It had taken him a week to get around Hadwyn's new wards, but he finally did it. Sirius was headed toward the castle main doors in his dog form when an enticing smell reached his nose. Following the scent to its conclusion (a hot meat pie in a secluded corner in a corridor a floor above the Potions' classroom), he immediately dug right in. He noticed the taste of a sleeping potion too late and woke up only briefly as a spell was performed upon his unmoving form to change him back into his human state.

. . .

Sirius scowled down at the children below him . . . or rather, he stared up at them. He was trussed up and hanging upside down from one of the danker corridors within the Slytherin dungeons.

"Slimy snakes . . ." he started to growl, only to be silenced by a spell that somehow made his tongue stick to the top of his mouth, effectively gagging him.

"You really are an idiot," said the small girl whom he belatedly realised was the student Hadwyn had referred to as 'Hobbs.'

"Insulting your captors?" another one shouted out in a derisive voice.

Yup, same old Slytherins, he groaned internally as he glared back down (up) at them.

"Treat us like shit all you want; think we're the lowest of the low and the scum of the earth, but don't insult us when we're the ones who decide whether you live or die," the small girl spat, taking a predatory step forward and jabbing her wand just in front of his eyes.

Live or die? He scoffed in his mind. Someone needs to back off from the drama potions.

"Don't believe us?" Hobbs asked with a cool sneer. "Fine. Confundus."

. . .

Three hours later, Hadwyn finally tracked Sirius down from where he was wandering up and down the 3rd floor corridor muttering about finding a garden gnome to "take to the ball."

"Must you really annoy the younger years?" Hadwyn sighed as he bodily forced Sirius back to the dungeons.

"Have you seen my date? She's about this high . . ." Sirius answered earnestly, making a vague waving motion with his hands.

"Honestly Black, you're worse than Severus hopped up on too much absinthe; talking cauldrons my arse."

"They talk!?" Sirius sounded delighted at the idea and Hadwyn groaned aloud.

"You just wait, Black," Hadwyn responded darkly after a moment. "I'm going to pensieve this and then make a copy to send to Severus."

. . .

Really, until his dream had turned into a nightmare, it hadn't been too bad.

In fact, he reflected as he rocked back and forth in his bed gripping sweat soaked sheets, it had been pretty damn good.

Before his dream had turned into a pair of giant floating eyes intent on getting him, he had been dreaming about his parents. It hadn't even felt like a dream, despite the lack of surrounding details.

Somehow, Harry felt, it had been real.

They had all been sitting next to the lake just . . . talking. He had told them—somewhat fearfully—about what had happened with Lupin, and though his father glowered frighteningly and his mum got a bit teary eyed, they had still managed to assure him that they weren't angry at him for what had happened.

It had been somewhat of a revelation for him to imagine that his parents would take his side and not the side of one of their oldest friends.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember what it felt like to have his mum's hand on his arm, to have his dad's shoulder bumping against his, but the dream was already slipping from his grasp. Instead, the nightmare blossomed forth again, pushing itself into his mind's eye with a frightening level of clarity.

He had fallen into the lake and sunk deep down to the dim bottom. He hadn't been able to move his legs, his voice was muffled and the silence had pressed in around him on every side, pounding violently in his ears. Then, out of nowhere, a pair of bright blue luminescent eyes had appeared in front of him and his heart rate had skyrocketed, thrusting him back into the waking world with a barely suppressed scream of terror.

A wave of intense nausea rippled through him and abruptly he bolted out to the hallway. He barely made it to the toilet before vomiting forcefully, banging his shins rather painfully on the floor as he did.

Heaving again, he barely noticed the warm hand that suddenly appeared on his shoulder.

"A nightmare?" Severus murmured comfortingly in his ear.

He nodded, not trusting himself to open his mouth just yet. He reached up with a shaking hand to wipe off some of the tears and sweat that were mingling on his cheeks, but Severus was faster. A wet washcloth cleaned his face methodically and he slumped backward into his guardian's chest with a soft sigh. Severus' other arm came around his chest and held him until his face was cleaned.

"Do you think you can stand?"

Harry shook his head and turned his face into the soft nightshirt behind him.

A huff of air over his ear and he hid a smile as Severus picked him up, sweaty pyjamas and all. Instead of delivering him back to his bed, the man took him to his own bed and placed him carefully within its covers. After a liberal use of freshening charms to dry out his pyjamas and to clean out Harry's mouth, Severus then climbed into the bed and wrapped strong arms around him.

Harry buried his face into the man's chest and scooted as close to him as he could get without suffocating. A long fingered hand moved to his head and began stroking his unusually wild hair and he felt himself relax slightly.

"I dreamed . . ." Harry began haltingly.

"Of?" Severus' soft voice rumbled across his head.

"My mum," he admitted in a whisper. "My mum and Jam—my dad." Harry could feel his cheeks flaming at his slip of the tongue. So what if he'd started thinking of Severus as his Papa? It was only a secret still. It was only a fantasy.

"And?" Severus sounded measured and calm; almost as though he had understood Harry's verbal slip, but had decided to ignore it.

