“Mr. Dursley, I presume?”

Braced and ready, it took a little while for Harry to realize that the shove he'd been waiting for wasn't coming. Whoever had spoken had thoroughly distracted Uncle Vernon, to the extent that he never released the back of Harry's neck, but never propelled him out onto the sidewalk, either. He was stuck in mid-motion, mouth slightly agape.

Looking for the man who'd so frozen his uncle, Harry looked up, but the man was too close for him to see anything but a long expanse of black fabric that led up to black buttons. But it was a man, he knew that. A man he didn't know, wearing a long, black, button-up...dress?

Oddly, he'd somehow managed to appear inside the house without coming in through the front door. Maybe he'd come in through the back and walked through the kitchen? But Aunt Petunia hadn't said anything, either, and she would not have liked this dark stranger in her house. He was one of the funny-looking people that occasionally noticed Harry on the street and greeted him like they knew him before disappearing. His aunt hated them.

Finally over his shock, Uncle Vernon released Harry's nape and drew himself up. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

“That is irrelevant, Mr. Dursley,” the dark man said arrogantly. “I will leave in a moment, but first you listen to me. Tempting as I understand it is, you will not throw the boy again. I will be watching, and I will know.”

Mouth agape again, Mr. Dursley reddened and started blubbering. “How- you dare- in my house! Who do you think you are? What right do you have to tell me what to do with my own nephew?”

“Like I said, that is irrelevant, Mr. Dursley. All you need know is that I am watching, and I will not permit you or your wife or son to harm him.”

“My son? My son would never harm anyone! How dare you-! Get out of my house!”

But the dark man was evidently not intimidated. “I will leave, Mr. Dursley. But heed my warning. Your son will not harm mine.”

There was an abrupt, sharp crack, and the man disappeared. In the middle of the foyer, and without using the door. It was like he'd never been.

But – mine? He'd thought his father was dead!

---

Severus Snape grimaced, surprised and disturbed by the entire encounter. Damn, but Harry Potter was tiny. Seven years old, and the uncle could probably palm his head. He detested children, and would likely be more dangerous to Harry than helpful, but that did not mean that he would allow Vernon Dursley to throw the boy.

---

---

---

He was...on the roof. On the chimney, even. How did that happen? Then he grinned. Piers and Dudley were below, looking up at him in shock, their game of Harry Hunting having ended in a singularly unexpected way.

“Misters Dursley and Polkiss, you will leave now before I take your tongues to dry and use in a Verbis potion. Is that clear?”

Urr...clear? He didn't even know what the man meant, and he was loads smarter than Dudley and Piers. But the menace underlying the words was unmistakeable, and Dudley had met the dark man before. He pulled on Piers' arm, and the two of them left quickly.

The dark man looked after them before glancing briefly at Harry, and Harry's heart beat up as he realized that the man would leave again.

“F-father?” Harry said tentatively. The man turned and gave him a sharp look. He always did, when Harry called him that, but Harry had no other name for him, and he'd never been corrected.

“Yes?” the man demanded harshly.

“I- don't know how to get down,” he said.

“Then you would be wise not to get yourself up, don't you think?” the man demanded.

“I don't know how I did that, either!” Harry protested.

The man's eyes narrowed. “Do not cheek me, boy.”

Harry closed his mouth quickly, and held tightly to the sides of the chimney. The man had rescued him before, but now he was mad.

But then, he always seemed mad, when he talked to Harry. And this time, Harry felt a weird tug, and realized that he was being lifted. Looking down at the man anxiously, he let go of the chimney to be lifted to safety.

---

He'd expected the boy to flail and yell, when his spell started pulling at him, but the boy simply let go of the chimney and calmly allowed himself to be lifted down. Severus gave him an extra scowl and disapparated back to Hogwarts.

---

---

---

Severus smirked as the tiny dark-haired figure looked down from the lowest branch of the tree and considered the drop to the ground in obvious trepidation. Served the boy right. Severus had watched as the little idiot had jumped up and down trying to reach the lowest branches, then attempted to climb the trunk, then painstakingly dragged a park bench over underneath the tree and jumped up and down on that, and then finally stacked a plastic chair on top of the bench to jump up to grip the lowest branch and climb into the tree. At which point, of course, the chair had fallen down, and the park bench was too low for him to get back down again, and now he was stuck. Eventually, Severus knew, he'd have to rescue him. Certainly Lily's sister and brother-in-law weren't going to. But he'd let the boy suffer for a bit. Anyone who was that determined to get himself into trouble deserved whatever happened to him.

