Of Herbs, Crowns and Soot by Tedi
Summary: During the 19th century London, Harry Potter falls down the chimney of the apothecary of one Professor Severus Snape; bringing with him dire inconveniences.

But not every family is found in blood, and not every story follows the same path. For Harry, Snape and Draco, the truth has never been harsher.

A Severitus AU, one without magic. A/N: Slow edits.
Categories: Healer Snape, Master Snape > Apprentice Harry, Teacher Snape > Professor Snape, Parental Snape > Guardian Snape Main Characters: .Snape and Harry (required), Draco, Original Character, Remus, Sirius
Snape Flavour: Snape Comforts, Snape is Controlling, Snape is Depressed, Snape is Loving, Overly-protective Snape, Snape is Secretive
Genres: Angst, Family, Hurt/Comfort
Media Type: None
Tags: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Hospitalization, Injured!Harry, Physical Impairment, Sibling Addition
Takes Place: 3rd summer, 3rd Year
Warnings: Abusive Dursleys, Neglect, Physical Punishment Non-Spanking, Physical Punishment Spanking, Self-harm, Suicide Themes, Violence
Prompts: Chimney Sweep
Challenges: Chimney Sweep
Series: None
Chapters: 28 Completed: No Word count: 142312 Read: 33967 Published: 16 Jul 2020 Updated: 27 May 2021
The Return of Professor Snape by Tedi
Author's Notes:
We've all been waiting for this, haven't we? :)

Thank you to Absinthe, my beta, for her continuous efforts.

Hope you all enjoy. ;)

Back at the Leaky Cauldron, Harry sat with his head planted on the table. His other arm prickled under the wood, and he didn’t bother thinking of his injured arm as his fingers scratched down the unbandaged skin. Clumsy, impulsive. That was something Harry shared with the scratches. No doubt Professor Patel felt the same way about him, back turned to Harry and engaged in a lengthy conversation with Tom. Yasane was there, too, in the corner and throwing Harry the occasional, concerned glance. Harry pretended to not see them. His head continued to thud against the wood. 

Thud, thud, thud.  

The noise accompanied the throbbing of his heart. The hammering threatened to burst through his chest. 

Harry heard Professor Patel thank Tom quietly. Lifting his head, hair falling over his eyes, he could make out Professor Patel dropping something into her bag. With a fluid motion, she turned around. Her feet padded against the wood, almost nervous. Behind her, the book Harry had borrowed from the library lay dormant, abandoned - a reminder to Harry of a failure. A failure Professor Patel only damaged with her presence.

She didn’t smile, but gestured for him to follow. Her kind eyes didn’t follow Harry as he pushed himself from the table, swinging his legs over the bench in a daze. With a sloppy wave at Tom and Yasane, he followed after the Professor. 

The world Harry came to know swirled out of focus and into the gloomy, grey streets of London. The smells, the sounds - It all altered pathetically into monotone, miserable passers-by of an equally monotonous, miserable world where the only smell was of grime and dirt. Professor Patel, impassive to the change, turned right. Her footsteps mingled with the many others parading down the street. Harry followed, mood spiraling down with every step.

Professor Patel craned her neck to glance at Harry. Slowing down, she hung back until they were walking side by side, Harry’s feet embarrassingly clumsy next to the marched trot of the Professor. 

“How is your arm?” she asked, eyeing the bandages. On instinct, Harry slid his other hand over the bandage, starting at the top. His small fingers met the rough, bloodied shirt sleeves with uncomfortable solace. Healed was just one thing he was, among many. Bruised, healed, relieved, afraid. A whirlwind of emotion that had no place in his heart.

“I’m alright. I mean, well, it’s not as bad.”

“Oh, dear. I was rather afraid, no... terrified to find you as such in the middle of the street, bloody shirt and lonely, rather ruffled. I'm glad you told Tom about the cut. I hope you'll be more careful of pens in the future," she paused, offering a thin smile which only built the guilt Harry had for lying to the Professor

"Especially after hearing such troubling news from Professor Snape.”

