"Harry, look at me, child. Look at me!" Severus muttered as he gracefully knelt before his distressed first year. Moving his hands to the boy's arms, he gently pulled them away to reveal a tear streaked face. Lily's eyes stared up accusingly at him and he had to swallow hard at the emotions that look engendered within his heart.

"You are not a freak!" He growled in a forceful voice.

"And this is proof?" Harry held out his three fingered hand in front of Severus' face. "No, it's true" he shook his head, wiping furiously at the tears that were still insistently filling his eyes. "I am a freak. I know it," he said weakly, turning his head away from Snape and shutting his eyes.

It was the muggle equivalent of a teenager putting their headphones on and turning their back on the person they didn't want to speak to.

"Damn it, Harry," Severus said, leaning forwards and grabbing both of the boy's hands in his own much larger ones.

Short of forcing a mental link or gathering the boy up in his arms—Merlin forbid—there was little he could do until Harry chose to face him again.

"Talk to me, damn it," Severus whispered, knowing that the child couldn't hear him.

. . .

Dumbledore sat in his office reviewing the beginning of the year reports from his teachers. He had already pulled those teachers who had Harry Potter in their classes, and he was anxiously rifling through them first.

Pulling a very unused clause from the distant recesses of one of the rule books of Hogwarts, he had managed to keep Harry's disabled status out of newspapers, and unless something new occurred to the boy, he could likely he could get away with it for the rest of the year.

It was with that reasoning that he had managed to filter the homebound owl post sent by the students regarding the boy as well. He had simply applied a charm to the wards around Hogwarts that affected all outgoing owls (and their post), blurring the word 'disabled' and scrambling the surrounding texts into something that was rather more benign.

Unfortunately, that was unlikely to work for much longer; he was already starting to get letters of inquiry from some of the more intelligent pureblood parents. Pushing the thought from his mind, he looked back down at the reports atop his desk.

'Hermione Granger is possibly one of the most intelligent witches I have seen in many years of teaching,' was a repeated line amongst many of his professors.

He smiled a bit and continued on in his reading.

'Draco Malfoy is most certainly his father's son.'

'Morag MacDougal, despite being raised in a muggle household, shows a remarkable aptitude for charms.'

'Although Susan Bones greatly resembles Amelia, she is quite her own person."

'Lisa Turpin and Sabrina Fawcett are just trouble waiting to happen. I do not envy Filius for having them in his house.'

'I have already had to separate Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter.'

'Dean Thomas seems a bright chap, despite being muggleborn. He is catching on nicely. In part, I think we can thank Seamus Finnigan for helping to guide him. They are already becoming best of mates.'

'I have repeatedly asked you not to pair Gryffindor with Slytherin in my classes, but you have denied me every year. Before this first years' class ever started, a fight broke out resulting in a broken nose for Ronald Weasley. I think you also ought to be aware that Neville Longbottom is a menace around a cauldron and will likely need outside tutoring to refrain from killing all of his classmates. And before you ask, no, I am not joking.'

'There seems to be an indeterminate amount of tension between Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter.'

'I cannot get Gregory Goyle or Vincent Crabbe to answer in anything other than grunts. Truthfully Albus, they resemble two large lumps of clay sitting in my classroom.

'Michael Corner seems to be unaware of the great adoration the female population has for him.'

'Ernie Macmillan is either deliberately annoying the other children or he is simply oblivious to their feelings.'

'Harry Potter is nothing like his parents, and as far as I can tell, neither is Theodore Nott.'

'Millicent Bulstrode does not seem to be getting on well with her year mates.'

'The first year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws class is made up entirely of dunderheads. Sally-Anne Perks was the only one of her classmates to get her potion right and even her sample was off-colour.'

'Harry Potter is unaccountably quiet in class. He refused to attempt the Levitation charm, but then again, he was not the only one. I fear that Hermione Granger's early success may have cowed the others."

'Neville Longbottom is showing early signs of talent in Herbology. The plants simply respond better to his presence than some of the others. On that note, Ronald Weasley has already done something to draw the ire of the Slytherin students . . .'

. . .

"Let go," Harry whispered, jerking his hands out of his grasp. Severus let them go without a fuss and then sat back and waited for something more to happen.

He watched as the boy hastily scrubbed at the leftover tears on his face and then opened his eyes to gaze silently back.

"You are not a freak, Harry," Severus felt compelled to reiterate.

"You're lyin', but I can appreciate the sentiment," Harry answered with a grimace as he pushed himself back upright. Severus stood as well, but took a step backwards to give the lad some space.

"Why do you think I am lying?" He asked.

Harry didn't say anything immediately. Instead, he stalked back up the front of the room as Severus trailed ever so slightly behind him. It wasn't until they were back where they had started that Harry finally turned and answered his question.

"Don't know if you've looked around lately, but most people have both their legs. Most people have five fingers on each hand, and they don't look like they were just run over by a lorry!"

Severus pursed his lips and then responded, "And what of Moody? Is he a 'freak' as well?"

Harry's mouth twisted bitterly at the mention of Moody's name. "We're both freaks. He's just a lot older'n me."

"I doubt he would describe himself as such," Severus countered, crossing his arms and leaning back against his desk.

"He might not, but I do," Harry answered quickly, shoving his thumb into the front of his chest. "And you can ask him about it, if you like."

Briefly, Severus wondered if the boy was actually going to dare him to do such a thing, but then the moment passed, and the thought was gone from his mind.

"Is age the only reason you feel you are different from Moody?" He probed, raising an eyebrow.

The boy's face darkened again and Severus steeled himself for an explosion that didn't come.

