In Blood Only by EM Snape
Past Featured StorySummary: Everyone is dismayed to learn Snape is Harry's father. Especially Snape and Harry.
Categories: Parental Snape > Biological Father Snape Main Characters: .Snape and Harry (required), Draco, Dumbledore, Hermione, Lucius, Remus, Ron, Tonks
Snape Flavour: None
Genres: Action/Adventure, Angst, Drama
Media Type: None
Tags: Snape-meets-Dursleys
Takes Place: None
Warnings: Alcohol Use, Character Death, Torture
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 45 Completed: Yes Word count: 173775 Read: 400907 Published: 29 Jan 2005 Updated: 28 Aug 2006
To Bleed A Headmaster by EM Snape

Another Occlumency session utterly wasted. This was becoming an unwelcome routine.

His thoughts did not dwell upon the boy's words. Potter clearly did not take well to opiates; that's all there was to it. He stalked into his private lab, in search of a counter-agent, hoping to administer it sooner rather than later. He had no desire to monitor the boy all night for deleterious side effects from what was clearly an over-powerful dose of the Calming Draught; he had neither the patience nor the inclination to play nursemaid to the Boy Who Lived if he chose to empty his stomach during the night.

In any case, the nonsense coming from Potter's lips had been grating at his nerves. None of it could possibly have any grounding in reality.

Or could it?

Snape scowled as he ladled the counter-agent into a beaker. His thoughts ventured back to previous Occlumency sessions, combing through the flashes of Potter's memory for evidence substantiating his incoherent assertions.

He'd never before dwelled upon the content he unearthed in Potter's mind, with the notable exception of the dreams of the previous year, and the liaison with Nymphadora Tonks he'd had the misfortune to witness. It was true he had derived a certain amusement from, say, watching James Potter's son chased up a tree by a dog, or from witnessing James Potter's son bullied by his whale of a cousin, but he'd always held those memories at an objective distance. He was a skilled enough legilimens to differentiate between Potter's memories and his own. They never sprang unbidden to the forefront of his mind as his own memories tended to.

He could remember now, though, those incidents that might indicate there was some truth to Potter's claims. Potter brushing a spider from his leg in a dark, cramped space... Potter in the darkness, shouting through a locked door frantic excuses about his teacher's blue hair... An infuriated, purple-faced man sputtering with rage, "Go -- cupboard -- stay -- no meals..."

No meals.

Severus gazed down at the beaker in his hand as his mind worked out the implications. The potion... the one that had restored the boy's skeletal structure... Snape genes were not responsible for shrinking the boy. The potion was not the culprit...

"Not that they never fed me, mind you, it's just that I was hungry more often than not.."

The boy had been starved.

As soon as the possibility occurred to him, he knew it to be true. The question of why Potter shrank so visibly upon being restored to his natural height had nagged and nagged at Snape's thoughts for a week now. He could not imagine how James Potter had beaten him yet again. And although it had occurred to him in passing that poor eating habits could have contributed to Potter's lack of stature, he'd watched the boy at the table and observed a healthy, teenage appetite.

He could reconcile those two seemingly contradictory truths now.

It was amazing. Absolutely amazing. The Muggle relatives had confined Potter to a cupboard and deprived him of food. Yet Dumbledore maintained he would have been an entirely unsuitable guardian!

He returned to the study and discovered Potter curled up, sound asleep on the carpet. With an exasperated sigh and a flick of his wand, he levitated the boy from the floor and plopped him gently into a chair. Fingering the cold glass vial, he considered Pottter's sleeping form thoughtfully. He knew how Dumbledore cared for the boy. The old wizard could not have known what was happening to him. Had he been cognizant of the boy's mistreatment, there was certainly no way Potter would be lying here today, growth stunted by chronic malnutrition.

How incredible that this man, so omnipresent a figure in his own life, could have been unaware of the extent of Potter's mistreatment. Dumbledore had loved this boy like a child of his own, yet he had been completely ignorant with regards to the boy's living situation.

He set the vial of the counter-agent on the desk, choosing not to administer it and simply to wait the boy out. He would only slumber so long under the influence of the draught, and then, perhaps, they would have a short discussion.

* * *

The boy at last stirred, looking confused, and then wary upon finding himself asleep in the study. Snape wordlessly gestured for Potter to take a seat across the desk from him, and conjured the boy a glass of pumpkin juice. Too thirsty to indulge in his customary suspicion, Potter drank gratefully, occasionally darting glances at Snape where he sat grading papers.

