Harry hated how disorienting magic was. Not only the idea of it—magic, real magic! He could hardly get his mind around that—but also the actual practice of it. It made things spin around, like the night before, or all muddy and foggy, like the drugged sandwich. It defied the way Harry had set himself, the rules he followed to keep him out of trouble—and he liked it, for breaking the Dursley’s rules, but it scared him, with what it could do.

He hated most the man who caused it all. Without him, he thought, magic might be fun. But instead it was dangerous, because whatever a normal person could do, that man could do it more.

Right then, Harry was half-frightened and half-furious as he watched Snape toss a handful of powder into the fire. It immediately turned a bright, crackling green, and Harry took a step back as it roared and filled the entire fireplace. The man turned and leveled a glare.

“It’s only a Floo, Potter. Scared of a little fire?” the man sneered, and Harry scowled and clutched his hands into fists at his side.

“No.”

The man gave an unpleasant smile and grabbed Harry’s arm. Snape pulled the boy forward, so close to the fire that Harry almost leaned up against the man to get away.

“Afraid yet?” the man hissed in his ear. Harry’s mouth was too dry to say anything, so he just shook his head, and the man gave a cruel little laugh so close to his face Harry could feel the puffs of breath against his cheek and he started to kick and fight.

“Let me go!” he yelled, and pushed back against the man, trying to topple him over.

Snape snarled and shoved the boy into the fire, following and barking out ‘Hogwarts!’ as the flames roared impossibly high—then sank.

The two were gone.

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Albus Dumbledore was slightly surprised when Harry Potter fell through the fire and onto his carpet. He rose from behind his desk, where he had been sorting through different sorts of Muggle sweets, to greet the boy, but he just looked at Dumbledore with wide eyes and skittered away from him. As soon as Dumbledore frowned and opened his mouth, Severus stepped through and Potter got even more skittish.

In two strides, Snape had cornered the boy and hauled him in front of Dumbledore by the arm. Harry fought and kicked, finally biting the man on the hand and launching himself away. Snape, ever quick with a leg-locker, had the boy down in seconds and dragged him back.

Dumbledore looked shocked.

“Severus, I do not think that is necessary.” Steel was behind Dumbledore’s words, and the boy tried to pull away from Snape, before the man tightened his grip.

“Do you know how many times this little brat tried to give me the slip?” Snape snarled, giving the boy in his grip a shake. “And in the open floo network, at that! We could have both been killed! Tell him,” he ordered, pocketing his wand. The boy said nothing, his scared green eyes darting all about the room, his glasses dangling off one ear.

“I told you to tell him.” The boy winced and pulled against the mans arm. Snape started to reach into his pocket and Dumbledore noticed the strange look that came across the boys face. Something like fear and hate and triumph all mixed into one—

“Four,” the boy said softly, and he yanked once more against the mans arm. “And it’ll be five if he doesn’t let me go!”

“It’ll be five if I do,” Snape snarled.

“Silence!” Dumbledore said, and Snape shut his mouth sullenly, still gripping the boys arm as tightly as he could. Dumbledore made his way over and forcibly separated the two. “That is quite enough, Severus.”

Harry, true to Severus’ guess, had taken off as soon as Dumbledore had released the mans hold on him. Unable to open the door, he pushed himself against it and kicked, and when Dumbledore approached him he put his back to it and glared at the man.

“Don’t—don’t come any closer,” Harry said, and to his surprise the man complied. Harry looked him over, still shaky from the Floo and the presence of the new man. He didn’t look as frightful as the professor—more like a version of Father Christmas stretched thin. He was wearing what looked like a dark blue dress, and his eyes seemed kind and twinkling from above his glasses.

Harry didn’t trust him a bit.

“Harry,” the man said gently, holding out a hand. “Come here, dear child. Nobody wants to hurt you here.” The man gave Snape a glare, there, and Snape sneered. Of course he wouldn’t hurt Potter. He was a child—an arrogant brat, but a child. Everything he’d done thus far, he knew, wouldn’t hurt Potter. He was a damned indestructable brat of a boy. Nothing that Snape did would hurt him.

Now, if he pushed too far and hurt the boy, that would be just the sort of honest mistake Snape could revel in.

