"But why do I have to stay with him?”

Dumbledore sighed gently, and adjusted his glasses. “When Cornelius contacted me, he informed me that you had run away from home to the Leaky Cauldron. He assured me that you were fine, so I contacted your Aunt and asked her what had happened.”

Harry bit his lip at that. Aunt Petunia wouldn’t have given a good account of the incident, in all likelihood. She had probably made it out that he had purposely inflated Aunt Marge in a temper tantrum.

“She informed me firmly that they did not want to see you again this summer, after, ahem, such a traumatising experience. Although, by that point, the ministry obliviators had tended to her sister-in-law, she still felt that nothing good would come of having you in the same house as Miss Margery Dursley.”

Harry frowned at that. It was all Aunt Marge’s fault.

“So? That doesn’t mean I just have to run along and stay with him.”

The headmaster’s soft, chiding, “Harry,” made him falter in his convictions. Perhaps his tone had been a bit belligerent. Then again…

“Of course, that means that we needed to find you somewhere else to spend the rest of the summer. Cornelius’s suggestion was…” he made a moue of distaste.

“What?” Harry asked, curious.

Dumbledore looked Harry in the eyes. “It wasn’t entirely sensible. He suggested that you stay here at the Leaky Cauldron, by yourself, not venturing past Diagon Alley.”

What was wrong with that? “That’d be fine,” Harry said, relieved. “I can stay here, and I’ll be alright, and I can go to Tom if anything happens, but nothing will. I’ve got Hedwig, too.”

“Harry, I did say that the minister’s suggestion was not entirely practical, you realise.”

The boy shrugged.

“You cannot stay here without supervision.”

“But—”

Dumbledore shook his head. “No.”

Harry suppressed a sigh and said, “Alright, then.” He thought for a moment, then ventured, “I could stay with the Weasleys, if you think I need supervision.” Although he was trying not to show it, his tone clearly said that he didn’t think it was needed.

“The Weasleys are in Egypt, enjoying a much-earned holiday with their eldest son.”

Nearly smacking himself in the head for forgetting, Harry murmured, “Oh. Yeah, Ron told me.” He brightened up quickly though. “What about Hermione? I’m sure her parents wouldn’t mind.”

Dumbledore’s face seemed to say that he thought Harry was presuming a bit with that statement. “Harry, the Granger family is on holiday in France.”

“Right.” He sat there, thinking hard. “Would Neville mind having me over?”

Pushing his half-moon spectacles further up his nose, Dumbledore said, “I do not believe that would work, Harry. Before you ask, neither Mr Thomas or Mr Finnegan can take you, nor Miss Brown or Miss Patil.”

Harry scrunched up his face. “I wouldn’t want to stay with them!”

“Well, consider yourself lucky that you won’t be, then, if you must look at it in that manner. Harry, it isn’t exactly polite to foist yourself on a family with whom you aren’t actually acquainted, in any manner.”

Frustrated, Harry bit out a “Yes.” Then, quieter, “I know. But the alternative…”

“Mmm,” the old man uttered, pensively.

The pair sat in silence for a minute, Harry twiddling with a frayed thread at the cuff of his jacket.

“I considered taking you myself, you know. However, my role in the International Confederation would not allow me to pay sufficient attention to you. I will be travelling frequently, as well.”

At this point, Harry had nearly resigned himself to his fate. Nearly.

“Professor McGonagall might have considered it her duty, but she is visiting family in Guernsey, helping tend to a sick aunt.”

Harry wished that he had a sick aunt. Two sick aunts, actually, even if one wasn’t really related to him. Petunia and Marge would be much improved if they were coughing up phlegm and staying in bed all day.

“But, Professor,” he started, finally finding voice to what seemed a reasonable objection, “I don’t understand. Surely he can’t actually have offered to take me?”

“Actually, Harry, he—well, he owed me a favour, and once he heard of the alternative, he agreed.”

Harry rather doubted that he had agreed with any grace whatsoever. “Wait… Did you blackmail him?” he said incredulously.

“That you would suspect me of such a thing!” The headmaster shook his head sorrowfully. “Harry, do you really think that I would do that?”

Harry wasn’t certain, but he was pretty sure that Dumbledore might. And honestly, why else would this be happening?
Continuing, Dumbledore said, “Anyway, the point of the matter is that he offered, and you will be staying with him for the rest of the summer.”

