Half an hour later, Snape and Harry sat at the kitchen table. Snape was drinking another cup of tea, and Potter was watching him warily while sucking an ice cube. It was one of six still in the bowl, which Snape had set in front of him with a curt order to finish them. He wondered whether Snape considered this lunch.

Snape had been staring off into space and this, coupled with the ice cube weirdness, was making him uneasy. The man was obviously unbalanced.

“ I never told you to stop, did I?”

Harry picked up a cube but did not put it in his mouth. “Do I have to?’

“Yes, you have to. Have I ever given you an order I have not meant, boy?”

Harry sighed and shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Honestly, children complain about everything these days. Always sighing and whingeing about the slightest things.” He gulped a little more tea. Harry half expected steam to come pouring from his ears, the man drank it almost boiling.

“Why do I have to eat these?”

Snape gave his idiot ward a chilling look and said nothing. The boy was getting a haircut as soon as this was over. It was like talking to a pile of grass shavings wearing glasses.

“Because, you brat, I stupidly assumed you’d prefer a little pain relief to additional punishment for your naughtiness. Unless I was mistaken and you’d just as soon go outside right now to look?”

Potter actually squeaked, which thing Snape made a mental note to laugh about later. The boy quickly popped the ice cube into his mouth and said nothing. He was staring at his fingernails, which he had bitten to the quick, though Snape was pleased to note that the broken knuckles had healed well enough.

“Why did you do it, Potter? No, don’t answer me with a full mouth.”

Harry waited until the ice was gone and kept looking at the table.

“Because I didn’t want to make a fuss.”

Snape felt incredulity fighting with…. something else.

He bit down his pique and made himself answer calmly.

“ I more than anyone appreciate and laud that impulse, but there are times when a certain response is natural and normal. It is normal to cry and vocalize during a spanking, Mr. Potter.”

Harry said nothing. He hung his head and sat fidgeting. His relatives had had nothing but sharpest scorn for any declarations of pain from him. Or weakness, or illness, or tiredness. Anything which might lessen his usefulness to them. He had been trained early and well, and he found the idea that Snape, of all people, was encouraging him to holler and fuss was simply too much. He gave his head a clearing shake and began sucking another cube.

Snape watched the boy. His lack of artifice was really quite useful. It would take a long time to convince him, if in fact it wasn’t already too late. Had someone reached out to him at thirteen, would Lucius and Edmund Nott and Jonas Avery have held the same dark appeal?

Wool gathering, meaningless sentimentality. He shoved the chair back from the table roughly and went to the icebox. He opened it and pulled out a bit of roast beef and cheese. He got the bread from the breadbox and sliced it. He could feel Potter’s eyes burning into his back.

“ Has no one ever told you it is rude to stare, Potter?”

The boy mumbled something. “Not with a full mouth, boy! I’ve met hippogriffs with a finer sense of decorum, and I mean that.”

A second later : “ Can I do something to help, sir?”

It was the last thing Snape had expected. He stopped and looked at the boy, who seemed relieved to have found something he could do. At least the fidgeting had stopped for the moment.

“Thank you, no. You can sit and come up with answers for the questions I’m going to ask you as we eat.”

Harry was relieved that Snape was going to give him more than ice for lunch. He was moderately certain that Snape didn’t mean him outright harm, but he was equally sure that the man had to be some kind of nutter. Look at him, for Merlin’s sake, with his weirdly greasy hair and ugly black woolens in summer.

He jumped when Snape put the plate in front of him. It was a sandwich, and to Harry’s glee it was roast beef and cheddar, his favorite. He waited until Snape had sat down to dig in, and they ate silently for some time.

“Tell me, Mr. Potter, what possesses you to do it?”

“Like I said--”

“Yes, yes, but besides that. I’ve seen you get badly injured and never bat an eyelash. That time Lockheart vanished the bones in your arm, for example, you took it far more stoically than you should have. What, does it please you to see what you can take?”