Harry grimaced, tugging his bottom lip in a hard bite. Troubling news. Direct and derived from  a terrible source. Though he couldn't be entirely sure, Harry had little doubt that this source was his relatives who   had left the shop in havoc- jars pulled down from shelves, rations of herbs, plants, teas balms and more shattered on the ground in a heap of hopeless disappointment. Broken windows, crushed down doors and wallpaper that wouldn’t ever heal, according to Professor Patel, who said it with such sorrow Harry had to wonder if the shop was hers. She couldn’t be blamed though. Not for her sadness, not for her frown, not even for her down-turned eyes veiled behind her head scarf when the wind embraced the fabric particularly hard. 

They turned a corner on Professor Patel’s command. A placid hand wrapped around his shoulder, steering him clear from the path of a dense crowd. Her eyes remained bitter and dismal. Dormant. It didn’t suit Harry to want them to be kind, suffused in warmth. It was selfish, demanding, and something he didn’t deserve to have. 

Not yet.

Perhaps not ever. 

Harry took a deep breath, his heart anything but still, “Professor-”

Professor Patel gave him a firm squeeze, “Not yet, Harry,” she said, turning another corner that led to a flight of stairs, “Not yet. We’re almost there.”

Harry swallowed thickly, feeling rather shut out. Shunned. And though he knew he deserved it, it stung cruelly inside his gut, a heavy stone seemingly dropping down from his heart. 

The stairs, plain and grey as they are, led them to a street much like the stairs themselves. Long, narrow. Leaving you panting and searching in a hazy spin for a sign of where you were and where you were meant to go. Professor Patel didn’t falter in her composure. Her back stood firm, straight. Harry could barely see her chest rising beneath the layers of black fabric. 

No possible hindrance. 

“Oh, dear. Would you like a minute?” she turned around and matched his pace, her veil drooping beneath her chin when she bent down to his height, brows tightly knit together. Harry ignored her concerned gaze, hands on his knees while he waited for the pounding in his chest and ears to stop. 

After a few minutes, “I’m fine,” he said, lifting his head shakily, “Are we almost there?”

“Actually, we are,” Professor Patel said, back straightening, head turning to face a house close behind them. Breath still ragged, Harry followed her gaze across the street and along the height of a red house to a simple two story building. It was warm-colored and comfortable, but not inviting. Not for Harry. He followed the Professor anyway.

There were people outside. A small amount, so few as to be called a handful. Harry shrunk down against their stares, moving beside the Professor with a nervous step of feet. Professor Patel, in return, recoiled from Harry. Whirling around in a motion that sent her skirts flowing in a flowery swirl before pooling on the floor. Harry, defeated and betrayed, wistfully drew back. He didn’t lift his head when Professor Patel called a stranger’s name and fumbled inside her bag.

For a few moments, there was the familiar scratching of pen on paper followed by a set of footsteps and a foreign tongue. Unfamiliar to Harry, but undoubtedly familiar to the boy exchanging it with Professor Patel.

The conversation ceased. The boy shouted cheerfully after them, feet breaking into a run. 

“I have sent Professor Snape a message. He should be here soon, considering he has no house visits to make.”   

The spin Harry made to look at Professor Patel hurt his neck. Groaning, he slammed a hand down on his skin, Snape momentarily out of his mind until the thought came crashing back down. 

“Professor Patel, you don’t have to.”

“It’s quite alright,” Professor blissfully assured in her ignorance, dismissing his concerns with a smile, “He’s rather worried, I’m certain.”

Harry swallowed thickly, dropping his eyes, “He...” Harry tried in a whisper, “Professor Snape isn’t angry?”

Harry wasn’t sure what he was expecting Professor Patel to say. He hoped Snape wasn’t angry. He hoped that right as he got the message, Snape either came running to make sure Harry was safe or not at all. Though, Snape was always concerned for something. Concerned about the shop, about his customers and herbs.  Sometimes that concern was anger more than anything else.

Concern and only concern was all Harry wanted at this time.

