The day Severus Snape was burdened with a commission he did not want to accept and was compelled to prematurely shut Hogwarts down for the summer, was one of the longest days in Harry’s life, as pain and thirst overshadowed the otherwise beautiful summer day. 

The weather was sunny and the temperature was high already in the morning. Harry woke up in his bed after a restless night and concluded within a fraction of a second that he was not better, rather worse, because he was sweating and having chills as if he had a fever. He rose and opened the window to let Hedwig out, the letter to Madam Pomfrey attached to her leg. The fresh air was soothing on his hot skin and a whiff of jasmine mounted from the garden.

As the day went by, however, Harry’s room became hotter and hotter as the sun wandered to shine straight through the window. Aunt Petunia only checked on him once as she opened a small chink of his door to peak inside. Harry turned painfully in his bed to meet her eyes. In answer to her question, he replied that he had sent a letter to his school nurse. It seemed to satisfy his aunt. 

When he shyly asked for a glass of water, Aunt Petunia sneered and told him roughly to drag himself to the bathroom and drink from the tap. Shortly thereafter, however, Dudley popped in and without looking at Harry, he handed him the toothpaste-stained plastic mug where Dudley kept his toothbrush. Harry gulped the water down gratefully, but the mug was torn abruptly from him when Aunt Petunia called sharply for Dudley to come down. Aunt Petunia seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to detecting anything concerning Harry. Dudley did not dare to reappear after that and Harry supposed that his cousin had got strict instructions not to go back to Harry’s bedroom.

In the afternoon, the room was as hot as an oven and Harry was panting and drifting in and out of sleep. When he was awake, he could think of nothing but water and about how fast a magical owl made it from Surrey to Scotland. He made an attempt to get out of bed to fetch some water, but almost fainted from pain and fell back down on the hard mattress.

For many hours he abstained from calling his aunt, because he knew that pleading for help would inevitably mean that what he wished for would be withheld from him. He had learnt this the hard way at an early age: don’t ask anything of Aunt Petunia, don’t wish for anything, because that was a certain way of not obtaining it. Enthusiasm must always be dampened and wishes subdued. Humbling oneself, waiting silently, indifferently, preferably pretending not to want anything at all was a better tactic, as the whims of his aunt sometimes made her offer him this or that at random. Towards the late afternoon, however, he could not stop himself from crying softly for water. He heard his aunt move about in the kitchen, but was not sure that his calls reached her. He perceived the heavy steps of Dudley on the top floor, though, and increased his pleading for something to drink. He heard Dudley stop outside in the hall for a moment before he continued downstairs. Harry hoped that his cousin would transmit Harry’s need to his mother, but the response from Petunia would depend on her mood, which apparently was foul this afternoon, as neither Dudley nor Aunt Petunia mounted again and no water was brought to Harry. 

It was not until late in the afternoon that Hedwig came back and it was not until Harry sat up in his bed to unfasten the letter attached to her leg, that Harry fully realised how ill he was. It was excruciatingly painful to move and when he touched his stomach, it was strangely taut, as if permanently frozen in the middle of the most strenuous phase of a sit-up. Falling back against the pillow after that small bit of exercise, Harry started to shiver violently and felt his temperature raising. It was as if something had burst inside his stomach to release all kinds of toxic substances into the body. 

With a sinking heart, Harry read Madam Pomfrey’s short answer. He needed to go to a Muggle hospital to have surgery. He was relieved and disappointed at the same time. It would have been easier, in a way, if he had been obliged to go to Hogwarts for magical treatment. He felt a surge of apprehension, because…. surgery… that meant that you cut into a person’s body, did it not? He pushed the thought aside and focused on how to get his aunt’s attention and how to convey Madam Pomfrey’s message in the best way. As if she had sensed his preoccupations, his aunt appeared at the door. It turned out that she must have kept a watch-out for Hedwig because she immediately asked for the letter. Harry showed her and she frowned, pressing her lips together as she read the note. Somehow, strangely, she did not seem surprised by the content, only incredibly angry, as if she had been insulted somehow.

