“You will respect me as your parent,” Snape began, “and refrain from answering back or disobeying my orders. Bearing in mind I am now responsible for disciplining you, and I will if I have to.”

Harry gulped.

“If you disobey me in a teaching capacity, then I shall take points and assign detentions as I did before. If you defy me in a parental capacity, then I will not hesitate to revoke privileges. You will follow any instructions you are given for your safety, as I have no intention of running around trying to keep you out of the Dark Lord’s clutches every moment for however long this war lasts. You will follow them without question and if you are told something does not concern you, then that is the end of it—you do not try and find out under your own steam. I will allow you to keep that Invisibility Cloak of yours—”

Harry started; that had been unexpected.

“—since it can protect you in an emergency, but if I find you have been using it for simply rule-breaking then the punishment will be severe.”

Snape took a breath. Harry wondered if the man was getting pleasure out of lecturing him like this. He had probably always wanted to be able to control Harry; even if it meant putting up with his company.

“I understand you currently have full control of your Gringotts vault. I will not interfere with that provided you are not silly with your money—if you prove yourself incapable of managing it, then I will have it restricted and you will instead receive an allowance until I deem you responsible enough to return access. During classes I will be treating you like any other student; do not expect any special treatment because you are now my—son.” The word sounded bitter.

“However … I will no longer single you out simply for your celebrity status; ignore any attempts by anyone to get you in trouble; insult your intelligence, ability or parentage; attempt to get you thrown out the school; blame other people’s actions on you; or …” Snape hesitated. “Anything else I ever did that was—unfair.” He looked truly uncomfortable at admitting this. “For this charade to work, we have to both work on not antagonising the other.”

Harry nodded, but a thought had occurred. “Prof—I mean … Father …” That word did not sound good on his tongue at all.

“Yes, Po—Harry?” His name coming back at him felt even stranger.

“Um … even if we pull this off … what’s to stop the Ministry asking around? Anyone will tell them that we’ve always hated each other. It’s not exactly a secret.”

Snape paused, thinking. “You have a good point …” He frowned. “I don’t know. That is another problem.”

“That alone’s probably enough for Fudge to prove this wasn’t our choice—right?”

“I don’t know, P—Harry. It would certainly raise question marks, unless we can come up with a plausible reason …”

Harry considered. “Well … what if … we said it was an act?”

Snape merely raised an eyebrow. Harry hurried to explain.

“Say, we didn’t hate each other—instead, had a … good relationship—but maybe so you couldn’t be accused of favouring me, we both pretended otherwise. Only we both went a bit overboard and gave everyone the impression it was pure loathing.”

Snape actually looked impressed. “That’s … actually not a bad idea, Potter.” He paused. “Harry. It might work … would be difficult to disprove, anyway …”

“Unless—oh.” Harry paused. “Suppose someone asked how we got a good relationship in the first place? Everyone knows you picked on me the moment we met.”

Snape considered. “Then we say we knew each other since before Hogwarts.”

“Oh!—Er, how?”

“We say … I visited you at your relatives’,” Snape said, surprising Harry further.

“Why would you do that?”

“To … to check up on you because—because your mother was an old school friend.”

“Oh.” Harry paused. That was fairly logical. After all, Snape had been to school with his parents—and saying he had been friends with his dad would be a lie far too big for anyone to believe. Come to think of it, Snape had never mentioned Harry’s mother in his criticisms.

“I guess that might work. Unless they asked the Dursleys …”

“I doubt that, but I’ll have a word with the Headmaster about memory modification. And I should probably meet them again.”

Harry was instantly alarmed. “What?—I mean, pardon?”

“Well, it would not look very good if, to confirm our story, I was asked to describe your relatives and couldn’t—would it?” Snape pointed out.

“Yeah, but … couldn’t you just look at a photo or something?” Harry couldn’t allow Snape and the Dursleys to meet; he wasn’t certain how it would go but he was picturing Snape starting to see Harry as an unloved freak rather than an infuriating, pampered celebrity (he preferred the latter—he could ignore that), and the Dursleys giving Snape ideas about even more ways to punish him.

