The Best Man I Ever Knew, Part 1
Teen · Angst · Hurt/Comfort · Drama · Post-War · Canon Divergence · Multi-chapter · On Hiatus
I declare that the whole world of Harry Potter is the sole property of J.K. Rowling and that this story was not written for profit.
Harry walked into the gloomy building and looked around when a door opened and a tall, stern looking woman came out into the corridor towards him. Harry straightened up and smiled at her. The woman stopped and stretched her mouth into some imitation of a smile. "How can I help you?" she asked.
Harry's spirits sank a little and he said what he had prepared. "I found out you have my son here. His mother died giving birth to him. I left him with an acquaintance to raise him, and unfortunately she died. But my son disappeared before I managed to find out his carer was no longer with us. It's been exactly a month since I found out, and now I'm searching for him. At the police I found out he had been placed here. His name is Soren Steward. Of course, that's the name the authorities gave him. His real name is Soren Potter." He finished. The woman looked at him and went into an office, motioning for Harry to follow her. "Yes, you're right. This child was brought to us about a month and a half ago." She looked at him. "How do I know you're not lying to me?" Harry armed himself with patience, he knew he would have to use a Confundus Charm, or... He didn't really want to, but he needed to get Severus's son as quickly and easily as possible. Nobody knew it, but Harry was a master of wandless magic, and on top of that his unexpected Slytherin genes were slumbering inside him.
"Imperio," he finally pointed his wand at her and smiled. "Now, please prepare everything I need to take my son, including the adoption papers. I'll give him a proper home and take care of him." He sat down in an armchair and waited. After almost an hour of preparing papers, the woman went to fetch a three year old boy. "Severus," slipped from Harry's lips, surprised by how much the boy looked like his father, and he went over to him. He turned to the woman, who slid the papers towards him, and he quickly signed. "Thank you." He took the boy by the hand, drew his wand, ended the Imperius and cast Obliviate on her. Then he created a new memory for her and finished it with a Confundus Charm. He hoped his manipulation hadn't harmed the woman. But he needed everything to be unassailable and certain.
When they stood together in front of the building, Harry looked down at the quiet boy and noticed he was shivering with cold. In that moment Harry realised he really hadn't thought it all through. The thought rushed through his head that he should warm the boy up. So he picked him up, used a warming charm and wondered whether it was strange that the boy surrendered to him like that and didn't resist at all. Had there been so many new faces that he no longer minded? In that moment he felt the warmth from the warming charm too. He held him close to his heart and Apparated to Diagon Alley, where he went straight to Madam Malkin. She chattered away, greeted Harry like an old friend and wondered where he had got a three year old son. During the month he had been searching for the boy, Harry had come up with a fairly believable story. Soren was his son either way, so he answered Madam Malkin, "Youthful recklessness. His mother died and had no family left, so Soren ended up with me as his rightful father." After the necessary shopping for the boy, they finally found themselves at home in Grimmauld Place, and Harry could take a proper look at him.
The little boy stood in ragged clothes in the living room, sucking his thumb and staring at him as if he were an apparition. "Soren, from now on I'm your dad." He came closer, and the boy mumbled something to himself. With a sigh Harry lifted him up, sat him in an armchair and went to the fireplace. He threw in Floo powder and yelled, "Hermione?!" Her head appeared in the fireplace right away. "Harry! Have you got him?" Harry nodded. "I need help. I don't have much experience with little children, and I could probably use some books." He thought he could go to Molly too, after all she would be far more use than books, but first he would have to work up the courage for that. Nobody really knew anything about his relationship with Severus, and since he had no intention of trumpeting it around, he couldn't fully answer all the questions they might ask him. Hermione nodded. "Have you already bought and set up everything for him?" Harry sighed. "You know me so well. Of course not! I need to transfigure some room here into a nursery, but I don't think I even know the spells I need..." Hermione smirked. "Well, while you and Ron were working on finding him, I took the trouble to look them up and write them down for you. So, Harry..." A piece of paper, singed at the edges, flew out of the fireplace. "Here you go, and turn his room into something fabulous! And before I forget, you should probably have him as close to your bedroom as possible!" With that the fire went out as Hermione ended the connection. Harry turned back to the room, but his eyes were glued to Hermione's paper. He nodded to himself and sat down in the armchair opposite Soren, and only then did he realise Soren had fallen asleep in the armchair. Looking at that carefree face, a smile spread across Harry's.