But Professor Patel didn’t answer. Not verbally. Instead of reassurance, her lips pulled into a sharp smile and a maniac laugh escaped her - crazy, high pitched and echoing despite the absence of space in which to echo. The laugh startled Harry almost to the point of falling, his eyes wide with mild fear. She had tried, and failed, to hide it behind a clothed hand.

The brutal picture of Sirius Black entered his mind. 

It was gone as suddenly it came, however - the laugh that couldn’t possibly be hers and the picture that wasn’t meant to be in his mind in the first place. They left, and Harry was left with the soft smiling, ever sweet, kind-eyed Professor Patel. 

“He... He is angry, isn’t he, Professor?”

“What?” Professor Patel asked, brows disappearing up under her veil. They dropped in understanding not a second later, and Harry was afraid she’d fall into another fit of crazy laughter. Her face had contorted into a vaguely mysterious expression, after all.  But Harry would rather not bother solving it. 

“Oh, dear. Not at all, Harry,” Professor Patel said, walking towards the two-story house, leaving a much too relieved Harry behind her. 

Then she snatched it all brutally away.

“He’s rather furious.”

*

The door opened with a twist of a key. Too easily, too quickly. Harry wasn’t prepared. Professor Patel’s hand steered him from the now closed and locked door and stopped him beside a shelf that held-

Shoes? 

Pairs of shoes. Five pairs of shoes. Women’s shoes and men’s shoes. Two shelves of them with two more empty ones lined underneath. Harry’s eyes narrowed further when Professor Patel bent down to take off the one’s she was wearing, collecting them in her hands and stepping onto a red-brown carpet while sliding them into the slot at the very top. 

“Would you please take off your shoes as well?” Professor Patel said, turning to face Harry.

Harry regarded her with a tilted head before turning around and sitting down on the carpet, slipping his shoes out and taking one on each hand. Scanning the empty shelves, he pushed his own shoes directly under a black pair collecting dust. Oddly, that was the only pair that looked to be doing so. The rest were well-kept and in good quality.

“Follow me, Harry,” Professor Patel pulled him from his thoughts and into a hallway leading to an area which opened to three closed doors.

Harry didn’t dare linger far behind while looking around, but the slow pace Professor Patel walked with gave Harry the chance to take a look around the moderate-sized house. The condition wasn’t half bad, well enough to match the apothecary’s... previous quality. The interior, while simple, was coloured in rich pigments and held no space for decoration of any kind save for a mirror in the hallway they left behind. 

“Ahmed?” Aisha called into the house, rapping on one of the closed doors, “Where are you, habibi?”

A male voice came from the door to the very right, calling out in a foreign word, one similar to what Professor Patel had spoken with the boy outside, before the door opened, revealing a young man that resembled Professor Patel in one of those chairs with wheels Harry had seen in Diagon Alley. 

The man, who had dark skin, black hair and (unlike Professor Patel) black eyes greeted them with a soft smile before his eyes fell on Harry and his lips pulled down into a confused frown. 

“Aisha?”

Professor Patel approached the young man, Ahmed, and bent down to plant a soft kiss to his hair line with another jumble of words. Ahmed replied with a similar set and gestured Harry with an incline of his head, and the two conversed in their language. Harry recognized his and Snape’s name with a decent amount of worry and panic, which Professor Patel tried to ease with a smile once she turned around. 

“Harry, this is my brother Ahmed. Ahmed, this is Harry.”

Professor Patel’s brother rolled forward in his chair and extended a hand, “Nice to meet you,” he said in an accent unfamiliar to Harry, gripping his hand in a gentle hold.

“Nice to meet you too Mr. Patel,” Harry managed, shaking back, dropping his hand to his side and fumbling with the hem of his shirt nervously when Mr. Patel pulled back with a laugh.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been called that,” he managed between a hearty chuckle, shaking his head and meeting his sister’s eye.

“Too long,” Professor Patel confirmed, a chuckle of her own escaping her lips. Facing Harry, she slipped a hand behind his back, not pushing him but urging him forward to the door in the middle, “Please wait here while I wash up and bring us some tea. Ahmed-” she twisted her head to face the man once Harry had sat down on one of the sofas in what must be a parlor, “-would you stay with Harry while I wash up?”