“Don’t move, I said!” Harry said in a high-pitched voice. He reached up and hooked his glasses back over both ears. “W-who are you?”

“I’m Professor Dumbledore—“

“Like he’s a professor?” Harry spat, pointing at Snape. Dumbledore frowned.

“Well, I’m the Headmaster now, really. I have not taught for a very long time.”

“The Headmaster,” Snape drawled, “Is a master of magic, Potter. I told you that.”

Harry looked at the two men suspiciously, then pushed himself back even more. “I want to go back to the Dursleys. Now.”

Snape sneered and Dumbledore looked kindly and confused. “Why, you’ll return to them shortly until the beginning of the year, my boy. Then come back here for the start of school.”

“I don’t want to come back here. I want to go back to the Dursleys and I never want to see any of you again.”

Dumbledore took a step toward the boy. “Now, Harry, let us be reasonable—“

“Don’t—don’t come closer! Stay there!” The boy fished in his pockets and pulled something out. He had been planning for this ever since his idea back at the inn, and he’d almost wet himself when Snape reached back towards his pocket for it. For Harry held, in his trembling hands, a long, thin wand that belonged to Severus Snape.

Dumbledore blinked, but Severus let out a roar and charged for the boy, who evaded the mans capture, jumping and darting and landing behind Dumbledore’s desk. “Don’t you touch me!” he spat at Snape, and he pointed the wand shakily at him. “I—I’ll kill you!”

Dumbledore looked baffled that the boy had displayed this much violence, but Snape just threw back his head and laughed a dangerous laugh. “Kill me? You wouldn’t know where to start!”

“Then I’ll snap it,” Harry said, changing his hold on it so that he gripped it with both hands, ready to exert force and snap the thing to pieces. Severus stopped laughing.

“Harry—“ Dumbledore said helplessly, but Snape started in before Dumbledore could continue.

“Oh, so it has teeth, does it?” the man asked in his softest, most dangerous tone, and the boy shivered, but otherwise stayed firm. He took a step forward, his voice like frozen velvet. “Want to get me back, do you? Want to teach me a lesson? Make me pay?”

“I want you to stay where you are and not take another bloody step!” the boy said. “Or I’ll crack it in two!”

Snape had an almost sleepy look on his face, his eyes heavily lidded and his mouth in a catlike, dangerous smile.

“How very like your father you are, Potter,” he said, and Harry froze. He was trying to distract him, Harry knew, or make him cry—that was the only time Uncle Vernon had ever brought up his parents, to tell him how worthless they were so that Harry would cry. Well, not now.

“I wouldn’t know,” Harry said, his eyes trained on Snape to make sure the man didn’t take another step. “He’s dead.”

“Ah, yes,” Snape purred. “Dead and buried. And do you know why?”

Harry’s hands tightened around the stick. “No. And I don’t care.”

Snape continued. “Because of you. Him and your worthless Mudblood mother—“

“Severus!” Albus cried, but Severus kept going, like a spider weaving an incredibly tangled web.

“Dead and buried, Potter, because of you.”

Harry scowled. “Don’t see how that can be true,” he said stubbornly, “Unless I was the one who drove them to drink. Uncle Vernon said I drove him to it.”

Snape cocked his head to the side, and some voice wass yelling at him and telling him to stop, to wait, something was wrong here, something needed addressing. Maybe it wasn’t even that voice in his head, maybe it was Dumbledore, standing next to him and telling him to stop—

But Potter never stopped. Not when Snape begged, not when Snape pleaded or cried. Potter. Never. Stopped.

And neither would he.

“Ah, well, it’s not only your fault, I suppose,” Snape said. “After all, you might have all lived quite happily, holed up in hiding like a couple of rats, if it wasn’t for one person.”

“Severus,” Dumbledore warned, but Snape kept going, because Snape would never stop.

“Guess who that person is, Potter? Or is your mind still a bit…foggy?”

Harry exerted enough pressure to make the wand bend a little. “Man who collided with them, I suppose. Shut up, or I’ll snap it in half.”

Snape smiled—but it wasn’t a smile, not really, it was a challenge, it was bared teeth and danger and hatred seeping out of his face.

“Me, Potter.”