”Well, they can just come and take you to a hospital themselves,” she spat. ”I’ll write them an answer.”

”But, Aunt Petunia, the school is closed in the summer. Madam Pomfrey is probably leaving on a vacation. And you see, it’s that appendi… appendi-something. A girl in my class at primary school caught that too and had surgery. It’s not a magical disease at all. I don’t need any special treatment, just the same as ordinary people.” Harry had to make an effort to speak and the words came out pantingly and weak as he carefully tried to persuade his aunt, endeavouring not to let his desperation show.

His aunt did not give him an answer, but sneered while she picked up a piece of paper from his desk and scribbled something on it before she ordered Harry to give it to Hedwig and send the owl away.

”She’s tired,” Harry tried to object. ”She’s made it all the way to Scotland and back within ten hours. She might not have the strength to…”

”I don’t care. Send her away!” ordered his aunt. ”I’m not responsible for your owl, nor for your school to have so deplorable ways of communication. Not even a phone number when you want to contact someone!”

Harry complied with a sinking heart, fumbling with Hedwig’s leg as his hands were shaking and his sight was blurred from dizziness. When his aunt turned to walk out of the room, he could not help himself from pleading.

”I need some water, Aunt Petunia, please… I’m so thirsty.”

”I’m sure your precious magical friends will attend to all your needs and whims when they arrive. In the meantime, I have other things to do than to run up and down the stairs. Vernon will be home soon and I have a dinner to prepare,” she snapped.

When she left, Harry lay curled up on his side, crying silently in hopelessness. He stopped soon because crying made his stomach hurt worse and his eyes stung from dryness. There was not enough liquid left in him to waste on tears. He drifted into unconsciousness again.

Uncle Vernon came back from work at seven o’clock as usual that evening. Harry woke from the front door slamming shut. A strong wind had risen outside, and dark clouds were rushing over the small piece of sky squared by Harry’s window. The heavy heat during the day was culminating in a thunderstorm. Harry heard murmuring voices from below that soon escalated. Startled, he realised that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were having a row. And that was when it started to grow really ugly at Number four, Privet Drive.

***

At 8.30 pm Severus Snape strode through the empty streets of Little Whinging under a downpour of rain, his permeated wizard cloak flapping and plastering itself around his body from time to time. The wind was moody, increasing and decreasing randomly and seemed to come from different directions at once. As a consequence, Snape’s face was splashed with water, despite the hood he had drawn over his head. 

The Potions Master had spent the past three hours damning Poppy Pomfrey, Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter. His rage had empowered him to do his packing in record time, secure his potions lab in a provisory way and then to visit all the ward spots of the castle and of the grounds to strengthen the protections and prepare the premises for a long-term shut-down. Despite his efficacy, it had taken him three hours to complete the procedure and before he had Apparated his belongings to Spinners End, it was quite late in the evening and he was exhausted and magically depleted by his work. 

Snape moved on to cursing Muggle suburbs - they were so ugly and meaningless! - damning people in general and Muggles in particular. From there he started to swear over the weaknesses of the human body and its diseases - appendicitis in particular. What an utterly ridiculous disease! A small part of the bowel to no use, a cul-de-sac of the intestines that no one needed. Only, for wizards and witches, the organ was of paramount importance - in that it needed to be removed to liberate magical energy. The appendix was the only non-magical part of a wizard and it was not until it was removed that the wizard would have the possibility to develop his magical potential. If something went wrong and the appendicitis never blossomed out, the wizard’s or witch’s magical powers would regress and leave them as squibs. It was a dreaded occurrence, and in wizard families, parents awaited their children’s appendicitis with apprehension and joy, because it was truly a rite of passage into the magical world. 

The dependency on Muggle health care for the removal of the appendix caused trouble for the most secluded magical people and was a source of humiliation for the pure-blood families who despised the Muggle world. Snape knew subcultures of the pure-blood community who had educated their own surgeons in order to avoid the mortification of attending a Muggle hospital. The fact that wizards never needed surgery in any other context, however, made these wizard healers perform inferiorly to the Muggle surgeons, who had plenty of practise on operative procedures. So most magical families bowed to the dependency on Muggles, who at any rate were completely ignorant of their heroic contribution to the magical world. Every single wizard and witch in modern times had in fact gone through their hands and under their knife on the operation table. 