After a moment, however, the boy seemed to abandon his worry over how to get down again in favor of the original source of his determination – a small cat who had fled a little higher into the tree to get away from the her “rescuer”. The boy followed her up – then higher up - and then, to Severus' dismay, started crawling towards her away from the trunk of the tree and out into the thinner branches. The cat, of course, continued to flee, and Harry gave another anxious look at the ground at least ten feet below before clearly regaining his determination and heading further along the branch after her.

The cat continued to pick his way carefully further from the trunk of the tree, and Severus watched in astonishment as the boy continued to follow, finally getting to a point where it was too narrow to crawl and flipping himself underneath the thin branch to instead clamber squirrel-like along the underside of it. Meanwhile the branch started to bend under his weight.

He was going to kill the boy himself, Severus determined. All that danger and effort and misery to protect the boy from real danger and the boy was going to die falling out of a tree.

It was almost a relief when the boy yelped and began to fall and Severus was finally able to catch him with invisible hands and lift him down. The brat was hanging upside down from the grip on one of his ankles, but Severus was not feeling charitable and did not bother to flip him before pulling him to himself and dumping him unceremoniously on the grass in front of his feet. The boy was clearly disoriented, but he just as clearly saw the hem of Severus' robe as he stood up promptly to stand in front of him.

“Sir!” he said. “Thank you!”

But Severus couldn't think of anything to say, nor did he bother. He found himself grabbing the boy around the waist, and then his hand came down of its own volition to give the boy a sharp smack on the seat of his pants. And that felt...exactly right, in that moment, and he did it again even sharper.

---

The dark man was...smacking him! And it hurt!

“S-sir!” Harry protested. “N-no!” SMACK!

“F-fatherrrr!” he complained. It was evidently a mistake, as the smacks just came down sharper and faster. The man was mad. He'd never been so mad before. And – ow!

“Don't you dare complain, boy,” the man said harshly. “You deserve every damned smack. You'd be dead if I weren't here.”

“I d-didn't mean-”

“Silence!” the man said harshly.

It was that, and not the spanking, that brought the first tears to Harry's eyes, and he tried to be quiet but just a moment later he gave a loud sniff as the smacks continued to fall steadily on his now constantly-stinging backside.

Soon after that, it was over, as the man stood up and released him to stare down at him with an intimidating scowl. Harry tried to look back at him, but lost courage somewhere around the man's nose, and looked down again. Still the man glared, and to Harry's dismay he felt his lower lip start to tremble again and his eyes fill with tears under the weight of that harsh gaze as his butt stung from the swats he'd received. His father had spanked him. And he was still mad.

---

Damn. Damn, damn damn. He couldn't just leave the boy like that; Lily would haunt him.

“Calm, boy,” he told him. “I have not harmed you.”

Sniff. The boy was trying, too, he could tell – scrubbing the tears away with a rough fist and pursing trembling lips, only to have the tears reappear a moment later. And now the boy was scrubbing at his nose with a sleeve instead of at his eyes.

Ugh. Severus sighed. Fine. Fishing in his robes, he pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to the boy. “Use this,” he told him.

The boy looked up at him only very briefly, but he took the handkerchief and cleaned his face with it, and it did seem to help calm him down.

But the little brat still wasn't meeting his eyes, and his lower lip was extended in a slight, probably involuntary pout.

“Don't give me that,” Severus told him. “You have no business getting yourself into a situation like that and then expecting me to rescue you. I have enough problems. I will not accept you giving me trouble.”

Sniff.

Right. Eight-year-olds cried when you scolded them. Fabulous. At least the first-years were tougher than this. The boy was tiny.

“You will go home, now, do you understand?”

That got the boy's attention, and he looked up at him in dismay for a moment before looking down again, biting his lip. No doubt the boy would try to disobey him.

“I will know if you don't,” he told him menacingly.

Again, the boy looked up quickly and then back down. “I know,” he said softly. There was a pause, and then an even quieter, “...please don't make me?”

