It was awkward, walking into the kitchen, knowing that Snape would be there. Harry had never liked learning new routines, and this was very much new to him-- he didn’t really have an idea of how exactly he was meant to be acting. At the Dursleys’, he’d known what to do for as long as he could remember. At Hogwarts, he’d just copied the other students. At Ron’s-- well, Ron was there, and the other Weasley children, to watch so he could adjust his behaviour if necessary. But here--

Snape was in the kitchen, and Harry was the only other one there. And he really didn’t know what Snape expected of him. To be polite, of course-- though Snape often made that difficult. To have manners. But it was always the small things that were important, like if he was meant to sit at the table, or assist, or--

Harry told himself to stop overthinking, and stepped towards the sink to wash his hands. Snape’s eyes stayed on him as he did so, the man’s hands deftly slicing cucumber. The boy scrubbed his fingers and beneath his nails for longer than he usually would, not knowing quite what to do when he finished.

After he’d dried his hands on the tea-towel, though, Harry was saved from awkward hovering. Snape told him, “Plates,” and motioned towards a cupboard. 

Harry knew how to be quiet; he was very good at making himself smaller, tucking in his elbows and avoiding eye contact. It made some days easier. But as he and Snape made salad sandwiches, then ate, Harry found that the quietness wasn’t quite the same as the kind he’d needed at the Dursleys. It was uncomfortable, of course-- almost exceedingly awkward -- but it wasn’t the jagged-edged discomfort of the Dursleys. 

And when Harry left the kitchen for the second time that day he found he was struck by how much more ordinary it had all been compared to being at the Dursleys, when he never ate with ‘the family’, and Aunt Petunia benevolently condescended to scrape him some leftovers. It kind of creeped him out that his experiences of mealtimes with Professor Snape had more in common with those he’d had with the Weasley family than at the Dursleys’. Sure, it was far, far quieter than the raucousness that came with sitting down with seven people, two of them Fred and George-- but the amount he ate wasn’t being judged, and he wasn’t having to keep one ear out to make sure Dudley wasn’t coming in the kitchen to spill his food on the floor.

He retreated to the room he was sleeping in, and spent a pleasurable hour writing Ron a letter ranting about how weird everything was. But after he was finished, he decided that he wouldn’t send it-- because, reading back over what he’d written, he found that he’d gotten too bloody personal. There were things he’d mentioned in it while he was happily insulting Aunt Marge that Ron shouldn’t know-- it would be very uncomfortable having Ron ask him if it really was true that the woman actually encouraged her dog to attack him, or why his relatives had told her Harry went to a school for incurably criminal boys. Harry had always run a fine line with complaining about the Dursley’s with Ron-- it was good, sometimes, to moan about it, but he’d always known that while it would be okay to mention that Dudley liked hitting him with his Smeltings stick it would not end well if Ron knew that Harry had been locked in a cupboard for days on end when he was younger.

So he stuffed that letter in the lining of his trunk lid and doodled aimlessly for a bit, drawing swirling lines and lop-sided stick-figures on brooms. Ron was in Egypt, anyway, and was probably too busy exploring pyramids to notice if Harry’s letters were delayed.

After a similarly uneventful and quiet dinner, Harry was set to doing the washing-up while Snape meticulously wiped down the table and the benches. Aunt Petunia had done the same thing at the end of every day, but there was something different about how Snape was doing it-- perhaps that, unlike his aunt, Snape didn’t look like he had a bad smell curling under his nose.

Harry was nearly finished when Snape let out a little, “hmmph,” and walked out of the kitchen. Only this time he didn’t leave out the door to the garden-- the man went in the direction of the living room. Shaking suds off his fingers, Harry ducked quickly and quietly into the corridor to check-- yes, Snape was in there.

After he placed the last dish in the draining rack, Harry absently swirled dirty water down the drain. Then, taking one last look to see if everything was in its place, he put a hand on the door to the garden and opened it with a soft click.