As Snape walked up the driveway to Number four, Privet Drive, he seemed to enter a particular angle where he found shelter from the wind. He stopped for a second to wipe his face with a handkerchief, before he stepped up to the door. He realised as he lifted his hand to knock, that he was probably about to meet Petunia Evans, who he had not seen for fifteen years. There was an unpleasant notch in his stomach that he tried to ignore and for some reason he cleared his throat repeatedly.

It took some time before the door opened. Snape had the time to move backwards on the lawn and check that light was shining out of several windows as a sign that someone was home, before the white-painted door was thrown open rather violently. Had he not stepped back a moment earlier, he might have received it plain in the face. 

Petunia Evans-Dursley stared at him for a few seconds before sniggering and jerking her head.

”How appropriate that it’s you, Severus!” she said. ”I told you one of them would turn up,” she continued in a hard voice to someone inside the house. Snape stepped forward and caught sight of a fat and pale man in the hallway, supposedly Petunia’s husband. Snape let his eyes search Petunia’s face. There was a slight resemblance, he thought with a pang of regret, but she was nothing like Lily. The features of this woman were taut and hard and her gaze was cold.

”Lily’s admirer,” said Petunia, adding sarcastically on her husband’s behalf: ”My sister’s rejected lover. How noble of him to come looking for her precious child.”

Snape could not help blushing slightly. This was more humiliating than he had expected and he felt a new surge of anger mount in him. 

”The boy has already been taken to the hospital,” Petunia hissed maliciously.

Snape felt the irritation prickle his skin. Just as he had expected. All his work, all his haste in vain. He pressed his lips together and prepared to swirl around. He realised that he had not pronounced one single word since the door opened. 

”Yes, that’s right, go away and never come back!” spat Petunia, suddenly hoarse and emotional, and slammed the door shut. Snape inhaled sharply, turned around and took a few steps on the lawn before he stopped to exhale and think. His instincts told him that something was wrong. It took him a few seconds, through the haze of vexation, to realise what it was. After a slight hesitation, he forced himself to walk back to the door, ready to repeat his knock, when it opened from the inside, slowly and carefully this time. The fleshy face of Petunia’s husband showed in the chink. Snape noticed that the man’s eyes were slightly puffy and red-rimmed.

”If you’re both here, who is with Mr Potter at the hospital?” asked Snape without preamble. Mr Dursley shot a quick glance over his shoulder back inside the house. 

”No one… No one is. I’m not even sure she drove him to the hospital - she was so adamantly against it at first and then when I tried to persuade her that we must go, she suddenly changed her mind in a fit of rage and dragged him down into the car and left with him. She came back twenty minutes later and said that she had dropped him off at the hospital.” Mr Dursley spoke so quietly that Snape had to bend forward to hear him. The fat man looked ridiculous, as he was hunching and clinging to the handle of the door, but there was true pain in his eyes and his whole countenance signalled how horrified the man was.

”Will you please check that Harry is okay?” Petunia’s husband whispered. ”She might have dumped him anywhere. I’m so sorry that I have to doubt my own wife, but she is so filled with… hatred towards that boy at times… I don’t understand… I really don’t understand… I’m not sure he reached the hospital and if he did, he is all alone. Please! Petunia will never forgive me if I go… She’s all I have. She’s a good person except when it comes to the boy. I could not stand to loose her. Yet I could not live with… I tried to explain to her… To reason with her… If the boy… If Harry was to…” The man drew his breath. ”He was so ill, you see… We had already waited too long… and he lost consciousness twice on the stairs… Please…” 

Snape had seen many ugly things during his days as a Death Eater, but this begging man with his huge body surface of cowardly wobbling flesh was one of the most distasteful scenes he had witnessed. Yet it was not the man’s appearance, but the implications of what he was saying that sent shivers of horror down Snape’s back. What had they done to the child?

