The words settled heavily between them.

“You still have access routes they believe remain uncompromised,” Dumbledore continued. “You know how they operate. Their trust in you was never fully severed just bruised.”

Severus stared at him for a long moment.Going back to  Voldemort meant stepping willingly into the jaws of something monstrous. Knew he would be expecting nights of pain and humiliation. That he would need to once more dirty himself so badly that he never felt clean.He knew that. Dumbledore knew it too.

“Find out what they want with Harry,” Dumbledore said quietly.

Severus looked away toward the burning containment wards below. Then back toward Dumbledore.

“And if they already have him?”

Dumbledore#s expression did not change.

“Then we discover why and ensure his safe return, but Severus do not lose your position when you regain it..”

Silence stretched.

Then Sirius spoke first.

“I’ll find him.”

There was something frighteningly sincere in the way he said it. Not noble. Not heroic. Possessive. Protective. Like Harry Potter had already become something Sirius considered his responsibility. Severus studied him briefly. Then looked back toward Dumbledore.

“And if the Dark Lord does not believe my story?”

Dumbledore’s voice stayed calm.

“He will.”

Severus almost laughed at that. A short, exhausted sound.

“Brilliant.”

Dumbledore stepped closer slightly.

“For what it is worth,” he said quietly, “I believe Harry is still recoverable.”

Severus held his gaze.

“That sounded carefully rehearsed.”

“It was.”

Another silence. Then Severus nodded once. Decision made.

“I’ll go.”

Sirius adjusted the sleeve of his coat slowly.

“When I find him,” he said, “is there anything else I should be concerned about?”

Dumbledore’s eyes drifted back toward the ruined trace map visible through the observation glass. His answer came after a long pause.

“A second Harry Potter.”

That finally made both men still. Below them, the containment wards ignited one by one across the large, hulking maze. Trying desperately to cage something that had already escaped.

Behind them, footsteps again. Severus turned slightly. Minerva McGonagall entered the tower carrying field reports she had pilfered from an inattentive ministry official, moving fast, scanning. She stopped when she saw them.

“Albus,” she said to Dumbledore, then glanced at Severus briefly. “We’ve confirmed the graveyard site anomaly. There was a full ritual collapse. But..”

She hesitated. Severus stepped forward slightly.

“But what?”

Her voice lowered.

“There was a civilian presence signature at the rupture point.”

Dumbledore went still. Severus’s eyes narrowed.

“Civilian?”

The woman nodded once.

“Yes. But not recorded on arrival logs.”

A beat.

“It matches Potter.”

Silence again. Different this time. Heavier. Because now it wasn’t just missing. It was elsewhere. Dumbledore exhaled slowly.

“Then Voldemort has achieved displacement,” he said quietly.

Severus looked at him.

“And Potter?”

Dumbledore didn’t answer immediately. Because the honest answer was something no one wanted yet. Instead he said:

“We proceed as if he can still be recovered.”

Severus didn’t like that answer. But he understood it. Because the alternative was worse. He turned back towards the maze. Watching containment wards ignite in sequence. Then quietly, to no one in particular:

“Then we find him.” Sirius said strongly. Dumbledore looked at him nodding his head just slightly.

Rain started to hammer against the wooden frame of the observation tower hard enough to sound like distant gunfire. Within a few moments Sirius Black was already gone. No escort. No official clearance. No Ministry tracking sigils. Dumbledore had arranged it that way deliberately.

A fugitive moved through broken places easier than trained aurors ever could.

Especially one with old family money, abandoned estates, and enough bitterness to survive almost anything. Severus watched the departure from the upper observation deck in silence.

Below, Sirius crossed the courtyard alone beneath the storm, black coat snapping behind him like a torn banner. He never looked back.

“Confident choice,” Severus said eventually.

Dumbledore stood beside him with his hands clasped behind his back.

“No,” Dumbledore replied quietly. “Necessary.”

Severus glanced sideways at him.

“That man hates authority almost as much as he hates himself.”

“Yes.”

“And you sent him after a missing child.”

Dumbledore’s eyes remained on the rain.

“He will burn the world before allowing harm to come to Harry Potter.”

That answer unsettled Severus slightly. Not because he disagreed but because Dumbledore sounded certain. Below them, Sirius disappeared into the darkness beyond the gates.

Gone.

Like a ghost slipping between cracks in reality.

“Severus I need you to go now. I’m sure you are already being called” he said.

Severus nodded once, hand going to his arm the burning becoming more insistent..

“I know.”

A pause stretched between them, heavy with things neither of them bothered to explain out loud.

“It’s the only correct plan left,” Severus added.

For the first time that day, Dumbledore did not immediately counter him. Instead, he studied Severus for a long moment, like a man calculating the weight of a decision already in motion.

Then, quietly:

“Proceed.”

Severus turned. At the end of the viewing platform, Minerva stood waiting with the sealed destination slip in her hands that she had shown Sirius. She looked uncertain, caught between protocol and instinct. Her eyes flicked to Dumbledore.  Not as a superior. As something worse.

A puppeteer who never needed to raise his voice.

Dumbledore gave a small nod. Permission. Minerva exhaled and stepped forward, knowing it is her turn to receive orders. Her voice lowered as Severus passed.

“Be careful,” she said. “Whatever’s out there… it’s powerful.”

Severus didn’t respond immediately. He only glanced at the woman, knowing that the slip of paper in her hand held the destination of Potter. Part of him wanted to reach out to take it, to go himself to find the child but that was not his role in this war. That would be someone else’s duty. The mangy mutt.

“Everything is powerful,” he said finally.

Not reassurance.

Observation.

Then he turned away. The corridor back down to the ground seemed longer on the way back. Not physically, just in the way distance felt when reality was slightly unstable at the edges. Behind him, Minerva’s gaze lingered too long. Behind her, Dumbledore was already looking past all of them. Thinking three steps ahead of a conversation nobody else had realised was a turning point.

Severus didn’t notice. He was already moving. Cloak tightening around his shoulders, boots striking stone with steady, deliberate rhythm. Each step forward felt less like walking toward a destination and more like walking back into something the world had tried to bury. At the edge of the wards, the air changed.

Subtle at first.

A pressure shift. Like the world remembering it had teeth. Severus paused just once. Not fear.

Assessment.

Then he slipped his sleeve upwards. The ink on his arm shimmered wrongly alive, as if reacting to being released from its confines. For a fraction of a second, the ward line beyond him flickered. Something on the other side noticed him noticing. Severus’s jaw tightened slightly.

“Right,” he muttered under his breath.

And stepped through.

The wards folded around him like a held breath finally released. Behind him, unseen from the entrance of the school Dumbledore watched the exact point he vanished.

Expression unreadable.

Not hope.

Not doubt.

Something closer to calculation becoming inevitability. And far away beyond mapped space, beyond safe classification, the world shifted in response to a name being carried across it.

Severus Snape.

Moving toward something that should not yet know it was being found.

Chapter Text

 The Boy Who Chose the Monster

Harry stumbled after Abaddon through soaked fields and hedgerows, trainers sinking into mud, lungs burning from cold air and panic. Somewhere behind them, the graveyard still glowed faintly through the storm, blue flashes of Ministry spellfire cutting through the dark.

Abaddon never looked back

He moved like he already knew where they were going. Fast. Efficient. Black combat clothes soaked through with rain and blood alike, dark hair plastered against his forehead, scar cutting pale across his face whenever lightning flashed overhead. Harry could barely keep up. His hands still shook. Cedric was dead. Pettigrew was dead.

Voldemort…

Harry nearly tripped over a root. Abaddon caught him instantly by the back of his top before he could hit the ground.

“Move.”

Harry scrambled up immediately. Behind them, voices suddenly erupted from the graveyard carried across the storm winds.

“Merlin!”

“That’s Pettigrew!”

“He’s supposed to be dead!”

“Get Bones down here NOW!”

 Harry stopped to turn, thinking that maybe he could help. Sirius could be free. Abaddon grabbed him again shoving him forward.

“I said move.”

Not cruel. Not gentle either. Just absolute. Harry swallowed and forced his legs forward. The Midlands stretched around them in endless black countryside. Empty roads. Flooded ditches. Stone walls dividing fields that vanished into darkness. Somewhere far off, church bells rang midnight through the storm. Then voices.

“POTTER!”

Abaddon stopped so suddenly Harry nearly collided with him. Down the slope behind them, lights moved through the rain. Wands. Aurors. Three of them. Harry recognised the red-trimmed travelling cloaks immediately.

 “Harry Potter!” a woman shouted through the storm. “Stay where you are!”

Another voice: “The armed individual with you is to disarm immediately!”

Abaddon slowly turned. Harry felt it then. That shift. The thing inside Abaddon that went still before violence. The Aurors approached cautiously through the mud, wands raised. Rain streamed from their hoods.

“Harry,” the woman called again, softer now. “You’re safe. Come here.”

Safe. Harry almost moved. Then Abaddon spoke quietly beside him.

“No.”

The Aurors spread slightly. Tactical. Trying to surround. Harry saw Abaddon notice it too.

“The man with you is dangerous,” one Auror barked. “Step away from him now!”

Abaddon tilted his head slightly. Lightning flashed. For a second his face looked skeletal in the white light.

“He thinks you’re rescuing him,” Abaddon said softly.

The woman frowned.

“What?”

Abaddon moved. Harry barely saw it happen. One second Abaddon stood beside him. The next…

CRACK.

The lead Auror hit the ground screaming as Abaddon shattered her wand hand beneath his boot. A red curse tore through the rain. Abaddon twisted sideways with unnatural speed, grabbing the second Auror by the throat and slamming him face-first into the stone wall hard enough to silence him instantly. The third fired blindly. Green light exploded through rain. Abaddon shoved Harry down into the mud and threw a knife. Not magic.

Metal.

The Auror collapsed choking, clutching his shoulder where the blade buried deep. Everything went silent except thunder. Harry stared. Abaddon stood motionless in the rain amongst them, breathing hard once. Twice. The woman whimpered on the ground, clutching her ruined hand.

“You attacked Ministry officers,” she gasped.

“You approached my position armed.”

Abaddon walked toward her slowly. She tried to crawl backward. Harry should have been horrified. Should have been sick. Instead he watched with something awful twisting in his chest. Awe. Because Abaddon looked unstoppable. Not like a wizard. Not like an Auror. Something worse. Something built entirely for survival. Abaddon crouched in front of the woman, voice calm.

“You saw us.”

The Auror stared at him in terror. Abaddon glanced briefly toward Harry. Harry realised suddenly what he was doing. Witness management. No loose ends.

“No, please.”

Abaddon struck her once across the temple with the handle of her own wand. She went limp instantly. Not dead. Just gone. Abaddon stood.

Abaddon froze for half a second. Only half. But Harry noticed. Then Abaddon grabbed Harry by the shoulder and shoved him forward again. Faster now. Urgent. The rain became vicious as they crossed another field, climbing over fences and cutting through drowned farmland toward distant woods. Harry’s legs ached. His glasses were useless with rain. Still Abaddon kept going. Always checking roads first. Always scanning windows. Once headlights appeared briefly on a nearby lane. Abaddon immediately dragged Harry flat into a drainage ditch filled with freezing water. The car slowed. Abaddon’s wand was already in his hand. Not trembling. Not hesitant.

Ready.

The vehicle eventually passed. Harry looked sideways at him from the mud.

“You were going to kill them.”

Abaddon kept watching the road.

“Yes.”

No shame. No excuse. Just fact. Harry should have feared him. Instead he heard himself ask quietly:

“Why?”

Abaddon finally looked at him then. Rainwater ran from his jawline. Blood stained one sleeve black.

“Because if they report seeing us,” he said, “they send more.”

Harry stared at him. Abaddon’s expression remained flat. Cold. But Harry was beginning to notice something underneath it now. Not cruelty. Calculation. Everything Abaddon did revolved around one thing only: Keeping Harry safe. Keeping him alive. The thought hit strangely hard. Abaddon rose from the ditch first and held out a hand without looking at him.

“Come on.”

Harry took it immediately and followed the monster into the storm. They walked until Harry could no longer feel his feet. The storm had eased into cold relentless rain by the time they reached the outskirts of a tiny Midlands village. A scattering of yellow lights glowed through the dark cottages, a petrol station, a closed pub crouched beside the road. Abaddon stopped beneath the shelter of dripping trees.

“Stay here.”

Harry immediately grabbed his sleeve.

“You’re leaving?”

Abaddon looked down at the hand clutching him. For a second Harry thought he might pull away.

Instead Abaddon only said, “Five minutes.”

Then he disappeared into the rain. Harry stood alone in the dark woods trying not to panic.

Every sound felt wrong. Every passing car made his stomach lurch. He kept seeing Cedric. Kept hearing Voldemort’s voice. And underneath it all was the terrifying certainty that Abaddon might simply never come back. Because why would he? Harry barely knew him. A stranger from another world claiming to once be him. A violent thing wearing his face somewhere underneath scars and blood and exhaustion.

Thunder rolled overhead. Harry hugged himself tighter. Then branches shifted. Abaddon emerged silently from the darkness carrying two stuffed bags and a bundle under one arm. Harry blinked.

“Did you?”

Abaddon ignored the question completely.

“Sit.”

Harry sat automatically beneath the trees while Abaddon crouched beside the bags, pulling items out with efficient movements. Food. Water bottles. A first aid kit. Packets of painkillers. Thick socks. A dark waterproof coat still with shop tags attached. Dry clothes. Harry stared. Abaddon grabbed Harry’s wrist suddenly. Harry flinched. Abaddon’s expression hardened instantly at the reaction. Not angry. Worse somehow. Like he recognised it.

“You’re bleeding.”

Harry looked down. A long cut sliced across his forearm from when Pettigrew drew his blood to bring back Voldemort. Mud and rainwater had turned the blood pink.

“I’m fine.”

Abaddon didn’t answer. He opened the first aid kit with one hand. Harry watched him closely now. Up close Abaddon looked terrible. Not just tired. Ruined. There were older scars visible beneath his soaked sleeves. Fresh blood still seeped slowly through bandages wrapped badly around his ribs beneath the black combat shirt. One of his hands trembled faintly whenever he stopped moving. Harry realised suddenly, Abaddon was badly hurt. And still moving like this. Still fighting Aurors. Still dragging Harry across half the countryside.

“Hold still.”

The antiseptic burned. Harry hissed. Abaddon didn’t apologise. He cleaned the cut carefully anyway. Not gentle exactly. But precise. Like someone trying very hard not to hurt him more than necessary.

“You stole all this,” Harry said quietly.

“Yes.”

“You don’t care?”

“No.”

 Abaddon wrapped the bandage around Harry’s arm securely before reaching for the waterproof coat.

“Put this on.”

Harry stared at it. It was new. Actually new. Not Dudley’s old cast-offs stretched wrong at the shoulders. Not oversized charity jumpers Petunia dumped at the end of his bed like obligations.

New.

“For me?”

Abaddon looked at him blankly.

“You’re freezing.”

Like that answered everything. Harry pulled the coat on slowly. It fit properly. Warm immediately settled around him. Something strange tightened painfully in his chest. Abaddon shoved a wrapped sandwich into his hands next.

“Eat.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

Abaddon opened a bottle of water instead. Harry noticed he wasn’t eating.

“You should have some.”

“I said eat.”

Harry obeyed. Because Abaddon spoke like commands were survival itself. For a while only rain filled the silence. Harry ate sitting against a tree while Abaddon remained crouched near the roadside watching through branches constantly, wand loose in one hand. Always alert. Always waiting for danger. Harry swallowed hard.

“What happened to your world?”

No answer.

“Was there really a war?”

Silence.

“Did we win?”

Abaddon’s jaw tightened slightly. That was all. Harry studied him carefully.

“You said you were me.”

“I was.”

“What happened to you?”

Abaddon finally looked at him then. Lightning flashed white through the woods. For one terrible second Harry saw how empty Abaddon’s eyes really were. Not emotionless. Destroyed.

“Nothing,” Abaddon said quietly.

Harry knew instantly it was a lie. A huge one. But Abaddon turned away again before he could ask more. The rain strengthened overhead. Abaddon suddenly reached into the second bag and pulled out a folded hoodie. Dark grey. Soft-looking. He tossed it toward Harry.

“Change out of the wet clothes.”

Harry hesitated.

“In front of you?”

Abaddon blinked once like the question itself confused him.

“You’re fourteen, not fragile.”

Harry flushed slightly and changed anyway beneath the shelter of the trees. The hoodie was warm too. Dry. It smelled faintly of detergent and smoke instead of cupboard dust and Privet Drive. Abaddon looked away the entire time. Only turning back once Harry finished.

“Better?”

Harry nodded. Abaddon rose slowly and nearly stumbled. Harry froze. Abaddon caught himself instantly against a tree, hiding it fast, but not fast enough. Blood had soaked further down his side.

“You’re hurt.”

“I know.”

“You need a hospital.”

“No hospitals.”

“You could die.”

Abaddon’s expression remained flat.

“Probably.”

Harry stared at him. Abaddon said it with complete indifference. Like his own survival did not matter at all. Only Harry’s did. The thought settled heavily in Harry’s stomach.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked quietly.

Abaddon checked the road again before answering.

“Because nobody came for us.”

Harry frowned.

“What?”

Abaddon looked at him for a long moment. Then away.

“You’ll sleep for two hours,” he said instead. “I’ll keep watch.”

Harry opened his mouth again. More questions. Thousands of them. But Abaddon had already gone silent once more, standing guard at the edge of the woods like something feral and exhausted and impossible. And despite everything, despite the blood and violence and fear, Harry found himself feeling safer beside him than he ever had at Privet Drive.

Harry woke to the sound of fabric tearing. For one disoriented second he forgot where he was.

Cold air. Rainwater dripping somewhere nearby. The smell of wet earth and smoke. Then memory crashed back all at once and he jerked upright beneath the trees, heart pounding violently. Abaddon was sitting several feet away with his back against a trunk, knife clenched between his teeth while he rewrapped bandages around his ribs. 

Harry froze.

The injuries were horrific. In the weak grey light before dawn, Abaddon’s chest looked ruined beneath the open combat shirt. Thick scars crossed old burns and knife wounds layered over one another like someone had tried repeatedly to carve him apart over years. Fresh injuries cut between them. One long vicious wound stretched across his side, still raw and angry-looking. Another puncture wound near his shoulder had bled through entirely. Harry stared in horror.

“How are you still moving?”

Abaddon glanced up briefly before tightening another bandage one-handed.

“Practice.”

“That’s not funny.”

Abaddon pulled the knife from his mouth.

“I wasn’t joking.”

Harry swallowed hard. Up close it looked worse than before. Abaddon should have been unconscious. Maybe dead already.

“You need a healer.”

“No.”

“You’re bleeding everywhere.”

“Yes.”

“You could die.”

Abaddon barked a sudden laugh at that. A real one this time. Rough and sharp and completely wrong coming from him. Harry blinked in surprise. Abaddon shook his head slightly.

“I’ve suffered much worse than this.”

“How?”

Abaddon leaned back against the tree again, breathing carefully through obvious pain.

“War.”

Harry looked at the scars again. Not just combat injuries. Torture. Some looked magical. Others brutally physical.

“What happened to you over there?”

Abaddon’s eyes drifted toward the dark woods.

“Same thing that always happens to people like us.”

People like us. Harry frowned slightly. Abaddon looked back at him then, expression strangely calm despite the blood soaking fresh bandages.

“But I’m still here.”

He tapped Harry lightly once against the forehead.

“And so are you.”

Harry stared at him. Abaddon’s voice lowered slightly.

“We survive.”

The words settled heavily between them. Harry looked down at his hands. Then quietly:

“You said you killed Hermione and Ron.”

The silence afterward felt dangerous. Abaddon didn’t react immediately. He simply tied off the bandage hard enough to make blood spot through white cloth again.

Finally he said:

“Yes.”

Harry hated how small his voice sounded.

“Why?”

Abaddon’s expression didn’t change.

“At first they were my friends.”

Something cold entered his voice.

“Then they became soldiers.”

Harry swallowed.

“What happened?”

“They chose a side.”

“And you didn’t?”

Abaddon looked at him sharply then.

“I didn’t choose it, no.”

The answer carried something final inside it. Harry hesitated before asking the question anyway.

“Did you hate them?”

Abaddon went still for a long moment.

“By the time I killed them… I considered them enemies.”

The words came flat and emotionless. Like reporting weather.

“I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be their friend anymore.”

Harry felt sick suddenly. Not because Abaddon admitted it. Because he sounded empty saying it. Like something inside him had burned out years ago.

“Did they try to kill you first?”

Abaddon gave him a look that answered enough. Harry wrapped his arms tighter around himself.

“You could use magic to heal those,” he muttered eventually.

Abaddon immediately shook his head.

“No healing spells.”

“Why?”

“Trace signatures.”

Harry frowned.

“What?”

“Strong healing magic leaves residue. Trackable. Ministry, Death Eaters, doesn’t matter. Anyone competent could follow it.”

Harry stared.

“You know all that?”

Abaddon’s mouth twitched faintly.

“In my world,” he said quietly, “everyone hunted everyone.”

Then suddenly Abaddon’s head snapped toward the woods. Instantly alert. Every trace of exhaustion vanished. Harry felt the shift immediately now. He recognised it.

Predator.

Abaddon rose silently to his feet, already drawing his wand and knife simultaneously.

“Behind me.”

Harry obeyed instantly. Branches cracked somewhere beyond the trees. Low voices. Male.

“…tracks end near here…”

“…Potter has to be close…”

“…Dark Lord said alive…”

Death Eaters. Harry’s stomach dropped. Three figures emerged through the rain in black cloaks and silver masks. One spotted them immediately.

“There!”

Abaddon moved first. Always first. A curse exploded from his wand before the Death Eater even finished shouting. The masked man flew backward into a tree with a crack loud enough to echo.

The second Death Eater fired green light through the woods and Abaddon stepped directly into its path to shield Harry. The curse missed by inches. Abaddon threw the knife. Straight through the man’s throat. Harry recoiled in shock. The third Death Eater turned to Apparate, Abaddon was already there somehow. Fast. Too fast.

One hand seized the back of the mask. The other drove the wand upward beneath the man’s jaw. Red light flashed. The body dropped instantly into mud. Silence returned. Rain hissed softly through branches. Harry stared at the corpses. Abaddon stood motionless amongst them breathing hard now, one hand pressed briefly against his wounded ribs. Blood seeped between his fingers.

“You got hit!”

“I’m fine.”

“You are not fine!”

Abaddon yanked the knife free from the dead man’s throat with brutal efficiency before wiping it clean on the cloak.

“We move now.”

Harry looked shakily at the bodies one last time before following. Again. Always following. The countryside slowly gave way to old roads and rolling hills as dawn threatened somewhere behind storm clouds. Abaddon led them away from villages now, sticking to railway lines and flooded footpaths where fewer people would look. Harry stumbled more than once from exhaustion. Abaddon never complained. Whenever Harry slowed too much, Abaddon simply adjusted pace automatically without mentioning it. Hours later they finally reached an old stone bridge crossing a narrow river swollen with rainwater. Abaddon stopped underneath it immediately.

Stone overhead.

Limited entrances.

Good sightlines.

Defensible.

Harry recognised the calculation now. Abaddon inspected the area once before nodding slightly.

“We stay here till dark.”

Harry sank against the cold stone wall exhausted beyond words. Abaddon remained standing a moment longer listening carefully to the storm outside before finally lowering himself stiffly to the ground opposite him. The bridge sheltered them from most of the rain. For the first time since the graveyard, they were still. Harry looked at Abaddon across the dim space. At the scars. The blood. The exhaustion hidden behind relentless movement. And suddenly Harry realised something frightening. Abaddon truly believed he would die eventually. He just didn’t care if it happened protecting Harry first.