There was a terrible silence in the room. Then, with an almighty bang, Harry pushed with all his might, magical and physical, and snapped the man’s wand into pieces. Instead of two, however, it was hundreds of small shards of wood and feather scattering all over the room, tiny pieces of shrapnel that hit Snape and Dumbledore and Harry most of all.

Snape seemed shocked and disoriented by the loss of his wand. However, his gaze soon sharpened and his face turned ugly with anger.

“Potter,” he hissed.

That was when Harry leapt upon him, landing the first punch square to Snape’s nose.

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The fight was one of the most vicious Dumbledore had ever seen fought with fists. Harry gave as good as he got, Dumbledore saw, and was clawing at Snape’s arm from where the man had pinned him to the floor and had a stranglehold on the boy’s neck. Snape looked especially ferocious, with blood from his nose all over his face and his teeth bared in that terrifying grin. Harry looked viscious as well, his glasses on the floor a few feet from his head, his black eye making him look dangerous, his teeth clamping into Severus’ hand.

This couldn’t continue, Dumbledore knew, and he broke them up with a flick of his wand, restraining the two in separate corners.

He had no idea where to go from there.

Snape was in a rage. How dare the boy—he would show him. The boy could think himself better than everybody, could think himself prince of the damned bloody world, but he couldn’t get out of this. He couldn’t get out of this trouble, and when the boy least expected it, Snape would get him back. Snape would get him back.

Harry was in a rage. He was fighting and twisting in the corner where he’d been sent, panting from the fight and in a great deal of pain. He’d broken Snape’s nose, he suspected, and his own hand felt funny—a sharp sort of pain that made him want to laugh and cry, but he wouldn’t do that, not in front of Snape. The man could think him the weakest and the stupidest of all the boys he’d met, but Harry knew that he was a match for him. Without the mans wand, he was just a normal person, and Harry could get away from a normal person. Harry would get away, when the man least expected it, he would run and flee and find himself home. Harry would get away.

Dumbledore went to Severus first, hoping that the man could be calmed down more than the boy who was throwing himself at the barriers of his corner with a single minded intensity. It would take two wizards—maybe three—to calm the boy down from that.

“Severus, what is going on here? What have you done?”

Snape took a few deep breaths and fixed an injured look on his face. “All I did was fetch the boy, headmaster. He’s been that way since I fetched him from his relatives.” His tone was nasally, reminding Dumbledore into casting a quick healing spell over the mans nose.

Dumbledore frowned. Was the boy truly this violent? Arabella had always described him as placid and shy, quick to please and careful in his nature. He looked at the boy in the corner, and the fire in his eyes as he stopped throwing himself out of the barrier and settled himself in a corner, cradling his hand to his chest and readying himself for the next attack.

“I think he’s disturbed, Headmaster,” Snape continued. “He’s been biting and swearing the whole way.”

“Did he cause a scene in the Alley?” Surely he would have heard. The boy had gone nearly feral in his office, and he doubted he would have behaved any better in public.

Snape shifted. “Well, I had a…a very mild sedative on me, so I may have inserted a portion into his meal to ensure compliance—“

“You drugged him?” No wonder the boy was so angry! But Severus said he had been drugged because he was already angry—

Snape bristled. “It was necessary. If I hadn’t, the boy would have run straight into Malfoy or one of his crowd, or worse, straight into Knockturn. It was for the boy’s own good.”

Dumbledore nodded and thought. What was he to do with a Harry Potter this—untamed?

Then he remembered what had happened in his office.

“If you think him so unhinged, Severus, why did you bait him? You drove him to this much, at least.”

Severus scowled. “Self-defense,” he said sullenly. “He’s kicked and scratched and bitten me to death. Not to mention vomiting on my shoes. I wanted a bit of my own back, that’s all.”

Dumbledore nodded, then frowned. Severus hated all Potters—that had to be remembered. He did wish Hagrid had not hurt himself—by now Harry would probably be back at his relatives, playing with his owl and getting ready for the upcoming year at Hogwarts. Counting down to it, even! Instead—

Dumbledore steeled himself and headed over to the boys corner, where he sat in the corner, glaring at the professor. Dumbledore stopped, picked up the boys glasses, then went to Harry and knelt down, holding them out to the boy.