Mr Patel nodded, turning his chair around so he could enter through the doors. Meeting Harry’s eyes with a smile, he pulled into an empty spot beside an armchair, flexing his hands before letting them rest on the armrests. 

“So, you were an assistant to Professor Snape?” Mr Patel chose to start, clasping his hands on his lap, “I haven’t seen him in a long time. How is he?”

Harry swallowed. He averted his eyes from side to side at first, unsure how to continue. Opening and closing his mouth multiple times, he finally spoke, head lowered and back hunched, “Well, I think. He was... irritated. Rather angry, I think.”

“What? With you?”

Harry rubbed his arm, “I hope not, sir.”

Mr Patel chuckled, easing back into his chair with relief, “I don’t enjoy seeing him irritated with me, either.”

“Sir-” Harry spoke before he could stop himself, throat drying when Mr Patel turned to face him.

“Yes?”

Harry cleared his throat. Twice and once more for good measure, though it didn’t do any good. His voice fell as soon as he started to speak, “I- nevermind.”

“No, no. Do go on.”

Harry lifted his eyes. Mr Patel gave him a firm nod, waving his hand for him to continue. Harry nodded in return, and took a deep breath.

“So you- You and Professor Patel... Do you know Professor Snape well? Professor Snape said, um, I remember him saying he and Professor Patel work at the same... school,” it came out with an air of question rather than statement, and Harry winced at his own tone while he continued, “Can you tell me about it?”

“Me? Well, I’m not as close to him as my sister, understandably, but yes. They work at the same school, Professor Snape as a teacher of chemistry and Aisha, well, I don’t know exactly, but I know she works with a portion of students. We’ve gotten close because the apothecary he runs actually belongs to our family.”

Harry blinked, narrowing his eyes, “Your family?”

Mr Patel nodded, “The apothecary belonged to our mother, but in recent years, we’ve had trouble managing it after her death. My father is a tradesman, and is often overseas. I’m a lawyer, but-” he motioned his legs, tapping his thigh with a tight-lipped smile, “-I cannot find work, for a number of reasons. We couldn’t sell the shop yet, as it was on contract, and we couldn’t find anyone to keep the shop. That is, until Aisha discussed the matter with Professor Snape and  he agreed to board there during summers until the end of this year. It was a fair deal, profitable, for both parties.”

“Who was the shopkeeper when Professor Snape wasn’t there?”

Mr Patel smiled sharply and pointed at himself with his thumb, “Why, me, of course! I have no knowledge of medicine, but I can manage sales of some plants and flowers.” 

“Oh, dear,” a voice said by the door, and Professor Patel walked in, carrying a tray with a jug and bowl, “If I remember, you almost caused the demise of the shop until you agreed to take in an assistant.” 

“Well, I’m not exactly tall, am I?”

Professor Patel placed the tray beside Harry on the sofa. Now Harry could see that beside the jug and bowl, was a dry, rough looking towel and a block of-

“Soap,” said Professor Patel, thrusting the soap into his hands, “I thought it’d be best for you to wash up here.”

Harry took the slippery bar into his hands and held them over the bowl, scrubbing his hands as he was told, surprised and rather ashamed to see the colour of the water when Professor Patel began to pour the water from the jug over his hands. Once Professor Patel was sure his hands were of acceptable standard, she handed him the  towel and began to walk out the room.

Harry stopped her mid-way.

“Professor Patel?”

She turned around, raising a brow.

“I’m so sorry... about your shop, that is. If I had known...”

Professor Patel’s expression softened, and she turned around fully to stand in front of Harry. 

“You could not have known, though. Those two wretched people had no right to damage our shop-”

“They paid the price, though, Aisha-”

“It wasn’t enough! I want to see them in jail-”

“We had the charges thoroughly paid, including the insurance-”

“Not what I’m trying to say, habibi,” Professor Patel said through her teeth, and the two of them shared a glare. A moment later, both of their drawn brows relaxed and Harry swallowed thickly, looking between the two with growing anxiety.

