The boy’s head jerked up. Snape saw the pulse in his throat leap and Potter swallowed hard.

“Voldemort.” There was no question, no childish tremble. His eyes were flat. Snape felt a chill creep down his spine. For a trace of a second, the merest thousandth of an instant, he felt as cold as he did in the presence of the Dark Lord himself, the child’s gaze was that penetrating. That devoid of pity.

“Yes.” Harry’s stomach slid in a greasy half loop and he clutched the arms of his chair hard. Snape was… is (?)…somehow involved with Voldemort. He felt for a moment the same elemental chill that the Dementors had evoked.

“Did he---?” He gestures at Snape’s arm, and Snape nodded. “Yes, Potter. He believes in--lasting lessons, shall we say.”

Snape expected Potter to scream, cry, cower. Anything but this calm, measured scrutiny. The child was chewing something over in his mind, that much was certain.

“Then you left? After he--?”

“Scarred me. I left him after your parents--after you-- after that Halloween.” Snape couldn’t tell the boy about Lily. He needed his trust first. He needed to help the boy feel safe enough that he could withstand such a blow to his world.

Snape looked as though he wished he was anywhere but where he was. Harry felt crushing weight, a sadness he didn’t understand yet. It made his skin prickle unpleasantly. Why was everything so ruddy hard?

“All right, that’s enough for both of us today. Go upstairs and I’ll bring your potions. Put your pajamas on, and Merlin help you if you simply threw all your clothes in your drawers rather than folding them.”

Harry had done just that, and he made his way up the stairs slowly, still feeling that strange sorrow. By the time Snape arrived with the potions, the clothes had been jostled into some semblance of order and Harry was sitting on the bed, PJ clad.

Snape held two vials in his hands. He had taken a little time in getting the potions. He felt drained, though they had barely scratched the surface. Would it have been better to tell the child? Snape shook the thought away and handed Potter the healing potion. The boy winced at the taste but swallowed it. The second was the Soothing Syrup. It actually tasted nice, sort of like the Muggle treat they called marshmallows.

Harry didn’t feel as instantly sleepy as before. It was more a pleasant, insistent fuzziness that made his earlier…whatever it was…fade away, there but distant. He found he could push it away to deal with later. Snape was still there, but he too had faded. The man was lingering beside his bed. Harry tried to feel something about this. It was easier to close his eyes. His breath evened.

Snape picked the light cover off the end of his bed and draped it over the prone body. The child seemed to sleep folded in on himself. His hands were clasped at his chest. He felt a moment of--not awe, but perhaps welcome acceptance--that the child’s face had that open look again.

He snorted. Stupid. Leaving the room ( it looked like Potter would be out a while), he went to the library. Pulling his wand from his sleeve, he pointed it at the nearest shelf. The books floated out and neatly arranged themselves on the bare desk. He methodically sorted them into three piles: Innocuous, Age Inappropriate, and Never in Hell.

The first were things he’d owned as a child, or which wouldn’t warp the boy ( well, not worse than simply being James Potter’s progeny had anyway). The second were things Potter could look at when he was a bit older, if he showed sufficient maturity. The third…

How old had he been when he’d found it? Nine? He’d been looking through the shelves (even in that foul little hovel, they had had books) when his hand lit upon something. A sketchbook. He opened it causally, idly. A few were landscapes, ruins, ducks at a park. A small sheath had fallen from the back, and he picked it up.

He liked the papers and books, at nine. Not the music, he’d never liked the music, but the books and drawings were interesting. He especially liked the ones his Dad had made during the War. He’d left most of a leg in France, had his Dad, but he’d made a lot of really brilliant drawings of tanks and stuff, even some airplanes.

So he’d been smiling when he retrieved the papers from the floor. He didn’t for long; smile. He’d been crying when he finally closed it. He hadn’t had the words for what he’d seen, not for years. He only knew he’d seen something bad, something forbidden. Of course, after Tobias died he’d seen the rest. Old enough to understand at eighteen. Old enough to be sickened.

‘Damn you” Snape thought fiercely “ I think you wanted me to find it.“

He realized he was clutching the desk’s edges so hard his hands hurt. The knuckles were white. He was glad the old monster was dead, and whatever atrocities he had wrought were dead with him.

There was a noise from within the house and he all but jumped. He walked quickly to the kitchen and found the boy’s owl rapping at the window with a clawed foot. She had the remains of a mouse in her beak, which she thoughtfully swallowed before she flew in.

He expected her to fly to her cage, or find Potter, but to his irritation, she fixed her great marble like eyes on him and followed him to the sink. He filled a glass with cold water and drank deeply. The owl’s gaze was unswerving. He tried his Death Glare on her, which could turn some of the most dangerous dark wizards in Britain to quivering simpletons. Nothing.

“What is it, then? Has my skin turned green?” The owl tipped her head to one side and studied him. Then, very deliberately, she perched on his shoulder and gave his ear a friendly little chomp.

Did this mean she liked him? Or at least didn’t hate him?

Hedwig sat still a moment and flew off. She was tired, but, having checked her boy’s new brood parent and found him adequate, she’d decided to go to sleep. On the whole she liked being the boy’s owl. She was relieved he was away from those nasty nest mates he’d been living with. Here, she could fly freely, and with that pleasant thought she put her head under her wing and began to snore ever so gently.

Snape wondered when the boy would wake and what would happen. He’d finish the library and try to find something to occupy the boy’s time. He could always restock his personal potions store. He allowed himself a smile, thinking of the weeks of chopping he could put the little brat to. Not to mention quartering blat slug spleens, and de eyeing beetles, and peeling the linings from bicorn gizzards.

The horrid little monster would just ruin them for spite, he decided. Still, he had to come up with something. If the brat thought he’d lie around all summer, reading whatever took his fancy and flitting here, there and everywhere on his broom, he had another thing coming.