Thanks for your review. Yeah, Severus was totally out of line, but he was reeling from the shock of Harry using an unforgivable on him AND being informed in the most harsh manner imaginable that he was expected to kill Albus (whose coming death he's still distraught over).

Also if you consider, Severus only cares about 3 living people (Albus, Harry and Draco) and all at once he's forced to realise that 1 of them thinks he is a traitor and 1 thinks he will be amenable to killing him...

And Severus did try to keep his temper (stopping himself from hexing Harry etc) the hitting business was his frustration, hurt and anger from everything bubbling over. OK now I'm making excuses- so I'm going to shut up. He shouldn't have done it is the simple answer!

Ah, good point about whether Severus knows, Albus was certainly a  bit cagey at the end, wasn't he?

Thank you, it's great to know which bits people like and which bits don't work so well.

 Yep, Severus has messed up pretty majorally, in fact I'd go as far as to say that none of them came out of this particularly well, although at least on Harry's part it was perhaps understandable.

Thanks for the bits you feel didn't sit so well with you, I'll never know if people don't say! I will bear it all in mind.

FYI What I was thinking when I wrote this was that Harry was always going to be more bothered by the emotional abuse (I hate you etc) than the physical violence. (But I do get your point and think it's a valid objection)

And you're right of course, the logical thing would be for them to look at all his dreams. I think I justified it in my head by saying Severus is too angry/upset to ask the right questions and Dumbledore's too intent on making use of the situation to get his own way, but actually it probably *is* a bit contrived because I wanted to get him all set to leave for the Dursleys asap. opps.