After he had studied the spells, he left Soren sleeping in the armchair and went upstairs. Right behind him he conjured a barrier with a little gate, so nothing would happen to Soren at night. He chose the room right next to his bedroom. He looked around and coughed. There was so much dust that turning it into a usable room would take real work. He looked at Hermione's parchment again and gradually transfigured one piece of furniture after another, until a nursery appeared in front of him. The cot was dark brown with a black canopy full of silver stars. He transfigured the curtains on the windows into the same ones as on the cot and with a wave of his wand removed all the dust from the floor. He cleaned it and transfigured the old carpet into foam puzzle mats with animals in the middle. Then he transfigured the old desk into a smaller table with a little chair, and the books into toys. When he was satisfied, he noticed that without thinking he had done everything in muted dark colours. "Maybe Soren doesn't have Severus's taste..." he waved his hand at himself. "If he doesn't like it here, I can change it any time." With those words he went back to his bedroom, where he conjured another identical cot, because why should Soren sleep anywhere but his room right now anyway. Downstairs in the kitchen he transfigured one chair into a high chair so Soren could eat on his own, and went to collect him from the armchair in the living room, where to his horror he found that Soren was no longer in the armchair. "Soren?" He started searching one room after another, until he found him in Severus's old laboratory, trying to reach an empty flask. "Got you!" He scooped him into his arms, whereupon the little boy screamed and tried to get away from him. So Harry let him go, and Soren looked at him calmly now from a certain distance. "Is everything alright? Would you like something to eat? And then probably a bath and bed, it's very late..." But Soren shook his head and ran out of the room. Harry had no intention of losing him and searching again, so he ran after him. He found out that three year olds are quite fast and nimble, because Soren dodged him brilliantly several times, laughing mischievously as he did. When Harry finally caught him, he'd had enough. "Food yes, but bed no, right?" Harry quickly understood, since Soren's stomach rumbled, and he realised the child had slept for at least three hours while he was preparing the room. "What am I going to do with you!" He burst out laughing when Soren stuck a finger up his nose. He caught his little hand and explained that this wasn't something you do.
After several tough weeks of getting used to being a parent, Harry felt he had it down pat. Soren gave him a hard time, but he enjoyed it. At night he soothed his nightmares, during the day he played with him and enjoyed the laughter and the smile that he had unmistakably got from Severus, who had been so stingy with it. Harry vowed that Soren would be a happy person, content and able to find his place in the world.
Even though Harry didn't like doing it, he had to enrol him in nursery, since he had to go to his training and later to work. His parents' money wouldn't last forever either, and he wouldn't want to scrape by with Soren. The teacher told him with great joy that Soren clearly had a weakness for potions, since he loved playing with cups best and showing how he poured and mixed some liquids. Harry didn't like hearing that, it was the one subject where he had never really been an excellent student. But he shrugged and went to buy a potions set for the littlest ones. It was a set with plastic beakers and flasks and some kind of sand that could be mixed and then separated. Soren stared at the present reverently when Harry gave it to him. That was the first time he called him Dad…
The next thing he found out about his son was that even at such a young age he showed accidental magic. Whenever he didn't want to go to bed or have a bath, plates exploded in the kitchen. In one month he had to buy a set of plates four times and preferred to alternate shops so he wouldn't look suspicious. Hermione found it very funny, and so did Ron, whom Soren liked enormously and whose name he kept repeating. Ron visited him regularly and played with him with the figures he had bought at the Quidditch World Cup. It must be said that Harry rolled his eyes at this, since Soren had absolutely no idea what game it was, and it was more Ron who was playing.
And so month after month went by, and Harry kept discovering new and fascinating sides of his son, until it was Soren's fifth birthday and a party was being prepared...
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Mimosa Confiante
By day, I work somewhere between marketing, copy and campaigns; by night, I usually end up somewhere between fanfiction, cosplay and yet another “what if” that refuses to leave me alone. I write mainly in the Harry Potter and Mo Dao Zu Shi fandoms, most often Snarry, Snamione, HarryLu and WangXian. My healthcare background means that anatomy, medicine and far too much research occasionally find their way into my stories. Cosplay is another way for me to play with the characters I love, whether I stay close to canon or turn them into my own fanfiction and AU versions. In Diary of a Slytherin Girl with ADHD, I write openly about life with a brain that usually has far too many tabs open at once.
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