It wasn’t raining anymore, so Harry stepped outside. The feeling of wet blades of grass underfoot, of damp soil and grit, gave him energy. He’d been inside all day-- and there was no Dudley-- no Uncle Vernon-- no Aunt Petunia. No-one to chase him or order him to get weeding. No-one was watching him, and it was a splendid feeling.

He wriggled his toes and grinned, then attempted a cartwheel on the grass. It did not go well. The handstand didn’t exactly succeed either, but he tried both again and again. Then, as the light began to trickle away, he picked his way carefully around the beds and inspected the tree growing near the back fence. It seemed ordinary, but just in case he picked up a pebble and threw it in that direction.

The tree did not move.

Approaching it, he laid a cautious hand on the bark, then threw away all reservations and swung himself up. After all, he thought, Snape had warned him about the daisies-- so surely he would have let him know if the tree was dangerous too.

He was hanging upside-down, his knees curled around a branch, when he heard the door open. 

“Inside, Potter.” 

Harry swung himself up the right way, then jumped down, feeling light-headed. It was very nearly dark, now, but as he stepped towards the man he became aware of just how dirty he was. There were streaks of muddy dirt on his legs, his arms-- he could feel some on his cheek, too-- and blades of grass were stuck to him. He prepared himself for a scathing comment, but Snape only said, 

“Wash, and be in bed by nine. Lights out at half-past.”

For a moment Harry was silent, rather shocked at the lack of sarcasm, but then what Snape had actually said caught up to him. 

“You’re giving me a bedtime?” he said incredulously, spinning round to stare at Snape. The man had hardly said anything to him all day, and then to come out with this.... No-one had ever given him a bedtime. “A half-past nine bedtime?”

“Yes,” Snape said. He closed the door to the garden and flipped the deadlock. 

Wasn’t thirteen too old for a bedtime? “I never fall asleep before eleven,” Harry said defiantly. Which wasn’t true at all, but really, half-past nine?

The potions professor put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and turned him to face the other way, towards the corridor and the staircase. “Then you shall lie awake in bed thinking about how to be respectful to your elders.” He started to push Harry forward, but the boy slapped the hand off his shoulder and spun round again, temper flaring. Of course what Snape had said at breakfast about leaving Harry be had been too good to be true. 

“I won’t,” he said angrily. Later he would look back and wonder just why this had fired him up so much. But right now all he was thinking was that Snape had lied, that he’d been lulling Harry into almost believing that the rest of the summer could go by with them just ignoring each other. 

Then Snape was looking down his nose at Harry, who glared up at him. But the man wasn’t saying anything-- just looking at Harry as if he was a particularly interesting specimen. Then he turned around and lifted up the kettle to fill it at the tap, visibly dismissing Harry.

The boy shifted, unable to keep up his combative posture when Snape was just ignoring him. It threw him off-balance-- at school the man enjoyed every opportunity to light into Harry for disobedience or disrespect, and here Harry was handing him the opportunity on a plate. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

Snape placed the kettle on the hob.

“ Say something,” Harry said. “Go on, say something.”

Snape lit the stove and then adjusted the angle of the kettle so the handle was pointing sideways. Then, still facing away, he said, “What do you wish me to say, Potter?”

Harry shuffled his feet and muttered, “I-- er, well--” then fell silent. His anger had fallen away enough that he knew he’d sound like a maniac if he told Snape to insult him.

Finally Snape turned around and met Harry’s eyes. 

“I think that your outburst makes it quite clear that you do need your sleep,” Snape said quietly. He held up his hand when Harry opened his mouth-- and for some reason Harry obeyed the tacit instruction and closed his jaw with a click. “Sleep-deprivation leads to irritability and irrationality. Go to bed, Potter. I will not let you shout at me under the guise of ‘discussion’.”

Harry rocked back and forth on his heels, confused at what had happened. It all seemed to be over now, though Snape continued to stand there, looking at Harry. 

The kettle was coming to a boil as Harry bit into his lip and walked away. The grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs marked the time as quarter to nine, and the noises of Snape making a cup of tea drifted after him as he went up the stairs. Harry wondered why he was giving in-- was he giving in? It all seemed rather unclear. 