“The truth is,” Mr Patel spoke, stepping carefully into the matter, “You are not at fault. The two responsible for the damage are, and we’ve already settled it with court, have we not? We’re lucky Professor Snape reached the shop just in time-”

That’s when there came a hard, loud knock from the hallway. A heavy rap that snatched Harry by the heart and shook him until his soul came to pass on.

Thud, thud, thud.

It echoed inside his head, chest, ears, and throat. Suffocatingly loud. Terrifying. 

Professor Patel left the room with a swirl of her skirt, her feet disappearing down the hallway. A door opening, closing. More footsteps and the shuffling of shoes and finally, the outside door opening. 

Harry couldn’t hear much, both from his anxiety and the length of the hall. However, he did hear Professor Patel shout just once, demanding someone take off his shoes, which ended the conversation entirely until there was the sound of another set of shoes being pushed into the shelf. 

Harry’s ragged breathing hitched, almost stopping. Thud, thud, thud came the footsteps from the hallway. The wreckage that was Harry’s heart threatened to rise up his throat and out like bile. His head spun, making wild circles and unbalanced twirls. Taking it between his hands didn’t help, but until the very second the Patels called his name, one concerned, one asking for his attention, it was solace.

Harry lifted his head.

Professor Snape stood with his hands behind his long coat.

“Mr Potter,” Snape said, stepping through, his eyes narrowing towards Harry's arm, “I believe we have much to discuss.”

 

*

Professor Snape marched the length of the room with uncharacteristic speed. Measured steps crossed the distance between the door and the window before repeating, while more unfavorable words tumbled out of his mouth. Words which were all stolen from Harry’s mind, yet multiplied ten-fold in difficulty leaving Harry confused with cheeks shamefully aflame.

“Idiot, idiot child!” he is free to say, because the Patels are out of the room and have promised to not intervene, “I ask for you to do one thing - one thing , Potter! One simple task!- and you again manage to bewilder me by doing the exact opposite. Opening the door, Potter! I fail to see how you can manage to get into such circumstances when my exact instructions would have prevented you from all and any danger!” 

The floor sways under Harry’s feet. His eyes burn with unshed tears and his knuckles white from his harsh grip on the seat beneath him . Snape doesn’t pause,  and in the following minutes, Harry is left to listen to Snape’s tirade, the scolding that is ‘less than he deserves’. 

Ten long, angry minutes later and Snape throws himself down onto a chair. Ten long, terrible minutes and a few seconds later, his head in his hands and his chest rises with exhausted relief. 

Not a minute later, and Snape lifts his head. His narrow, black eyes boring into Harry’s own and the boy looks away, wiping a stray tear with the back of his head. Snape sighs. Harry wants to look up, look up, and see with deadly curiosity if Snape held concern in his eyes, or if they still flashed with anger.

He doesn’t dare. 

Snape summoned his attention anyway. He does so with a voice both exhausted and something else Harry doesn’t understand.

“How do you plan on defending yourself, Mr Potter?” 

Harry didn’t. He hadn’t thought he needed to, what with running away and assuming a job in Diagon Alley. He had planned on never meeting the Professor again. He was wrong. Very, very wrong, he thought, as the Professor matched him a scowl and a glare; his black hair fell in a curtain around his head far greasier than usual. His clothes too, now that Harry paid better attention, were stained and sewn clumsily in one spot; patches of white coloured certain areas.

Snape cleared his throat, claiming Harry’s attention once more with a thin-lipped frown.

“I asked you a question, Mr Potter. After your late-night travels and a span of a week without your notified absence, do me the courtesy of answering my questions. Honestly and verbally.”

Harry wiped his eyes once more, the burning not easing, “I-I don’t, sir. I never did.”

“Never, you say?”

Harry shook his head in emphasis, “I didn’t think-”

Snape scoffed in a manner which said ‘obviously’.

“I didn’t think I’d...” he said, pausing to swallow and continued the rest in a whisper, “I didn’t plan on seeing you again.”

“What was that, Potter?” Snape bit back, raising a brow. 

Harry repeated. Once more in a whisper. 