”Which hospital did she say she left him at?” he asked. 

”St Paul’s… At the other end of the town. Thank you,” whispered Mr Dursley and started when he heard his wife’s sharp and impatient voice calling him from the living-room. With a last look at Snape he shut the door silently. Snape drew his cloak closer around himself, cast a look down the empty street and Apparated directly from the Dursley’s garden.

***

When Harry realised that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were quarrelling, he forced his foggy mind to stay awake and try to make out what was going on. Suddenly the door to his room was flown open and an upset Dudley appeared.

”They’re having a row again… because of you,” the boy said, distraught and resentful, but after that statement, he simply sat down on the edge of Harry’s bed and listened together with Harry to the rolling voices from the hall down-stairs.

”This letter says that we have to take him to the hospital.”

”I have sent a note to ask for them to come and fetch him.”

”Why? We are his guardians. I am perfectly able to drive him to the hospital, Petunia. It will take no time. If they are wrong and it is nothing, the doctor will send us home again, but if they’re right and he suffers from appendicitis, he clearly needs surgery, don’t you see?”

”You are not going anywhere with that boy, Vernon, I warn you!”

”Step out of my way, Petunia. I’m only mounting to check how he is. It’s our duty, don’t you understand? What would it say about us if we let him…?”

”Someone of his kind will come and collect him sooner or later. You don’t need to see him. Why are you always to damned concerned about him? I thought we had been through this already, Vernon! He’s my responsibility, he’s my nephew!”

Harry and Dudley heard rumbling steps on the stairs, a choked swearing coming from Uncle Vernon and shrill cries from Aunt Petunia as if she tried to prevent him from mounting and he tore away. At last Uncle Vernon showed up at the door to Harry’s room, red in the face and breathing heavily. 

”Good Heavens!” he exclaimed when he saw Harry on the bed. He was about to hurry to the bedside when Aunt Petunia gripped his arm forcefully from behind and somehow managed to swirl him around. How the thin woman had the strength to do so to a man more than twice her weight was a mystery. But she was livid with rage and hissed at her husband:

”Do… NOT… approach him!”

”Petunia… He is so ill. It’s a catastrophe. We should have gone yesterday like I said. He’s running a fever. A very high temperature. Look at him - he’s barely conscious. I should have checked on him before leaving for work this morning, but you promised me, Petunia, you promised me.”

”Don’t go near him, I say. And Dudley come away from his bed!” commanded Petunia. 

”Appendicitis is not contagious, if that’s what you think, pet.” Uncle Vernon suddenly sounded relieved as if he had found a rational explanation to Aunt Petunia’s weird behaviour. But Aunt Petunia snorted.

”Of course it’s not. I know that,” she spat. Uncle Vernon looked at her in confusion. ”We need to wait for them to come,” she said stubbornly.

”But what if they’re not coming? We cannot risk it… Petunia… Petunia, darling, you know I love you. Dudley and you are everything to me, but I could not… I could not watch… a child… die… in my own house… right in front of me… I cannot…” Uncle Vernon’s voice broke and Harry noticed dazedly that Dudley had tears streaming down his face. Am I dying? Harry thought. He was too weak to react to the thought.

”He’s not dying. Don’t be daft,” Aunt Petunia snorted, but she cast Harry a cold, searching glance.

”I’ll take him. Right now. There’s no other way. I’m going to carry you downstairs, Harry. Prepare yourself to…” His uncle was interrupted by Aunt Petunia, who walked so close up to him with clenched fists that Uncle Vernon actually backed off. Was she really going to hit her husband? Harry thought bewildered. Dudley shrieked weakly and sniffed repeatedly. 

”I won’t allow you to go. You don’t realise what you’re doing. You cannot once again choose that boy over your own family. It will be devastating. Don’t you care about Dudley? How he’ll feel if you do it?” shouted Aunt Petunia.