"They—They don't think it's my fault," Harry managed, clenching his fists into the front of Severus' soft cotton nightgown. "What Lupin did, that is," he added.

Severus didn't respond immediately, and Harry's imagination started supplying answers in his silence.

Of course it's not your fault, he'll say, Harry thought, mentally kicking himself. But it was! If only I had done something earlier!

"What precisely is not your fault?" Severus finally said, surprising him somewhat.

Flustered, Harry pulled away slightly from his guardian and with a miserable expression, he spat, "The rape!"

Severus winced at the loudness of his words and Harry flinched backwards, his eyes wide.

Oh god, oh god, oh god! Harry's consciousness gibbered.

His brain fell silent when Severus reached out a hand to cup his cheek. Strangely enough, Harry saw the corner of Severus' mouth turn up in an almost smile. He narrowed his eyes in the dim setting of the bedroom, thinking perhaps it had been a trick of the light, but then his guardian spoke, distracting him completely.

"I am proud of you for saying that aloud."

Harry blinked. The hand on his face rubbed a calloused thumb over his cheek gently and he blinked again.

"You've come so far, endured so much this year. I've begun seeing signs that you were healing from this ordeal, but this is by far the clearest."

The hand on his face felt nice. And the feeling in his chest felt even nicer, even if it did constrict his insides in an unusual way.

Proud. Proud of him even, Harry thought half-numbly.

Hesitantly, Harry found himself smiling back. His face felt clumsy, almost as though it had forgotten what it was like to turn upright.

In response, the twist on Severus' lips turned into a real smile as he spoke three coveted words to Harry.

"That's my boy."

. . .

The next day, over a breakfast that was closer to lunchtime (thanks to their late night conversation) Harry broached another subject. It was one that he had been mulling in his head for some time, and now with newfound confidence, he managed to actually ask Severus.

"Could you teach me Potions?"

Severus inclined his head once, his black eyes glancing at Harry once warmly, before returning to his meal.

That's how Harry found himself standing in Severus' potions lab less than an hour later with his guardian patiently going over all of the basics of brewing.

"I wish you could have covered the different ways of cutting and slicing at the beginning of our class," Harry said wistfully at the end of the lesson.

"I did not find it necessary to spend time on something so basic," Severus retorted, ebon eyes boring into Harry pointedly.

"Well," Harry answered, fidgeting on his wooden stool, "Some of us weren't from magical households, so we didn't know how to do a lot of that stuff."

"And what of Ms. Granger?" Snape's eyebrow rose pointedly, and Harry frowned.

"She reads a lot." He shrugged. "I tried to read the Potions textbook too, but I—I guess I felt like I was missing a lot or something. My fam—the Dursleys, I mean," he noticed Severus nodding sharply at that correction. "They got angry whenever I did better in class than Dudley, so it's taken me a lot of time to figure out what real studying looks like, I guess. And if I could have had more practical lessons on the basics," he shot a nervous glance at Severus, "I think I would have had more success, even with your, you know . . ." He shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to think of the time when he had thought Severus had hated him.

"Even with my unusually harsh treatment of your person," Severus finished for him, getting up from his own stool and walking over to the table where Harry's textbook still sat.

"Yeah," Harry said softly. "That."

"Do you know what an appendix is, Harry?"

"That sort of worthless thing in your body?" Harry asked, cocking his head to the side as he tried to figure out where Severus was going with this seemingly abrupt change in conversation.

His guardian's lips quirked once before his face smoothed out again. "Not in this case, child. An appendix is typically found in the back of a book for the purpose of providing extra information."

Frowning, Harry stood up and walked over to where Severus was flipping through his textbook.

"Like what?"

Severus finally stopped on a page and pushed the book toward him. "Like the differences in crushing and pulverizing," he said, showing Harry a page with full colour, moving pictures that demonstrated precisely what he had just said.

Harry's eyes went wide and he hesitantly reached out and turned over the page. A section on the appropriate dismantling of Jabberknoll parts was given. The next page showed the suggested method for grinding down a Graphorn.

Still speechless, Harry turned his eyes up toward Severus and asked, "This was here the whole time? Why didn't anyone say anything about it?" He sounded faintly hurt as he tried to imagine what his potions might have been like with the extra help this provided.

"It was mentioned in the footnotes of various chapters," Severus answered, confusing him further.

"Footnotes?" Harry squeaked.

"Here," Severus answered calmly, turning back to chapter 1. At the bottom of the page, Harry saw a section printed at the bottom of the page in very small font.

Squinting, he tried to read what it said, and finally managed to make out that it had given the exact page numbers of the aforementioned Appendix. He looked back to Severus, only to find his guardian looking at him quizzically.

"What?" He fidgeted uncomfortably under Severus' gaze.

"When was the last time you had your prescription checked?"

Harry frowned, but answered, "The last year I was in muggle school. So . . . three years ago."

It was Severus' turn to frown. "Your reprehensible relatives should have taken you in for a check-up when you came home at the beginning of your first year," he said, before curling his lips upward again. "Perhaps I should teach you how to make an Eye Strengthening Solution. Tell me child, how would you like to be free of your glasses for good?"