The storm eased sometime near evening. Rain still dripped steadily from the stone bridge overhead, but the worst of the wind had finally passed. The river beside them rushed dark and swollen through the countryside. Harry sat wrapped in the stolen hoodie and coat, half-asleep against the wall. Abaddon remained awake. Of course he did. One knee raised. Wand resting loosely across his arm. Eyes fixed on the grey countryside beyond the bridge opening.

Watching.

Always watching.

Harry was beginning to think Abaddon never truly relaxed. Then Abaddon suddenly went still. Not tense. Still. Dangerously still. Harry straightened immediately.

“What?”

Abaddon lifted one hand sharply for silence. Footsteps. Slow. Careful. Coming from above the bridge. Harry’s pulse jumped. Abaddon rose soundlessly to his feet despite the obvious pain it caused him. The footsteps stopped. Then a familiar voice echoed down through the rain.

“Harry?”

Harry froze.

“…Sirius?”

Abaddon moved instantly in front of him. Protective. Aggressive. Wand already raised. A tall figure appeared at the edge of the bridge slope, dark coat soaked from travel, wand held low but ready. Sirius Black looked exhausted. Older than Harry remembered from school meetings and distant floo gatherings. Gaunter now. Hollow-cheeked from months on the run. But his sharp aristocratic features remained unmistakable. The moment Sirius spotted Abaddon, his expression hardened violently.

“Well,” Sirius said coldly. “There you are.”

Abaddon said nothing. Harry stepped forward slightly.

“Sirius, wait!”

“Get away from him, Harry.”

Abaddon’s wand lifted a fraction higher. Sirius noticed immediately.

“So it’s true then,” Sirius murmured. “Dumbledore was right.”

At Dumbledore’s name, Abaddon’s entire posture changed. Harry felt it like pressure in the air.

“You spoke to him.”

Not a question. Sirius’s eyes narrowed.

“And you’re the demon the Aurors are speaking about”

Demon.

Harry saw Abaddon’s jaw tighten slightly.

“Sirius,” Harry said quickly, “he helped me.”

“He murdered Aurors.”

“He saved me!”

“He’s dangerous.”

Abaddon finally spoke.

“So are you.”

The two men stared at each other across the bridge shadows like wolves deciding which one attacked first. Harry suddenly realised something terrifying. They genuinely might kill each other.

Sirius slowly raised his wand. Abaddon mirrored him instantly.

“Abaddon,” Harry started.

“Stay behind me,” Abaddon said quietly.

Sirius’s gaze flicked briefly to Harry.

“That thing is manipulating you.”

Abaddon moved before Harry even processed the insult. A curse exploded from his wand, Sirius blocked instantly. The bridge erupted with light. Stone shattered. Water exploded upward from the river.

Harry stumbled backward as the two men attacked each other with terrifying precision. Sirius fought like an aristocratic duellist controlled, elegant, lethal. Abaddon fought like war itself. No wasted movement. No hesitation. Every spell designed to incapacitate or kill as quickly as possible. Sirius barely avoided a cutting curse that sliced clean through part of the bridge wall.

“Harry!” Sirius shouted while deflecting another attack. “He’s unstable!”

Abaddon slammed a curse into the stone beside Sirius hard enough to crater it.

“Say Dumbledore’s name again.”

Harry realised with horror that Abaddon wasn’t fighting defensively anymore. He was trying to end this.

Fast.

Sirius saw it too. The older man’s expression sharpened grimly.

“Oh, you’re serious.”

A vicious spell burst from Sirius’s wand. Abaddon countered instantly, and Harry did the stupidest thing he had ever done in his life. He stepped between them.

“STOP!”

Two spells screamed toward him from opposite directions. Everything happened at once.

Sirius’s face drained of colour. Abaddon actually looked afraid. Both wands jerked violently sideways at the last possible second. The curses missed Harry by inches. One blasted apart the riverbank. The other obliterated part of the bridge overhead in a shower of stone. Silence crashed down afterward. Harry stood frozen between them breathing hard. Abaddon looked murderous. Sirius looked horrified.

“You idiot child!” Sirius snapped.

Abaddon grabbed Harry violently by the shoulder and shoved him behind him again.

“Never do that again.”

Harry stared at him. Abaddon’s hands were shaking. Not from rage. Fear. Actual fear. Sirius noticed too. The older man slowly lowered his wand first. Interesting. Very interesting.

“He would have hit himself before hitting you,” Sirius said quietly, studying Abaddon now instead of attacking. “That’s inconvenient.”

Abaddon’s expression became blank again instantly.

“Leave.”

Sirius ignored him completely. Instead he looked at Harry.

“Harry, listen to me carefully. This man is dangerous. Dumbledore says…”

“I don’t care what Dumbledore says.”

Sirius blinked. Harry surprised himself saying it. But once the words started they would not stop.

“He came for me.”

Sirius frowned slightly.

“He killed people for you.”

“He protected me.”

“He’s unstable.”

“He’s hurt.”

Sirius went silent. Harry stepped fully beside Abaddon this time. Conscious choice.

“He could’ve left me there,” Harry said quietly. “Everyone else would have handed me over already.”

Sirius studied him carefully. Then Abaddon. Abaddon stood rigid beside Harry despite blood slowly soaking through fresh bandages again. Exhausted. Armed. Ready to fight anyway. Ready to die anyway. Sirius’s sharp gaze narrowed thoughtfully.

“You trust him.”

Harry hesitated only briefly.

“Yes.”

Abaddon glanced sideways at him. Just once. Something unreadable flickered across his scarred face before vanishing again. Sirius exhaled slowly through his nose.

“Well,” he muttered, “that complicates my life enormously.”

Abaddon’s wand remained raised. Sirius finally looked directly at him.

“You’re bleeding through your bandages.”

No response.

“You’re also half-feral, paranoid, and apparently willing to murder anyone who approaches him.”

Still nothing.

Sirius sighed.

“I know of a place.”

Abaddon’s eyes hardened instantly.

“No.”

“It’s abandoned.”

“No.”

“Nobody connected to Dumbledore knows it exists.”

Abaddon still looked unconvinced. Sirius’s mouth thinned.

“You can either continue dragging a traumatised fourteen-year-old through freezing rain while hunted by both sides of a war…”

His eyes flicked pointedly toward the blood soaking Abaddon’s side.

“…or you can accept temporary shelter.”

Harry looked between them carefully. Sirius wasn’t looking at Abaddon like an enemy anymore. Not entirely. More like someone trying to understand a dangerous animal that had unexpectedly guarded a child instead of devouring one. Abaddon remained silent for a long moment.

“How isolated?”

Sirius almost smiled at the immediate tactical question.

“Old family property. Warded. Hidden. No one around for miles.”

Abaddon considered. Harry could practically see calculations happening behind his eyes. Escape routes. Defensive positions. Betrayal probabilities. Finally Abaddon lowered his wand slightly. Not trust. Never trust. But enough. Sirius noticed too.

“Well then,” Sirius said quietly. “Looks like none of us are having a peaceful week.”

Harry let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Outside the bridge, rain continued falling across the darkening Midlands countryside.

But for the first time since the graveyard they finally had somewhere to go.

Chapter Text

 What you Are Asking For

Apparition with Abaddon felt wrong. Not because he splinched. Not because he lost control. But because Abaddon travelled like violence. Harry barely had time to gasp before the world tore itself apart around them. Black smoke swallowed everything. The air screamed in his ears. Then suddenly solid ground slammed back beneath his feet hard enough to make him stumble. Abaddon caught him immediately by the shoulder before he could fall.

“Breathe.”

Harry shoved him away on instinct. “I am breathing.”

“You weren’t.”

Sirius appeared beside them a second later, his own apparition smoother, quieter. He barely reacted to the freezing rain soaking through his coat as he looked up toward the hill ahead.

Harry followed his gaze. And forgot what he was about to say.

The manor loomed over the countryside like something ancient and predatory. Black stone towers rose into the storm clouds. Narrow windows glowed faintly gold behind ironwork older than Hogwarts itself. Dead trees surrounded the estate for acres, their branches twisted like skeletal hands clawing toward the sky. The house looked less built and more unearthed.

Harry felt magic immediately. Not the bright humming warmth of Hogwarts. This magic sat heavy in the air like pressure before a thunderstorm. Abaddon went completely still beside him. His expression sharpened.

“The stones are warded,” he said quietly.

Sirius glanced at him. “You can feel that?”

Abaddon ignored the question, eyes fixed on the manor. “Blood magic. Layered protections. Old ones.”

Harry looked between them uneasily. “Is that bad?”

Sirius barked a bitter laugh. “Depends which side of the gate you’re standing on.”

The iron gates ahead of them towered at least fifteen feet high, covered in twisting metal shapes Harry realised with growing discomfort were human figures. Not decorative ones. Screaming ones. The wards pressed harder the closer they got. Harry instinctively moved nearer to Abaddon. Sirius reached the gates first. He rolled up one sleeve before pulling a knife from inside his coat.

Harry frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Getting inside.”

Sirius sliced his palm without hesitation. Blood hit the iron. The gates screamed. Harry physically jumped backward as the sound tore through the night. Crimson lines spread through the metal like veins beneath skin. Magic surged outward so violently the ground itself trembled beneath their feet. Abaddon’s wand appeared instantly in his hand. Not frightened. Prepared. The gates slowly creaked open.

“Family wards,” Sirius said, wrapping his bleeding hand with complete indifference. “House requires blood recognition.”

Harry stared at the entrance. “That’s insane.”

“No,” Abaddon said quietly beside him. “That’s old.”

The manor doors opened before they reached them. Warm air rolled outward carrying the scent of old books, smoke, and something darker Harry could not name. Inside, the entrance hall stretched upward into shadow. Black marble floors reflected silver candlelight. Portraits lined the walls in towering frames, but unlike Hogwarts portraits, these ones did not move. 

They simply watched.

Harry felt their eyes following him. Abaddon stepped inside first. The second his boots touched the marble floor, the manor reacted. The candles flared brighter. The wards shifted. Something ancient moved beneath the walls like a sleeping creature turning in its sleep. Sirius noticed too. His gaze snapped sharply toward Abaddon.

“You feel familiar to it,” he said slowly.

Abaddon’s expression remained unreadable. “My world had houses like this.”

That answer clearly unsettled Sirius more than it should have. Harry looked around uneasily as they walked deeper into the manor. Every corridor seemed endless. Dark wood paneling climbed the walls beneath ceilings painted with constellations Harry did not recognise. The house felt alive. Not metaphorically. Harry could feel the magic pressing against his skin like breathing. Abaddon dragged his fingers lightly across one stone archway as they passed.

“Blackstone foundation,” he murmured.

Sirius stopped walking.

“How do you know that?”

Abaddon looked at him evenly. “Because powerful families build the same way across worlds.”

The silence after that sat heavy. Harry hated how often Abaddon said things that reminded him this wasn’t really his world. It made Harry feel that this may be temporary for Abaddon.

Eventually Sirius led them into what looked like a drawing room large enough to host Ministry galas. A fire roared to life automatically the moment they entered. Harry dropped heavily onto one of the sofas. Exhaustion hit him properly for the first time since the graveyard. Everything hurt. His scar still burned faintly beneath his fringe. Abaddon remained standing near the fireplace, eyes scanning exits automatically. Always alert. Always waiting for danger.

Harry rubbed tiredly at his face. “We can’t stay hidden forever.”

“No one said forever,” Abaddon replied.

“I need to go back.”

Abaddon looked at him. “Back where?”

“Hogwarts.”

“No.”

Harry frowned immediately. “You can’t just decide that.”

“I can when the alternative gets you killed.”

“Dumbledore would protect me.”

Abaddon laughed softly. That frightened Harry more than shouting would have.

“You still think this is about protection,” Abaddon said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re valuable now.”

Harry stood abruptly. “I’m not an object.”

“Not to me,” Abaddon replied instantly. “To everyone else? Different conversation.”

Sirius leaned silently against the mantle, watching the argument carefully.

Harry pointed angrily toward the windows. “My friends are there.”

“And the Ministry.”

“That doesn’t mean…”

“Yes,” Abaddon cut in sharply. “It does.”

The room fell silent. Abaddon stepped closer now, voice calmer but somehow more dangerous because of it.

“You’re fourteen. Been missing now for 24 hours. Traumatised. Recently kidnapped by a terrorist cult. Witness and unwilling participant to a resurrection of the most powerful Dark Lord of all time. Centre of a political crisis. World famous for defeating said dark lord. Do you honestly think they’ll just let you walk back into school and pretend everything is normal? On top of that Dumbledore will want to send you back to Privet Drive.”

Harry opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Because when Abaddon said it like that, it sounded impossible.

Sirius finally spoke. “The boy has a point about returning eventually.”

Abaddon looked at him instead. “Not yet.”

“Hogwarts remains one of the safest locations in Britain.”

“For ordinary students maybe.”

Sirius’s gaze narrowed slightly. “You distrust Dumbledore that much?”

Abaddon’s jaw tightened.

“I distrust systems,” he said flatly. “Especially ones built around sacrificing children for the greater good. Whilst hiding behind a kind facade.”

Something flickered across Sirius’s face at those words. Recognition maybe.

Harry looked between them both. “You’re acting like someone can stop me.”

Abaddon stared at him for a long moment.

Then quietly:

“At the moment none of us have legal guardianship over you.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Abaddon gestured between them. “Me? Illegal existence technically. Sirius? Wanted by the Ministry. Sirius Black is still officially a mass murderer. Which means legally you are vulnerable.”

The word landed unpleasantly. Vulnerable. Harry hated it immediately.

Sirius folded his arms slowly. “If the Ministry intervenes…”

“They can take him,” Abaddon finished.

The room became very quiet.

Harry stared at them both. “Dumbledore wouldn’t allow that.”

Abaddon’s expression hardened instantly.

“You are still assuming this depends on what Dumbledore wants or that he himself doesn't have plans for you?”

“He cares about me!”

“Yes,” Abaddon snapped. “And powerful people who care about you are still capable of deciding what’s best for you without your consent. Such as illegally taking magical guardianship over you.”

Harry flinched. Because that sounded horribly possible. Abaddon exhaled slowly, forcing some of the anger down.

“I am not letting anyone separate us,” he said.

No hesitation. No uncertainty. Just absolute, terrifying certainty. Sirius studied him across the firelight for a long moment. Back on the bridge he had seen desperation. Fear. Protectiveness.

But this was something else entirely. Abaddon meant it. He would fight the Ministry itself before surrendering Harry. And somehow Sirius believed him.

Abaddon looked toward the fire thoughtfully. “Then we need leverage.”

Sirius’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Explain.”

“If powerful people decide Harry belongs under Ministry protection, we need legal standing before they move.”

Harry looked between them uneasily. “What does that mean?”

Abaddon’’s expression darkened.

“It means,” he said carefully, “that hiding is no longer enough.”

The fire cracked loudly in the silence that followed. Because all three of them understood what  Abaddon was really saying. This manor was not just a refuge. It was the beginning of a side powerful enough to oppose everyone else.

Abaddon remained beside the fire long after the room had fallen quiet. Rain battered the manor windows hard enough to sound like thrown gravel. Shadows moved across the walls beneath the firelight, distorting the ancient portraits watching from their frames. Harry hated the way this house stared at people. He sat curled into the corner of the sofa, exhausted enough that his bones felt heavy. Abaddon still had not sat down once since arriving.

Always moving.

Always watching exits.

Sirius finally broke the silence.

“You’ve thought about this before.”

Abaddon glanced at him. “Obviously.”

“No,” Sirius said quietly. “I mean properly.”

The fire cracked between them. Harry frowned slightly as Sirius continued studying Abaddon with growing unease.

“You already have plans.”

Abaddon did not deny it. That frightened Harry more than if he had.

Sirius folded his arms. “What exactly are you intending to do?”

Abaddon’s expression remained unreadable in the firelight.

“Protect him.”

“That’s not a plan. That’s an objective.”

Harry looked between them warily. Abaddon finally moved away from the fireplace, pacing slowly across the room.

“The Ministry will want control of him,” he said calmly. “Dumbledore already has control and will want influence over him. Voldemort wants ownership of him. Every side in this war wants access to Harry Potter.”

Harry opened his mouth immediately.

“I’m not…”

“A symbol?” Abaddon cut in softly.

Harry stopped. Abaddon looked at him then, and the anger in his expression vanished for a moment.

“To the wizarding world you are,” he said quietly. “That’s the problem.”

The words hit Harry strangely hard. Sirius’s gaze narrowed slightly.

“You speak like someone who’s already watched this happen.”

Abaddon looked away first. That silence was answer enough. Harry felt cold suddenly.

Because he realised with growing horror that Abaddon was not discussing a temporary situation anymore. This was not: hide for a few days, recover, return to school and talk to Hermione and Ron about his most recent adventure. Abaddon was discussing systems. Power structures. Long-term survival.

War.

Harry sat forward slowly. “You’re talking like we’re never going back.”

Abaddon stopped pacing. For a second he said nothing.

“I’m talking like I don’t trust anyone else to keep you alive.”

The room went still.

Harry swallowed hard. “Even Dumbledore?”

Abaddon laughed once under his breath. Not mockingly. Tiredly.

“You still think powerful men being kind means they’re safe.”

“That’s unfair.”

“No,” Abaddon replied sharply. “It’s accurate.”

Sirius watched the exchange silently. Abaddon turned back toward the fire.

“The moment the Ministry realises there’s another version of Harry Potter walking around, everything changes.”

Harry rubbed a hand over his scar. “You keep saying that.”

“Because you don’t understand the scale of this yet.”

Abaddon gestured toward the manor around them.

“Families like Sirius’s survive wars because they understand something ordinary people don’t.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow slightly. “And what’s that?”

Abaddon’s eyes lifted toward the old portraits.

“Power matters more than morality.”

Silence. Even the fire seemed quieter. Harry hated how believable that sounded in Abaddon’s voice. Sirius studied him carefully now.

“You’re not trying to run,” he realised slowly.

Abaddon looked at him evenly.

“No.”

“You’re trying to build something.”

Harry looked sharply toward Abaddon at that. But Abaddon did not deny it. That was the moment the atmosphere in the room changed completely. Sirius straightened slightly away from the mantle. Not defensive. Interested. Dangerously interested.

“You think you can oppose both sides?” Sirius asked.

“I think both sides will eventually force me to.”

“And your solution?”

Abaddon’s expression hardened.

“Make it impossible to touch him.”

Harry stared.

“You can’t just build your own side in a war!”

Abaddon looked at him immediately.

“Yes,” he said calmly. “You can.”

The certainty in his voice made Harry feel suddenly very young. Sirius exhaled slowly through his nose.

“You’ve already planned this.”

“Yes.”

“How far?”

Abaddon’s eyes flicked briefly toward Harry before returning to Sirius.

“Safehouses. Political leverage. Magical custody loopholes. Defensive alliances.”

Harry felt sick. This was real. Abaddon had truly thought about all of this already. Sirius stared at him for a long moment before speaking again.

“How old are you?”

Abaddon smiled faintly without humour.

“Older than I ever thought I would get to.”

The manor lights flickered. All three of them looked upward immediately. Something shifted through the walls. Not movement. Recognition. The magic in the manor pulsed low beneath Harry’s feet like a heartbeat. Then one of the doors deeper in the corridor slowly creaked open by itself. Sirius’s expression darkened instantly.

“That door hasn’t opened in years.”

Abaddon turned toward it slowly. The wards around the room softened. Harry physically felt it happen. The oppressive magic pressing against them seemed to ease around Abaddon specifically. Like the manor had accepted him. Sirius noticed too.

His eyes narrowed sharply. “What are you?”

Abaddon did not answer. Because honestly Harry was starting to wonder the same thing. Ancient family magic should not react to strangers this way. But the house was reacting to Abaddon like it recognised him. Or feared him enough to obey. Abaddon walked slowly toward the open doorway. Candle flames brightened as he passed them. The manor watched him.

Interested.

Sirius’s voice lowered carefully. “Old houses recognise conquerors sometimes.”

Harry looked sharply toward him. Sirius kept staring at Abaddon.

“Powerful magic leaves impressions.”

Abaddon glanced back over one shoulder. “And what impression am I leaving?”

Sirius held his gaze for a long moment.

“Something the house thinks will survive.”

The silence after that felt enormous. Finally Sirius pushed away from the fireplace.

“You can stay here,” he said at last.

Harry blinked slightly. Abaddon’s expression did not change, but Harry saw the tiny shift in his shoulders. Relief. Very small. Very hidden. Sirius pointed a finger toward Abaddon.

“Conditional alliance.”

Abaddon nodded once. “Expected.”

“You get access to the lower wards, the east wing, family libraries, and my contacts.”

Harry stared between them. “You’re serious?”

Sirius ignored him completely.

“But understand this carefully,” Sirius said quietly to Abaddon. “If you become a danger to the boy, I will kill you myself.”

Harry froze. The room fell silent. Abaddon answered immediately.

“Good.”

No hesitation. No offence. Just certainty. Sirius studied him for another long moment. And for the first time, Harry realised Sirius trusted Abaddon a little. Not because Abaddon was safe. Because Abaddon’s loyalty to Harry was absolute enough to be terrifying.

Then suddenly pain exploded through Harry’s scar. He cried out sharply, nearly falling from the sofa as white-hot agony tore through his skull.

“Harry!”

Abaddon reached him first. The room blurred violently. Harry could hear shouting somewhere distant but it no longer mattered because the vision slammed into him hard enough to drown reality entirely. Dark stone walls. Chains, spells and blood. Someone screaming.

Severus Snape.

Harry recognised him instantly despite the blood running down his face. Severus hung suspended by magical restraints, breathing hard through broken ribs while symbols burned red-hot across the floor beneath him. A voice spoke somewhere nearby. Cold. Amused.

“Your little rebellion is becoming troublesome.”

Harry could smell burning flesh.

Severus spat blood onto the floor. “Go fuck yourself.”

A scream followed. Not from fear. Pain. Harry felt it like knives beneath his own skin. Another figure stepped into view. Serpentine and terrifying.

Voldemort.

Magic curled around his fingers like living smoke as he grabbed Severus by the jaw hard enough to force his head upward.

“Tell me where the boy is.”

Severus laughed weakly despite the blood in his mouth. That seemed to anger Voldemort more than resistance would have. The torture curse hit again. Harry screamed aloud with it and the vision shattered. He collapsed forward gasping violently onto the manor floor. The fire roared higher around the room. Abaddon was kneeling beside him instantly, one hand gripping the back of his neck to keep him grounded.

“Harry. Look at me.”

Harry could barely breathe.

“Snape”

His scar burned horribly.

“Snape’s alive,” he choked out. “They have him.”

Harry collapsed before the last word fully left his mouth. Abaddon caught him halfway to the floor. The boy’s entire body convulsed with pain, scar blazing angry red beneath sweat-soaked hair. His breathing came in short, broken gasps that sounded far too much like panic.

“Potion cabinet,” Abaddon snapped immediately.

Sirius moved without argument. That more than anything told Abaddon how serious this had become. By the time Sirius returned, Harry was barely conscious. His fingers clutched desperately at Abaddon’s sleeve while his eyes remained unfocused, trapped somewhere between reality and whatever Voldemort’s connection was forcing him to see. Abaddon forced calming potion between Harry’s lips.

“Swallow.”

Harry coughed weakly.

“Harry.”

Another swallow. Finally the potion took effect slowly enough for the shaking to lessen. Not stop. Just lessen.