At long last, when the boy had nearly finished the goblet, Snape broached the subject.

"Tell me, Potter," Snape said brusquely. "Is the Headmaster aware your Muggle relatives starved and imprisoned you?"

The boy choked on his pumpkin juice. Snape watched with idle amusement as he coughed it out. Graceless, as usual. When the boy's composure was sufficiently recovered, green eyes grown hollow with panic flew up to meet his. All the color had fled Potter's face, with the notable exception of two fascinating spots of crimson on his cheeks.

"Wh-- wh-- You must be crazy if--"

Snape rolled his eyes at the inarticulate attempt at misdirection.

"Don't bother denying it, Potter. You were forthcoming enough several hours ago about the treatment you received at the hands of your relatives. I require only clarification before I draw conclusions of my own. Now, did the Headmaster know?"

Before he'd even thought to ask the boy this, he knew what the answer was. Of course Dumbledore had not known. Whatever else weighed on the mind of the old wizard, he genuinely loved his little boy hero. Severus knew that all too well. Had he known of the abuse, Dumbledore would either have removed Potter from the Dursley household altogether, or he would have descended upon those Muggles with enough ferocity to cow them into treating the boy with more respect.

Did Potter know that, however?

Snape felt a surge of vindictive glee when a dark expression stole over the boy's face, green eyes glittering with a long-nurtured hurt and anguish.

"Of course he knew," Potter said bitterly, glaring down at his goblet of pumpkin juice. "The Hogwarts letter he sent me was even addressed to my cupboard."

Foolish boy. Those envelopes were magically addressed. Did he truly believe Dumbledore sat down and carefully wrote them himself?

"I see," Snape said softly, revealing nothing with his tone.

Potter still wasn't looking at him; the boy stared furiously down at the goblet. Who was he angry at? The Muggles? Dumbledore? Himself?

Oh, how he hoped it was Dumbledore the boy was imagining, glaring so fixedly like that. How delicious it would be to know the boy was angry with the Headmaster who so desperately adored him. This man who had treated Severus worse than the shit scraped off a Marauder's boots would reap some of his own back.

Snape could detect embarrassment amidst that anger and resentment. The knuckles of the boy's hand, gripped tightly around the goblet, had turned stark white.

"You've never told anyone about this, have you?" Snape realized suddenly. "I'm the first to discover your mistreatment."

"The Dursleys know," Potter retorted tartly, cheeks growing redder still, steadfastly refusing to meet Snape's eyes.

Snape stared at him. How remarkable. How simply remarkable.

What a marvelous quirk of fate, that he was the one gifted with this information. Potter clearly didn't realize it, but Severus did-- this new tidbit of knowledge was sheer power. It could tear straight into Dumbledore's sentimental heart, were he to learn of the maltreatment to which he'd consigned the boy.

You concealed him from me for his protection, Snape thought, darkly amused. Oh, look what you did to him, Headmaster. Look at your marvelous work.

"I told you, they never exactly starved me," Potter insisted suddenly, still avoiding Snape's eyes. "They just wouldn't let me eat sometimes. And they never imprisoned me."

"No?"

"No!" Potter glared up at him fiercely. "Not like you have, for absolutely no reason. It was only when I was in trouble."

Well, perhaps the boy had a point there. He really had no immediate justification for confining the boy to his room. Snape certainly wasn't willing to concede it, though.

"Ah... I remember," Snape said, in a mock-thoughtful tone. "I truly am a monster next to your beloved Muggles. I dared thrust you into an opulent bedchamber, whereas they accorded you the grand privilege of a cupboard. You have free access to the facilities under this roof, but they let you out to... use the loo, I believe you said. I suppose they were kind enough to regiment your restroom privileges as well?"

Potter looked impossibly more embarrassed.

Snape smiled ruthlessly, pressing his advantage. "How many times a day would they let you out, Potter? Twice? Three times?"

Something that flickered in the boy's eyes caught him off guard. Shame. Humiliation. Had they seriously--

"There was a fixed number?" Snape said incredulously. Really he'd just hoped to get a rise out of the boy. He hadn't thought...

Potter was glaring at the goblet again. This time Snape had no trouble guessing that Potter was glaring at it in lieu of him.

