More Than One Way to Skin a Cat (Inspired by Athey's Rebirth — lulu42's Path of Decision — hctiB-notsoB's I See the Moon)

Warnings: Some swearing, some angst, some mental illness. Moderate amount of crack. Strong Canon divergence.
No underage/no pairing/no smut.

Thank you, ad infinitum, to my beta and my friend Eider Down. His fic The Second String is over at /s/13010260

To Skin a Cat's plot continues 'til the end of 1995. Then, after a bit of transition and a time skip, the Post-Hogwarts sequel Lepidoptera takes place with a T-rated SS/HP pairing. Again, no smut/no lemons.

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I am defining Severitus as Severus raises Harry, not the actual biological relationship.
For plot reasons Dudley's birth date has been shifted from June 1980 to October 1979 and Hermione's birthday from 19th to 29th September.

… …

The Unfortunate Truth

He remembered dying, bleeding out, his consciousness barely there.

He remembered pain. He remembered his one last look into those green eyes, doomed as they were to join him soon in death.

His heart ached, as his neck ached, as his body ached.

He greeted death as a friend.

… …

He didn't expect to wake up. It was rather disconcerting, really. One moment he was drifting away, and the next he was aware of his body again, just as sore as before.

It felt approximately the way he imagined coming back from the brink of death should feel like. Which is to say, fucking awful.

His forehead hurt like someone had stabbed him, except Severus had been stabbed before and this was markedly worse.

Severus made to get up, because lying here dying wasn't helping anyone.

He toppled over, entirely too weak, and fell against—

Were those bars? Somebody had bothered to heal him from Nagini's bite, proceeded to stab him in the face with a cursed blade, and then put him behind bars?

He could see the room he was in, inexplicably high-ceilinged. There was a giant form lying on the ground—his captor had likely fallen asleep. Who knew how long they had been waiting for him to wake up?

Someone stormed in them, and Severus tensed, trying to ready himself. He did not know if they were friend or foe, who had won the Final Battle. Either way, they likely thought him a villain.

Black robes and swinging black hair swooped in and—

—ignored him. Completely. The form fell over the giant on the floor, making choked gasping noises Severus admitted sounded like he did himself, when very upset.

He surreptitiously checked, but the noises weren't coming from his own mouth; his own face was sticky with drying blood, not tears.

There were sounds from above, like a nearing freight train. The grieving man cursed, looked around wildly and Disapparated just as feet came thudding up wooden stairs. A voice was shouting, moaning in its approach. "No, no, no, no. I'll—I'll kill him!"

This did not bode well.

The possibly-sleeping-but-probably-dead giant's head had shifted and Severus could see brilliant red strands pouring across wooden floorboards.

The cursing man tripped into the room, gasped, cursed again, pointed his wand.

Severus was suddenly completely helpless, trapped in a body bind. The giant swept him up and held him against his shoulder. Severus could see the scene from above, now. A woman, crumpled before a crib. Crimson hair spilling everywhere.

He swallowed. He'd bet everything that under closed lids would be startling green eyes.

Something cold and dark clenched inside him, the reality of his situation looming like the gaping maw of a very, very long drop.

His throat made a sound almost identical to the one the other man had made, the man that had Apparated away after finding Lily's body.

Severus didn't know how this had happened. He didn't know why this had happened. He wasn't even entirely sure what had happened.

"Hagrid!" Severus' captor's voice rumbled through him. "Here, take Harry for me, you can borrow my bike. Bring him to Poppy, keep him safe."

Despite Severus' best efforts, this toddler body was too young. It slipped out of his control, as the engine's lullaby roared him to sleep.

… …

Severus awoke to bright light—and Tuney Evans pursing her lips at him.

It was all he could do not to have a burst of accidental magic right then and there.

… …

The Boy Who Lived (in the Cupboard)

There once was a boy who lived in a cupboard—with the shoes.
He was so young, such a child, he didn't know what to do.
So he ate his chicken broth, and a big slice of bread,
Sunk himself in Occlumency as he went off to bed.

Over the next week Severus learned that Petunia Evans, now Petunia Dursley, had not mellowed with age.