With a scowl on his face, Harry slouched in his chair and said nothing.

Dumbledore peered over the top of his glasses at the boy and kept his silence. Picking up his wand, he conjured himself quill, ink, and paper, then settled down to his writing.

Harry’s head was churning with conflicting thoughts and emotions. He was angry, and annoyed with the headmaster, and perhaps slightly tired. It was a bit after nine-thirty at night, and the day had been a real horror. But that just made him feel more inclined to snap and growl at anything the headmaster would say. The overly reasonable tone that the man used just made him more irritable.

If Dumbledore could be stubborn and blackmailing and thoroughly unreasonable, why should Harry agree to anything the man said? And if Harry didn’t say anything, didn’t agree, then the headmaster couldn’t make him.

Could he?

Harry scratched an itch on his arm and scowled darkly at his feet. He wouldn’t give Dumbledore the satisfaction of looking at him. Ha! How would he take Harry ignoring him?

After a minute he couldn’t take it any longer and snuck a glance at the old man. Unfortunately, Dumbledore looked supremely unconcerned, as he dipped his quill in the inkpot and continued to write.

Harry fiercely kicked at the leg of the chair he was sitting in and hunched lower in the seat.

After what felt like a long time, Harry brought his hand up to his mouth, covering a yawn. It was boring, just sitting there while Dumbledore wrote. His anger had faded away, slowly but surely. Without Dumbledore paying any attention to him, after a minute or two he had started to feel rather ashamed of his behaviour. Dumbledore had been utterly unreasonable, but he himself had acted a bit like a sulking toddler.

It had been too much effort to maintain his scowl, after that thought popped into his head. Instead he pushed his chair out from the table a bit more and curled up, knees near his chin. He wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his chin on them.

Every now and then his head would bob down, and then jerk back up again when he realised he was falling asleep. His eyelids felt heavy, and he knew that if the wait went on too much longer, he would fall asleep. But when he looked at the clock over the mantel, it had only been ten minutes or so since Dumbledore had started writing.

The knock at the door jerked Harry out of his stupor. He looked blearily at Dumbledore, who was rolling up the parchment, after having used his wand to vanish the writing implements.

“Who’s that?” he asked rather sleepily.

Dumbledore stood up to answer the door and said brightly, “Why, the man we’ve been waiting for, of course!” He strode over and opened it while Harry rubbed his eyes and tried to puzzle out whether it would be Tom with some more tea. “Do come in, Severus.”

When Harry actually saw the figure in black, he realised that he hadn’t actually believed what Dumbledore had been saying. He swung his feet to the floor again, suddenly awake.

Severus Snape inclined his head to the headmaster and Harry said incoherently, “What—no— but I—”

Dumbledore, drawing up a chair for the other man, said, “You didn’t really think that I’d have you sitting in that chair all night, Harry?”

Harry rounded on him and bit out tightly, “I never—I didn’t actually agree—you can’t make me…” He trailed off, not finding the right words to express the turmoil of thought he was going through, and kicked the leg of the chair again angrily.

The headmaster’s gaze turned chilly, and Harry swallowed roughly.

“Harry, this arrangement does not need your agreement. I will inform you once again, as seemingly you were not listening. You will be staying with Professor Snape for the remainder of the holidays. None of your protests will change that.”

Harry lowered his eyes, faced with the inexorable force that was Albus Dumbledore in full steam. He suddenly felt very, very tired. Perhaps he would wake up and this all would be just a weird dream.

“However,” the old man continued, “your attitude towards your guardian will determine how well your holiday goes. If you continue to be defiant and rude, it will be a difficult one for you. If you cooperate, it shall go better for both of you. Do you understand?”

Harry flushed and gave a small nod. Even if he did cooperate, though, it was Snape. The potions professor wouldn’t make anything easy. When he looked at them, though, the headmaster looked as unmoving as steel, while Snape’s face was impassive. Harry would have no chance.

“Good.” Dumbledore then turned to Snape and said in a lower voice, “I suspect he is overtired.”

Harry’s hackles raised at that comment, but he forced himself to remain still.

“Indeed,” murmured Snape. Harry felt the man’s gaze on him for a tense minute before Snape turned back to speak with Dumbledore.