”Mum, Harry’s ill. He needs to go to the hospital. It’s okay. I don’t mind,” said Dudley in a trembling voice. Uncle Vernon looked with a mixture of hope and dread at his wife.

”You don’t understand!” she exploded. ”Neither of you do. Do you think that it is an ordinary appendicitis? Do you think that anything about him is ordinary? I know. I grew up with a sister of the same kind as he. I know the consequences - so just you let me handle it!” Aunt Petunia looked ready to fight both her son and husband if necessary and Harry noticed with dread the determined and almost insane glow in her face. For the second time in his life, subsequent to Aunt Petunia’s words, Harry witnessed his uncle break down as the huge man started to cry. 

”We can’t let him die… Petunia, please, we cannot,” his uncle stuttered dejectedly. ”What will become of us if we do? Don’t you see? My grandfather died from appendicitis. He was elderly, but still, he caught it, went to the hospital too late, because it burst and caused a generalised infection in his abdomen and even if they tried to save him and he had surgery, he died two days later. Please, I cannot have this on my conscience. We cannot live together after this, Petunia - it does not matter how much I love you, it will be impossible to…”

Aunt Petunia stared at her husband mutely as he sobbed, shoulders slumped, head bent. He did not intend to fight her physically, but contented himself with this sniffling plea. Suddenly Aunt Petunia swirled around and approached Harry’s bed, jaws set grimly, eyes flashing. 

”Get up, boy!” she said and jerked the sheet covering Harry’s still pyjama-clad body away. She grabbed him by one arm and pulled him roughly on his feet. Harry let out a cry at the stabbing pain in his stomach on standing up so abruptly. Everything around him went black and he must have passed out for a short while, for the next moment he found himself in the hall outside his bedroom, dragged by his aunt. From this point, Harry only heard bribes of words as he slipped in and out of consciousness, pain and dizziness intermingling. He desperately tried to keep on his legs not to fall down the stairs towards which his aunt dragged him without hesitation. Had not Aunt Petunia maintained her grip of iron around his arm, he would have fallen over. She acted as if possessed and was surprisingly strong.

”… fainting. Careful, you’ll fall, both of you!”

”Let go!”

”Where are you going?”

”… hospital. Are you happy now?”

”… carry him.”

”Don’t touch him.”

”… call an ambulance?”

”…ridiculous…”

”You haven’t driven in fifteen years, Petunia. Why don’t you…?”

”… you make me…”

”…insane. Why can’t I…?”

”You stay away, Vernon, for your own and Dudley’s sake. I’ll drive him to the hospital. Satisfied?”

The next time he came to his senses, they were outside and she was dragging him through the rain towards the car. Harry opened his mouth to try to catch some raindrops in his mouth. Absurdly, the craving for water seemed to rule out the fear and the pain for a short while until he was shoved into the backseat of the car. Through the not yet closed door he watched his aunt and uncle fight over the car keys. His uncle’s fat fingers were closed around his aunt’s small hand. In the shine of a lightning it looked like he was towering over her and was about to murder her, if not the distraught expression on his face had contradicted the staging.

”Petunia, it’s dangerous. What are you doing? You might have an accident.”

”There is no one out on the streets in this storm. I have my license, give me some credit, Vernon. And I’m doing this for you, remember. Let go!”

Harry heard the doors slam, the motor ignite and the car started to move in small jumps that made Harry groan as it sent stabs of pain through his stomach. 

Even if he was not fully conscious all the time during the ride that followed, it was an experience that Harry would not soon forget. Aunt Petunia drove fast and jerkily, making Harry bounce on the backseat. Through the car window, the light of passing street lamps alternated with lightnings from the thunderstorm. As they rolled further and further away from Privet Drive on unknown roads, Harry felt the apprehension rise inside him. Where were they going? Had Aunt Petunia really lost her mind? Was she actually driving to the hospital? Or would she dump him in an empty backstreet, on a field or in a forest? Harry cried tearlessly, shaking with chills and from fear. He felt that it was futile to beg for his life. His instincts told him that his aunt was beyond reasoning and pleading. Was this it? Was he going to die?