"Twice. But I'd sneak out at night if I had to," Potter muttered. "I couldn't once I was in Dudley's room, because it had locks, but I could always get out of the cupboard."

Snape knew he should be processing this information in context of the Occlumency lessons he'd been trying to teach the boy, but really... This was simply too revealing.

The boy suddenly made sense, now that he knew of his upbringing. Potter's irascibility, his refusal to obey simple instructions, to trust others who clearly knew better than he did. The defiance with which he'd always greeted Snape's attempts to reign in his unruly behavior. How could he bend to authority? It had always been used against him.

His theory was quickly confirmed when Potter blustered, voice loud with false bravado, "I suppose you're going to tell your nasty Slytherins all about this, aren't you. Well, guess what? I don't care at all. And you can tell Draco Malfoy to--"

"Of course I won't tell them, P--" He stumbled over the name a moment, "Harry."

That shocked the boy. Potter suddenly looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time, blinking dumbly.

"There are some things that can be kept in confidence between a father and son," Snape added delicately.

He smirked inwardly at the sheer astonishment that overtook the boy's features. Really, did the child believe he'd so quickly surrender such potent knowledge without first exploiting it?

Oh, but he intended to exploit it fully. He intended to make Dumbledore bleed with the pain of it.

He didn't expect Potter to see it from that angle. The boy might be a Snape, but he was not a Slytherin. He could see the slow mechanisms of the Gryffindor brain working out the details, trying to discern the motives in Snape's seemingly baffling behavior. Potter was, however, utterly ignorant of Severus's history with the Headmaster, thus he had no key to unlock the mystery of Snape's thoughts.

He would not realize the weapon he had handed over so unwittingly. He would not read into this discretion the tactic it truly was.

And although this knowledge would be a useful tool in time, at the moment, keeping this secret could also prove a vehicle straight into the boy's confidence...

"You won't tell them?" Potter said disbelievingly, as though unable to believe his luck. "Really? But, they'd love to hear it. I bet Malfoy would get off on it. Why--"

"Why would I?" Snape said softly. "Slytherin may be my house, but you, after all, are my blood."

Damn. The boy's eyes narrowed with what could only be suspicion. Perhaps he'd pressed too far, too quickly.

Well, perhaps now was an opportune moment for some simple misdirection.

"This revelation does shed light on something that rather confused me before, I admit."

Potter glanced up at him curiously, the suspicion vanishing from his features.

Good. Very good.

Snape retrieved the crowning item from his desk drawer and placed it with an audible thump before the startled boy. Potter stared at the book for a drawn-out second, then turned his astonished green eyes to Snape.

Snape held his gaze as the boy scrutinized him warily, intently. And then a cautious sense of understanding stole over Potter's face, tinged with some disbelief.

Yes, Potter, Snape thought idly. In this issue, we will have an understanding.

He thumped the book with his palm, drawing the boy's eyes back to it.

"Nothing life-threatening, Potter," he said sternly. "You don't want to go to Azkaban for killing a Muggle."

Potter's expression was entirely unreadable.

Suddenly feeling a bit uneasy, Snape leaned over to catch the boy's eye. "If you attempt to cast any of these on me," he said in a soft, threatening voice, "I will show you just how dark these curses can get. Understood?"

Potter nodded mutely, seemingly unable to tear his gaze from Kinship and Related Curses where it rested innocuously on the edge of the desk. With a smirk the boy failed to catch, Snape amused himself with images of Dumbledore's disappointed expression. He could imagine the Headmaster gazing disapprovingly at him from across the desk, or at Potter, after having to sort out some unfortunate mess in the Muggle household.

He knew now why the boy had wanted this book. And, honestly, he couldn’t say he entirely blamed him. Let Potter wreak some well-placed vengeance. And let the headmaster confront his own mistakes. Severus would relish every moment of it.

The instant Potter used one of the curses in the book against his Muggle relatives, Dumbledore would find out. No one could accuse Snape of directly instigating the confrontation between the Headmaster and the consequences of his mistakes if the revelations stemmed from the boy's own actions.

"I will have the house-elves prepare us some breakfast," Snape told him. "Minky will escort you back to your chambers shortly."

With one last, fleeting glance at Potter, he left the boy where he sat, staring transfixed at the book

He never saw the darkness gathering in the boy's eyes.

The End.


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