But Harry, gathering other clothes, washing himself, brushing his teeth, then walking into the room that was his for the rest of the summer, knew that-- somehow-- Snape had got Harry to do what he wanted, and he didn’t doubt that the remainder of his stay would follow the same pattern. The problem was that if Snape seemed all reasonable and calm and for-your-own-good, then Harry was the one in the wrong if he acted in defiance. At school, when Snape clearly was being unreasonable, then Harry’s disrespect had been an act of standing up to a bully-- but so far it didn’t seem like that pattern was the one the summer would follow. 

Harry hunted out a quidditch magazine, switched on the lamp resting on the bedside table, and then curled up to sit in bed. He stared at the thing blankly, not really seeing the spectacular aerobatics of the Wimbourne Wasps seeker.

He wouldn’t be made to feel guilty-- no, Snape wouldn’t be able to manipulate him into it. Would he?

There was no point thinking about it. Harry forced himself to put it all aside, and focused in on the exploits of various quidditch teams.

Some twenty minutes later creaking noises let him know that Snape was walking upstairs. Harry tried to determinedly kept reading, but found he could not, because the man paused right outside the door to his bedroom, which Harry had stupidly left open. He had to look up.

“What?” Harry said. But it was rather quieter than what it might have been.

Snape said, “Turn that light out in five minutes, Potter.” He waited until Harry nodded, mentally resigning himself to the whole bedtime thing, then flicked the switch to turn off the overhead light.

But although he started to turn away, partway through his stride the man pivoted and stepped further into Harry’s room, rather than leaving. Harry put down the quidditch magazine and straightened a little as Snape came closer, then stopped a few metres away from Harry.

“Potter,” the man said exasperatedly, “what are you wearing ?”

Harry glanced down—he was in bed, the covers up to his waist. He couldn’t see what Snape was on about—maybe the teacher was hallucinating. 

“Err,” he said, “pyjamas?”

A long, slender finger was jabbingly pointed at his chest.

“Those are not pyjamas. That is a t-shirt—a grubby, tatty, far-too-large-for-you t-shirt, but a t-shirt nonetheless.”

“But—” Harry looked down self-consciously, rubbing his fingers along a fold in the fabric, “but it is pyjamas. Pyjamas are what you wear to bed—so these’re pyjamas.” 

He tried to ignore the comments on the state of the shirt—they may have been true, but it stung anyway. Harry couldn’t help that Dudley wore his clothes to death, or that Aunt Petunia shoved them on Harry, telling him to be grateful, could he?

If the boy had looked at Snape, he might have noticed that the man had a pained expression on his face, the kind that muttered unkind words about badly-educated children.

“So,” Snape said softly. Harry glanced up at him, quickly, like a rabbit before a fox. He recognised the tone, and it didn’t bode well. 

“So, Potter. Last night—”

“Yes?” Harry squeaked.  

“Last night, you wore shoes to bed. Shoes, and jeans and another of those infernal t-shirts . By your reasoning, that is what you would call pyjamas. Are shoes pyjamas, Potter?”

“Well, no—”

“Indeed. Ergo, your definition is wrong. Unless—you aren’t wearing any at the moment, Potter? I must inform you that I do not approve of footwear on my furniture.”

Harry’s mouth was open, but somehow he couldn’t find anything to say. He just knew that Snape was wrong, all wrong, and had twisted it all somehow in that sneaky, horrible way he did. It was unfair, and he couldn’t even say so, because then the man would act all reasonable.

They remained in silence for a while, until Harry almost had something cutting and intelligent to say, when Snape spoke and he lost his train of thought.

“Exactly my point. Wait here.”

And then Snape left the room before Harry could tell him that he wasn’t exactly going anywhere, and what point did the man think he was making anyway? 

He fidgeted with the edge of the sheet and thought that even being left mostly alone by Snape still meant that the professor was somewhat there. That had been made clear by the bedtime thing, and was made even clearer now. And all the somewhat theres would add up. Harry was unsure whether this was preferable to being with Aunt Marge and the Dursleys: at least there he’d had an idea of what to expect. 

