Harry returned to Number Ten the next morning at eight o’clock to find Snape where he left him, doing the Daily Prophet crossword.

“Ah, Potter. Good.” Snape put down his book. “How are your cooking skills?”

“Not bad,” Harry said.

“Oh really?” Snape sounded sceptical.

“Well, my relatives don’t complain about the quality, mostly. Just how fast I could get it to the table.”

There was a pause. “You cook for them?”

“I used to, before I went to Hogwarts. I know how to do it. Why, what did you want?”

“Oh, I already Summoned some fruit,” Snape said. “But you’ll need plenty of energy today. There’s eggs in the fridge.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“And Potter.”

“Yes?”

“I could do with a coffee. Black no sugar.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Harry busied himself with the coffee, and poured out two mugs. Leaving one on the bench, he took the other one into the living room.

“How did you sleep? he asked politely, holding out the coffee.

“Not brilliantly.” Snape rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “But better than nothing.” He reached for his mug. “Thank you.”

Harry returned to the kitchen, added milk and sugar to his own coffee, took a sip and then started frying eggs. There was silence from the living room and he engrossed himself in the task. When something tapped on the kitchen window, he started and nearly burned himself. “Hedwig!”

He opened the window and let her in. She gave him a nip on the finger in greeting.

“Hi, girl. Sorry but I have to ask you to leave again.” She hooted indignantly. “I know, I’m sorry, but it’s an emergency. Here, this is the letter, it’s for Dumbledore.” Harry withdrew the letter from his pocket. “He’s in Cyprus.”

Hedwig gave him a strange look, and hooted again.

“Don’t give me that look. Snape’s stuck to the floor and I can’t get him unstuck myself.”

She hooted again, this time sounding more like a laugh.

“Who are you talking to in there, Potter?”

“My owl!” Harry called back. “Now Hedwig, please.”

She ruffled her feathers and allowed him to tie the letter to her leg before she flew out of the window, and he hurried to rescue the eggs.

“Have you sent the letter?” Snape asked the moment Harry was in his range of vision.

“Yes, I have sir.”

“Good.”

Once Harry had finished his breakfast, he washed up and then dared approach Snape again, who was doing the crossword again.

“So ... what am I doing today?”

Snape lowered the Daily Prophet. “You can begin by fetching me a table and my work. Since I cannot make it into the potions lab I might as well work on my lesson plans for next term. The file is in my desk drawer, the first on the right.”

Harry followed Snape’s instructions and Snape began working after presenting Harry with a list of things to do. The first on the list was the laundry.

He fetched the laundry basket and began sorting the contents, trying to do it with the minimum amount of touching Snape’s dirty clothes. This was not a job he had ever wished for, in fact he’d have preferred to do one of Snape’s typical gross/exhausting detentions, but since Snape was unable to do it himself he didn’t complain.

The sorting was actually pretty easy, since everything was either black, grey or green. Harry tried hard not to see past the colours to what each item was, and bundled the grey pile into the washing machine. Next he washed his hands thoroughly, checked the time and then put the kettle on.

Snape looked surprised when Harry came into the living-room with a cup of tea, but Harry had been spending enough time with Snape to know he liked his routine—at least where tea and coffee were concerned.

“I didn’t have to ask,” he said in astonishment. “I was about to call you.”

“I know.” Harry placed the tea on a free corner of Snape’s table. “It’s milk and two sugars, just like normal.”

For a fleeting moment Snape looked impressed, but the expression was quickly replaced with a neutral expression. “That’s correct, Potter. Thank you,” he said stiffly.

“You’re welcome.” Harry pulled out the to-do list again.

2. Clean the kitchen

That was something he had no problem with. Snape kept his kitchen practically pristine, so it would be one of the easiest chores ever. Harry sprayed and wiped down all the surfaces, dusted the tops of the cupboards, cleaned inside the oven and inside the fridge and freezer. It had began as almost spotless, so the entire task took him about half an hour.

When he had finished, the laundry was almost done, so he waited and then unloaded it, put in the black wash and hung the wet stuff out on Snape’s washing line.

“Why don’t you just use a drying spell?” he asked as he came back inside curiously. “For that matter why even use a washing machine? Why not cleaning spells?” Snape scowled at being interrupted.

“Cleaning spells have their place, as do drying spells, but in my view washing with soap and water and drying naturally have better results. It is also better for the clothes; non-magical materials that are subject to a lot of magic have a habit of wearing out faster.”

Harry accepted this and checked the list again.

3. Tidy away equipment and ingredients from yesterday

That was a much bigger job. When Snape brewed, he tended to have a lot of things out to hand, and he was very picky about how they were put away. There was also going to be the matter of cleaning everything up, which would be much harder now it had been sitting down there dirty overnight.