“Hello, Harry.”

The boy took the glasses wordlessly with one hand and shifted his glare to Dumbledore’s face. “I want to go back to the Dursleys. Now.”

Dumbledore noticed the odd angle of the boy’s other hand and reached out gently. “Is your hand injured?”

The boy pulled out of reach, hissing from pain. “Don’t touch it,” he said. “I can handle it on my own.”

Dumbledore smiled gently and slowly moved forward. He cast a quick splinting charm, and bandages and splints wound themselves around the boys hand quickly. The boy looked from his hand to the headmaster.

“Thanks,” he muttered, and kept his eyes on the ground. “I still want to go back to the Dursleys.”

“Can you tell me why you’re so vehement, Harry?”

The boy looked at the man incredulously. “I—what? He’s mad!” He pointed with his splint to the professor, who was glaring at the two from his corner, where he wass still restrained. “He—he’s kidnapped me and drugged me and made my legs freeze up and won’t let me go back to my aunt and uncle—“

“Kidnapped you?”

Harry nodded. “Did—he just popped into the hut and grabbed me.” Harry weighed something in his mind, then said it. It couldn’t do any harm. “I think he killed Uncle Vernon.” Probably the man hadn’t, but he could still accuse him of it.

Dumbledore’s eyes widened. “You think he what?”

“I—He grabbed my arm, right, and Uncle Vernon must have heard him and came in—and he pointed his stick and him and he fell down.”

“Was there green light?”

Harry shook his head. “Red. Like blood.”

Dumbledore gave the boy a small smile. “Ah, well, he merely Stunned him.”

“What’s that?”

“Put him unconcious.”

“Yeah, well—didn’t make me want to go with him. I told him I didn’t want to, but he wouldn’t listen.” The boy measured Albus with a glance. “Are you—are you on his side?”

Dumbledore smiled reassuringly. “I’m on nobody’s side, dear child. In fact, I believe this may have all been a misunderstanding.”

Harry’s eyes widened and he stared at Dumbledore. “Are you daft?” he asked. “I—he kidnapped me! I told him I didn’t want to go, and he took me anyway! That’s kidnap!”

Dumbledore tried to soothe the boy. “He didn’t properly explain himself. If he had, you would have gone with him very willingly, I believe.”

“Yeah, and if he had wheels he’d be a trolley, but he doesn’t and he isn’t and he didn’t explain himself at all!”

“Professor Snape is not used to having to explain himself. He truly was doing what was best for you. If he had perhaps realized you didn’t understand the situation—“

“The situation? He just said I was going with him and to keep my big trap shut!”

Dumbledore frowned. “Did he identify himself?”

“Said I had to call him professor.”

“Did he never tell you where you were going?”

Harry thought and shook his head. “Said some funny name.”

“Hogwarts?”

Harry shrugged. “Mighta been.”

Dumbledore smiled. “But then, he did identify himself, as a Hogwarts professor. Why didn’t you want to go with him?”

“I don’t know what that means! What’s a hogworts? Isn’t that some sort of flower or something?”

Dumbledore’s smile faltered. “My boy,” he said, “It’s the school of magic. Your parents went there when they were young—did your aunt never tell you?”

Harry frowned. “I’m not supposed to ask questions.”

Dumbledore frowned. Perhaps Petunia felt the pain too much to speak of her sister freely. And she had not known James at all. Poor child. “Well, your parents both came to Hogwarts to learn magic. As you will do, in the fall.”

“Does he teach here?” Harry asked.

“Yes. Potions. And he’s Head of Slytherin House.”

“I’m not staying, then.”

Dumbledore’s frown deepened. “My boy, it was a misunderstanding. I’m sure once Professor Snape explains himself and apologizes to you—“

“No. I won’t stay.”

“Harry, let us be reasonable—“

“That is reasonable! I’m not staying anywhere where someone who kidnapped me and drugged me is staying too! I won’t!”

“Harry, how do you expect to be able to protect yourself if—“ Dumbledore hated to do this, to frighten the boy with Voldemort, but the boy had to realize the danger of refusing to attend. “If Voldemort should return?”

All he received was a confused look.

“Who?” Harry asked.