Abaddon lifted him carefully and carried him upstairs through the silent manor halls while Sirius followed behind. The house seemed quieter now, attentive in the way predators became attentive when something wounded entered their territory. The bedroom Sirius had given Harry was enormous. Dark green curtains framed towering windows overlooking the storm outside. Ancient wards hummed softly through the walls. Abaddon laid Harry carefully onto the bed. Within minutes exhaustion and potion dragged him unconscious. But not peacefully. Even asleep Harry writhed against the sheets, breathing unevenly as small sounds of distress escaped him.

“No,” he whispered weakly. “Stop.”

Abaddon sat beside the bed immediately. Sirius remained near the doorway watching both of them. For a while neither spoke. Rain hammered the windows. Harry twisted again in his sleep, face pale with pain.

Abaddon rubbed tiredly at his own face. “I forgot how strong the connection was.”

Sirius looked at him sharply. “The scar?”

Abaddon nodded once.

“It gets worse due to the resurrection.”

The room fell quiet again. Harry whimpered softly in his sleep. Sirius finally spoke.

“What are we going to do?”

Abaddon’s expression darkened.

“He needs Occlumency.”

Sirius frowned slightly. “At fourteen?”

“He doesn’t have a choice.”

Abaddon leaned back in the chair beside the bed, exhaustion finally beginning to show through the cracks.

“If Voldemort can reach him whenever he wants, then Harry becomes vulnerable every second he sleeps.”

Sirius folded his arms. “Best Occlumens alive besides Dumbledore is Snape.”

Abaddon’s expression did not change.

“That’s a shame,” he said flatly. “We’ll need to find someone else.”

The words hung cold in the room. Not cruel. Practical. But Sirius noticed the tiny tightening in Abaddon’s jaw afterward. He cared. More than he wanted visible. Hours passed slowly.

Eventually Harry’s nightmares quieted enough that Abaddon finally stood.

“You should sleep,” Sirius said.

Abaddon shook his head once. “Later.”

Sirius directed him silently toward the east wing baths. The shower water came out nearly scalding. Abaddon stood beneath it far longer than necessary, eyes closed while grime and dried blood disappeared down the drain. He called forth the magic within his core and started healing himself, feeling the protection of the wards. His body almost sagged in relief from the sudden lack of pain. For the first time in days there were no curses flying at him. No running. No screaming. Just heat. 

Silence.

The reprieve felt unnatural. Dangerous almost. War taught people to distrust calm. Fresh clothes waited outside afterward exactly where Sirius had promised they would be. Black trousers and a dark shirt. His heavy boots read to be put on. Abaddon dressed automatically. The fabric smelled clean.

Expensive.

Strange after sleeping in ruins and graveyards. By the time he reached the kitchens, the manor had settled into deep night silence. Sirius sat alone at the long wooden table nursing untouched whiskey.

The kitchens themselves were enormous, older than most houses Abaddon had lived in. Copper pans hung from the ceiling. Ancient magic warmed the stone floors beneath their feet.

Sirius glanced up as Abaddon entered.

“You look less dead.”

“High praise.”

Sirius snorted quietly. Abaddon moved toward the counters automatically, finally noticing the ache in his stomach.

Sirius watched him for a moment. “You eaten recently?”

Abaddon opened cupboards until he found bread.

“Not really.”

“How long?”

Abaddon shrugged slightly.

“A couple days maybe.”

Sirius stared at him. “That’s idiotic.”

“That’s war.”

Simple answer. Completely sincere. Abaddon finally sat down with food and water, eating slower than Sirius expected. Controlled and methodical. Like someone used to rationing.

Sirius leaned back slightly in his chair.

“What’s your interest in Snape?”

Abaddon looked up.

Sirius clarified. “You reacted to the vision.”

Abaddon drank water before answering.

“He mattered to Harry.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Silence lingered for a moment. Then Abaddon spoke quietly.

“He died in my world.”

Sirius went still. Abaddon stared down at the table instead of at him.

“First war, tried to stop Voldemort from killing my mother..”

Something shifted in Sirius’s expression at that. Not pity. Understanding maybe.

Carefully he said, “Snivellus was brilliant.”

Abaddon glanced up slightly.

Sirius gave a humourless smile. “Didn’t stop me from making his school years miserable.”

Abaddon raised an eyebrow.

“Me and my friends bullied him,” Sirius admitted plainly. “Most people did. Quiet, poor kids make easy targets when you’re raised around monsters.”

“And later?”

Sirius stared into his glass.

“Later he became one of the best spies the Order ever had. Still an arrogant prick though.”

Abaddon nodded slowly. That tracked. Severus probably had the kind of personality people underestimated until it killed them. Before either man could continue a scream tore through the manor.

“Abaddon!”

Abaddon was moving before the echo finished. He hit the staircase at a run, magic already crackling dangerously through his hands. Harry was upright in bed when Abaddon burst into the room.

Crying. Not quietly. Not controlled. Absolutely terrified.

Abaddon crossed the room immediately. “Harry.”

Harry grabbed onto him hard enough to hurt.

“They’re going to kill him.”

Abaddon said nothing.

Harry’s breathing shook violently. “I saw it again…I saw…”

“I know.”

“He’s hurt.”

“I know.”

Harry looked up at him desperately, eyes red and exhausted and far too young.

“Please save him.”

Abaddon went very still. Sirius stopped silently in the doorway behind them. Abaddon looked down at Harry carefully.

“Do you understand what you’re asking me?”

Harry blinked through tears. “What?”

Abaddon’s voice stayed calm.

“Severus Snape is a prisoner inside enemy territory. He is being tortured because they believe he knows where you are.”

Harry shook his head rapidly. “Then we have to get him out.”

“There is no peaceful version of that rescue.”

The room fell silent. Abaddon held Harry’s gaze steadily.

“If I go for him, people will die.”

Harry swallowed hard. Abaddon did not let him look away.

“I need you to understand this properly, Harry.”

His voice lowered further.

“The only way I get Severus out alive is by killing every person standing between me and him.”

Harry’s breathing hitched.

“You are asking me to kill.”

The words landed heavily between them. Not dramatic. Not manipulative. Truth. Abaddon watched Harry carefully the entire time. Waiting. Giving him the chance to pull back. To say no. Harry’s hands tightened in Abaddon’s shirt instead.

“They’ll kill him if we don’t.”

Abaddon said nothing. Harry’s voice cracked.

“So yes.”

Tears slid down his face again.

“Yes. I’m asking.”

Silence filled the room. Sirius watched Abaddon carefully then. Because this was the moment that mattered. The line. The choice. Abaddon closed his eyes briefly. And when he opened them again, something colder had settled there. Decision.

“Alright,” he said quietly.

The fire in the room flickered violently.

“Then we bring Severus Snape home.”

Chapter Text

The Devil Came Kindly

The manor gates opened slowly. Severus Snape stared up at the manor and felt the old instinctive tension settle between his shoulders. The house belonged to the Rosiers now. One of the old loyal families. Wealthy enough to survive any war so long as they bent at the right moment. The manor itself sprawled across the cliffs in black stone and towering glass, every window glowing gold against the storm-dark countryside.

Too bright.

Too alive.

Like the house knew who had returned to it. Severus stepped forward putting his mask into place. The mask he had longed to destroy many times over the past decade. The gravel path crunched beneath polished boots as masked servants opened the doors before he even reached them. Nobody greeted him. Nobody spoke his name. They only watched.

Judged.

The old families remembered everything. And they remembered Severus Snape particularly well. The boy who escaped Azkaban. The spy who walked free. The traitor who survived the fall of Voldemort.

Severus ignored the stares as he shrugged off his wet cloak into a house elf's waiting hands. Years ago, after Voldemort’s defeat, Dumbledore’s side had released the truth publicly. Severus Snape had supposedly been Dumbledore’s informant inside Voldemort’s ranks the entire war.

Useful.

Embedded.

A brave young man risking himself for the light. It had cleared him instantly. No prison sentence. No trial beyond appearances. No Azkaban other than the week he spent there waiting for Dumbledore to get him free. While others rotted in cells or fled the country, Severus had walked free into a respectable teaching position and potions mastery personally arranged by Albus Dumbledore himself. People whispered about being a traitor. Others called him a hero. Neither group knew the truth. Severus himself was no longer entirely sure what the truth was.

He climbed the grand staircase toward the upper hall where Voldemort’s followers had gathered. The atmosphere thickened the higher he went. Dark magic crawled beneath the walls like veins beneath skin.

By the time the doors opened for him, the room beyond had fallen almost entirely silent. Dozens of followers lined the chamber. All masked and all openly bearing their arms to show the dark mark. That was new. Every eye shifted toward him as he entered. Severus kept his expression neutral.

At the far end of the room, elevated above everyone else, sat The Dark Lord Voldemort. Still and watching. The years as a wraith had changed him somehow. Not older. Worse. He looked less like a man now and more like the idea of one carved from shadow and violence. His face that of a snake. Dark robes spilled around the throne-like chair. One hand rested lazily against the armrest on top of his wand while the other tapped once against polished wood.

The sound echoed sharply in the silence. Severus lowered himself immediately to both knees. Head bowed. Trained habit that had never disappeared.

“My lord,” he said calmly.

No answer came. The silence stretched. Severus remained perfectly still. He knew this game. Voldemort enjoyed silence because people eventually filled it with fear. A minute passed. Then another. The room became suffocatingly quiet. Severus could feel sweat beginning to gather beneath his collar despite the cold. Still Voldemort said nothing.

Severus kept his gaze lowered toward the black marble floor. Steady breathing. Controlled posture. Clearing his mind in case his old master wanted to check his loyalty. 

Do not look nervous.

A chair creaked softly. Footsteps followed. Slow, measured and deliberate. Severus watched dark robes stop directly before him.

“You survived remarkably well,” Voldemort said quietly.

Severus swallowed once. “I served as instructed.”

“Did you?”

The question remained soft. That was always the dangerous part. Severus lifted his head carefully enough to appear respectful without seeming like he was challenging him.

“I maintained my position after your fall. Dumbledore trusts me completely. His side believes I was their spy from the beginning.”

A faint murmur passed somewhere in the room. Voldemort did not react to it.

“How fortunate for you,” he said.

Severus forced himself onward carefully.

“I remained close to power so that when you returned, I would already be in place.”

Voldemort tilted his head slightly. Studying him.

“Liar.”

The word landed softly. Severus felt his stomach tighten instantly. Around them, the room went very still.

“My lord…”

“You mistake me for Dumbledore,” Voldemort interrupted quietly. “That is your first mistake.”

Severus’s pulse had begun hammering now despite every effort to remain calm. Voldemort crouched slowly before him. Almost eye-level. Terrifyingly composed. Even more inhuman up close.

“Dumbledore always did prefer comforting lies,” Voldemort murmured. “He sees what he wishes to see in people. Their uses blinding him to their limitations”

A pale hand lifted, fingers brushing lightly against Severus’s jaw. The gesture looked almost gentle. It made Severus want to recoil.

“But I know you.”

Severus held still. Barely breathing.

“I know precisely what you are.”

Voldemort’s red eyes sharpened.

“And you,” he whispered, “have never been faithful to anyone other than a dirty little mudblood.”

Severus forced himself not to pull away from the hand against his jaw. Fear was dangerous around Voldemort. Too little looked dishonest. Too much looked guilty.

“My lord,” Severus said carefully, “everything I have done has been to preserve my position for your return.”

Voldemort watched him in silence. Severus hated silence now. He continued quickly before the quiet could swallow him whole.

“Dumbledore trusts me completely. His inner circle trusts me. The Ministry listens when I speak. I can move freely where your other faithful cannot. Surely you see the value in that.”

Voldemort’s expression did not shift.

“And Harry Potter?”

The question struck harder than any curse. Severus kept his face still by force alone.

“What about him?”

Voldemort’s fingers tightened slightly against his jaw.

“There it is.”

Severus’s stomach dropped.

“You speak of politicians, positions, strategy…” Voldemort murmured. “Yet the moment I mention the child, your pulse changes.”

Damn it. Severus tried to recover immediately.

“He is strategically important.”

“Mm.”

Voldemort rose smoothly to his feet again.

“Tell me something, Severus.”

The room remained utterly silent around them.

“When the boy’s broom was cursed,” Voldemort said lightly, “why did you intervene?”

Severus’s throat tightened. Memory flashed uninvited, Harry Potter, a small eleven-year-old child holding on for dear life as his broom tried to kill him. Too young. Too thin. Trying not to cry. Being watched by the student populace. Severus speaking the counter curse without caring of who was sat beside him. Even with his suspicions he cared only for saving the boy. Voldemort smiled faintly.

“There it is again.”

Severus realised too late that his breathing had changed.

“My lord, I only acted to preserve stability within the school, if anything would have happened to him…”

Pain exploded through him. Severus screamed before he could stop himself. The curse hurled him sideways across the marble floor hard enough that his shoulder cracked against stone. Agony tore through every nerve in his body like molten metal driven beneath skin. The Cruciatus. Pure. Unrestrained. Severus curled instinctively, choking on the scream clawing out of his throat as the pain intensified again and again and again.

Then suddenly it stopped.

The silence afterwards rang louder than the screaming had. Severus lay trembling on the floor trying to drag air back into his lungs. Voldemort looked down at him almost curiously.

“You endured that remarkably well,” he observed.

Severus coughed blood onto the marble.

“My lord…” he rasped. “I am loyal to you.”

Voldemort’s expression cooled further somehow.

“No,” he said quietly. “You are trying to make it seem you are.”

Another flick of the wand. Pain detonated through Severus again. This time he could not remain silent. His scream echoed through the hall while followers watched with open fascination. Some looked pleased. Others uncomfortable. But none intervened. Severus’s vision blurred violently. The curse vanished again without warning. He collapsed flat against the floor shaking uncontrollably.

“I am loyal,” he gasped.

Voldemort descended the steps slowly until he stood over him once more.

“I gave you purpose,” Voldemort said softly. “I gave you power. I remade you from the pathetic frightened child you once were.”

Severus said nothing. Because part of that was true.

“And yet,” Voldemort continued, “you look at Harry Potter and see that filthy little mudblood that chose another.”

Severus’s pulse stumbled. Voldemort crouched again.

“How disappointing.”

“My lord,”

“You pity him.”

“No.”

“You protect him.”

“No.”

“You hesitate when Dumbledore manoeuvres him.”

Severus forced himself upward onto shaking arms.

“I did what was necessary to maintain cover.”

Voldemort studied him for a long moment. Then sighed softly.

“As always,” he murmured, “you mistake deception for intelligence.”

Severus froze. And suddenly understood. Voldemort already knew. This was not interrogation.

This was confirmation. Voldemort lifted one pale hand toward Severus’s face. Severus jerked backwards instinctively. Too late. Voldemort seized him hard by the temples. Pain ripped through Severus instantly, not physical this time but something far worse.

His mind tore open. Any shield or wall he had in place had been bulldozed down.

Severus choked out a broken sound as Voldemort forced his way inside without mercy. Memories exploded violently to the surface, Harry at eleven, silent and bruised after a fight with Draco. Severus quietly leaving the school to search for Harry when he hadn’t turned up for the welcome feast in his second year. Harry stood with Sirius Black and Severus rushing to protect him. Watching him. Protecting him. Always.

Protect the boy.

Protect him.

Protect, Protect, protect.

Voldemort released him violently. Severus collapsed onto the marble floor coughing and vomiting while the room spun around him. Above him, silence. Cold silence. Then Voldemort spoke.

“You betrayed me,” he said quietly.

The disappointment in his voice sounded far worse than rage. Severus dragged in a ragged breath.

“My lord,”

“Enough.”

Voldemort stepped back from him. Revulsion flickered briefly across his face now. Not because Severus had betrayed him politically. Because Severus had dared to care for another.

“You chose the child,” Voldemort said softly.

Severus could not answer. Because now there was no point lying anymore. Voldemort looked toward the followers gathered around the hall.

“Break him,” he ordered calmly.

Then he turned away while hands seized Severus from behind. Hands grabbed Severus before he could even breathe properly again. They dragged him across the marble floor like an animal carcass while Voldemort’s followers descended eagerly around him.  The mood in the room had changed completely now.

Vindication.

Excitement.

Severus finally understood something horrifying then. They had wanted this. For years. All those years he stood at Voldemort’s right hand while they bowed lower than him, feared him, envied him. They had been waiting for him to fall. Someone kicked him hard in the ribs. Something cracked. Severus hissed through clenched teeth as laughter erupted above him.

“Careful,” one man sneered. “Our brave little spy looks fragile.”

Another grabbed a fistful of Severus’s hair and yanked his head back viciously.

“I always said he was weak. The greasy little half blood.”

“You should’ve seen him around the Potter boy,” a witch laughed cruelly. “Practically pathetic.”

“Maybe he wanted to fuck the child instead of protect him.”

The room exploded with vicious laughter. Severus lunged blindly despite the pain. Pure instinct.

The man holding him stumbled backwards in surprise before three others slammed Severus face-first into the floor hard enough for stars to burst behind his eyes. Boots hammered into his ribs. His stomach. His spine. Someone stamped directly onto his hand until bones snapped. Still Severus refused to scream.

That only enraged them further.

“Oh, he still thinks he’s important.”

A curse struck his shoulder. Another tore across his back. Severus’s body jerked violently against the stone floor as pain ripped through him from every direction. Above it all, Voldemort watched silently from the throne.

Detached.

Cold.

As though Severus had already stopped being a person. Hours blurred after that. Or maybe it was only minutes.

They dragged him to the lower levels beneath the manor once the public humiliation ended. The elegant upper halls disappeared behind damp stone corridors and rusted iron gates. The dungeon smelled like blood and mildew. Severus knew then he was not leaving it alive. The torture became systematic after that. The dungeon started to smell of wet stone, blood, and burnt metal.

Severus hung several feet above the floor, wrists shackled apart by glowing iron restraints sunk directly into the walls. The magic threaded through his shoulders like hooks, forcing his arms wide enough that every breath dragged broken ribs against each other. Blood ran sluggishly down his side, disappearing beneath the torn remains of his shirt. The room was cold enough that his skin had gone grey.

Still alive, unfortunately. A bootstep echoed through the chamber. The guards straightened immediately as Voldemort descended the narrow stairwell, dark robes whispering over stone. He carried no visible weapon. He never needed one. Severus lifted his head slowly, strands of greasy sweat-soaked black hair hanging into his face.

“Ah,” he rasped. “The parasite himself.”

Voldemort stopped a few feet away, studying him with detached disappointment rather than anger.

“Your little rebellion is becoming troublesome.”

Severus laughed weakly, then winced when something in his chest shifted wrong.

“Go fuck yourself.”

One of the guards moved forward instantly, but Voldemort lifted a hand without looking at him. The guard froze. Voldemort tilted his head slightly.

“You continue to mistake defiance for strength.”

“And you continue,” Severus muttered through bloodied teeth, “to mistake fear for loyalty.”

For a moment the only sound was dripping water somewhere deeper in the dungeon. Voldemort stepped closer. Close enough now that Severus could smell incense and old magic clinging to him.

“You are a foolish child,” Voldemort said quietly. “Arrogant. Self-destructive. Wasteful.” His eyes swept over the shattered restraints cutting into Severus’s wrists. “And yet… beneath all of this pathetic rebellion… you would have made the greatest potions master under my rule.”

Severus gave him a flat stare.

“I’d rather drink acid.”

A flicker of amusement crossed Voldemort’s face.

“That could be arranged.”

The restraints suddenly tightened. Severus gasped sharply as agony exploded through his ribs. Something cracked again. White pain burst behind his eyes, but he refused to scream. His jaw locked hard enough to ache. Voldemort watched calmly.

“Where is Harry Potter?”

Silence.

The magic constricted harder. Severus’s breathing hitched violently.

“Where,” Voldemort repeated, “is the boy?”

Severus forced his head up despite the tremor running through his body.

“Somewhere,” he whispered hoarsely, “you’ll never fucking touch him.”

The blow came without warning. Invisible force slammed into Severus’s chest, snapping his body backward against the restraints. Pain detonated through already-broken bones. This time a strangled sound escaped him before he swallowed it down again. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. Voldemort’s expression darkened slightly.

“You are protecting a child who cannot save you.”

Severus coughed blood wetly onto the stone floor. His chin smeared with spit and blood.

“He doesn’t have to.”

Voldemort stared at him for several long seconds. Then he sighed.

“As expected, Pain alone is insufficient.”

The torches dimmed. Not naturally.  Something swallowed the light. The shadows around Voldemort thickened unnaturally, writhing across the floor like living ink. Even the guards shifted uneasily now, stepping backward instinctively. Severus’s breathing slowed. That, that was different. Voldemort raised one hand. Ancient symbols crawled beneath his skin like black veins.

“You should consider this an honour,” he said softly. “Very few survive long enough to understand this curse.”

Darkness gathered at his fingertips. Severus jerked violently against the restraints as instinct screamed at him to run despite having nowhere to go.

“Go to hell,” he spat.

Voldemort touched two fingers lightly against Severus’s chest. The curse entered him instantly. Severus convulsed. For one horrifying second, he felt nothing, then agony ignited in his feet. Not pain.  Not exactly. It felt like something was eating him alive from the inside out.

Severus’s entire body seized as the sensation crawled through his toes, burrowing into nerves like molten poison. Every ending it touched lit up in unbearable fire before going cold and numb behind it. His breath shattered into a scream before he could stop it. The guards looked away. Voldemort merely watched.

“The curse progresses slowly,” he explained almost conversationally. “Up the body. Through the nerves. By the time it reaches the spine, movement becomes… difficult.”

Severus’s legs shook violently beneath him. He couldn’t feel his left foot anymore. Sweat poured down his face as he fought to breathe through the pain clawing higher inch by inch. Voldemort stepped closer, voice low.

“And eventually…”

The darkness crept into Severus’s calves.

“…it reaches the brain.”

His vision blurred. Every instinct begged him to speak. To say anything. To make it stop. Instead, he forced blood into a grin.

“Still,” he gasped brokenly, “not helping you.”

For the first time, genuine irritation flickered across Voldemort’s face. And the curse climbed higher.  When he would leave, his followers would return to continue. Just like a habit. Not in rage. But for entertainment.

One follower preferred knives. Small precise cuts that took hours to heal badly. Another liked curses that attacked the nervous system, forcing Severus’s muscles into violent spasms until joints partially dislocated. One simply enjoyed beating him with bare fists while explaining in detail how much he had hated Severus for years.

“You thought the dark lord respected you,” the man snarled while slamming his head into the wall again. “He used you.”

Blood flooded Severus’s mouth.

“He trusted me more than you,” Severus rasped.

The beating after that nearly killed him. But Severus held onto those tiny acts of defiance desperately. Because if he broke, if he begged, then they won. And Severus Snape had lost almost everything in his life already. He would not lose his pride too.

Days passed.

He knew because food arrived intermittently though he could barely keep any of it down. Water tasted rusted. Sleep came only in fragments between pain and footsteps. The curse was now up to his hips.

By the fourth day, his left eye no longer opened. The socket had swollen grotesquely after someone repeatedly smashed his face against the cell bars. His right eye was barely better, crusted half-shut with dried blood. Every breath hurt. His ribs ground together sharply whenever he moved. His wrists were flayed raw from the iron restraints. And underneath all of it sat exhaustion so deep it felt carved directly into his bones.

Severus lay curled on the filthy stone floor shivering despite the fever burning through him.

Somewhere above, thunder rolled across the cliffs outside. The storm had not stopped for days.

Or maybe this was a different storm. Hard to tell anymore. He heard footsteps approach again and instinctively tensed for more pain. But they passed his cell. Laughter echoed faintly down the corridor.

Then silence returned.

Severus let his head rest back against the wall carefully. He was dying. The thought came strangely calm now. Not dramatic. Just true. Nobody was coming for him. Dumbledore would not even know where he was. Voldemort wanted him broken slowly. And he was getting his wish.