She tried, he knew that she tried. He could see it in the way she couldn't look Severus in the eyes without her upper lip trembling. The way she would sit sometimes watching him and his cousin Dudders—and wasn't that the worst name ever—as they slept. The way she made sure her grief was poured out quietly, in small doses, where it would not disturb her oaf of a husband or the two toddlers now in her care.

She fed them, changed them and took them outside at the same times every day. When they went shopping, she managed to budget extra diapers for her nephew and a bar of chocolate split three ways.

The helium balloon bearing the number two drooped lower with every passing day since Dudders' birthday.

… …

For the tenth night in a row, Dudders had woken them all with his screams. Severus stood in his crib to watch Tuney tend to him, soothe the limp blond hair on the boy's brow.

Severus had heard of colicky children, but it was like his cousin did nothing but sleep, wail, and stare into space with an expression that, on someone older than two, would seem forlorn.

"I'm so sorry, dear," Tuney said, blinking at Severus with unconcealed exhaustion. "He's just sick, he isn't usually this cranky. You'll see. Oh, but I wish it didn't have to be all of us he's waking up every night."

The solution to this, apparently, was that Severus was getting his own room, as far from his cousin's bedroom as possible. In fact, he was given a cupboard. Under the stairs.

It was as fastidiously clean as Tuney kept the rest of the house, had room for the crib and shelf of Dudder's castoffs. He got a brand new teddy bear though, brandished by Tuney almost as an apology.

Severus named it Sebastian and drew a lighting bolt on its forehead, a reminder of the child he was now—and also wasn't. He wondered, not without a good portion of guilt and some barely suppressed horror, what had happened to the real Harry Potter.

… …

Over the next half year Dudders began to sleep better, and Severus toilet trained himself to dispense with the humiliation of having his diapers changed. Vernon and Tuney fussed over Dudders, praising his every vapid, inane, childish thought.

Severus did his best to disappear into the background. Observing, or sinking into memories, wondering why and why me and why now and why this.

He did not bother himself with the hows. It was not his place to question the ways of the Gods. Because what could this be, if not some fresh hell wrought upon him by someone insisting he did not deserve to ever, in life as in death, catch a break?

… …

Playing the Long Game

Severus had not realised that children were so daft. When Draco had been born, Severus had hardly occupied himself with the infant. He vaguely recalled there had been much wailing, a lot of shit and eventually stories of he smiled today and he does this thing where he tries to walk and then he topples over and it's so—

Lucius and Narcissa had regressed from haughty politician-socialites, to people who could hold lengthy discussions over intricacies of baby-everything. Severus had avoided them until Draco was old enough to be taught to play chess.

Dudders was five now. He still spent more time watching dust motes than should be able to entertain him. He sometimes had night terrors, followed by a day's worth of Tuney cooing over his every move. He was also, thankfully, old enough for Severus to teach him to play chess.

The child had an odd habit of collecting broken things. A bent spoon. A cracked mug. The pencil that had somehow been gnawed entirely in half. Marge's Bulldog's eviscerated squeaky duck, sans squeaker. A single walkie-talkie.

A broken mirror.

Dudders would stare at Severus sometimes, until his vacant blue-green eyes watered. He would always drink in the attention his parents showered upon him, but whenever he was given some treat he'd go over to his cousin and share it.

It was endearing, in a disturbing way.

Severus had not been around very many children, which had been intentional rather than a happenstance, thank you very much. But he could tell—there was something not quite right with Dudders Dursley.

At least the chess games weren't half bad.

… …

It took until they started primary school until someone finally got Severus glasses. Hideous NHS frames aside, it was utterly brilliant. The world was his fucking oyster. He could read bus stop signs, and the terribly childish alphabet that adorned his classroom's walls.

Dudley—Severus had yet to decide if this legal name was an improvement from 'Dudders'—had the attention span of a seven-year-old who regularly had staring contests with things only he could see living in the mistletoe. The teachers talked amongst themselves about autism, unaware that they had an ex-spy in the class who was undeterred by closed doors.

Personally, Severus thought Dudley was just a bit different, and maybe there actually were very interesting things that the rest of them couldn't see. The child talked, walked and had learned to read very quickly. These adults just couldn't appreciate different without insisting on diagnosing some disorder.

Severus was offended on Dudley's behalf. And if he paid a little extra attention to his cousin, to make sure he wasn't picked on…well, nobody had to be any the wiser.

… …

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