He knew what the boy was going home to. He did. But the boy was perfectly safe there – his relatives, including his cousin, would no longer dare to actually harm him. He was just lonely and bored and likely to get pressed into service helping his unpleasant aunt in the kitchen or with the laundry. And it might make Severus a bad person, but that was precisely how he wanted his misbehaving brat to spend his afternoon after nearly giving him a heart attack.

He gave the boy a fierce frown, and Harry stopped even attempting to look at him. The tremble in his lip also increased.

Oddly, Severus found himself compelled to put a hand out and squeeze the boy's shoulder briefly before he apparated away.

---

Father...had touched him. Gently. The adult Dursleys didn't touch him at all anymore, since the dark man had shown up and forbidden his uncle from throwing him.

The man wouldn't be back again for weeks or months, Harry knew. Not until he got in danger again or something. But he'd touched him.

He should've done something, Harry realized. Gripped his clothing and begged him to stay, or to take him with him. Not just stood there like an idiot, stunned from this one little thing.

But no. Father would never allow that. He wouldn't stay, he'd just go all stiff and cold like he sometimes did and order him to let him go.

But oh, Harry wanted that touch back.

He wondered briefly what would happen if he actually didn't go home as instructed, but then remembered the state of his backside and redirected his thoughts. His father would come back, for sure, but it wouldn't be worth it. That time.

---

---

---

Harry shivered, and tucked his knees up and under Dudley's over-large jacket to fill the space and warm them. He'd tried layering clothing underneath the huge garment – tee-shirt over tee-shirt until he resembled a particularly unfortunate homeless person – but they didn't bulk up enough to keep air from getting into the gaps between the coat and his body. The thing worked better as a blanket, and Harry's pants were no better.

But Dudley was throwing a tantrum, again, and his reasoning and self-control were poor enough that Father's warnings were only partially effective. Dudley wouldn't hurt him on purpose anymore, or at least not much, but it was still well worth being out on a park bench in the cold to be away from him in this mood.

His toes were freezing, though. Harry had the same problem with the size of his shoes as with his jacket, and the shoes had holes, to boot. Not worn-through holes – Dudley had never, to Harry's knowledge, worn the same item of clothing long enough for it to naturally develop holes – but cut holes. Dudley enjoyed taking a pair of scissors to his clothing, especially if he got tired of it and wanted new, or if he'd outgrown it and knew it would be passed down to Harry. And it was raining. Not only were his feet cold, they were wet and cold. So would the rest of him be, soon.

Abruptly, Harry's view was taken up by a long expanse of black fabric, topped by the scowling face of his evidently-displeased absentee father. Harry looked up at him in surprise. The man hadn't shown up for more than three months, which was part of why Dudley was willing to throw things at Harry. And the man's scowl could've drilled a hole through Harry's skull. What'd he done?

But the man didn't start scolding. He just scowled even further, and pulled out the odd little stick that he did freak-stuff with.

“Sit properly,” he told him shortly.

Harry anxiously obeyed, and after a brief moment his jacket started to shrink, until it fit snuggly over Harry's multiple tee-shirts, and then his father transferred his glare to Harry's pants and they shrank, too. That done, he glared at Harry's hands and feet for a moment before directing the stick towards Harry's shoes.

“Reparo,” he ordered them angrily.

In a moment, the holes were gone. Still, his father's face darkened even further and then not only were Harry's shoes fixed, but his socks were dry. Finally the man stopped glaring at Harry's shoes and moved to glare instead at Harry's face.

“You're skinny,” he snapped.

Harry shrugged, curling his toes to enjoy the feeling of his clean and dry – if still over-large – socks.

“Answer me,” the man warned him.

“You didn't ask a question,” Harry pointed out.

He regretted it instantly, as the man's normal scowl and glare sharpened and focussed on his face and Harry found himself looking at the ground again.

“Was that cheek, Mr. Potter?” his father asked him.

“...no, sir,” Harry said softly. “...sorry, sir.”

“No, and sorry,” his father repeated. “Which is it? No, it was not cheek, or yes, it was cheek, and you apologize? And don't think to lie to me.”

Harry's cheeks reddened. “Y-yes, it was cheek, and I'm sorry, sir,” he said softly.

“Hmm,” the man told him. “Better. Now out with it.”

But he still didn't know what the man wanted him to say. Or, well, maybe he did, actually, but he didn't want to admit to it.

“Out with it, Mr. Potter,” his father demanded again. “Why are you so skinny?”