Harry checked the time. Half past eleven. Perhaps he should do food for them both first and crack on with it afterwards.

“What was the food plan for today?” he called to Snape as he looked in the fridge.

“Ham sandwiches for lunch, chicken casserole for dinner,” Snape called back.

That wasn’t too bad then. Harry could see all the required ingredients. But he thought it might be better to prepare the dinner now as well, knowing he would be too tired later.

He made several rounds of sandwiches, buttering the bread as thickly as Snape did and adding his favourite mustard. The ham was good quality, thick slices carved from a joint. Harry added the last of the cherry tomatoes on the side, filled a jug with water and took Snape’s in to him.

Snape looked slightly startled. “Lunch already, Potter?”

“I thought it was better to do it now than start on a big job and interrupt it. You don’t have to eat it yet if you’re not hungry.”

Snape made no reply to this, but accepted the food and water. Harry returned to the kitchen, unloaded the next lot of laundry, hung it out and put the last load in. In between bites of sandwich, he began preparing the chicken casserole.

It didn’t take long to chop the vegetables and assemble all the ingredients in the dish. Harry put the lid on it and found a space for it in the fridge. Now it was time to get started on the potions lab.

As predicted, it was in a state. It was what Snape called organised mess, but still needed a lot of organising—and elbow grease—to put away.

Harry started with the worst job: cleaning out the cauldron. Remembering to avoid Magical Mess Remover, he checked with Snape and picked out a safe cleaning solution, but it was a relatively weak solution and still required a fair amount of scrubbing.

Once it was spotless and sparkling, Harry turned to the ingredients. He’d come to understand Snape’s shelving system, which was based on the magical properties of each ingredient rather than alphabetical, as in the student store cupboard. Armed with Snape’s Encyclopaedia of Potions to help him, Harry managed to put everything back in their proper jars and return them to their correct places on the shelves. Snape was bound to find a mistake when he checked his handiwork, but Harry was fairly confident he’d got at least most of it right.

He cleaned the table, each of the instruments, and finally the floor. Once he had finished he was knackered and his limbs were aching.

Thankfully, there was only one last item on Snape’s list.

4. Water house plants

It turned out to not be the simplest task. Snape gave him very specific instructions.

“Only an eighth of a pint of water for the spiky one. Don’t water the yellow one, it’s in hibernation, just give it a couple of drops of spider venom, in that bottle there. Be careful! The blue one needs special feed added, it’s in the cupboard—one fluid once to half a pint of water. No, that’s too much! How did you ever pass Herbology, Potter?”

Once Harry had managed to tend to each of Snape’s strange plants to his satisfaction, it was nearly six o’clock. He went back into the kitchen and put the casserole in the oven.

“Dinner’s in about an hour,” he said, coming back into the kitchen.

“Right.” Snape surveyed Harry critically. “It’s time you had a rest, Potter, you’ve been on your feet all day.”

Harry didn’t need telling twice; he settled comfortably on ‘his’ spot on the sofa and fell asleep almost immediately.

He was woken an hour and ten minutes later by Snape shouting at him that he needed to check on the dinner, and he stumbled into the kitchen. Still half asleep, he opened the oven door and reached in to pick up the pot without thinking.

“OWWW!”

Harry withdrew his burning hands hurriedly and plunged them into the half-full jug of water. The ice cubes had long melted, but it was still cold enough.

“Potter? What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing!” Harry called back. He didn’t want Snape to know he’d been stupid to reach into a hot oven without oven gloves—he would never hear the end of it.

Now he faced a problem. He couldn’t leave the casserole in the oven for twenty minutes while he attended to his burns. He was going to have to brave the pain long enough to get it out and dished up.

Harry took his hands out of the jug, gingerly wiped them dry and put on the oven gloves, wincing as he did so, and retrieved the dinner. Still wearing the gloves as a layer of protection, he spooned half of the food into a dish for Snape and took it in to him.

“That didn’t sound like nothing,” Snape said as he entered the room.

“I just stubbed my toe,” Harry said, limping slightly to sell the lie. “I’m fine.”

He ditched the oven gloves and returned his throbbing hands to the jug for twenty minutes, and when the pain had lessened he ate his lukewarm dinner. When he looked in on Snape, he saw the man had finished his food and was engrossed in what looked like a book of number puzzles.

It was about twenty to eight now. Harry collapsed on the sofa, and was just drifting off again when a voice said, “It’s time, Potter.”

Harry yawned and forced himself upright. “Yeah. Okay. I’m going. Night, Professor.”

“Goodnight Potter.”