Snape had been dreading this, and fretting about it, and worrying. He was, in fact, acting rather undignified about the whole situation. He was the teacher. He wasn't supposed to feel jittery about going back to school. That was just silly, and he knew it. Moving had been less of a pain than he had anticipated. He had simply shrunken down all of Harry's furniture, using a shrinking potion which was quite simple to make, provided you were a potions master. Snape had shrunk the dresser with the clothes still in it, and the toybox with the toys still inside as well. They had all just shrunken along with the furniture and would be easy to restore once the potion wore off, which would be sometime late that evening. He would have the antidote on hand just in case, should he need to restore the objects before the potion wore off. Harry had been fascinated with the tiny furniture, he thought they were toys and tried to put them in his mouth.
"No, don't eat those," Snape instructed, saving Harry's crib and scooping up the rest of the furniture, placing them all in a small box. "When you eat your crib it makes Professor Snape very irate."
"No, Pot!" Harry agreed.
"Harry. Your name is Harry." Snape said, matter-of-factly. Then he put the box with Harry's things in it into his Essentials Kit, which he slung over his shoulder, and hoisted Harry onto his hip. He apparated to the King's Cross Station and took a deep breath. He was really not looking forward to this. He couldn't apparate to the grounds of Hogwarts and because he had another person with him he couldn't even apparate close. No, he was going to have to take the train, just as the students would be doing the next day. As he walked into the station he felt positively hypocritical. Snape had never liked trains to begin with, and he always had very short patience with babies or little ones on trains. And now, here he was. Taking the train with a one year old in tow. He feared it was going to be a long ride.
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Snape walked through the barrier between platforms 9 and 10 and sighed again. His usual strategy for trains was to take a sleeping draught and sleep the whole way. He knew that he couldn't be asleep with Harry though, Harry would crawl away or fall off the seat or some such ridiculous thing. Oh the ways babies could get into trouble. Severus had considered giving Harry some sleeping potion as well but he felt very uncomfortable about drugging such a little boy. Snape scowled. Who would have guessed that caring for Harry would have reawakened his moral conscious? To be truthful, Snape hadn't even missed it in the first place. The station master recognized Snape immediately and nodded to him.
"It's been quite some time, Severus, since I've seen you,"
"Quite," Snape agreed, without even a hint of remorse in his voice for that fact.
"Well, enjoy your trip." he said, giving the potions master a nod.
Snape nodded back and boarded the Hogwarts Express. Harry was oohing and pointing to different things, reveling in the different sights and the sounds he was hearing.