“Louder, Potter! Didn’t you hear me when I said-”

“I said I didn’t plan on seeing you again, Snape!” 

The lethal silence stretched far more than necessary between them.

Harry heard his own hitch of breath. He heard the pause while Snape’s back straightened. He heard, with dangerous fear, the ominous foreboding threat in wavering, fast approaching lines.

He heard great many things, but only saw the way Snape’s eyes first rose in mild surprise before narrowing into thin slits in what could only be anger. 

The world spiraled out of focus the minute Snape pushed from his seat with unnatural speed.

“Do. Not. Call. Me. That,” Snape gritted when their noses were touching, both hands on either side of Harry’s seat, his back arching over the armchair, “I mean it, Potter,” he advanced in a stern whisper and a raised finger, making Harry back away as much as he could in the chair, his eyes wide, “I will not put up with it, I assure you.”

Another silence. Harry hoped that, in a few short minutes, Snape would back away and leave Harry alone to deal with his thumping, racing heart. He didn’t, and Harry’s heart beat faster against his chest, threatening to steal his soul away, when Snape spoke once more.

“Now, tell me once again: How do you plan on explaining your actions?”

Harry refused to look back at those eyes, and hid behind a wall of his own arms wrapped about his knees pulled against his chest, “I’m sorry, Professor Snape. I truly am. I know you told me to lock the door. I know you told me to-to...” he broke off midway, voice cracking unceremoniously, “I know you did. You’re right. I know. But when I-I saw them... They were there and-” he wiped another tear he couldn’t hold back, sniffing a few times, “They were there, Professor Snape, and I couldn’t close the door, you know? They were banging on the window and Uncle Vernon looked so angry, and I couldn’t do it!” he cried out the last part, ignoring Snape as he flinched back, “I thought... I thought maybe... You’d taken me in, Professor. And you told Mast- Edwin that you’d report him, and I believed-” and Harry had believed. It was all he had done, and for that, he cried, streams of tears flowing down his cheeks, “I thought I could have been strong, alright? Brave. I thought I could have fended them off because I was away from them. I was here.”

I was with you.

Clearly, I was wrong.

Professor Snape didn’t step back. But his expression settled into something Harry hadn’t seen before. Professor Snape didn’t step back, no, but grimaced at the loud sniff Harry had produced. Slender fingers dug into his breast pocket before returning with a handkerchief which he dropped into Harry’s hands and refused to take it back with a grimace when Harry was finished using it.  

Harry dropped it on the coffee table, much to Snape’s distaste and resigned himself to occasional sobs and sniffs. 

Snape sighed, dropping his arms to his side and pinching the bridge of his nose, “Potter-”

“I found... I learned some things, while I was away ,” Harry cut him off, willing himself to speak now that Snape was far less angry, “Things about-” he looked up, eyes red and puffy, into Snape’s creased ones, “-my past. And my family.”

Snape’s face fell along with his hands. His skin, which was already profoundly pale, turned sallow and pulled at his cheekbones. It made him look thin. Sickly. And for a second, Harry was reminded that Snape didn’t look well at all. 

He ignored it for his own peace of mind.

“The Boy-Who-Lived. That’s what they called me. Did you know some aristocrat was going around murdering babies thirteen years ago, and the reason I earned the title was because he couldn’t murder me?” Harry said, biting out the last bits with rising anger. His jaw clenching with his fists while he continued, eyes narrowed almost as tight as Snape could pull them, “When were you going to tell me, sir? When were you going to tell me about my-” he licked his lips, heart viciously banging against his ribs, “my parents? My name?”

“Potter-”

“I didn’t even know their names!”

It came out in a scream that upset the coffee table as he stood up and shattered the ounce of self-control he prided himself to have. He didn’t care. Not about Snape. Not about some debt. 

Snape watched with raised, amused brows. Watched as first Harry stood up. Watched as Harry straightened his back. And finally, Snape watched as Harry pursed his lips and puffed his chest in foolish bravado.

“I didn’t know their names. I didn’t know anything about them.”