And Harry, Severus’s chest tightened painfully. Harry was probably alone. Frightened. Still believing adults would save him if he behaved properly, trusted them and acted like a fucking hero.

Poor kid.

Severus closed his functioning eye. He remembered Harry sitting silently on the grand hall staircase years ago after the fiasco with the chamber of secrets. Small shoulders shaking while trying not to cry loud enough for anyone to hear. Severus had stood in the shadows watching him awkwardly for nearly an hour saying absolutely nothing because he had never learned how to comfort people. But he would ensure the boy was safe. For Lily. 

Eventually Harry had whispered:

“I wish someone would come save me.”

The memory hit Severus so hard it almost hurt worse than the torture. Because God. He understood it now. Understood it completely.

Alone in the darkness, body ruined and trembling with cold, Severus pressed his head back against the stone and thought the exact same thing.

“I don’t want to die,” he thought desperately. “Please… somebody help me…” 

The thought shamed him instantly. Pathetic. Childish.

No one was coming.

No one ever came.

Yet, Severus found himself listening to the silence afterwards anyway. At some point Severus must have drifted off, half-conscious. Because the next thing he became aware of was screaming.

Not his own. The sound ripped through the dungeon corridors violently enough to drag him awake. A man shrieking somewhere above him. Another voice shouting orders. Then something crashed hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. Severus flinched instinctively before pain immediately punished the movement.

The screams got worse. Closer. There was a horrible quality to them now, not ordinary fear but pure animal terror. A curse exploded somewhere nearby. Another scream cut off abruptly. Then came the smell.

Smoke.

Not the ordinary kind. This smelled wrong somehow. Hot ash. Burning stone. Blood.  And underneath it all, Brimstone.

Severus’s functioning eye cracked open weakly. Orange light flickered faintly beneath the cell door. Fire. The dungeon had gone chaotic now. Running footsteps thundered overhead.  Someone was begging. Another person was sobbing openly. Then came a sound Severus had never heard before in his life. Voldemort’s followers screaming in fear.

Real fear. He wanted to laugh at that.

Severus tried forcing himself upright against the wall, but his body barely obeyed him anymore. Every muscle trembled violently with exhaustion. He was going to die here. Burned alive beneath the manor while monsters tore each other apart overhead. Strangely, the thought did not frighten him much anymore. Another scream echoed through the corridor outside his cell.

Then there was silence.

Heavy footsteps approached slowly afterward.  Unhurried. Deliberate. Crunching through what sounded like wreckage. Like boots stepping over broken bodies. Severus’s pulse weakly fluttered. The footsteps stopped directly outside his door. For one suspended moment, everything went completely silent. Then keys rattled softly. The lock clicked open. The cell door groaned inward. Smoke curled into the room immediately.  Severus could see almost nothing through swollen eyes and darkness. Only shape and shadow standing against firelight spilling down the corridor behind them.

Tall and broad.

Standing completely still.

A body lay crumpled somewhere outside the cell door. Another further down the corridor. Blood gleamed black against stone. The figure stepped inside. And Severus smelled it fully then.

Brimstone.

Ash.

Blood.

Death.

Not the scent of a man. The scent of something dragged upward from Hell itself. Severus’s breathing became shallow instinctively. The stranger stood over him silently for a moment.

Then a rough voice said:

“There you are.”

Severus could not move. The voice sounded exhausted but dangerous. Familiar somehow in a way he could not place through the pain clouding his thoughts.

“You’ve been giving my boy a headache,” the man continued.

My boy. The words barely made sense. Severus tried to speak but only managed a weak rasp.

The stranger crouched suddenly. Strong hands slid beneath him with startling care, as though Severus were fragile glass instead of a half-dead traitor rotting in a dungeon. Then he was lifted.

Bridal style.

The contrast nearly broke Severus’s brain. Outside the cell bodies littered the corridor in pieces. Blood painted the walls. Fire crawled along the ceiling beams in unnatural black-orange flames.

Yet the arms carrying him remained impossibly steady.

Careful.

One hand supported the back of his head so it would not jolt against broken stone as they walked. Severus drifted weakly against a chest that smelled of smoke, rain, and blood. A monster’s scent.

Ahead of them, another follower stumbled into view clutching a wand with shaking hands.

“You…”

The man never finished speaking. Something moved. Fast. A crack. A wet choking sound.

Then silence again. The stranger carrying Severus never even slowed down.

Severus’s head lolled weakly against his shoulder as darkness crept steadily into the edges of his vision. He could not see the man’s face properly. Only glimpses. Scarred skin. Dark clothing. Eyes that looked wrong in the firelight. Not human. Not anymore. And somehow Severus understood then with absolute certainty a demon his father had threatened him with when reading the book of revelations 

Abaddon. The Destroyer.

The thing parents whispered about to frighten children. Severus let his eyes fall shut at last.

Some distant broken part of him thought almost hysterically:

I always knew the devil would come for me eventually.

Chapter Text

The first time it didn't hurt

The smell of brimstone still clung to Severus’s lungs like a memory that refused to fade. He was sure of it now there was no mistaking it. That heavy, burning wrongness in the air. The kind of scent that didn’t belong in a living world. It had meant only one thing to him for as long as he could remember. 

The devil had finally come for him. Yet it was cruelty that faced him. A heavy cloak was placed over him, his clothes having been torn of his body quite a few tortures ago. The hands that closed around him were not what he expected. They didn’t seize. They didn’t drag. They didn’t punish. Instead, he was lifted cleanly, effortlessly, pulled from his slumped position on the ground as though he weighed nothing at all.

“Giving my boy a headache,” the man said quietly, as if it were an inconvenience rather than a judgement.

Severus barely registered the words at first. His body was too slow, too battered, too far gone into pain and shock. His vision tilted, the world slipping sideways as he was gathered into an unfamiliar hold.

Bridal style. Not restrained and not bound. Just simply held.

His instinct should have been to fight. To twist and strike, to try and escape. That was what cruelty had trained into him. Pain meant survival, and gentleness was always the lie before the blade. But there was no blade. Just arms that adjusted him with care, settling him in closer, as though correcting something delicate that had been placed wrong. Severus’s head was guided gently inward, against a solid chest.

Warm and steady.  And very real.

He was frozen. Because the devil, in every story he had ever been told, did not hold you like this.

The man, who Severus thought of as Abaddon, shifted his grip slightly, not tightening, not claiming, but protecting. One hand supported Severus’s legs curled against his thigh, the other braced behind his head as if instinct alone demanded it. Shielding. Guarding. As though Severus’s skull itself was something worth protecting from the world.

The contrast made something in Severus’s mind stutter; Brimstone still lingered at the edge of his senses. Still whispering that old certainty. And yet… the chest beneath his ear did not burn.

It beat.

Slow and controlled. Alive.

Severus’s breath caught, shallow and uneven, as the scent warred with the reality in front of him. His body didn’t know what to do with it. Didn’t know how to reconcile fear with something that refused to hurt him.

“You’re alright,” Abaddon said, softer now, as if speaking to something younger than Severus rather than the man he was, like a frightened pet. “You just need to stop thinking for a bit.”

Severus’s fingers twitched weakly against the fabric near the man’s shoulder, not quite gripping, not quite pushing away. His thoughts splintered. Because if this was the devil…

Then why did it feel like being caught before a fall? Like he was something fragile. Something worth preserving. Severus’s instinct flared weakly humiliation more than resistance.

“I’m fine,” he muttered, though it dissolved halfway through the sentence.

Abaddon adjusted his grip immediately, but not in response to the defiance instead only to make sure Severus’s head didn’t jolt against his chest as they moved.

“You are not fine,” Abaddon said simply.

No anger. No pity. Just fact. The corridor outside erupted in the distance again another crash,  another wave of magic snapping through stone but Abaddon didn’t even turn toward it. He walked forward through it all as if it wasn’t happening.

Severus felt the movement more than saw it.  Every step was shockingly steady. No bouncing. No harsh shifts. Whenever the ground gave way to uneven rubble or broken flooring, Abaddon subtly corrected his hold, keeping Severus’s head tucked securely against his shoulder. Like he’d done this before.

Like this mattered. Severus’s brow furrowed faintly, confusion cutting through the fog.

“You don’t… have to, ” he started.

Abaddon lowered his hand slightly, pressing it behind Severus’s skull, guiding him more firmly into his chest.

“Yes,” he interrupted, calm but absolute. “I do. My boy wants you safe otherwise he will be upset.”

Severus swallowed. It hurt. Everything hurt.

But this… this was different. The pain outside him was familiar. Expected. Managed. The pain inside him was the kind he knew how to survive.

This though. Being held. Being carried. Being protected without condition… It didn’t fit anywhere.

“I’m not,” Severus tried again, voice thinner now. “I’m not broken.”

Abaddon stopped walking for half a second. Not because of doubt. Because of choice. He looked down at him properly then. Not scanning for injuries like a soldier. Not assessing like a medic. Just seeing him. Really seeing him.

“You are injured,” Abaddon said quietly. “And exhausted beyond what you should have been forced to endure.”

A pause. Then, softer:

“That is not the same thing as broken.”

Severus’s throat tightened. He hated that his body reacted before his mind could argue. Hated the way the words landed somewhere deeper than logic. Abaddon resumed walking.

This time, his hand stayed firmly at the back of Severus’s head the entire time, shielding him whenever debris shifted or distant impacts rattled the walls. Even when the corridor widened and the chaos outside surged louder, Abaddon angled his body so Severus would never be the one taking the brunt of it. Severus’s voice came again, weaker now.

“You shouldn’t be doing this.”

A faint exhale almost a laugh, but not quite.

“I shouldn’t be doing a great many things,” Abaddon replied.

That almost made Severus smile. Almost. But it faded quickly when another explosion rolled through the structure, deeper this time, shaking dust loose from the ceiling. Severus flinched instinctively. Abaddon tightened his hold immediately. Not crushing. Anchoring.

“You are safe,” Abaddon said.

It wasn’t reassurance in the emotional sense. It was instruction to reality itself. And somehow, Severus believed it more than he wanted to.

They moved out of the cell block and into a wider corridor where the air smelled of scorched stone and collapsing enchantments. Figures moved in the distance, blurred, violent silhouettes, but none approached. None crossed the path Abaddon walked. It wasn’t fear that stopped them.

It was recognition.

Severus felt his awareness slipping again, the rhythm of Abaddon’s steps pulling him downward into something quieter. His head stayed pressed firmly against Abaddon’s chest, protected from every jolt, every shock, every fragment of the world trying to get in.

His last coherent thought before the fog took him fully was disorienting. Not the need to escape. Not that he needed help.

It's funny that the devil is the first to show me kindness.

And then even that dissolved.

Abaddon kept walking. The manor was coming apart behind them. Not in a single collapse but in layers.

Stone unmade itself under pressure that didn’t behave like magic or siege craft. Corridors folded inward as if the building was being forced to forget its own shape. Windows shattered outward in silent bursts, glass dissolving into ash midair. The sky above the estate churned with a sick, unnatural stillness. And through it all, Abaddon kept walking. Severus was no longer conscious.

His weight rested completely against Abaddon’s chest, head secured with a steady, protective hand that never once loosened. Every step was measured not rushed, not frantic. Controlled. As if panic was something other people were permitted to feel but not him. They crossed what had once been the manor’s grand inner hall. Now it was a fractured cathedral of ruin. And they were not alone.

Above them beyond the broken mezzanine where chandeliers hung like dead things stood figures in the dark.

Watching.

Unmoving.

Voldemort did not step forward. He didn’t need to. The air around him bent slightly, as if reality itself was reluctant to acknowledge his full presence. His gaze tracked Abaddon with slow, deliberate interest, like a scholar observing a specimen that did not belong in any known classification.

“That one…” Voldemort murmured.

His voice didn’t echo. It simply existed in the space between collapsing walls. “He is not one of theirs.”

One of his death eaters shifted beside him.

“Do we kill him?”

The question was immediate. Eager. Simple. Voldemort did not look away from Abaddon.

“No.”

A pause. Not hesitation, calculation.

“No,” he repeated, quieter. “Not yet.”

Below them, Abaddon moved through falling debris as if it had already decided not to touch him. A beam collapsed from above, but veered at the last moment, splintering harmlessly to either side of his path. Dust surged in waves and parted around him like something unwilling to meet resistance. Voldemort tilted his head slightly.

“Interesting,” he said.

Another follower leaned forward. “He’s taking the traitor.”

At that, Voldemort’s gaze sharpened, just slightly.

Severus.

Even unconscious, even broken down by whatever had been done to him, he was still the anchor of attention. Still the piece everything revolved around. Still someone who could be useful if used appropriately.

“Yes,” Voldemort said slowly. “He is.”

He watched Abaddon adjust his grip again subtle, instinctive, shielding Severus’s head from a falling shard of stone. The gesture was not tactical. Not strategic. It was care. Voldemort’s expression shifted, faintly amused.

“So the visions worked,” he said. “The child saw… and something else answered.”

One of the followers frowned. “You sent the visions as bait.”

“I sent a door,” Voldemort corrected. “I did not expect what walked through it.”

They moved together along the fractured upper gallery as Abaddon approached the outer breach of the manor. The structure groaned again, a deep, tired sound, like it was finally admitting defeat. Voldemort finally lifted one hand slightly. The collapse paused just for a breath. Not stopped.

Held.

So he could observe. Abaddon reached the edge where the manor opened into broken gardens and ash-choked air beyond. The moment he crossed that threshold, the structural hold Voldemort had imposed snapped back into chaos, and the building continued unravelling behind him. Still, Abaddon did not hurry. He never once looked up. Voldemort’s eyes narrowed faintly.

“He is not afraid,” one follower said.

“No,” Voldemort agreed. “He is committed.”

That seemed to interest him more than anything else so far. He stepped back from the shattered balcony, the manor resuming its collapse in full now that his attention had shifted. Stone fell like slow rain. The structure folded inward, erasing itself from the edges first.

“Find out what he is,” Voldemort ordered quietly.

His followers bowed their heads.

“And the boy?”

Voldemort paused.

His gaze drifted once more toward Abaddon disappearing into the ash-lit distance, still carrying Severus as if the world had no permission to take him back.

“The boy is already mine,” Voldemort said. “He simply hasn’t realised it yet.”

A beat. Then, almost thoughtfully:

“And gather what remains of my faithful.”

His expression darkened just slightly, like a shadow passing over water.

“Those still in Azkaban will be reminded who they serve.”

The manor finally gave in. It collapsed without sound.

The return was quieter than the escape had been. Not because the world had calmed but because Abaddon moved through it like silence had weight and he was carrying too much already. The manor they arrived at was not the one they had left. This one still stood.

The air around it was thick with layered wards old, heavy magic woven into the bones of the building like scar tissue. It resisted intrusion, resisted attention, resisted even the idea that anything inside could be found. And yet the doors opened as Abaddon approached. Magically. As if they recognised him.

Inside, the light was dim and uneven. Candle flames bent away from unseen drafts. The walls felt too still, like they were listening. Harry was already there. Sitting rigidly on the staircase that dominated the centre of the grand hall.

Awake and waiting.

The manor was quiet. Portrait eyes tracked movement from dark frames. Magic breathed through the foundations like a sleeping beast. But compared to the last four days, it felt silent. Harry’s’ hands shook in his lap.

He had not slept properly since the visions began. Every time he closed his eyes, Voldemort forced another one into his head. Snape chained. Snape coughing blood onto a dungeon floor. Snape trying not to scream while curses carved through him. Harry had learned very quickly that Severus Snape could survive almost anything.

That somehow made it worse. Because the visions had never shown death. Only endurance. Only pain. Sometimes it had seemed that Snape was looking directly at him through the vision as though he knew Harry was being forced to watch.

Harry was so tired his bones hurt. He heard the front doors of the manor open below.. His eyes flicked up the moment Abaddon entered and stayed there. For one horrible second Harry only saw blood. Dark clothes soaked with it. Harry knew that fear was written across his face too clearly to hide. Not just fear of Abaddon. Fear of what Abaddon was carrying. Severus hung limp in his arms, still unconscious, head carefully secured against Abaddon’s chest, body mangled, covered with a cloak but pale skin flashing as a bloodied arm fell limply. The sight made Harry flinch before he could stop himself.

Abaddon looked exhausted. Not physically Abaddon rarely showed physical strain but there was something cold and vicious still clinging to him, like he had walked straight out of a battlefield and had not fully returned yet.

Sirius stood a little behind Harry, half-leaning against the railing, arms folded. His expression was controlled but sharp, watching everything at once. Abaddon didn’t slow. Walking pass them into a sitting room off to the side.

He crossed the room and only then lowered Severus carefully onto a nearby settee, adjusting him with the same precise gentleness as before, making sure his head was supported before he let go even slightly. Severus did not wake. Abaddon straightened.

“It is done,” he said.

Harry swallowed hard. “Is… is he…”

“Alive,” Abaddon answered immediately.

A pause. Then, quieter, more practical:

“But not stable. I need a room. Somewhere quiet. Warm. Uninterrupted.”

Sirius’s gaze narrowed slightly.

“You need a room,” he repeated. “For healing.”

It wasn’t a question. It was an assessment. Abaddon turned his head slightly toward him.

“Yes.”

Sirius studied him for a long moment, as if trying to place him into a category that refused to exist.

“And how,” Sirius asked carefully, “do you know how to heal him?”

There was a beat of silence. Not hesitation. Selection. Then Abaddon replied.

“It is not healing in the way you mean.”

Harry’s breath caught slightly. Sirius didn’t move. Abaddon continued, voice even.

“It is control.”

The room went colder. Abaddon looked down at Severus briefly no emotion in his face, just focus.

“The most effective suffering is not inflicted once,” he said. “It is repeated. Controlled. Precise enough that survival is guaranteed… but never comforted.”

Harry looked away sharply, disgust and dread mixing in his expression. Sirius’s jaw tightened. Abaddon’s tone did not change.

“When the body believes it is finally allowed to end,” he continued, “you restore it. And begin again.”

A silence settled heavily in the room.

Harry whispered, almost involuntarily, “That’s… sick.”

Abaddon didn’t deny it. Didn’t agree either.

He simply said, “It is effective.”

Sirius exhaled slowly through his nose, eyes still fixed on him.

“So you’re saying you know how to keep him alive,” Sirius said, “because you know how to break someone without letting them die.”

“Yes,” Abaddon replied.

Harry shifted in his seat, visibly shaken now, looking at Severus again. “Wouldn’t someone be able to trace the magic then?”

Sirius cut in immediately.

“This house won’t allow it.”

Harry looked at him sharply. Sirius straightened slightly, expression hardening into something more clinical.

“It’s layered,” he said. “Old ward architecture. Ministry-grade tracing spells would hit a dead wall. Anything sent outward gets folded back into itself before it can be followed.”

Abaddon did not respond to that. He had already turned away.

“Room,” he repeated.

Sirius hesitated, then nodded once. “Top floor. East wing. It’s small but it’s the quietest.”

Abaddon lifted Severus again without effort. Harry watched him go, still visibly unsettled, as if trying to reconcile what he’d just heard with the fact that Severus was in those arms still alive, still breathing. Sirius spoke quietly once Abaddon had gone.

“That man isn’t here by accident.”

Harry didn’t answer. Because he couldn’t stop looking at the way Abaddon had held Severus. Not like a prisoner. Not like a mission. Like something worth keeping intact. 

The room was warm. Not comforting. Not soft. Maintained. A controlled heat sat in the air like a held breath, neither rising nor falling. The fire in the hearth burned without visible ignition or fuel, steady as a system rather than a flame.

Severus lay on the bed. Still unconscious, but no longer sinking. Abaddon stood beside him for a moment without moving. Not watching in concern.

Assessing. He waved his hand and transfigured the cloak into a white night shirt. With white he could see if there was any fresh bleeding. Abaddon looked at the man and knew that he would not appreciate him dressing him unconscious so with another wave of his wand Severus was now clothed in the night shirt and under the blankets.

Abaddon went back to assessing. Like something had been placed in front of him that required repair. He placed two fingers at Severus’s wrist. Paused. Measured. A pulse. Weak. Inconsistent.

“Borderline collapse,” Abaddon murmured not to anyone in particular. It was classification, not alarm.

His hand shifted. The air around Severus changed. It wasn’t light. It wasn’t glow. It was structure.

Magic didn’t pour into Severus so much as organise itself around him, like invisible hands aligning fractured systems back into order. His breathing adjusted first, subtle, mechanical correction. Then the tremor in his muscles eased by degrees that were almost imperceptible.

Severus’s brow tightened briefly. A reflex. His body registering interference. Abaddon didn’t react to it. He simply continued.

His hand moved slightly lower, not touching, but directing. As if the body beneath him was a map only he could read correctly. Bone. Muscle strain. Internal damage. Exhaustion layered over exhaustion. A dark curse. Each problem was noted without emotion. Each correction applied without hesitation.

Severus’s fingers twitched against the blanket. His eyes opened halfway. Unfocused. Lost for a moment in the sensation of something changing inside him without pain increasing. That was wrong. His body expected pain to mean survival. This did not.

“…what…” Severus tried, but the word dissolved.

Abaddon didn’t answer immediately. He adjusted the flow again. A slight recalibration. Like tightening a mechanism that was still loose. Only then did he speak.

“Your system is stabilising,” he said.

Not reassurance. Report.

“Who are you?” Severus stared at the man.

“I am Abaddon.”

Nothing more was said as if it meant nothing that this man had stated that his name was the same as the destroyer in the book of revelations. 

Severus blinked slowly, trying to focus. His body felt heavy, but not in the same collapsing way as before. More like he had been set down somewhere stable after being carried too far for too long. His eyes landed on Abaddon. Standing over him. Still. Unchanging.

“…you’re doing this,” Severus whispered.

“Yes.”

No elaboration. No comfort added. Just confirmation of function. Severus swallowed. His throat felt raw, but it wasn’t tearing further. It was… being held in place. That was worse. And better.

He didn’t know which one to trust.

Abaddon placed his hand briefly over Severus’s upper chest not pressing, not grounding him emotionally, but checking alignment. Another adjustment followed immediately in response, subtle enough that Severus barely felt the shift, only the absence of deterioration.

“You will remain still,” Abaddon said.

It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t even instruction in the emotional sense. It was condition-setting. Severus’s eyelids fluttered.

“I… don’t like this,” he muttered weakly.

A pause. Abaddon’s gaze didn’t change.

“That is irrelevant,” he said.

Then, after a moment, almost as an afterthought:

“You will recover faster if you do not interfere.”

Severus let out a faint breath that might have been a laugh if he had the strength for it. But even that movement felt different now. Less like falling apart. More like something being held together from the outside. His eyes drifted shut again, not from exhaustion alone this time but from the unfamiliar sensation of not needing to actively survive every second.

Abaddon remained where he was. Continuing the work. Not gently. Not kindly.

Precisely.

And for the first time in his life Severus allowed himself to relinquish control, trusting that this man will care for him in a way no one had done before.

Chapter Text

The Man Who Stayed

Severus woke slowly. Warmth pressed around him. For one confused moment, he genuinely thought he was dead. The mattress beneath him was impossibly soft, dipping under his weight instead of digging painfully into bruises and old fractures. Heavy blankets covered him to the chest, warm enough that his body had loosened in sleep without permission and he was wearing clothes.

Severus lay perfectly still.

He could not remember the last time he had woken without pain. Not real pain anyway. There was soreness, especially in his legs from the dark curse Voldemort tortured him with,, a dull ache beneath his ribs, stiffness in his shoulders  but the sharp agony was gone. The fractures Voldemort’s followers had left behind had vanished completely.