“A photo would not tell me what they are like.” Snape looked at Harry shrewdly. “Any particular reason why you seem reluctant for me to meet your relatives? It is for your own good after all.”

Harry swallowed. “Um, no, sir—Father.”

This wasn’t good at all. But he could think of no valid argument.

“Hmm … If the Ministry asks why we waited until now for the adoption—we could say I was reluctant to jeopardise your safety by taking you away from the protection your relatives offered—but since you were going to be leaving them anyway, if Fudge got his way, then …”

“Oh—yeah, that explains the timing as well,” Harry said, half a mind still worrying about the Dursleys.

“Quite. That’s settled, then.” Snape looked around at the clock. “We shall have to discuss the smaller details later. Go and unpack while I get dinner on. You may take any bedroom except the master, which is mine.”

Recognising his dismissal, Harry dragged his trunk—which was its full size again, but still feather-light—up the stairs, and left it on the landing whilst he inspected the rooms.

There were three. The master bedroom was quite obvious, as it was considerably larger than the others and looked more lived-in. Harry had no desire to earn his first punishment for venturing into Snape’s bedroom, so he quickly moved his trunk into the nicer of the other two bedrooms.

Though smaller than Snape’s, it was still pretty big, with a little private annexe which housed a desk, chair, and set of shelves. The whole suite was decorated like the living-room—bronze-coloured carpet and cushions, cream bedding and bedside rug, and his bedspread and both window and four-poster curtains were the same as the curtains downstairs: cream, embroidered in silk with small bronze flowers and green leaves in spirals.

The window was large, spanning most of the wall, and overlooked a large garden spilling with plants; beyond that, other large houses and gardens. The furniture was old, dark oak like downstairs. In addition to the annexe and the bed, Harry had a window-seat, a wardrobe, chest-of-drawers almost as tall as him, a large set of freestanding shelves, a bedside table, a smaller version of the sofa downstairs and another small table, and his own fireplace, though there was nothing lit.

Well, Harry thought, it beat Dudley’s second bedroom. It definitely beat the cupboard under the stairs. And he had more space here than at Hogwarts.

Remembering Snape had sent him to unpack, Harry quickly opened his trunk and began doing so. His clothes were easily stashed in the wardrobe and drawers. His schoolbooks went on the shelves in the annexe. Everything else he arranged neatly on the bedroom shelves, except his Firebolt which had to stand in a corner, and his Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder’s Map which he stashed under the mattress. Snape had said he wasn’t going to relieve Harry of the Cloak, but Harry wasn’t taking any chances.

There. Harry sat down on the bed for a breather. He was unpacked. All ready for a … new life.

He swallowed, stomach full of butterflies. He didn’t feel ready for this. He didn’t know what to expect. Not that he wasn’t relieved Snape wouldn’t be making him scrub cauldrons all day—hopefully—and constantly bang on about his father being so arrogant, but usually Harry had an idea what to expect from Snape. Pure nastiness—simple. Now, Snape was going to have to be nice to him—and vice versa.

Harry wasn’t sure how he could do that—pretend to be a family. He’d never had a real family. The Dursleys were no good example. The Weasleys were wonderful, but the dynamic in their home was very different from anything he and Snape could falsely create. Even if he and Snape were genuinely family, then it would still be different. He had nothing to go on. He didn’t know how to be a son.

Surely, if the Ministry looked too closely, they’d realise? How could he and Snape ever hope to convince anyone that they even mildly liked each other? Let alone …

Snape’s a spy, Harry reminded himself. He’s probably used to lots of acting. He, Harry, on the other hand ...

What was he thinking about? He knew how to do this. He’d pretended to be the happy, beloved nephew when he was in public with the Dursleys, from a very young age. He was used to pretending everything was fine and that he wasn’t completely terrified of them. He’d learned to smile, be polite to strangers like Aunt Petunia insisted, not flinch when Dudley came near him, and if necessary lie his backside off.

He had obviously been quite good at it, for when Harry had finally got old enough to realise that most kids didn’t sleep in cupboards and get called freaks by their families (which took him longer than he wanted to think about), he realised he couldn’t recall anyone, ever, suspecting that something was not quite normal in the Dursley household.

Maybe this wasn’t impossible after all.