“Your knowledge, or the lack thereof, does not involve me,” said Snape, sweeping the dust above the floor with his coat as he made a turn for the door, “We’ve lingered far more than necessary here. We’ll take this conversation back home, once you’ve cooled your temper.”

When Harry stood his ground, Snape turned to face him with a ready scowl, hand on the door knob. 

“Mr Potter, it’s not in your favor to spoil my patience. I have clearly said we will take this conversation to the shop, where we have the luxury of not intruding on other people’s hospitality. Now come, Mr Potter.”

Harry breathed in, closing his eyes. When they opened, they opened fierce. Bright. He shook his head, subtly, twice, and clenched his jaw. 

“I’m not going with you.”

There was a silence of five seconds, where Snape too closed his eyes and resumed with a stern voice upon opening them, as though he was trying particularly hard to not throttle the nearest object at reach. 

“Potter, do not test my patience. I don’t have the energy nor mentality to deal with your tantrums. Either you will come with me!” he screamed, cutting Harry off with a raised finger and livid eyes, “Or I will leave you to find your own way back to the dirty slums as you so wish.”

Harry threw up his arms, landing a kick to the side of the sofa, “I said I won’t come! I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“You do not have a choice in the matter!” Snape shouted in return, prowling closer. And for each step he took towards Harry, Harry took a step back until the back of his legs touched the sofa and his flailing arm landed on the coffee table for support. He’d be cornered again, with another measured step, his nose touching the Professor’s.

Not this time. 

With speed that surprised Harry himself, he slipped past at the very last second. Sliding around the Professor’s slender frame to bolt for the door. 

With speed that surprised Snape himself, he caught Harry by the collar at the very last second. Choking him with a disgruntled sound, he was pulled down onto the floor with his head facing the ceiling. 

Harry's neck burned, and so did his eyes. More so when Snape’s face appeared in his swirling vision, which he regarded with a scowl while his tears prickled. 

“I hate you,” Harry whispered raggedly, pulling his arm over his head, body shaking with brief, sporadic tremors, “I hate you for so many reasons. You have no idea, do you?” he paused, heart skipping a beat, “ Do you even care?” 

“I have my intuitions. And no,” he paused, bending down, “I do not,” Snape replied from somewhere in the dark; his cold, long fingers meeting Harry’s small ones and pulling him to a stand. 

“Let’s go, Potter. You’ve had enough adventures.”

And as he was led to the door, coiling back from the light, he could almost agree. 

However, before they could leave through the hallway, Professor Patel exited from the door on the side, which from above her shoulder, Harry could make out a kitchen. 

“You’re leaving already, Professor Snape?” she asked, looking rather dreary. Harry hoped it wasn’t in regards to what Snape would do to him. 

Snape’s grip on his upper arm pulled him back to a stop, his shoulders dropping their tension, “We’ve overstayed your hospitality as is. I apologise, Professor  Patel, for getting you involved in our affairs.” 

Professor Patel didn’t look back at Snape. Instead, she stood standing in front of them for some while, looking lost in thought before a sharp smile pulled on her lips and she shook her head. Harry was afraid she’d fall into another fit of scary laughter. 

“I say it’s somehow my affair as well, Professor Snape,” she said, crossing her arms, “I’ll see you out.” 

And with her in the lead, Harry was marched forcefully by the steel grip Snape had on his arm, the hold momentarily gone whilst he put on his shoes only to return back on his shoulder as they walked out the door. 

“Oh, and Professor Snape?” 

Snape and Harry turned to look back, just as they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“I hope you’ll be inclined to share whatever… proceeding you have going on with young Harry with us soon.”

“Have I made it far too obvious?” Snape asked, voice mingled in both amusement and irritation. 

She shrugged, a hand closing the door to a crack, “Obvious enough for me. Take care?”

And the door closed with a click. 

To be continued...
End Notes:
Thank you for sparing your time to reading this. If it's no trouble, please don't hesitate to comment anything below, for they drive the story forward. :)

The next chapters will be a delight, specifically chap. 8, filled with even more wholesome, angsty, fun and whump-y moments. Hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am. Hope to see you next week, everyone.

Salam!


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