Healing.

Proper healing. Careful healing. His throat tightened unexpectedly. During the first war, nobody had healed him unless absolutely necessary. Severus had learned young how to shove bones back into place himself, how to stitch skin closed with shaking hands, how to function while feverish because there had never been anyone else to rely on. Pain had lasted days back then. Sometimes weeks. And afterward people had still called him cruel for being angry about it.

Slowly, Severus pushed himself upright the heavy blankets falling to his waist. The room around him was small. Dark wood. Stone walls. Firelight flickering softly somewhere nearby. Enclosed but safe.

The realization made his stomach knot instead of easing. The last thing he remembered. A massive pair of arms lifting him from the cell. Heat. Smoke. A voice above him.

The devil.

Severus’s face flushed abruptly. He stared down at the blankets in horror. Nobody had ever carried him gently before. No one had ever touched him with softness. Not once. As a child he had been dragged, shoved, thrown aside. During the war he had walked injured because weakness annoyed people. Having weakness meant he would become a target. Even after battles, nobody touched him unless necessary.

But Abaddon..

Severus swallowed hard. Abaddon had carried him like something fragile. Like Severus mattered enough to protect. The thought unsettled him far more than the torture ever had. He knew how to handle torture. Severus’s gaze shifted across the room, and stopped.

Abaddon was asleep beside the bed.

Not properly in a bed either. He sat half-reclined on what looked like a transfigured couch shoved against the wall near Severus’s bedside, one boot perched on the edge of the bed like he had fallen asleep accidentally.

Which, honestly, was probably exactly what had happened.

Firelight flickered softly across him. Dried blood stained the black fabric stretched across his shoulders and throat. One sleeve had been rolled roughly to the elbow, revealing hastily wrapped bandages underneath. Exhaustion sat heavily across the sharp lines of his face. But despite that Abaddon still looked dangerous, attractive, and deadly. Even asleep.

Especially asleep.

Severus’s eyes shifted lower and they widened. Harry Potter was curled tightly against Abaddon’s side beneath a blanket, practically folded into him. Dark circles under his eyes, wrinkled clothing as if they had been worn for days. One small hand remained twisted in the fabric of Abaddon’s sleeve like he had refused to let go even unconscious.

And Abaddon. Abaddon had an arm around him. Protective. Instinctive. Possessive in a way Severus could not understand. The sight rooted him in place. Slowly, Severus realized something deeply unsettling. Abaddon trusted Potter enough to sleep beside him. That should not have mattered.

Except Severus had already understood something ugly about Abaddon. Men like Abaddon did not sleep around other people. Not truly. Not deeply. Not unless they believed they were safe.

Abaddon looked like the kind of man who woke violent if startled. The kind who trusted nobody at his back. Severus had known soldiers like that during the first war  men held together by paranoia and rage.

Abaddon would most definitely be worse.

And yet Potter was tucked beneath his arm like it was the most natural thing in the world. Severus looked away sharply. His chest hurt suddenly. Not from injury. From something uglier. Something he didn’t think he would ever feel again. Because Severus had never been held like that. Not once.

As a child there had been cold rooms and shouting and hands that shoved instead of comforted. Even Lily had never touched him with care instead always keeping him at arm’s length until she too left him. No matter how much he begged, pleaded or degraded himself she didn’t return to his side. During the war there had only been survival. Afterwards, people tolerated him at best, feared him at worst. Severus had spent most of his life being useful. Not wanted. Never protected. Never held onto like someone mattered enough to keep close. His throat tightened painfully. And then, cruelly, memory surfaced.

“My boy wants you safe otherwise he will be upset.”

Severus stared at Abaddon’s sleeping face. His safety was not important to Abaddon. It was important to Potter. The rescue had not been for Severus but because Potter had asked. Abaddon had obeyed.

Simple as that.

Something hollow opened quietly beneath Severus’s ribs. Of course. Why would someone like Abaddon rescue him otherwise? Severus was bitter. Cruel. Difficult. Dumbledore’s spy master during the first war. A man people used because he was sharp enough to point at enemies. And now? Now he had failed. Now he was useless.

Voldemort’s followers had taken him effortlessly. He had needed to be rescued like some helpless thing. Worse, Dumbledore had likely already written him off. Severus swallowed thickly.  His role in the future war had been simple: survive long enough to be useful. But Potter was here now. The true saviour. The boy Dumbledore had shaped the entire world around. What use was Severus beside that? The thought lodged somewhere ugly in his chest.

Because if he was not useful…

People left. That was how the world worked. Severus looked around the room again slowly, mind already turning despite the exhaustion dragging at him. He needed to recover quickly. Needed to prove his value somehow. Needed to earn the right to stay before these people realised rescuing him had been a mistake. 

The floorboards creaked outside the room. Severus’s body tensed automatically reaching for a wand that wasn’t there. A moment later Sirius Black stepped through the doorway carrying a mug of something steaming in one hand. He stopped when he saw Severus awake. For several seconds neither man spoke. The years between them seemed to fill the entire room.

Sirius looked older than Severus remembered from school, harder, sharper around the edges but the expression was exactly the same. Cool amusement. The look of someone who had always enjoyed standing above other people. Severus remembered blood on bathroom tiles.

Mocking laughter.

Aristocratic boys with polished shoes watching him scrub ink off his robes while Sirius leaned in the doorway grinning lazily. Severus had hated him for years. Judging by Sirius’s face, the feeling had remained mutual.

“What is this?” Severus asked hoarsely. “Some kind of elaborate afterlife punishment?” 

Sirius ignored that, setting the mug down nearby. 

“Well,” Sirius drawled quietly, “that’s unfortunate.”

Severus snorted faintly. “Disappointed?”

“A little,” Sirius admitted.

The honesty would have been startling if Severus hadn’t known Sirius enjoyed cruelty almost as much as Severus did. Sirius’s gaze drifted briefly toward the sleeping figures on the couch. Then back to Severus.

Silence settled briefly. Then Severus asked the question that had been clawing at him since waking.

“How long was I there?”

Sirius’s expression darkened immediately.

“Four days.”

Severus closed his eyes briefly. Too long. Far too long. Memory returned in flashes, the death eaters, the torture, the feeling of dark magic crawling through his veins. Wishing to be saved like a child.

“Harry started seeing it on the first night.” Severus opened his eyes slowly.

“What?”

“Your torture.”

“Visions,” he said quietly. “Every few hours. He’d suddenly see whatever they were doing to you.”

“That makes no sense.”

“No,” Sirius agreed. “It doesn’t.”

Severus looked toward Potter again automatically. The boy was asleep hard enough to resemble collapse. Now that he knew, he could see the small details showing sheer exhaustion and mental crisis.

““You’re telling me,” Severus said with poisonous calm, “that Dumbledore’s precious, shining little Gryffindor hero sat there for four bloody days watching me get tortured? How very noble of him. Truly the stuff of legends. I assume there was a stirring speech about bravery afterwards too?”

Sirius barked a startled laugh despite himself. “You really are a bastard even half dead.”

“I still don’t understand why the kid wanted you rescued,” Sirius said casually. “You were horrible to him at school. You should’ve seen him yesterday, barely standing. Wouldn’t sleep properly because every time he did he saw more of it.”

Severus’s throat tightened.

“He was having panic attacks,” Sirius added. “Trying not to cry because he thought it would distract Abaddon.”

Severus stared at him for a long moment before speaking.

“That’s rich coming from you.”

Sirius frowned slightly.

“You spent seven years teaching me exactly what terror feels like,” Severus said softly. “Forgive me if I recognise the symptoms but don’t feel pity.”

Sirius blinked once. That landed somewhere uncomfortable in his chest.

“And him?” Severus asked, nodding slightly toward .Abaddon. Sirius was silent for a moment. Then he laughed once under his breath.

“I genuinely thought he was going to cause the apocalypse. I’m serious.” His voice lowered instinctively. “I’ve seen powerful wizards angry before. Abaddon wasn’t angry anymore by the end.” Sirius glanced toward the couch carefully. “He was hunting.”

A faint chill crawled down Severus’s spine.

“Harry would get another vision,” Sirius continued, “and Abaddon would just… stop speaking for a while.”

Severus stared silently toward the sleeping man again. Abaddon did not look unstable. He looked controlled. Which was somehow worse. Sirius rubbed tiredly at his face.

“I’ve never seen somebody that focused on killing before,” he admitted quietly. “Not rage. Not revenge. Just absolute certainty. Each day he disappeared for hours and each day came back covered in blood. I don’t know what he did or where he went and I’m not going to ask. All I know is on that fourth day, he was drowning in blood but had your location.”

Severus swallowed once.

“And he agreed to help because Potter asked?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all?”

Severus’s expression became complicated.

“I think Abaddon would walk into hell itself if Harry asked properly. Instead it was to ensure a rotten, dirty little bat stayed alive”

Severus’s expression hardened instantly. There it was. Familiar territory. Contempt. Mockery. Safe things. Severus leaned back slightly against the pillows, ignoring the pull in his ribs and the deep ache in his legs.

“And yet here I am,” he said dryly. “Tragic for everyone involved.”

Sirius huffed something halfway to a laugh. Severus continued before the other man could speak again.

“Why are you here?” Severus asked sharply. “Last I checked, you were Dumbledore’s favourite attack dog.”

Sirius’s expression flattened slightly.

“Former attack dog,” he corrected.

Severus gave a thin smile. “Right. So now you’re his.”

That should have earned him a shove into the wall at minimum. Years ago it would have. Sirius had always preferred violence when he was cornered. Instead Sirius walked further into the room and placed the mug carefully on the bedside table.

“You still do it,” he said.

“Do what?”

“Snarl before anyone else gets the chance.”

Severus’s eyes narrowed. “Insightful.”

“You think if you bite first it hurts less when people bite back.”

Something ugly twisted briefly across Severus’s face. Sirius ignored it with the same infuriating calm.

“You used to do it at school too,” he continued. “Mouth running before anyone even touched you.”

A laugh escaped Severus, sharp and humourless. “And whose fault was that?”

Sirius finally looked at him properly then. Not defensive. Not angry. Which somehow made it worse.

“As for Abaddon,” he continued, glancing toward the couch, “he’s useful.”

Severus frowned slightly. Sirius’s expression darkened with something almost thoughtful.

“That man would burn kingdoms for Harry,” he said quietly. “And the important thing is he’d sleep peacefully afterward.”

Severus looked toward Abaddon involuntarily. Sirius was right. Even unconscious there was something deeply wrong about the stillness in his body. Not evil exactly. Just… lethal.

Like violence had become ordinary to him.

“He’ll kill for the kid,” Sirius said simply. “That matters.”

Silence settled briefly. The fire crackled. Then Sirius looked back at Severus.

“You, on the other hand,” he said, “ I haven’t decided what you are yet.”

Severus’s stomach tightened. There it was. The real conversation. Sirius folded his arms.

“If you want to stay here,” he said plainly, “you’ll need to earn your place.”

The words slid neatly between Severus’s ribs because they were familiar. Conditional safety. Conditional usefulness. Conditional survival. Severus almost relaxed hearing them. At least those rules made sense.

He lowered his gaze slightly, mind already moving toward strategy again. What skills did he still have? What information? What value? How quickly could he recover? A rough voice suddenly cut through the room.

“Sirius.”

Both men looked toward the couch. Abaddon had not moved much. One arm still rested around Potter automatically, the boy asleep against his chest completely unaware of the conversation happening around him. But Abaddon’s eyes were open now.

Dark and exhausted. Dangerously alert despite sleep still clinging to his expression. He looked at Sirius for a long moment before speaking again.

“Down, boy.”

Sirius blinked. Severus stared. Then, horrifyingly, Sirius’s mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile. Abaddon closed his eyes again with a tired sigh.

“You’re upsetting the patient,” he muttered.

“You told me to evaluate him,” Sirius replied.

“Yes,” Abaddon said. “Not threaten him like a territorial dog.”

Severus genuinely did not know how to process the fact Sirius Black appeared to tolerate being spoken to like that. It was then Severus realised why their conversation was almost cordial earlier. Black had known Abaddon would probably wake and didn’t want to piss him off. Black was either too scared or too in awe of this man to hold back his vitriol. Interesting.

Sirius muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like arsehole.

Abaddon ignored him completely. Instead he tightened his arm slightly around Potter on instinct when the boy shifted in sleep. The movement was so automatic that Severus suddenly felt like he was intruding on something painfully private. Abaddon spoke again without opening his eyes.

“For the record,” he said tiredly, “nobody here has to earn food or a bed.”

Severus went very still. Abaddon finally opened his eyes again and looked directly at him.

“You stay because Harry would cry if you disappeared,” he said flatly. “And I would find that inconvenient.”

The words should have sounded cruel. Instead they were somehow worse. Because Severus could hear the truth underneath them. Abaddon genuinely did not understand why anyone would need more reason than that. A small movement shifted against Abaddon’s side. Potter blinked awake slowly.

For a moment he looked disoriented, hair sticking messily across his forehead as he pushed himself upright beneath Abaddon’s arm. Then his eyes landed on Severus. Relief hit his face instantly.

“You’re awake.”

The words were soft with exhaustion. Honest. No suspicion. No caution. Just relief. Severus stared at him. Something uncomfortable twisted beneath his ribs. At school, Severus had made sure Potter stayed away from him. Sharp comments. Coldness. Cruel little remarks whenever the boy lingered too close. Better that way.

Children like Potter should not get attached to people like Severus.

But now…

Now Potter had dragged him out of hell by asking the devil for help. And Severus genuinely did not know what to do with that. Potter shifted off the couch slightly, blanket falling around his narrow shoulders.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said quietly.

Severus opened his mouth automatically, some sarcastic response already prepared out of instinct alone. Nothing came out. Because cruelty suddenly felt pathetic here. Potter had saved him. Not because Severus deserved it. Not because he liked him. Just because he thought Severus dying would be wrong. Severus looked away first.

“…Right,” he muttered roughly.

Abaddon watched him for a moment with visible amusement.

“You’re overthinking this,” he said.

Severus scowled instantly, grateful for the irritation because at least irritation felt familiar.

“I’m not.”

“You are,” Abaddon replied calmly.

Sirius snorted softly from near the doorway. Abaddon ignored him. Instead he reached blindly toward the bedside table without looking and shoved the steaming mug toward Severus.

“Drink that.”

Severus eyed it suspiciously.

“What is it?”

“Healing potion.”

“You poisoned it?”

Abaddon looked offended. “If I wanted you dead, I’d simply slit your throat.”

“That is somehow less reassuring.”

“Drink the tea, Snivellus,” Sirius said tiredly.

Severus reluctantly took the mug. The warmth seeped immediately into his freezing hands. Another unfamiliar feeling. Someone had made him something because he was injured. Not because they needed something afterward. Before Severus could process that thought too deeply. Silver light suddenly burst into the room. All four men looked up instantly. A Patronus. A gleaming silver phoenix circled once before Dumbledore’s voice echoed through the chamber.

“Sirius Black. It has become clear that Harry Potter has been abducted by a dark entity of significant power and influence. All remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix are hereby ordered to regroup immediately. Harry Potter is considered compromised until further notice.”

The silver Patronus vanished. Silence settled across the room. Then Abaddon laughed. Not loudly. Just a low, genuine sound of amusement, as though someone had finally delivered the punchline to a joke he'd been waiting years to hear. Potter made a strangled noise and buried his face in his hands. Across the room, Sirius closed his eyes. The expression suggested a man discovering that his day had somehow become worse.

Abaddon leaned back into the sofa as though he owned the manor, the room, and possibly reality itself. One broad arm rested along the back of the couch behind Potter.

“A dark entity,” he repeated thoughtfully.

The grin spreading across his face was nothing short of catastrophic. Severus watched it happen with growing concern.

“You know,” Abaddon said, “I think I preferred being called a demon.”

Harry groaned into his hands.

“Oh, for God's sake.”

Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You are never letting that go, are you?”

Abaddon looked genuinely offended.

“Not once.”

“Abaddon…”

“Dark entity is excellent, actually.”

“Abaddon.”

“It sounds important.”

“Abaddon.”

“I might have it engraved somewhere.”

Sirius looked moments away from throwing himself from a tower. For the first time since waking, Severus felt something unfamiliar stir in his chest. A laugh. Small and rusted nearly beyond recognition. The sort of thing he hadn't expected to feel again. He didn't let it escape. But it was there. The realisation unsettled him far more than the Patronus message had. These people were absurd.

The terrifying man who could probably level a city was arguing over his preferred classification of supernatural horror. Potter looked perpetually exhausted. Sirius seemed one inconvenience away from death. And somehow the room felt... warm. Safe. Severus hated how quickly he noticed it.

Hated even more that he didn't immediately want to leave. Outside, wind brushed softly against the manor windows. For years, survival had meant keeping one foot pointed toward the nearest exit. For the first time in a very long while, Severus found himself looking away from the door.

Chapter Text

The Third Side of The Fire

The Patronus had vanished in a shower of silver light. Silence settled over the room. Harry sat frozen next to Abaddon, the blanket hanging from his thin shoulders. His face had gone pale at Dumbledore’s words. Compromised by a dark entity. Not rescued. Not missing.

Compromised.

Sirius stared at the empty air where the Patronus had disappeared, dread settling heavily in his stomach. If he did not report back to Dumbledore soon, questions would start. And if Dumbledore decided Sirius had betrayed him… He would be called enemy, traitor a target.

Sirius dragged a hand down his face slowly.

“This is bad.”

Abaddon, sprawled sideways on the makeshift sofa like the situation barely interested him, shrugged.

“Being an enemy isn’t that bad.”

Sirius stared at him. Severus, half-reclined on the bed with the blankets now over his legs, let out a disbelieving laugh that immediately dissolved into a wince of pain.

“That,” Severus muttered, “might be the stupidest thing you’ve said today.”

Abaddon looked offended and also shocked that someone had dared to speak to him like that..

“I’ve said loads of stupid things today.”

“Yes,” Severus replied dryly. “But this one has consequences.”

Abaddon rolled his eyes.

“Oh no. The headmaster of a school hates me. What a fresh and unexpected development.”

Sirius ignored them both, pacing once across the room.

“You don’t understand,” he snapped. “If I openly side against Dumbledore, I lose everything immediately. Access. Influence. Protection.”

Abaddon leaned his head back against the chair.

“You also stop helping a man who raises children to die.”

The words landed heavily. Harry shrank back even more into Abaddon. Sirius saw it and immediately regretted the conversation happening in front of him. Severus noticed too. His expression sharpened.

“Actually,” He said slowly, “this might help you.”

Abaddon looked over immediately with suspicion.

“That tone means I’m about to hate your idea.”

“You’ll hate all my ideas.”

“Because they probably involve thinking and not doing.”

Severus ignored him.

“Technically,” Severus continued, turning toward Sirius, “Abaddon has kidnapped Potter.”

Harry blinked in alarm. Abaddon sat upright instantly.

“I did not kidnap him.”

“You absolutely did.”

“I rescued him.”

“You took the politically important child saviour, the boy-who-lived, the beloved childhood friend of the Weasleys and vanished with him without permission.”

Abaddon wagged a finger at him.

“That sounds way more evil when you say it like that.”

“Because I’m saying facts instead of feelings.”

Sirius stared between them. This was insane. Severus looked back toward Sirius.

“If Dumbledore believes Abaddon manipulated or abducted Potter, then Black remaining publicly loyal becomes useful.”

Abaddon’s expression darkened immediately.

“No.”

Severus continued calmly, ignoring him.

“Dumbledore should not be underestimated. If Black stays close to him, he can redirect suspicion, delay investigations, feed you information,”

“I said no.”

Harry flinched slightly at the sudden sharpness in Abaddon’s voice. Severus’s own expression cooled.

“You cannot solve this by glaring at everyone.”

“Watch me.”

“You need allies.”

“I need Harry alive.”

“And keeping him alive requires strategy.”

Abaddon stood abruptly. The room changed with the movement. Violence rolled off him fast and instinctive, like a storm gathering without warning. Sirius tensed automatically. Even injured, Severus’s shoulders straightened carefully.

“You think I’m stupid?” Abaddon asked quietly.

Severus held his gaze evenly. “I think you’re angry.”

“Funny. I think you talk too much.”

“And yet I’m still right.”

Abaddon laughed once without humour.

“You want him to go back to Dumbledore after that message?”

“I want us alive long enough to fight back.”

Abaddon’s eyes lifted from where he stood. In the dim manor light, with dried blood still dark across his sleeves, he looked less like a man and more like something waiting to decide whether violence was necessary.

“When did we become us?”

Severus stilled. The question should not have bothered him. It was practical, expected, a completely rational question. Instead something unpleasant twisted low in his ribs.

“Is that not the reason you rescued me?” He asked quietly. “I know how they think. That was my entire role. To think ahead before everyone else.”

Abaddon stood there, gaze unreadable.

“The reason I rescued you,” he said, “is because the visions were killing Harry. He wasn’t sleeping. Wasn’t eating properly. I told him I’d bring you back because I wouldn’t allow that to continue.”

The words landed with surgical precision. Severus looked away before any of them could notice the reaction. Hurt. Absurd, humiliating hurt. He barely knew the child outside of classrooms, detentions and rumours. Harry Potter had looked at him with fear more often than trust. Severus himself had spent many years exhausted, bitter, and cruel in ways he preferred not to examine too closely.

And alone. Always alone.

So why did it feel like something inside him had dropped at the reminder that this was obligation rather than want? Abaddon continued before the silence could settle.

“I already told you. There are no conditions attached to staying here.”

Severus gave a brittle laugh.

“That may work on children,” he muttered. “Not on me.”

Abaddon’s stare sharpened slightly.

“This is not charity,” Severus said before he could stop himself. “It’s for you. I know what people like them do. I know their structures, their paranoia, the way they move resources, who panics first, who runs, who turns traitor under pressure.” His fingers tightened against the blanket over him. “If I have nothing to do, I’ll go mad.”

That, at least, was honest. Stillness filled the room..

“You think usefulness is the price of remaining here,” Abaddon said.

Severus said nothing. Because yes. Obviously yes. Abaddon sighed leaning forward ensuring he looked him in the eye..

“No one in this house earns food,” he said. “Or safety. Harry already decided that you stay.”

Severus frowned faintly. “That is an irresponsible system.”

“And yet it is the system that’s keeping you and Harry safe.”

The words hit harder than it should have. Abaddon straightened again before Severus could answer.

“But,” he added, “if working stops you tearing your own mind apart, then fine. You can help.”

For the first time since waking in the manor, Severus felt his breathing ease slightly. Abaddon noticed. Of course he noticed.

“You really were going to try walking out of here half-dead if you thought you weren’t useful enough,” He said, almost thoughtfully.

Severus looked away. Abaddon’s expression darkened with something strangely close to anger.

“That,” he said, “is going to become extremely irritating.”

Harry looked between them anxiously. Sirius realised suddenly that Abaddon was not angry about the strategy itself. He was angry because Dumbledore had just claimed Harry belonged to him. Claimed authority. Claimed ownership. Abaddon looked like he wanted to set the entire country on fire for it. Severus saw it too. Which was exactly why he once again started pushing.

“You said it yourself,” Severus continued carefully, “that no one decides what happens to Harry anymore.”

“No one does.”

“Then use Black intelligently.”

Abaddon’s jaw tightened. Severus pressed forward anyway.

“Until guardianship is established legally, Dumbledore can claim you abducted a minor under his protection.”

Harry went visibly still at the word protection. Severus noticed instantly and cursed under his breath. Abaddon noticed too. His expression shifted sharply. Not softer. Worse. Protective. Dangerous. He turned immediately toward Harry and Sirius.

“Out.”

Sirius blinked.

“What?”