"Yeah, I suppose so," Harry muttered after a bit, twisting his crutch between both hands in what Severus saw as a nervous behaviour.

"In what way?"

The boy's shoulders lifted in a shrug, but Severus didn't call him out for it. He waited instead, sensing that there was more that Harry needed to say.

"He's got magic," Harry answered at last, pivoting on his heel and turning back to look at Severus with a bitter scowl.

"As do you."

"Liar," Harry said with a growl, green eyes piercing their way into his heart.

"You wouldn't be here if you didn't," Severus persisted, narrowing his eyes at the enigma standing before him.

"Because Dumbledore never makes mistakes?" The hatred in the boy's composure was remarkably different from his prior anger. Then in an instant, the pure wave of feeling rolling through him was gone and Severus was left blinking at the change.

"Hogwarts does not allow muggles to see the castle for what it is. Why are you so intent on believing you have no magic? From what I know of your accident," he noted how Harry stiffened on that word. "If not for your wild magic, you would not have survived at all."

"Then why can't I do magic?" Green eyes stared accusingly up at him.

Severus knelt down in front of his small angry snake. "Harry, you are only a first year. Your classmates cannot do much in the way of magic either."

"Not true," Harry bit out from behind clenched teeth.

"Of course there are a few exceptions, there always are, but for the most part you are exactly where you should be," Severus patiently explained.

"Not true!"

"What isn't?" Severus retorted coolly, shifting to peer directly into the boy's livid green eyes.

"I can't do the spells."

"Which ones?"

"The ones the others can do. The ones my poor defenceless muggle classmates can do," Harry spat out, his fist clenching white knuckled around his crutch.

"It takes longer for some than it does for others—," Severus started.

"You don't understand!"

"Then enlighten me," Severus said carefully, the challenge evident in his eyes.

"I can't do them; damn it," Harry roughly rubbed a hand through his spiked hair. "I can't do them, because I can't say them, because I can't say them right." He turned away from Snape and in a fit of rage he suddenly threw his crutch across the room, yelling "BOLLOCKS!" as he did. His shoulders shook, but when he finally turned back to Severus, his face was clear of any telling emotions.

"This isn't going to work," the boy said in a gravelly voice. "I ought to just get out now. Go back to where I was. Forget about this shite," he said, dropping onto the student bench just behind him and driving another hard hand through his hair.

Thoughtfully, Severus watched Harry for a moment longer and then stood up and moved to the board. Summoning some chalk from his desk, he quickly wrote out a series of phrases, only turning back to the boy when he was done. Unsurprisingly, he found that Harry was watching him.

"Win-GAR-dee-um lev-ee-OH-sa," he said, reading it slowly out loud. "Let me see your wand motions," Severus instructed, watching as the boy clumsily handled—or mishandled, rather—his wand.

"There's part of your difficulty right there. You are looping your hand far too high into the air."

Harry tried again and Severus watched with a critical eye.

"No, watch me," he corrected, going to where the boy was seated and taking a seat next to him on the hard student bench. He demonstrated the wand motion from beside the boy and then made him repeat it until it was correct.

"Now try."

He watched Harry attempt the spell on a feather that Severus had conjured, but the feather still did not move. When he listened closely to the boy's speech, he could hear a bit of slurring between some of the words, and although he knew the child was trying his best, it simply wasn't getting any better. Harry simply could not hear himself making the mistakes and Severus was hard pressed to right the difficulty.

"I told you," Harry said after another ten minutes of fruitless attempts. He slumped forwards, dangling his wand between his fingers.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Severus that made him want to smack himself for not having broached the question earlier, "Harry, do you know sign language?"

"Some," was the lacklustre response. "The nurses taught me a bit when they realised that my hearing wasn't getting any better. "Why?" Sharp eyes flicked at him questioningly.

"It is possible that we may be able to adapt something to work to your favour. And if that does not work, then I believe it is entirely possible that you may be capable of wandless magic."

"Isn't that—?" Harry abruptly straightened, eyes sharpening in focus as he stared back at Severus. "That's silent magic, right?"

Severus shook his head in the negative and said, "Not necessarily.  It is merely what it sounds like.  Magic without a wand.  It does not need to be silent, but it can be very advantageous in certain situations to have it be so."

"Do you think I could learn that?" Harry's eyes were looking at him in sudden hopefulness and Severus found himself briefly mesmerized by the sight.

After a breath of silence, Severus answered, "I think it is distinctly possible. It may also be advantageous to look at not only British Sign Language sources, but also American Sign Language ones as well. The Americans," here Severus paused and rolled his eyes for good measure. He was pleased when the boy let out a soft laugh at his action. "Despite their otherwise sordid history and practices in general, they have managed to contribute a few useful things to the Wizarding society as a whole, and their use of one handed sign language may turn out to be one of those."

"Sir," Harry paused with a befuddled expression, "What do deaf wizards and witches do in the UK in order to do their spells?"

"Unfortunately, in the past, magical people who have been unable to speak the spells were often treated little better than squibs. For families of more substantial means though," Severus grimaced slightly, "private tutors were often brought in, or else those children were sent to other, more open minded countries."

"Is America one of those?" Harry's brow was wrinkled as though he couldn't quite imagine it.

Severus pursed his lips irritably before beginning to speak, "Given America's age as a country, practices of any kind tend to be newer and less steeped in tradition. Thus, they come across as being more open minded, simply because they haven't had to contend with the same history as those more venerable countries such as ours."

In the end, they decided that Harry would look through the library for anything related to wandless magic, and Severus in turn would look outside the school for resources on both British Sign Language and American Sign Language.