Harry blushed a little, because yes, it did please him. He liked the security of knowing that he could handle things, liked being able to decide what hurt him, liked the way he could make psychical pain distract him from worse hurts inside.

It started small, like most things do. When someone yelled at him, or called him a name, or locked him in that damned cupboard for days at the time, he’d find a way to make himself not care. He’d dig his nails into his palms, or pinch himself, or bite his lip.

When Snape had smacked him (how it galled him to think that, even to himself!) it had seemed reasonable to distract himself from the nasty berk’s stinging spanks by biting his cheek. Except, Snape was hard to shut out, and so he’d had to bite really hard. So hard he’d drawn blood, which he rarely did. And then, when he’d licked his lips, a little blood had clung. And Snape, being no idiot, had seen it and extrapolated.

“Well?”

“I -- I guess so. It isn’t a big deal, really--”

Snape stood up so fast his chair hit the wall and knocked down a small framed picture. The glass shattered but Snape didn’t seem to notice. He moved like a snake, leaned over the table and grabbed Harry’s wrist.

“ That’s where you are wrong. It may not be a big deal now, it may not be a big deal tomorrow, but someday it will catch up with you. Do you have any idea, any idea at all what you could do to yourself?”

Harry was afraid. Snape looked really angry. Really angry. Angry enough to hit him across the face, or shake him like a rag doll, or…

Snape realized a moment too late that he had scared the boy. He was sheet white, looking as though he expected Snape to hex him to death at the very least. Snape dropped Potter’s wrist and inhaled loudly. He made himself sit back down.

Harry took a sip of his water and watched the man. The color in his cheeks faded a bit. He put his head into his hands a moment and seemed to want to speak.

“Mr. Potter, I did not mean to…frighten you in any way. As you may have intuited, I have…strong feelings about this issue. I would hate to see you… do yourself irreparable harm to yourself.”

He sipped his own water and pointedly did not look at the boy. The child’s breathing returned to normal and he said, after a long silence

“Professor?”

“Yes, Potter?”

“ I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

“I know. After we eat, you’ll be taking a potion for the cut you put in your mouth and a dose of soothing syrup and then lying down. You still look sleep deprived to me.”

Harry balked at taking a nap like a little kid but didn’t dare give Snape a hard time. He waited for the man to stand, but instead he rolled the sleeve of frock coat up, shoved the shirt sleeve aside and thrust out his arm.

Harry was torn between a sort of fascinated disgust and pity. The skin was ridged and crenellated, shiny pink. It looked as though Snape had some terrible accident or something in the not so distant past.

“Twelve years. And it was no accident.” Snape could not help but Legilimize the boy, wanting to know what was going on behind his strangely impassive face.

“ What…”

“That’s not the point. The point is, had I not acted like a damned proud fool, it might not have scarred like this. Is this how you want to look, Potter, like an alligator?”

Harry was unsure how to respond, not wanting to make the man feel worse about his disfigurement than he did. Snape picked up on the child’s (misguided) empathy and said quietly “The correct answer is ‘no’ Potter.”

“ I refused to get treatment because I refused to show weakness. More the fool I, boy. Weakness and need are not synonymous, do you understand?”

Harry nodded slowly. His perspective on Snape had shifted a little. Something caught his eye and, being young and innocent, he blurted out thoughtlessly, “What’s that?”

“That” was in fact a strangely faded line, like an old tattoo. It was surrounded by scar tissue but untouched. Snape immediately jerked his shirt down and fixed his coat. Harry saw him swallow hard. He looked both sad and strangely ruthless.

Snape writhed internally. He had taken this boy in to atone, and part of that, he felt, was (relative), age appropriate honesty. He refused to contemplate telling the child a lie about it. No matter how messy and shameful, he owed it to Lily, the woman he had as good as killed, not to make her son believe that he was something he was not.

“That, Mr. Potter” he almost whispered “ That is the Dark Mark.”