“It’s late,” Abaddon said flatly. “Harry needs sleep. You too.”

Harry hesitated uncertainly. “Abaddon,”

“Go on.”

The tone wasn’t cruel. But it was final. Sirius recognised it immediately for what it was. Abaddon was reaching the edge of his temper. Harry looked worried now, glancing once toward Severus. Severus remained still on the bed, though Sirius noticed the subtle tension in his posture. 

He thinks he’s gone too far. Interesting.

Sirius guided Harry gently toward the door who resisted just long enough to look back at Abaddon.

“You’re not angry at Snape, are you?”

Abaddon closed his eyes briefly like the question itself exhausted him.

“Go to bed, kid.”

Harry disappeared reluctantly into the corridor with Sirius following behind. The bedroom door clicked shut. Silence. Severus stared at the wood for several seconds. Then finally leaned back slowly against the cushions, wincing again as healing bruises pulled painfully across his ribs and the ache in his legs continued.

Well. That had probably been the point where sensible people got thrown out. Severus exhaled carefully.

“You know,” he muttered toward the ceiling, “most people threaten me before they decide to murder me.”

No answer came immediately. Then Abaddon’s footsteps crossed the room.

Severus looked up cautiously. Abaddon tossed another blanket at him. It hit Severus directly in the face.

“You’re freezing,” Abaddon muttered.

Severus blinked. Abaddon dropped back onto the couch with visible irritation. The silence stretched.

“He’s not going back.”

The words were quiet now. Absolute. Severus studied him carefully.

“I know.”

Abaddon stared at the dying fire.

“I don’t care what laws Dumbledore wrote. I don’t care who signed what papers. Nobody gets to own him.”

For the first time since Severus had met him, Abaddon sounded genuinely afraid. Not for himself. For Harry.

He looked away slowly. Ah. There it is. Not madness. Not recklessness. Devotion. The dangerous kind.

Severus adjusted the blanket awkwardly where it had tangled around his arms. The silence after Abaddon’s declaration stretched long enough to become uncomfortable. The fire crackled softly between them. Finally, Severus spoke.

“In terms of magical law,” he said carefully, “Black should already be Potter’s guardian.”

Abaddon glanced sideways at him. Severus kept his gaze on the ceiling.

“He’s Potter’s godfather. That carries weight with old magic. Especially in ancient houses.”

Abaddon frowned slightly. “Then how did Dumbledore get him?”

Severus gave a humourless smile.

“Politics. Fear. War. A very handy Azkaban sentence that helped his case.”

His voice sharpened faintly with old bitterness.

“But by pureblood laws? Traditionally by magic itself? Dumbledore never should’ve been able to claim magical guardianship while Black lived.”

Abaddon leaned back slightly in his chair, listening now. Severus continued quietly.

“The old families won’t like it either. Pureblood houses obsess over bloodlines, inheritance, magical succession.” He looked toward the fire. “Allowing a political leader to override a magically appointed godfather sets a dangerous precedent.”

Abaddon’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“They’ll think Dumbledore overreached.”

“They’ll think Dumbledore made himself stronger than family magic.”

Severus let out a slow breath.

“And ancient houses hate nothing more than someone threatening their own power.”

For the first time that evening, Abaddon looked genuinely thoughtful instead of reactive.

Severus noticed immediately. Good. Useful.

He needed to stay useful.

Because usefulness was safety. The moment he stopped being valuable… Severus pushed the thought down hard before it could finish forming. Abaddon suddenly spoke.

“Again, there are no conditions to stay here.”

Severus blinked. Abaddon’s tone remained flat, matter-of-fact.

“You don’t need to earn your place.”

Severus stared at him for a moment, caught off guard badly enough that he couldn’t immediately hide it. That was dangerous. He recovered quickly.

“That’s a stupid way to run things.”

“Probably.”

Severus looked back toward the fire.

“With my body like this,” he said quietly, “thinking is all I’m good for at the moment.”

The words came out colder than intended. Detached. Like he was discussing damage to an object instead of himself. Abaddon said nothing. Which somehow made it worse. Severus hated pity. Hated silence. Hated people pretending not to notice weakness. He expected reassurance next. Or lies. Or awkward sympathy. Instead, Abaddon stood. Severus stiffened automatically before he could stop himself. Abaddon ignored it completely.

He moved around the bed and sat down on the edge of it beside Severus with careless familiarity that immediately set every instinct Severus possessed on edge. Too close. Far too close. Severus’s entire body went rigid. Abaddon reached for his wrist. Severus nearly jerked away before pride stopped him. Warm magic spread through his arm instantly. Not the sharp invasive kind healers usually used. This felt steady. Controlled.

Heat sank slowly through damaged muscles and shattered nerves, easing pain he had almost stopped noticing because it had become constant. Severus stared downward silently. Abaddon focused entirely on the healing spell, brows drawn together slightly in concentration.

No hesitation.

No disgust.

No fear of touching him.

Severus found that significantly more alarming than the magic itself.

“Missed some damage here, Snape,” Abaddon said lowly, rough thumb dragging over Severus’s wrist as dark silver light crawled beneath the skin. His expression tightened almost imperceptibly at the curse tangled through the older man’s legs. “I can stabilise it. Stop it spreading. But I can’t remove it immediately. Its going to take a long time to heal.”

The admission sounded bitter in Abaddon’s mouth, like failure. His grip on Severus’s wrist tightened briefly before easing again, strangely careful for someone built like a weapon.

“Severus. My name is Severus.” It was only the second time he had ever willingly given his first name to another. Preferring the distance his surname gave him. He went very still at that. Not shocked Abaddon could tell he had probably known already, but there was a faint tightening around his mouth, the sort of controlled reaction Severus used when he was trying very hard not to show humiliation.

 “The damage is permanent,” he muttered. “Your legs are always going to hurt. You’ll need a walking stick. At the moment I have slowed the spread but it will take me more time to stop the spread completely.”

“Well,” He said after a moment, voice dry and razor-thin with exhausted sarcasm, “how fortunate that I already possess the dramatic disposition required for a permanent limp.”

The joke landed weakly. Beneath it sat something uglier: frustration, shame, the quiet horror of becoming permanently dependent on something. Severus had always measured his worth by usefulness. A damaged body felt dangerously close to becoming useless.

Still, after a pause, he exhaled softly and glanced back toward Abaddon instead of retreating into himself completely.

“You’re stopping it spreading,” he said more quietly. “Most people would have left me to rot with it. .”

The gratitude clearly cost him more than the diagnosis had.

“Severus.” Abaddon repeated once more allowing his magic to flare into his wrist in response.

Nobody sat this close voluntarily. People usually kept distance from Severus Snape even before the torture. He preferred it that way. Coldness was easier. Cleaner. This felt dangerously human. Severus became abruptly aware of everything at once. The warmth from Abaddon’s shoulder inches away. The quiet concentration on his face. The fact that Abaddon smelled faintly of smoke and blood. Severus looked away immediately, annoyed at himself.

“This is unnecessary,” he muttered.

“No it isn’t.”

“I’m not dying.”

“You’re still hurt.”

Severus opened his mouth. Closed it again. Abaddon continued healing him in silence. The magic spread lower across his ribs next, dulling the persistent ache there. Severus felt heat crawl embarrassingly up the back of his neck.

Ridiculous.

Absolutely ridiculous.

He was a grown man, former strategist of one of the most dangerous factions in magical Britain, and somehow he could not survive another human being sitting too close to him without becoming painfully aware of it. Abaddon glanced sideways suddenly. Severus immediately looked elsewhere. A pause. Then Abaddon’s mouth twitched very slightly.

Oh no.

He noticed. Severus felt genuine horror at that possibility.

“Are you embarrassed?” Abaddon asked quietly.

Severus turned toward him with immediate offence.

“No.”

“You are.”

“I’m literally injured.”

“That’s not a denial.”

Severus narrowed his eyes dangerously.

“You are an extraordinarily irritating person.”

Abaddon grinned suddenly. There it is. For the first time all evening, the fury had loosened from his shoulders. Severus hated the small rush of relief that caused. Abaddon didn’t move away.

If anything, he leaned in slightly more, close enough now that Severus could feel the warmth of him properly, close enough that pretending this was accidental became impossible. Severus’s entire body remained rigid, like if he relaxed even slightly the situation would become intolerable.

Abaddon looked almost… entertained. Not cruelly. Curiously. Like he was testing something he had never had time to try before.

“I’ve never really done this before,” Abaddon said casually.

Severus narrowed his eyes. “Done what?”

Abaddon gestured vaguely between them.

“Existing around people without trying to survive them.”

That was so blunt it robbed Severus of a response for a second. Abaddon rested his elbow on his knee, still not moving away.

“I like that you’re embarrassed,” he added.

Severus blinked. “That is not a normal thing to say.”

“Probably not.”

“You sound pleased with yourself.”

“I am.”

Severus exhaled sharply through his nose, looking away again. Abaddon’s voice softened slightly, but not enough to make it safe.

“Is that what you think we should do?” he asked. “Send Sirius back to Dumbledore. Play politics. Build whatever this is properly.”

Severus didn’t answer immediately. The question mattered too much.

Eventually, he said, quieter, “If you want to be the leader of a third side… to actually protect Potter…” He paused, jaw tightening slightly. “Then yes. It makes the most sense.”

Abaddon studied him for a long moment. Severus could feel his attention like pressure.

Abaddon finally asked, “And what’s your role in that?”

That landed harder than it should have. Severus gave a short, humourless breath.

“My role?” he echoed.

He shifted slightly, immediately regretting it as pain reminded him exactly how much damage he was still carrying.

“I’m not useful,” he said bluntly. “Not anymore. I’m not politically powerful. I’m not rich. I don’t have people. I’m now barely stable enough to walk across a room without thinking about it.”

His voice stayed calm. Too calm.

“Aside from giving you ideas when you’re about to do something stupid, I’m not sure what value I add.”

Silence. Severus expected agreement. Or dismissal. Or worse, pity. Instead, Abaddon made a quiet sound of disbelief.

“No,” he said immediately.

Severus looked at him sharply. Abaddon was still close. Still too close. Still infuriatingly unbothered by it.

“That won’t be your role,” Abaddon said.

Severus’s jaw tightened. “It’s the truth.”

“No,” Abaddon repeated, firmer this time. “It’s what you’ve decided you are because it’s safer than being anything else.”

Severus went still. Abaddon leaned back slightly now, just enough to give space but not distance.

“I’m brute force,” he said simply. “I know what I am. I make the hard calls. I deal with threats. I don’t care what it costs me as long as Harry is alive at the end of it.”

His gaze sharpened slightly.

“Sirius is loyal. He follows orders. He plays both sides if needed.”

Severus didn’t respond. Abaddon continued, quieter now.

“But you’re the one who sees patterns before they happen.”

That hit differently. Severus’s expression tightened almost imperceptibly. Abaddon didn’t stop.

“You’re the one who knows when a plan is going to collapse before it even starts. You’re the one who understands what people like Dumbledore will do next because you think like them.”

Severus let out a slow breath through his nose.

“I don’t think like them,” he muttered.

Abaddon’s mouth twitched faintly.

“You absolutely do.”

That irritated Severus more than it should have. Abaddon tilted his head slightly.

“You’re not a sounding board,” he said. “You’re not a spare brain I’m going to use when I’m bored. You’re part of this now.”

Severus looked away again, uncomfortable in a way that had nothing to do with physical closeness anymore.

“That’s generous of you,” he said flatly.

“It’s accurate.”

A pause. The fire popped softly in the hearth. Abaddon’s voice dropped slightly.

“I don’t keep things I don’t intend to keep alive.”

That silenced Severus properly. Because there was nothing casual in that statement. Nothing temporary. Abaddon stayed sitting beside him, still close, still watching him like he was waiting for Severus to argue again.

He didn’t.

For once, he didn’t have an immediate counter. And that, more than anything, unsettled him.

Harry appeared in the doorway like he wasn’t entirely sure the room wouldn’t explode if he stepped into it.

He hovered there for a second, half-lit by the corridor torchlight, hair messy from sleep, blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. His eyes flicked between them immediately. Abaddon. Severus. Still alive. Still sitting too close together. That seemed to be the main source of confusion.

“I thought you’d killed each other,” Harry said flatly. Severus watched the exchange silently from his position. Watched the way Harry instinctively kept distance from him specifically, like a nervous animal avoiding a known threat. Reasonable, considering Severus had spent years treating the boy with cold disdain, sharp remarks, and the occasional outright cruelty whenever they were close to each other.

The problem was that Abaddon had made his priorities painfully clear. Harry wasn’t temporary. He wasn’t baggage. He was family and if Severus intended to remain here in this strange, broken little unit orbiting Black Manor then eventually he would have to stop acting like Harry was an inconvenience contaminating the room.

Unfortunately, Severus had never been particularly good at kindness. He would have to try though.

Abaddon opened his mouth but Severus spoke first.

“No.”

The word was calm. Simple. Immediate. It shut the room down in a way Abaddon’s voice never quite managed. Harry blinked. He looked at Severus more closely, uncertain. That reaction was understandable. Severus Snape had never been kind to him. Not even accidentally. Not even when it would have been easier. He had always been controlled, sharp-edged, distant in a way that made safety feel conditional. Harry shifted slightly in the doorway.

“I… couldn’t sleep,” he admitted quietly.

Abaddon softened instantly, half turning. Severus interrupted again, gentler this time.

“Come in.”

It wasn’t a command. It wasn’t sharp. It was… steady. Harry hesitated anyway. His eyes flicked to Abaddon instinctively, like he expected permission or reassurance. Abaddon gave him a small nod. But he didn’t speak. That alone made Harry hesitate more. Because Abaddon always spoke. Always reacted. Always filled space with certainty or violence or both. Severus noticed. Something shifted in his expression, not visible softness exactly, but adjustment.

Like he was recalculating.

Harry stepped inside slowly. The door clicked softly behind him. He stayed near it at first, unsure where he was allowed to exist in the room.

“I thought…” Harry started again, then stopped.

Severus watched him. Didn’t interrupt. Didn’t overwhelm him. Just waited. That alone made Harry more nervous than anything Abaddon could have done.

“I thought you were arguing,” Harry finished.

Abaddon gave a short laugh. “We were.”

Harry looked between them again.

“You sounded like it.”

Severus leaned back slightly against the pillows.

“We were discussing how not to die,” he said.

Harry frowned. “That doesn’t sound like a normal discussion.”

“It isn’t,” Severus replied.

A pause. Abaddon watched the exchange carefully, but didn’t interfere. For once. Harry shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“Are you… okay?” he asked, looking at Severus more than Abaddon now.

It wasn’t confidence. It was cautious obligation. Like he felt he should check, even if he didn’t fully trust or want the answer. Severus noticed that immediately. Something in his expression tightened for a fraction of a second. Then softened, not into warmth, but into control.

“I’m functional,” Severus said.

Harry frowned again. “That’s not the same thing.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

Silence. Abaddon glanced at Severus slightly, like he was watching something form for the first time. Severus ignored him. Harry took a small step forward.

“I was worried,” he admitted quietly. “Because… you both sounded like you were going to kill each other.”

Abaddon smirked faintly. “We’re not there yet.”

“Yet?” Harry echoed.

Severus spoke before Abaddon could escalate it.

“No one is killing anyone,” he said firmly.

The certainty in his tone landed differently than Abaddon’s would have. It didn’t feel like reassurance through force. It felt like a rule of reality. Harry looked at him more closely now. Still uncertain. Still remembering.

Severus had been cruel to him. Sharp words. Cold dismissal. A man who looked at him like a problem to be managed rather than a child to be held. Harry didn’t forget that easily.

Severus saw it. And, unexpectedly, didn’t flinch away from it. Instead he shifted slightly, making more space on the edge of the bed. Not a command. An opening.

“You’re not sleeping,” Severus observed quietly.

Harry hesitated. “No.”

“Nightmares?”

A pause.

“…yes.”

Abaddon’s expression darkened instantly, instinctively leaning forward, Severus spoke again before the reaction could become overwhelming.

“Sit down.”

Harry blinked.

“Where?”

Severus nodded at the space beside him. Abaddon froze slightly, watching. Harry looked at Abaddon again. Abaddon didn’t object. Didn’t intervene. Just watched. That, more than anything, seemed to decide it. Harry crossed the room slowly and sat down on the edge of the bed, not too close. Careful distance. Like approaching something that might still hurt him. Severus didn’t move away. Didn’t crowd him either. Just accepted the space.

“That happens after what you’ve been through,” Severus said quietly.

Harry looked down at his hands.

“I keep thinking it’s still happening.”

Severus nodded once.

“That’s normal.”

The word normal landed strangely in the room. Not dismissive. Not pitying. Just factual. Harry glanced at him.

“You’re… not angry?” he asked cautiously.

Severus paused. For a brief second, something old and bitter flickered across his face, habit, reflex, history. Then it settled.

“No,” he said simply.

Abaddon watched this exchange like he was seeing a system recalibrate in real time. Harry frowned slightly.

“You used to be.”

Severus didn’t deny it.

“I was wrong about a lot of things,” he said.

The honesty startled even him slightly, if the pause afterward meant anything. Harry didn’t know what to do with that. So he just nodded faintly. Silence settled again, but this time it wasn’t sharp. It was… held. Abaddon finally leaned back, arms crossed, watching them both. Not intervening. Letting it happen. Severus glanced at Harry again.

“You don’t have to be afraid in here,” he said.

Harry didn’t answer immediately. But he didn’t move away either. And that, for him, was progress. Abaddon noticed it too. And for the first time since the patronus arrived, the room felt like it had stopped splitting into sides.

And started becoming something else entirely.

The room had gone quiet in the strange, fragile way quiet only existed after fear. Not absence of danger. Just exhaustion temporarily outweighing it.

The curtains had been drawn against the night. Firelight crackled low in the grate Abaddon had conjured earlier, the glow throwing long shadows across the stone walls of the manor bedroom. The air still smelled faintly medicinal beneath the smoke, blood-replenishing potions, dittany, dark magic residue that no amount of cleaning seemed able to fully erase.

Severus lay propped against the pillows, still pale from the Death Eater’s torture. Too thin already before this. Now almost hollowed out. Harry sat near his knees on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped forward, half wrapped in the blanket Severus had snapped at him to stop “fidgeting with like an idiot” ten minutes earlier.

It had not really been cruel. That was the unsettling part.

Harry still remembered classrooms full of sharp remarks and cold dismissals. Severus Snape had never needed a reason to make someone feel small back then. But now the cruelty felt worn down at the edges. Exhaustion had stripped something from him. Or maybe the knowledge that war was coming had.

Harry still did not fully trust him. But he no longer feared him. And somehow that felt even stranger.

“…you nearly blew up my entire classroom in third year,” Severus muttered weakly.

Harry looked offended. “That cauldron exploded because Draco Malfoy threw lacewing flies into it.”

“You were encouraging him.”

“I was not.”

“You looked encouraging.”

Harry snorted despite himself.

Across the bed, Abaddon now sat on the transfigured sofa with one elbow resting against the armrest, watching them in silence. Relaxed with only the smallest flicker of something unsaid at the mention of Malfoy. Or at least the closest thing Abaddon ever came to relaxed. His boots were still on. Wand balanced against his thigh.

But his shoulders had lowered slightly. His gaze no longer scanned every corner of the room like he expected death to crawl out of the walls. Severus noticed it. And that unsettled him more than anything else. Abaddon trusted no one. Severus knew this with terrifying certainty.

Abaddon was not paranoid in the ordinary sense. He was something beyond that, someone shaped into a weapon so completely that safety no longer existed naturally within him. Every movement was calculation. Every room was threat assessed. Every silence was temporary.

Yet somehow here, he had eased. Not fully. Never fully. But enough that Severus could see it. Enough that Abaddon had allowed himself to sit down. The realisation settled strangely in Severus’s chest. Dangerous. Warm.

Harry yawned suddenly. Then immediately tried to hide it. Abaddon looked over.

“Bed.”

Harry grimaced. “I’m not tired.”

“You are falling asleep sitting upright.”

“I’m awake.”

“You nearly fell sideways three times.”

Harry opened his mouth. Closed it again.

Then quietly, “The nightmares will come back.”

The room shifted. Not physically. Emotionally. Harry stared hard at the blanket in his lap instead of looking at either of them.

“What if he gets in again?” he whispered. “What if Voldemort gets into my head again when I’m asleep?”

Severus felt cold. Voldemort entering dreams was not normal childhood fear. It was violation. Invasion.

Harry rubbed at his face aggressively, clearly regretting speaking at all. “It was better before.”

Abaddon frowned faintly. “Before what?”

A horrible flush spread across Harry’s cheeks.

“When I slept on the couch.”

Harry looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole.

“With you there,” he added furiously. “Not, not because I’m a baby or anything.”

Severus very carefully looked away to preserve what remained of the child’s dignity. Abaddon, unfortunately, did not possess normal human instincts.

“You slept more deeply,” Abaddon said bluntly.

Abaddon’s expression changed instantly. Not softer. Worse. Protective. Severus watched him carefully then noticed something rare and deeply uncomfortable. Indecision. Abaddon glanced once toward the door. Then toward Severus. Then finally back at Harry.

“Severus is still injured,” Abaddon said at last.

His voice had flattened into command again.

“The dark magic used during the torture is still active in his system. I need to ensure I’m healing him through the night. To completely stop the spread.”

“I’m fine,” Severus said immediately.

Abaddon ignored him.

“If someone breaches the wards, Severus is vulnerable.”

Harry’s expression shuttered immediately. Severus recognised that look too. Possessiveness disguised as anger. A child who had finally found safety and was terrified it might belong to someone else. Abaddon frowned slightly, clearly missing the emotional shift entirely.

“I said I’m fine.” Severus responded not wanting to be the cause of an argument.

“You do not currently possess a wand.”

Severus glared at him. “I am still perfectly capable of caring for myself, as I have done many times before.”

“No,” Abaddon said calmly. “You are not.”

Harry looked between them nervously. Severus hated the truth of it. Hated it. He also hated how his heart seemed to skip a beat. His magic was unstable after the torture. His body felt weak in ways he despised. And Abaddon knew exactly how vulnerable that made him. Worse, Abaddon cared. That was somehow the most unbearable thing of all. Abaddon leaned forward slightly, already deciding.

“The simplest solution is obvious.”

Severus narrowed his eyes immediately.

“That sentence has never once in history been followed by something good.”

“ You two share the bed whilst I stay on the couch.”

Silence.

“What?” Harry sounded outright appalled. Severus looked equally horrified.

Abaddon blinked once at both of them like they were being irrational.

“This allows me to protect both of you simultaneously.”

“I am not sleeping in a bed with my professor.”

“With Potter?” Severus said at the exact same time.

Harry looked deeply offended now, colour rising in his face.

“I am fourteen, not four.”

“It is irrelevant.”

“It is absolutely relevant!”

Abaddon’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You are frightened.”

Harry went rigid immediately.

“I am not frightened.”

“You are.”

“I’ve fought Voldemort before.”

“And survived because Dumbledore manipulated every variable around you,” Abaddon snapped back instantly. “You were never actually in control of those situations.”

Harry stared at him.

“I still won.”

“No,” Abaddon said coldly. “You survived.”

The words landed like a slap. Severus saw Harry flinch. Then anger replaced it.

“I fought Voldemort and won.”

Abaddon laughed once. Not kindly.

“You fought a fragment directed precisely where Dumbledore wanted it directed. Under circumstances engineered to keep you alive.”

“I don’t need protecting every second!”

“Yes,” Abaddon said sharply, “you do.”

Harry stood abruptly from the bed.

“I’m not a child!”

Abaddon stood too. And suddenly the room felt smaller. More dangerous.