Snape tended to the mercurial, and his taste for fencing with words meant Harry was off-balance a lot. At the Dursleys, at least Harry was the quick one. Here, Harry floundered and made an idiot of himself and Snape used that infuriating smirk of his, the one that said, oh, look, Potter is silly…

“Catch.”

Annoyingly, the youngest-seeker-in-a-century fumbled the item thrown at him. He’d been thinking, and hadn’t noticed Snape re-enter the room, and Snape had never thrown anything at him before (thankfully), so it slipped through his fingers and landed in an untidy pile on his lap.

“What is it?” Harry asked, lifting up a bit of fabric. Then, “No—no. No way. You’re joking.”

He held it up. It was made of a soft white fabric, probably cotton. 

It was a dress. Harry said so.

Snape looked highly amused. “It is not a dress, Potter.”

It definitely was. “It is so—look, it’s long, it’s got a—” he peered more closely, “little ruffly bit at the hem.” He paused, then asked, voice rising, “Why did you throw a dress at me?”

“I did not throw a dress at you. I threw a nightshirt at you, Potter. Accuracy, please.” Snape made a little motion with his arm, flicking his wand out from his sleeve into his hand. “I won’t have you wearing those so-called ‘pyjamas’. Put it on and I’ll shrink it for you.”

“I’m not going to wear a dress! I’m a boy!”

“How very close-minded of you, Potter.”

Harry gaped. He was not close-minded. The Dursleys were close-minded. Draco Malfoy was close-minded. Harry was not. Was he?

Snape was talking, again.

“—but to salve your offended young masculinity, I repeat, it is a nightshirt. Not a dress. Now put it on so I can shrink it and you can go to sleep.”

Harry glanced at Snape’s face, and prepared himself. Hopefully this time would work better than the last... “I won’t wear it. You can’t make me put it on.” 

Almost immediately his stomach started to churn with anxiety. For Snape could make him, couldn’t he? Snape had a wand, and Harry did not. The Potions master was also a lot larger than him.

The man raised one eyebrow, a curve perfectly expressive of his opinion. But he said nothing: this made it far worse for Harry than anything else could have been. He knew without the man saying so that Snape would out-stubborn Harry, would wait there until Harry gave in. Snape was in his own home, and this made him different to at Hogwarts—Harry could see that, even after a day. He was less hair-trigger, less greasy, probably less sleep-deprived. He was infinitely more dangerous.

“I—” Harry said weakly. “I don’t see why I should wear a nightgown when what I already have will do.”

He’d lost already, and he knew it. It was merely a matter of time before he gave in—but Harry would try to draw out his defeat as much as possible.

“I—” Snape said, slowly, looking into Harry’s eyes, “I could always add some lace. Or ribbon.” He reached out a hand for the garment, but Harry, rabbit-quick, yanked it away.

“ It’sfine ” he squeaked. “I’m not going to wear it but I’m not going to wear it like it is. No ribbon.”

Snape eyed him benevolently, condescendingly, then turned away. Harry, cursing in his mind, got out of bed and put the wretched thing on. It went down to his ankles, and clearly was too big. He tried to scowl but was only too aware that it probably looked like a pout.

“I’m not wearing it,” he said miserably. “Could you shrink it?”

The nightshirt was duly shrunk, and Harry clambered back into bed. He turned so his back was to Snape and pulled the sheets up to his chin. 

Harry hadn’t thought Snape would say goodnight; and indeed, he didn’t. Instead, after a beat or two of silence, Harry heard him murmur:

“It seems these will not be necessary any longer.” 

If the sound of ragged clothes being sent into non-being was audible to the human ear, Harry would have heard it. However, it was not, and he was concentrating fiercely on not responding, so much so that he would only realise his pyjama-clothes were gone the next evening. After Snape left, closing the door after him with a soft click, Harry rolled over to stare at the ceiling grumpily. A minute later he fell asleep.