He hadn't forgotten his spanking, though it had been more than a year ago. “I keep...doing things,” he said softly to the ground. “I don't try, I promise, but things keep happening around me and my aunt doesn't like it but they say you won't let them punish me properly so sometimes they don't let me eat.”

“I see,” his father said shortly.

There was a silence, but a moment later, the man spoke again, and his voice was marginally softer. “You've learned to store food?” he demanded.

“...yes, sir,” Harry told him. “I just can't always get enough. My aunt takes it if she finds it, so I can't save much and I end up running out a lot.”

“Very well,” the man said, tone still very cold. “I will speak to them. You will eat, are we clear? If I find you're being picky, or refusing to eat-”

“You won't,” Harry said quickly, not wanting him to say it.

“Good,” the man said shortly. Without another word – or a repetition of the touch from before – the man disappeared.

But that night, Harry was given a full, hot, unadulterated meal by his sour-faced aunt, under the red face and narrow-eyed gaze of his uncle. “Take it to your room,” his aunt hissed at him. “I don't even want to see you.”

Even that, though, didn't manage to kill Harry's appetite. He just reminded himself of who it was who had actually fed him – and fixed his clothes - and ate his food as ordered in his cupboard under the stairs.

The next day, an odd package in a wooden crate showed up on the front porch, with a note to Petunia that made her purse her lips like she'd sucked a lemon, and nearly throw the entire box into Harry's arms. Inside it was a pair of very plain black gloves, four pairs of black woolen socks, a dark green woolen sweater, and a pair of perfectly-sized, thick rubber rain boots.

And a note. “If you destroy your shoes or any of your other clothing again, I will cut off each of your fingers in payment for them.”

Harry frowned. How could his father notice when he was in danger – every time he was in danger – and not know that it wasn't him who'd damaged his shoes?

And that wasn't the end of the note, either. It finished, “You will find the crate is indestructible to anyone without magic, and will not allow anyone but you to open it. I expect you to always remember to pack your clothing and anything else of value inside of it.”

Oddly, Harry found himself grinning as he took in the next part of the note. His father was definitely accusing Harry of being the one to destroy his clothing and shoes...and yet had provided a way for Harry to prevent Dudley from doing it. The man was weird.

Finally, though, it really hit him, and Harry looked down at the treasure in his arms and started to cry. His father had given him a present.

---

---

---

He was warm, and well fed, and decently clothed, and not in any danger whatsoever from any of his relatives. In short, he hadn't seen his father in nearly six months.

It was Dudley's tenth birthday, a couple of months before Harry's own. Piers Polkiss was over, as well as a couple of Dudley's other friends, and they were playing kill the carrier in the back yard. And Harry got an absolutely idiotic idea. Dudley had more-or-less learned not to mess with Harry, through direct encounters with his father. His friends had only ever been warned by Dudley.

He wasn't going to do it. Really, he wasn't. He was going to stay where he was, and weed and water the flower beds as his aunt had asked, and ignore the game.

But then the ball came flying out of someone's hand and whizzing past Harry's head. It hid the side of the house and bounced back, landing directly on top of the area Harry had just watered and splattering him with mud. And Harry's hand reached out of its own volition and seized the ball, and then Harry was up and running. “Bet you can't catch me, 'Dudders'!” he called back.

“Get him!” Piers called excitedly.

“Yeah, you're dead, Harry!” Dennis added.

And the chase was on.

Piers was nearly as slow as Dudley, Harry knew, but Dennis tended to be a lot faster, and even more violent. He'd been a problem before, and made Harry truly hate Dudley's parties. Now, he was perfect.

Harry shook his head, spraying a load of sweat, and concentrated on his running as he started to get out of breath. Dennis was gaining on him, but his father would show in any moment, he was sure. Any...moment...now.

He was slowing, and Dennis was gaining. It hadn't occurred to him what would happen if his father didn't show. Damnit, Dad, where are you?

He was starting to get scared, which, rationally, was ridiculous. Neither Dudley nor his friends had actually hurt Harry in two years. His father didn't allow it.

But where was the man? Normally, he'd've showed by now. Dennis was right behind him.

Suddenly – sooner than Harry expected – he found himself plastered to the ground, hitting hard under the heavier boy's weight, and the ball was ripped from his grasp.

“So, you want to play Kill the Carrier, do you, Harry?” Dennis asked him.

Uh, oh. Father...please?