“You are a teenager with trauma and suicidal instincts.”

“I know how to fight.”

“You know how to survive disasters you should have died in.”

Harry looked furious now.

“At least I’ve actually fought!”

The second the words left his mouth Harry knew they were a mistake. Abaddon went still. Completely still. When he spoke again his voice had gone very quiet.

“By your age I had already killed and laughed about it. By your age I knew the pain of having your nails pulled and what poison burned, which tasted sweet and which bubbled.. By your age I had been in multiple raids, torturing many who looked at me wrong. By your age I learned that no one would ever come when I screamed.”

Silence crashed into the room. Harry froze. Severus felt something cold crawl down his spine. Abaddon’s expression remained empty. Not proud. Not ashamed. Just factual.

“That,” Abaddon continued, “is the difference between us. You still believe surviving makes you experienced. It does not.”

Harry swallowed hard but refused to back down.

“I’m still not sleeping in a bed with my professor.”

“You are prioritising pride over safety.”

“And you’re treating me like I’m helpless!”

“You are vulnerable,” Abaddon snapped.

“I’m not weak!”

“I did not say weak!”

“Then stop acting like I’m incapable of doing anything myself!”

The argument finally tipped into shouting.

“Just transfigure another bed then!”

“This room is too small for another bed.” Abaddon looked utterly lost.

And suddenly Severus understood something profound and terrible. Harry was having a tantrum. The kind children only had when they believed, truly believed that the adult would not abandon them afterward. Harry trusted Abaddon enough to be angry at him. The knowledge hit Severus with startling force. Because children like Harry did not waste anger on unsafe people. They saved silence for those.

Abaddon, meanwhile, looked like he would rather fight another war than survive this conversation. Severus pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Wonderful,” he muttered. “Excellent. This is exactly what my recovery needed.”

Neither listened. Harry looked furious enough to shake. Abaddon looked worse. Because Abaddon looked afraid. Not for himself. For Harry. And somehow that made him harsher.

“You think competence means invulnerability,” Abaddon said. “It does not. Every person I have ever buried thought they were capable right up until they died.”

“I’m not one of your soldiers!”

“No,” Abaddon barked back. “You are somehow more difficult.”

“Enough,” Severus cut in sharply.

Neither stopped. Severus’s temper finally snapped.

“I swear to God if both of you do not shut up immediately I will personally poison you.”

That finally did it. Silence. Heavy breathing. Abaddon still standing near the sofa. Harry rigid near the bed. And then, the door burst open. Sirius appeared with a wand already drawn, hair dishevelled, expression murderous.

“What happened?”

His gaze flicked instantly between all three of them before landing on Abaddon.

“Why are you shouting?”

“We were having a disagreement,” Abaddon said flatly.

“You sounded like you were about to kill each other.”

“Still under consideration,” Severus muttered.

Sirius stared at Harry properly then, taking in the flushed face and furious eyes. Understanding clicked quickly.

“…right,” Sirius said slowly. “Teenager.”

Harry looked offended. “I am literally standing here.”

“Yes,” Sirius said. “And Abaddon looks like he is ready to throttle you. Well done kid it seems you made our emotionless leader finally get annoyed..”

Abaddon looked unimpressed. Sirius just grinned.

“Black. I think maybe Potter should stay with you tonight.” Severus spoke up from the bed.

Harry opened his mouth immediately. “I don’t need,”

“You’re staying with me,” Sirius said firmly. “Because unlike these two lunatics I enjoy sleeping without being screamed at.”

Abaddon lifted his wand. Harry and Sirius tensed immediately, instinctive wariness flashing across their faces before they suppressed it. That tiny reaction clearly stabbed Abaddon somewhere internal. His jaw tightened. Then he cast anyway. Dark silver magic spread briefly over Harry’s shoulders like smoke before sinking beneath his skin in thin invisible lines. Severus felt the ward settle. Aggressive.

Possessive enough to make even the manor itself hum in recognition.

Harry looked down at himself. “What was that?”

“A monitoring ward,” Abaddon said shortly. “If something touches you, breaks the perimeter, alters your mental state, or if your scar reacts abnormally, I will know.”

Severus stared at him.

“That is an absurd amount of tracking magic to place on a child.”

“Yes.”

No shame whatsoever. Harry, meanwhile, looked visibly comforted despite himself.

“You’ll know immediately?”

“Yes.”

“And you can come get me?”

“Yes.”

The answer came without hesitation. Some of the remaining tension eased from Harry’s shoulders at once. Not fully. He was still sulking on principle. But Severus caught it then, the tiny betrayed curve threatening at the corner of Harry’s mouth. A barely suppressed smile. Safe enough to argue. Safe enough to stomp about dramatically. Safe enough to demand reassurance and still expect it afterward.

Abaddon noticed it too. His expression did something strange for half a second. Small and quiet. Almost startled relief.

Then he ruined the moment immediately by saying, “You are still forbidden from attempting to duel homicidal dark wizards alone.”

Harry scowled again on instinct. “You can’t forbid me from things.”

“I absolutely can.”

“You’re not my dad.”

Abaddon looked genuinely affronted.

“Thank fuck for that. Your survival rate would be even worse.”

Harry made an outraged sound. Severus snorted tiredly despite himself. Harry hesitated. Then finally nodded once. Mostly because he now refused to look at Abaddon. Abaddon said nothing at all. Which somehow felt worse.

A few minutes later the room was quieter again. Harry gone. Sirius muttering something sarcastic down the corridor. The bedroom door shut behind them. Silence settled heavily across the room. Abaddon remained standing where he was.

Tense. Furious.

Severus watched him for a long moment. Then sighed.

“He is fourteen.”

Abaddon did not answer.

“He is traumatised,” Severus continued more quietly. “Exhausted. Hunted. Half the magical world either wants him dead or expects him to save it.”

Abaddon’s jaw flexed once.

“He should not have to fight at all.”

“No,” Severus agreed softly. “But he has. And children who survive things like that tend to become defensive when reminded they are still children, especially if they have never been treated like one before.”

Abaddon finally looked at him then. Still frustrated. Still restless.

“I cannot keep him safe if he refuses to understand the danger.”

“You cannot bully him into obedience either.”

“I was not bullying him.”

Severus gave him a look. Abaddon exhaled sharply through his nose.

“…perhaps slightly.”

“Heroic self-awareness.”

Abaddon ignored that. His shoulders remained tight. Severus studied him for another moment before speaking again, quieter this time.

“You frightened him.”

Abaddon looked genuinely unhappy at that.

“That was not my intention.”

“I know.”

And Severus did know. That was the problem. Abaddon cared too much already. Protectiveness sat inside him like a wound. Severus shifted carefully against the pillows, wincing slightly. Abaddon moved instantly.

“What hurts?”

“Nothing dramatic. Sit down before you wear a trench into the floor.”

Abaddon obeyed after a brief hesitation moving to the couch. Still tense. Still alert. Still visibly irritated with the entire situation. Severus looked at him for a moment before sighing again.

“If we are to follow your asinine plan then you are not getting into this bed wearing boots.”

Abaddon blinked once.

“And that shirt is soaked through with blood.”

Abaddon looked down at himself like he had only just noticed a small smirk appearing.

“Yes, Princess.”

The rough amusement in his voice made heat creep immediately up Severus’s neck. Honestly mortifying. 

“I will remain awake.”

“No,” Severus said instantly.

Abaddon’s eyes flicked toward him.

“No?”

“You are exhausted.”

“I am functional.”

“You are running entirely on spite and adrenaline.”

“I have continued under worse conditions.”

“That is not the reassuring statement you think it is.”

Abaddon’s jaw tightened slightly.

“If I sleep, you are undefended and Harry may need me.”

Severus rolled his eyes.

“You are one of the most powerful wizards I have ever met. I am fairly certain you can manage a few wards.”

Abaddon looked unconvinced. Severus crossed his arms carefully, wincing slightly at the movement and raising an eyebrow in challenge. Abaddon shook his head smiling before standing once more.

He pulled the dark shirt over his head without embarrassment. Severus immediately regretted speaking. Because unfortunately Abaddon was, well, built like violence given human form and Severus had always been drawn to violence.

Scars crossed his torso in pale lines. Old burns. Blade wounds. Evidence of a life clearly spent surviving impossible things. Silver runes lined his arms and chest, radiating a power that sat naturally on him. Effortlessly. Severus remembered suddenly and unwillingly what it had felt like being held against that chest earlier. He looked away almost instantly.

Utterly humiliating.

Men like Abaddon did not look twice at men like Severus. Too sharp at the edges. Too thin. Too damaged by years of becoming useful instead of loved. Severus knew exactly what Abaddon was, powerful, dangerous, inevitable. Someone people followed naturally. Someone kingdoms would form around whether he wanted them to or not.

And one day, inevitably, someone worthy of standing beside him would arrive. Someone elegant. Strong. Untouched by all the ugliness Severus carried around inside himself. Severus had spent his entire life surviving by remaining useful. Necessary. Easy to keep around. He knew how men like him ended: quietly dismissed once they stopped serving a purpose.

Abaddon might say otherwise now. Abaddon might look at him like he mattered. But Severus knew better than to trust temporary things.

Still, here in the dark, faced with Abaddon’s bare chest and full undivided attention Severus allowed himself one small moment of selfishness. Just one. Just long enough to pretend this belonged to him too.

Abaddon kicked off his boots next before lifting his wand and cleaned the blood from his trousers with a simple spell. Severus went still. Slowly, horrifically, he realised, Abaddon could have done that to the shirt. He could have cleaned the shirt the entire time. There had been absolutely no practical reason whatsoever to remove it.

Severus stared at him in dawning horror. Abaddon’s expression remained perfectly neutral. Except for the unmistakable glint in his eyes.

“Oh,” Severus said weakly. “You did that on purpose.”

Abaddon said nothing instead that small telltale smirk. He once more lifted his wand towards the door. Layers of wards sealed over the bedroom door in low shimmering gold. Severus felt them settle into place. Ancient. Powerful. Safe.

Abaddon finally slid carefully into the bed beside him, nearest the edge closest to the door. The mattress shifted under his weight. Severus immediately became hyperaware of absolutely everything. Abaddon beside him. The warmth. The closeness. The sheer size of the body next to him.  The fact that this was the first time in his entire miserable life he had ever shared a bed with another person.

Mortifying.

Abaddon lay back but did not close his eyes. Still guarding. Always guarding. Severus tried very hard not to think about the fact Abaddon smelled faintly of smoke and cold air. Which unfortunately only made him think about it more.

“I can hear you thinking,” Abaddon murmured quietly into the darkness.

Severus nearly died on the spot.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You are glaring at the ceiling aggressively.”

“I am doing no such thing.”

“You are.”

Severus glared harder. Abaddon’s mouth twitched slightly. Not quite a smile. But close. The fire crackled softly. Outside the manor, the war still existed. Voldemort still existed. The world remained broken and terrifying and hunting them.

But here, for one night, two damaged people lay together behind locked wards and borrowed safety. Severus tense but slowly unravelling from exhaustion. Abaddon awake beside him like something standing between him and the rest of the world.

Not peace. Not happiness. But something dangerously close to home. And eventually, one by one, even Abaddon relaxed enough to close his eyes.

And Severus had one more thought before he too succumbed. 

Let me have this just for a while longer.

Chapter Text

The Shape of Home

The morning came slowly, as though even the light outside the manor was reluctant to commit to what waited inside. Grey dawn filtered through heavy curtains in thin, uncertain bands. The fire had burned down to a low, pulsing glow in the grate, more ember than flame now, casting restless shadows across the stone walls. The wards still hummed. 

Severus woke first to the sound of the fire collapsing softly into ash. For several long seconds he did not move. Not because he was tired but because he became abruptly, horrifyingly aware of the position he was in. Warmth pressed solidly beneath him. A heartbeat against his cheek. Bare skin,  warm, solid, very much alive, and for a disorientating second his mind refused to process what that meant. Abaddon’s chest rose and fell slowly beneath him, steady even in sleep, like the body of something built for endurance rather than rest. Severus also had the humiliating realisation that his hand was resting on Abaddon’s stomach, a scar under his fingertips.

One of Abaddon’s arms lay heavy around his waist, more reflexive than embrace, and sometime during the night Severus had apparently migrated almost entirely against him in search of heat.

Merlin.

This was humiliating. Severus closed his eyes briefly in silent despair. Every logical thought evacuated his mind at once. This was, objectively, catastrophic. Abaddon was not wearing a shirt. Severus was currently using him as a pillow. There was no possible interpretation of this situation that did not result in humiliation.

He did not cling to people in his sleep. He especially did not cling to Abaddon. There were explanations for this. Entirely rational explanations. The manor was cold even though they were reaching the summer months. Severus had spent years half-starved and perpetually chilled. Abaddon radiated body heat like a furnace. The movement had likely been an unconscious survival instinct.

That was all. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.  Unfortunately, his body did not seem remotely interested in supporting this argument because even now, fully awake, he could not quite make himself move away. Abaddon was warm. Steady. Dangerously solid. Severus hated the sharp flicker of safety that came with the thought.

The room remained trapped in colourless early dawn, weak grey light filtering through the curtains. The rain had finally stopped. And beneath all of it, Abaddon remained almost unnaturally still. Severus frowned faintly. Then realised why. Abaddon had not truly slept.

Most people shifted unconsciously through the night. Curled differently. Relaxed into softness. Abaddon had remained in almost the exact same position for hours. Half-turned toward the bedroom door. One hand close to his wand. Body instinctively angled between Severus and the entrance. Even asleep, he looked prepared for violence. Boots placed beside the bed for immediate access. Knife still on the table. Wards active. Guard posture maintained through exhaustion. The observation landed somewhere painfully deep inside Severus’s chest. Abaddon had not once prioritised his own comfort. Only everyone else’s safety.

Very carefully, as if any movement might trigger an explosion of reality Severus lifted his head, letting his chin remain on the other's chest, hand unconsciously rubbing at the scar beneath it and stared at him quietly. Without the sharp edge of command or anger, Abaddon looked exhausted in a way he almost never allowed himself to appear. Dark shadows sat beneath his eyes. His breathing remained too shallow, too controlled, as though some part of him had stayed alert the entire night regardless of physical sleep.

Not paranoia but trained conditioning. Severus felt something tighten unpleasantly beneath his ribs, because he understood transactional protection. Understood alliances built from usefulness, leverage, obligation. His entire life had functioned that way. The Dark Lord protected valuable assets. Dumbledore protected strategic necessity. People cared so long as you remained useful enough to justify the effort.

But Abaddon…

Abaddon had protected him and Harry like it was instinctive. Automatic and unquestioning. Severus did not know what to do with that. It unsettled him more than cruelty ever could. Care implied permanence. Care implied attachment. Severus hated the thought immediately.

Emotionally irrational. Operationally dangerous.

He attempted to intellectualise the feeling at once. Stress attachment. Proximity dependency under wartime conditions. Trauma psychology accelerated emotional reliance in unstable environments.

That explanation should have worked. It did not. Beside him Abaddon shifted fractionally. Not awake. Just aware. His hand moved instinctively toward the wand near the pillow before stilling once whatever hypervigilant part of his brain recognised the room remained secure.

Severus watched that tiny unconscious movement and felt something inside him fracture quietly. Abaddon genuinely expected danger every second he existed. Even exhausted. Even surrounded by wards and the truly frightening part was that he would have met it willingly. A floorboard creaked faintly somewhere downstairs.

Instantly Abaddon’s eyes opened. No confusion. No lingering sleep. One second asleep. The next fully alert. Severus physically felt the tension coil through him as Abaddon assessed the room in one rapid glance, door, windows, wards, Severus…Who was currently laying on Abaddon hand almost stroking him. Severus felt the heat rise in hte back of his neck.

“…good morning,” Abaddon said quietly. Severus went rigid.

“I…”

His voice failed him. He tried again.

“I was not, this was not intentional.”

“I am aware.”

“I did not, I would never,”

“Severus.”

Abaddon’s tone was calm. Dangerously calm.

“It is fine.”

That somehow made it worse. Severus pushed himself back immediately, wincing as his injuries protested the movement, scrambling to re-establish distance as though proximity itself had become incriminating evidence.

“I fell asleep,” he said quickly, too quickly. “Obviously. That is all. Nothing else. Nothing remotely, this did not mean anything.”

Abaddon didn’t move. Didn’t sit up. Just watched him with that same steady, unreadable focus.

“You are injured,” Abaddon said.

“That is not relevant.”

“It is.”

“It is not.”

A pause. Then, flatly:

“You were cold.”

Severus stopped. That landed differently. Not aN accusation, not teasing, just a statement. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, irritation flaring instinctively to cover something more complicated underneath.

“I was not cold.”

“You were.”

Severus glared at him. “Are you always this observant or do you just enjoy cataloguing my failures?”

“I do not catalogue failures.”

“That is somehow not reassuring.” 

Abaddon said nothing else instead his eyes flicking once more around the room. His eyes looked towards the heavily warded door. The smallest pause. Checking for Harry. Last night’s argument settled heavily back into the silence between them. Harry had left furious enough to sleep in Sirius’s room instead.

Not frightened but angry and humiliated. Determined to prove he was not a child to be ordered into bed and watched over like something fragile. And Abaddon. Abaddon had pushed too hard. Severus thought they both knew it now. The line still lingered in the room like a bruise.

I had already killed people by your age.

Harry had gone quiet after that. Not because he had been intimidated. Because for the first time he had understood Abaddon a little. And that understanding had unsettled him badly. Abaddon’s gaze lingered briefly toward the door before finally returning to Severus. Only then did some of the immediate readiness leave his shoulders. Their eyes met. Severus became abruptly aware he was still lying very close to him, that he was there in bed in a night shirt that was currently tangled around his upper thighs and this man lay beside him. And with a fresh wave of mortification, realised that Abaddon had in fact remained still the entire time whilst Severus had been… on him. Like it had not mattered. Or like it had mattered too much to acknowledge. He pushed himself upright far too quickly. Abaddon caught his arm automatically before he could aggravate his injuries.

“Careful.”

Severus flushed with immediate irritation.

“I was perfectly careful.”

“You nearly fell off the bed.”

“I was repositioning.”

Abaddon looked at him for a long moment. Then, with visible effort, chose not to comment on the fact Severus had apparently spent the entire night attached to him like an overgrown heating charm. The restraint somehow made it worse. Abaddon’s voice came roughened by exhaustion when he finally said quietly,

“You should’ve slept longer.”

Severus stared at him incredulously.

“You didn’t sleep at all.”

Abaddon ignored that completely. Which was answer enough. For a while neither of them spoke. Somewhere downstairs old pipes groaned faintly through the walls. The wards continued their low magical hum beneath everything else, steady enough now that Severus had almost stopped consciously noticing them.

Abaddon had finally moved and propped himself upright against the headboard, still visibly listening to the house. Always listening. Severus watched him from the corner of his eye. Even exhausted, Abaddon carried alertness like a physical thing beneath his skin. Violence sat inside him with terrifying ease, held on such a tight leash it almost resembled stillness. Severus realised after several seconds that he was staring again. Abaddon noticed instantly. Of course he did.

“You’re doing it again,” Abaddon said quietly.

Severus blinked.

“Doing what?”

“Looking at me like you’re trying to solve a murder.”

Severus snorted softly.

“You stare at doors like they’ve personally offended you.”

Abaddon’s gaze flicked briefly toward the bedroom entrance.

“Most threats come through them.”

Severus stared at him for a moment.

“That is perhaps the bleakest thing anyone has ever said before breakfast.”

“It’s statistically accurate.”

“Which somehow makes it worse.”

A faint flicker touched Abaddon’s mouth. Not quite a smile. Close enough to be dangerous. The silence that followed settled strangely easily between them. Not comfortable, neither of them were built for comfort. Yet quieter than before. Abaddon’s expression sharpened slightly as he looked back toward Severus.

“How bad?”

Severus frowned faintly.

“My apologies?”

“The pain.”

Operational tone. Direct and clinical. And yet Severus recognised the concern immediately now. Abaddon expressed care the way soldiers checked ammunition. Methodically. Without softness. Severus shifted experimentally beneath the blankets, testing ribs that no longer felt shattered thanks to Abaddon’s healing the previous night. The deep tearing agony had gone. Most of the bruising had faded entirely. Only exhaustion remained. His legs still ached but for now there was no shooting pains.

“Tolerable,” Severus answered.

Abaddon looked unconvinced immediately.

“That bad, then.”

“You are aware,” Severus said dryly, “most people don’t conduct medical assessments at dawn.”

“You cried out during the night if I held you too tightly. I had to stop the spread three times.”

Severus went still. Abaddon said it flatly. No accusation. No drama. Just fact. Meaning he had remained awake enough to notice. The realisation did deeply unfortunate things to Severus’s internal composure. He recovered quickly.

“I survived, tragically.”

Abaddon ignored the sarcasm.

“The residue?”

There it was. Not the injuries. The curse that meant that now Severus would no longer be able to walk without assistance. The one thing Abaddon had not managed to remove completely. Severus hesitated a fraction too long. Abaddon’s expression changed instantly. Not emotional but focused.

“Severus.”

“It’s stable.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Severus exhaled quietly through his nose.

“The spread slowed after your healing.”

“But?”

Severus tried to look toward the dying fire instead of at him. Abaddon was not having that, placing a hand softly around his throat and using his thumb to push to Severus’s face up to look him in the eyes. 

“It’s still there.”

Silence. Heavy silence. Abaddon held it without blinking. Severus hated how impossible it was becoming to lie effectively under that stare. With visible reluctance he tugged the collar of his shirt aside slightly, exposing the faint blackened veins, evidence of a dark curse still lingering near his collarbone and shoulder. They looked less violent than the night before, the furious corruption dulled and partially burned away by Abaddon’s magic but remnants still threaded beneath the skin like spilled ink.

The room changed instantly. Abaddon’s posture sharpened with frightening precision. Severus watched his eyes track the remaining marks clinically. Assessing and calculating. Furious. Not at Severus. At the damage itself. That affected Severus far more than it should have. Abaddon moved his hand down automatically like a gentle stroke before seeming to consciously register the movement halfway through. His fingers hovered briefly against the marked skin near Severus’s throat. Warm. Careful. Severus felt the touch like an electric shock. Abaddon’s voice lowered slightly.

“It receded.”

“Yes.”

“But not enough.”

Severus attempted lightness.

“Your impossible magical standards continue to amaze me.”

Abaddon ignored that completely. His thumb brushed against the edge of the darkened veins before he withdrew his hand.

“We’ll clear the rest.”

Simple statement. Absolute certainty. As though the world itself was merely an operational problem waiting to be solved. Severus should have found that arrogance intolerable. Instead he found himself thinking, with sudden dangerous clarity:

Abaddon genuinely believes nothing is allowed to take the people under his protection.

The thought hit hard enough that Severus abruptly looked away. Emotionally catastrophic. Entirely unacceptable. He attempted immediate intellectual correction again. Stress attachment. Protective dependency responses. Trauma-conditioned emotional acceleration under prolonged threat environments. Perfectly logical explanations.

Unfortunately none of them altered the fact his pulse had quickened the moment Abaddon touched him. Across the hall, floorboards creaked quietly. Both their heads turned instantly toward the sound. Abaddon was already moving before the second creak finished. Not fast, or panicked. Just certain. He was out of bed not seeming to care about his current state of undress, bare feet on the floor, trousers hung low on his hips. His body shifting into position between Severus and the door without conscious thought, wand drawn in the same motion his hand reached the handle. Severus sat up slightly, watching him.

“Abaddon,”

The door opened. And Harry stepped in. He looked wrong in the space for a second, like he had been dropped into a life that wasn’t fully his yet. Borrowed jumper hanging too large off his frame. Sleeves rolled unevenly. Hair still sleep-mussed in a way he clearly hadn’t bothered fixing. In both hands, a mug of tea that he held too carefully, as if it might explode if he breathed wrong. Behind him, faintly, Sirius’s presence lingered in the corridor, not visible, but implied. The quiet distance of someone choosing not to interfere. Harry did not look at Abaddon immediately. Or Severus. He stared instead at the floor just inside the doorway.

“I made tea,” he said flatly.

Silence. Abaddon did not lower his wand. Severus watched both of them carefully. Harry shifted his weight awkwardly.

“I didn’t poison it,” he added, then immediately looked annoyed at himself for saying it. That finally made Severus exhale something almost like a laugh under his breath.

“Comforting clarification,” Severus murmured.

Harry shot him a brief look. Not hostile exactly but complicated. Then his eyes flicked up properly. Met Abaddon’s for half a second. Dropped again. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was loaded. Abaddon finally spoke.

“You left the warded space.”

Harry’ jaw tightened immediately.

“I went with Sirius like Snape asked me to. I wasn’t alone.”

“That is still outside the protection parameters.”

“I was two doors away and you placed wards on me,” Harry snapped, then stopped himself, visibly forcing a breath through his nose. “I wasn’t in danger.”

Abaddon’s gaze did not change.

“You were angry enough to make irrational decisions.”

Harry’ grip tightened slightly on the mug.

“I’m not a child.”

A beat. That line landed differently this time. Severus watched Abaddon’s expression shift, not softening and not apologetic. Like recalibration after a misread battlefield. Abaddon spoke more evenly.

“No.”

Harry blinked slightly, thrown off. Abaddon continued.

“You are not a child.”

A pause. Then, colder again:

“But you acted like one. You still operated at a level where your emotional volatility created risk.”

Harry’ face flushed faintly.

“That’s not…”

“It is,” Abaddon cut in simply.

No raised voice. No anger. Just fact stated with finality. Harry went silent again, breathing through his nose harder now, like he was physically restraining himself from arguing further. Severus recognised the spiral immediately. He intervened gently.

“Potter,” he said quietly, “you look like you’ve borrowed half Blacks’s wardrobe and all of his mood.”

That earned him a sharp look. But it broke the tension just enough. Harry shifted his stance again, uncomfortable in his own skin.

“I’m not apologising for last night,” he said abruptly.

Abaddon didn’t respond immediately. Which was worse. Harry rushed on anyway.

“You don’t get to talk to me like I’m fragile. I told you I’ve fought Voldemort before and I, I handled it.”

A flicker in Abaddon’s eyes at the name. Not surprise. Assessment. Then dismissal.

“You survived Voldemort under Dumbledore’s manipulation and controlled conditions,” Abaddon said. “That is not the same thing as what you could be facing.”

Harry’ face tightened.

“You don’t know what I can handle.”

Abaddon finally lowered the wand slightly. Not fully. Just enough to signal he was no longer expecting immediate attack.

“I do,” he said quietly.

That landed. Harder than the argument. Because it wasn’t arrogance. It was certainty shaped by experience Harry didn’t fully understand yet. Severus saw Harry struggle with that,  the instinct to reject it, colliding with the memory of last night’s words he couldn’t quite forget.

The people.

The way Abaddon had said it without pride. Without guilt. Just fact. Harry’ grip on the mugs loosened slightly.

“I don’t like being told what to do,” he muttered.

Abaddon’s tone didn’t rise.

“I know.”

That surprised Harry enough to look up properly this time. Abaddon held his gaze for a second. Then added, more quietly:

“But I will do it again if I think you are at risk.”

Silence dropped back into the room. He didn’t say it cruelly. That was the problem. Severus watched Harry swallow hard, anger and something else conflicting behind his eyes. Not acceptance. Not yet. But understanding again, the same dangerous beginning from last night. Harry set the mug down on the bedside table too carefully.

“I brought tea,” he said again, quieter now, as if repeating it might stabilise the situation.

Severus nodded slightly. “Thank you.”

Harry hesitated. Then, still not looking directly at Abaddon, added:

“There’s breakfast downstairs.”

Abaddon gave a short nod.

“Good.”

A pause. No resolution. No apology. Just three people standing in a room learning, unwillingly, how the shape between them was changing, the moment of stillness did not last. From the corridor behind Harry came a slow, deliberate clap..

Unhurried and unbothered. Completely out of place in the tension-drawn silence of the room. Sirius appeared in the doorway a second later. He looked, as always, like someone who had not slept properly in several years and had simply decided to dress well anyway. Shirt slightly open at the collar. Sleeves rolled with careless precision. Dark circles under his eyes that no amount of aristocratic posture could disguise. One hand in his pocket, the other carrying nothing at all, as if he had decided weapons were optional opinions.

His gaze took in the room in a single sweep. Abaddon half naked  half-guarding, still positioned too close to Severus. Severus sitting upright, shirt slightly askew, messy hair, curse residue still faintly visible beneath fabric. Harry standing stiffly with borrowed clothes and defensive posture. The tea on the bedside table. The wards still humming. The absence of overt catastrophe. Sirius nodded once.

“Excellent,” Sirius said calmly as he stepped fully into the room. “No one has murdered anyone overnight. Tremendous progress.”

Then Sirius’s gaze lingered a fraction too long on Severus.

“…though I am wondering about the state of undress of our dear professor and demon.”

Severus felt heat rise instantly to his face.

“Black…”

Abaddon said nothing. He didn’t need to. His attention had already sharpened, still and quiet in that way that always came right before something went wrong. Sirius, however, seemed entirely unconcerned by the shift in atmosphere. If anything, his mouth curved slightly, a cruel little thing. A familiar smile that Severus had been waiting for the entire time he had been in this house.

“So,” he continued, eyes flicking back to Severus, “this your bright idea of earning your place, Snivellus? Spreading your legs?”

The room went dead silent. Harry looked up sharply.

“…what?” he said, confused more than anything.

Severus felt something cold and familiar drop into his stomach. Mortification. Old, deep, and reflexive. His throat tightened as memories tried to surface uninvited, corridors, whispers, laughter that didn’t stop even when it should have. THe residual pain in his body, his own unbalance from the morning making it difficult for him to think of an adequately cutting response. 

“I didn’t,” Severus started, voice sharper than intended. “That is not…”

But the words tangled. Because part of him still knew how this went. Still knew how easily it could become true in other people’s mouths, regardless of reality. Harry looked between them now, uncertainty shifting into something more uncomfortable. Understanding forming in the wrong direction.

“No,” Severus said quickly, more forcefully now. “That is not what happened."

Sirius just laughed. Low and cruel.

“It always starts like this,” he said lazily. “People whispering about where Snivellus puts his loyalties. Though I suppose they used to say Severus Snape would crawl for whichever monster held the leash.” His mouth twisted cruelly. “Isn’t that how you ended up at Voldemort’s right hand?”

Severus went still. Not visibly at first. Just a tiny, deadly kind of silence. The sort born from years of surviving interrogation rooms and torture chambers and classrooms full of children who thought cruelty made them clever. Then something in him broke cleanly down the middle. Sirius’s smile widened slightly. Then Abaddon moved. There was no warning. No transition. Just impact. One moment Sirius was leaning casually against the doorframe. The next he was slammed into a wall so hard the stone behind him shuddered. A strangled sound left his chest as Abaddon’s forearm pinned him in place.

“What the fuck did you say?” Abaddon’s voice was low. Dangerously controlled.

Sirius blinked once, more surprised than afraid, too messed up by Azkaban to realise the danger he was in. Though that flicker of pain in his expression was real enough.

“Well,” Sirius managed, slightly breathless, “that escalated quickly.”

Abaddon tightened his grip. “Say it again.”

Sirius’s eyes flicked sideways briefly,  not to Severus, not to Harry, but to Abaddon himself. Measuring. Adjusting. Realising exactly how close he was to making a very serious mistake. Still, pride and ego got there first.

“There were always rumours,” Sirius said carefully, “that Snivellus would…”

“Watch your fucking mouth,” Abaddon snapped.

Harry moved closer “Abaddon!”

“Stay out of this,” Abaddon barked without looking away.

Severus had gone very still. Not from fear of Sirius. From the sheer inevitability of what Abaddon was about to do if this continued. Some part of him was gleeful. Black the bully would finally get what was coming to him. However, the smart side of Severus, the side that knew Harry would never forgive if something happened to his godfather knew he would have to stop this. Yet it didn’t douse the warmth forming behind his ribcage.

“Abaddon,” Severus said sharply, forcing control into his voice. “Let him go.”

Abaddon didn’t move. Sirius exhaled slowly, eyes still locked on Abaddon. Then, unexpectedly, his expression shifted. Something in it softened just slightly. Not fear. Not defiance. Recognition.

“…alright,” Sirius said quietly.

Abaddon didn’t loosen his grip. Sirius’s voice dropped further.

“I was out of line.”

Silence. That landed differently. Abaddon didn’t trust it immediately.  Neither did Severus. Sirius swallowed once, carefully this time.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he admitted. “It was unnecessary.”

A beat. Then, quieter still:

“And I apologise.”

The words hung in the air for a moment. Abaddon held him there a second longer, as if checking whether the apology was real or just another angle of manipulation. Then, slowly, he released him. Sirius stayed against the wall for a moment, straightening his collar as if nothing had happened, though the faint tension in his shoulders didn’t quite leave. Harry stared at all of them like he was trying to understand a system he hadn’t been given the rules for. Severus let out a slow breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. Abaddon stepped back. But his eyes stayed cold.

“Do not speak about him like that again,” Abaddon said.

Sirius nodded once.

“I won’t.”

A pause. Then, with a quieter edge that was almost honest:

“I forgot who I was talking to.”

Abaddon didn’t respond. But the room did not relax. Not fully. Not yet. Harry exhaled sharply through his nose, despite himself.

Severus muttered, “Give it time.”

Harry turned his head immediately. Abaddon didn’t look at him. Sirius stepped fully into the room then, pushing away from the wall and rubbing at his sore head that somehow felt more final than loud violence. He regarded Abaddon for a moment longer than anyone else. Observant. Then, mildly:

“You didn’t sleep.”

It wasn’t a question. Abaddon’s eyes flicked to him.

“I rested.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow.

“That is what people say when they are attempting to reassure themselves rather than describe reality.”

Abaddon did not respond. Which, in Sirius’s experience, confirmed everything. Sirius’s gaze drifted to Severus next and as if trying to extend an olive branch.

“You are also awake earlier than medically advisable.”

Severus gave him a tired look.

“Thank you for the diagnosis, mutt.”

Sirius’s mouth twitched faintly.

“Always a pleasure.” Then his attention moved to Harry.

The shift was subtle, but it changed the temperature of the room again. Harry straightened slightly under it, defensive instinct returning. Sirius’s tone softened by a fraction.

“You brought tea.”

“I did,” Harry said cautiously.

“And no one was poisoned.”

“I already said that,” Harry muttered.

“Repetition is comforting in uncertain environments,” Sirius replied.

That earned the smallest reluctant exhale from Harry that might almost have been laughter if it hadn’t been immediately swallowed. Sirius finally crossed further into the room, glancing briefly at Abaddon again who had now moved back to stand by Severus.

“You are hovering,” he observed.

Abaddon’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“I am standing.”

“You are standing,” Sirius agreed, “in a way that suggests you are currently debating how quickly you could remove everyone from this house through the nearest wall.”

A pause. Abaddon didn’t deny it. That was answer enough. Sirius sighed lightly.

“You realise,” he continued conversationally, “that if you continue to behave like a siege commander in a domestic space, people will eventually begin to treat you like one.”

Severus murmured, “He already is one.”

Abaddon glanced at him.

“Only when necessary.”

Sirius nodded.

“Which, given your definition of ‘necessary’, appears to include breakfast.”

Harry shifted awkwardly.

“This feels normal for you?” he asked Sirius under his breath.

Sirius didn’t look at him.

“No,” he said simply. “This feels unusually calm.”

That did not reassure Harry. It should not have. Sirius’s gaze drifted back to Abaddon, voice lowering slightly,  still dry, but less performative.

“You are aware,” he said, “that you are becoming attached.”

The room tightened. Severus’s eyes flicked up sharply. Harry frowned. Abaddon went still. A fraction too still.

“I am aware of my responsibilities,” Abaddon said evenly.

“That is not what I said.”

Silence stretched. Sirius continued anyway, unbothered.

“You did not sleep because you were monitoring an injured man and listening out for one emotionally volatile teenager.”

Harry bristled at “teenager” immediately. Severus did not correct him. Sirius went on.

“You positioned yourself between the door and everyone else for an entire night in a house already protected by wards you personally reinforced.”

Abaddon’s jaw tightened slightly.

“That is standard procedure.”

“For soldiers,” Sirius said mildly. “Not for families.”

That word landed. Hard. Even Harry noticed it. Abaddon’s eyes flicked once toward Severus, then briefly, almost imperceptibly, toward the space where Harry stood. A calculation. A correction. Not denial. Adjustment. Sirius watched it happen with quiet precision.

“You are not sleeping,” he added, softer now. “You are anchoring.”

Abaddon’s voice was controlled.

“That is unnecessary commentary.”

“It is accurate commentary.”

A pause. Then Sirius, almost lightly:

“I will be leaving soon.”

That shifted the room again. Harry looked up sharply. Severus already knew. Abaddon did not react outwardly, but something in his posture changed, microscopic recalibration. Sirius continued, tone now more practical.

“As we discussed I have obligations to return to Dumbledore’s sphere.”

Silence. Harry frowned.

“You’re really going back to him?”

Sirius’s expression didn’t change.

“I am going to be useful.”

Severus watched him carefully. Abaddon’s gaze sharpened instantly. Sirius met it without hesitation.

“Yes,” he said simply. “I am aware of what that means.”

The room went very still. Harry looked between them, suddenly less certain of his earlier irritation and more aware of scale. Severus spoke quietly.

“You’re going as eyes.”

Sirius nodded once.

“I am going as eyes.”

Abaddon’s voice was low.

“That is not a safe role.”

Sirius’s mouth twitched faintly.

“Neither is standing in a cursed manor with three unstable emotionally damaged individuals, and yet here we are. Me being the sane one and I spent over a decade in Azkaban”

Harry muttered, “I am not emotionally damaged.”

Severus glanced at him.

“You had a tantrum yesterday.”

“It was a gesture.”

Sirius ignored them both. His attention stayed on Abaddon.

“And before you begin restructuring the entire known world in response,” he added mildly, “I am not asking permission.”

Abaddon’s eyes hardened slightly.

“I didn’t assume you were.”

“No,” Sirius agreed. “You assumed I would listen to logic and reconsider.”

A pause.

“I did not.”

For the first time, something almost like amusement flickered across Abaddon’s face, gone as quickly as it appeared. Sirius exhaled quietly.

“Good.”

Then, softer and directed at all of them now:

“You are all forming something very dangerous here.”

Harry frowned.

“What does that mean?”

Sirius looked at him.

“It means,” he said calmly, “that none of you are currently behaving like you are alone anymore.”

Silence settled in the room, unchallenged and heavy. Then a loud growl broke it. Harry immediately stiffened, mortified, one arm flying across his stomach as if he could physically silence it.

“That,” Sirius said with open amusement, “is the very clear sign that we should have breakfast.” He laughed, watching Harry flush deep red.

“Yes, you all need to eat,” Abaddon added, already pulling on his shirt. “And this discussion is not happening in our bedroom.”

Severus froze.

Our.

It landed too cleanly. Too naturally. No one else reacted, not immediately. Sirius did, though. A thin, unpleasant grin flickered across his face as he glanced at Severus, clearly enjoying the moment. Severus ignored him on purpose, because his attention had already snagged on something else entirely. Abaddon had just transfigured a book into a pair of black slippers and was holding them out toward him.

“And those are…?” Severus managed.

“The floor is cold,” Abaddon replied, as if that explained everything in the world.

Before Severus could argue, Abaddon moved again, drawing the blankets back with no regard for protest, ignoring Severus’s instinctive scramble to preserve what dignity he had left. Then, firmly but not unkindly, he guided Severus to sit on the edge of the bed. Abaddon then did something that stopped the room. Even Harry let out a quiet, startled sound.

Abaddon knelt.

Severus went rigid. Looking down, he saw the bent crown of Abaddon’s head, shaved sides beginning to grow out, the longer top still messy with scattered strands of grey threading through it. The sight was disorienting. Too human. Too close. Before Severus could form a single thought, his feet were lifted carefully, and the slippers slid on with deliberate precision. Severus couldn’t speak. He simply stared, as if the room itself had shifted into something he no longer knew how to navigate.

“I made breakfast,” Harry spoke up as if he was broken. Severus blinked at him.

“You cooked.”

Harry shot him a look.

“I can cook. I am not incompetent.”

Abaddon was already moving. Transfiguring a pencil that had been in the bedside table into a walking stick. He assisted Severus to a standing position, his hand holding onto Severus’s elbow. Not abruptly. Deliberately. As if the decision had been made earlier and simply delayed by necessity.

“Downstairs,” he said.

Not a suggestion. A transition. Sirius straightened from the doorway with a faint sigh of resignation that suggested he had already accepted the day was going to escalate regardless of preparation.

“Breakfast,” he echoed mildly. “Excellent. A return to civilisation.”

Harry  muttered, “It’s just toast and eggs.”

“That,” Sirius said, “is also civilisation.”

The kitchen was warmer. Not emotionally. Physically. Old stone held heat differently, and the lingering scent of cooking softened the edges of the earlier conversation in a way none of them fully trusted. Harry had indeed cooked. Poorly arranged but functional plates sat on the table. Eggs slightly uneven. Toast unevenly buttered. Tea poured into mismatched mugs. It all clashed as if it had been done on purpose. To cause a reaction that didn’t happen.

It was, Severus thought, the most normal thing any of them had done in days. Which made it unsettling. Harry stood awkwardly by the counter as if unsure whether he was supposed to serve or disappear. Abaddon moved past him without comment, immediately assessing the room in the same way he assessed everything, exits, sightlines, weak points in the manor structure, magical residue in the walls. Then, without ceremony, he sat. At the head of the table even though technically this was Sirius’s house. and looked at the plates. Severus hesitated. Sirius took a seat further down with the air of a man accepting an unavoidable obligation. Harry remained standing. Abaddon looked up at him.

“You haven’t eaten.”

Harry frowned.

“I made it.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

A pause. Harry opened his mouth. Closed it again. Sat down to the left of Abaddon. Severus watched the exchange with faint disbelief, before realising that the only seat remaining was the one on Abaddon’s right side. An interesting position. Abaddon looked at him with an eyebrow raised and he realised all of the occupants in the room were staring at him. Abaddon then stood and pulled the chair out for him. Severus rolled his eyes, huffed but took the seat clenching his fist slightly as Abaddon pushed his chair in for him. Abaddon immediately reached for the nearest plate and pushed it slightly toward Severus.

“You need more than that.”

“I just sat down,” Severus replied.

“You have probably not eaten properly in days.”

“That is not,”

Abaddon’s gaze lifted. Severus stopped speaking. Across the table, Harry watched this with a mixture of irritation, jealousy and horrified fascination. Abaddon then pushed a second plate slightly toward Harry.

“Eat.”

Harry blinked.

“I know how to eat.”

“Prove it,” Abaddon said simply.

That earned a faint, unwilling huff of laughter from Severus that he immediately tried to suppress. Sirius observed all of this in silence for several seconds before speaking.

“You are monitoring intake levels now,” he noted.

Abaddon did not look up.

“Yes.”

“That is concerningly domestic for someone who threatened to break through a wall an hour ago.”

“It’s efficient,” Abaddon replied.

Harry muttered, “Will he always be like this?”

Severus answered before Abaddon could.

“Yes, probably.”

Abaddon, without missing a beat, pushed a mug slightly closer to Harry.

“Drink.”

Harry stared at it. Then at Abaddon

“I’m not going to collapse from lack of tea.”

“You might,” Abaddon said. “Given your current stress profile.”

Harry looked scandalised.

“My stress profile?”

Severus coughed once into his hand.

Sirius, quietly amused, murmured, “I believe you have been clinically assessed.”

Harry glared at all of them in turn, then picked up the mug and drank anyway, as if refusing would somehow validate Abaddon’s assessment. Abaddon seemed satisfied and turned back to his own plate only after both Severus and Harry had begun eating. The room settled into a strange, fragile rhythm. Utensils. Steam. Quiet observation. Not peace. Function. Eventually, Sirius leaned back slightly in his chair, setting his mug down with careful deliberation.

“I will be returning to the Order today,” he said.

The room did not immediately react. But the temperature changed. Severus looked up first. Harry stopped mid-bite. Abaddon did not move but his attention sharpened instantly. Sirius continued calmly.

“I will act as intended. Distraction. Misdirection. I will attempt to draw attention away from your current position.”

A pause.

“I may be useful in that capacity for a time.”

Harry frowned.

“That sounds like you’re walking into a trap on purpose.”

Sirius's expression remained neutral.

“Yes.”

Silence. Abaddon’s voice came low.

“Your likelihood of survival decreases significantly.”

“I am aware,” Sirius replied. Severus’s jaw tightened slightly.

“You’re still going.”

“I am still going,” Sirius confirmed.

He glanced briefly around the table.

“You are not currently in a position to be publicly exposed. Not yet. Not all of you. The structure being built here requires time.”

His gaze lingered briefly on Abaddon.

“And discipline.”

Abaddon did not respond. Sirius then looked at Harry.

“That includes you.”

Harry stiffened slightly. Sirius’s tone softened by a fraction.

“You are currently too visible to be left unmanaged.”

Harry bristled immediately.

“I am not,”

“Politically stable,” Sirius finished, not unkindly. “Which is not a criticism. It is a classification.”

Harry looked like he wanted to argue. But didn’t. Sirius turned his attention back to Abaddon.

“This means,” he said, voice steady, “that it will be imperative for you to take Harry to Gringotts.”

The room went still. Severus looked up sharply. Harry frowned.

“Gringotts?”

Abaddon’s expression tightened slightly. Sirius continued, unbothered.

“To begin formal guardianship procedures. Custody recognition. Legal shielding under remaining protective frameworks.”

A pause.

“It will prevent external interference. It will also reduce his immediate vulnerability to political leverage.”

Harry looked increasingly alarmed.

“Wait, custody?”

Abaddon finally spoke.

“Agreed.”

No hesitation. Harry turned sharply toward him.

“Agreed?”

Abaddon looked at him directly.

“Yes.”

Simple. Absolute. Harry stared at him, something between fragile hope and disbelief forming. Severus watched the exchange carefully. Sirius, meanwhile, exhaled lightly as if concluding a logistical briefing.

“Good,” he said. “Then we are, for the moment, aligned.”

A pause. Then, more quietly, almost as an aside:

“Try not to destroy each other before I return.”

He stood. Adjusted his sleeves. And for the first time, his tone lost some of its dry levity.

“I will lead some away from Dumbledore for as long as I am able.”

His eyes met Abaddon's. “And you,” he added, “will need to be ready when that stops working.”

Abaddon held his gaze.

“I will be.”

Sirius nodded once. Then looked at Harry.

“And you will go to Gringotts.”

A beat.

“It is not optional.” 

Harry opened his mouth. Closed it again. Looked at Abaddon. Then Severus. Then back down at his plate, visibly conflicted. Sirius turned toward the door.

“And I would suggest,” he added lightly, as if the conversation had not just shifted the entire direction of their lives as if he hadn’t suddenly been the most mature version of himself, “you all finish your breakfast.”

A pause at the threshold. Then, more quietly:

“Things will accelerate from here.”

And he left to get ready for his next adventure.