“I have the papers on the continental trials of Belby’s work that you lent me, Albus. All is going well on that front—I have completed several test runs. It should be ready for the start of term.”

“Wonderful. Thank you very much, Severus.”

Harry watched as Snape took a rather thick stack of papers out of his shoulder-bag and handed them to Dumbledore.

“Though I still cannot but feel that—”

“I know, Severus,” Dumbledore interrupted gently. “But please remember that I appointed him before anything happened on that front. In fact, I have been in negotiations with him about it since the Spring term last year.”

Harry fiddled with the cuff of his jacket and wondered what on Earth the two men were discussing. It probably was just potions. If it was potions then he didn’t want to know.

“—and I shall probably drop around each week, to check on how everything is going. Hopefully I will be able to give you a bit of a break, as well. Do not hesitate to contact me if there are any issues, though, of any kind.”

Snape nodded. “I will expect you, then.” He stood up, saying, “Owl me of any developments in the case. I’ve cancelled my subscription to the Prophet.”

“Why?” Dumbledore rose also, and gathered the papers that Snape had given him.

“The smoke kept making me cough, and I am tired of stamping out cinders. Up, Potter.”

Harry jerked his attention to Snape, who seemed to be making his way over to him. He stood up rather hurriedly and shoved his chair under the table.

The Headmaster was standing beside his chair, a bewildered look on his face. “Cinders? Smoke? Has your delivery owl been flying down your chimney?”

Snape barked out a harsh laugh. “Hardly. I simply feel compelled to incinerate anything that has a photo of that man.” He had reached Harry, now, and the boy shifted uncomfortably.

“Oh—I see.” Dumbledore said. Walking over to the pair of them, he said, “I have sent his trunk already.”

Harry glanced around, and it was indeed true that he could no longer see his school trunk. When had Dumbledore done that?

“Goodbye, Severus, Harry.” Dumbledore smiled at the boy, who looked away from the gaze. Why did Dumbledore seem so happy? Didn’t he know what he was condemning Harry to?

“The best of luck to both of you. Harry, mind Professor Snape.” The old man reached out and cupped Harry’s chin in his wrinkled hand, bringing Harry’s eyes up to meet his own. “Remember what I said before.”

Harry nodded uncomfortably. After a long moment the man released his chin.

“And Severus—try to be patient. With both Harry and your other activities.”

Harry snuck a glance at Snape, who was rolling his eyes. Though he did clasp Dumbledore’s hand briefly in farewell.

Ushered out the door, Harry nearly tripped on his own shoelace. He managed to recover, which was good because they would never have found all the pieces of him if he’d fallen onto Snape.

“Do it up.”

“Huh?” Harry said, eloquently, blinking a bit tiredly up at the dour-looking man.

“Your shoelace. Do it up. I have no desire to trip over you when you fall down the stairs.”

“Oh. Okay.” He bent down and did just so. It took a bit more effort than usual, as his fingers felt clumsy.

After they had made their way out of the Leaky Cauldron, Harry waving mournfully to Tom, Snape took hold of Harry’s arm and they disappeared with a loud crack.

Harry found himself on the pavement, having stumbled when landing. “What was that?” he asked dizzily, feeling a little sick. “That was awful.”

“Apparition,” Snape said curtly. He looked Harry up and down. It made Harry feel like a little beetle, about to be squashed under the judgement of a Potions master who thought Harry should have landed better and know what apparition was.

It must be some sort of teleportation, Harry reasoned. He hadn’t known wizards and witches could do that.

He scrambled off the ground, and in somewhat of a daze followed Snape down a dimly lit path to a terraced house. The streetlight in front of it was broken, and Harry fuzzily noticed the glint of smashed glass in the gutter.

Without really knowing how, Harry found himself inside.
Snape was there too, more’s the pity.

“Upstairs, first door on the left,” he was saying. “The loo is the next door over. Get up to bed, Potter, you’re swaying.”

“’M not,” Harry muttered. But the push on his back set him going, walking slowly up the stairs and opening the door. In one final moment of slight clarity he closed it, knowing almost subconsciously that he didn’t want Snape near.

The covers were extremely heavy, but he pulled them over him before falling fast asleep.

“Up, Potter!”

Harry was disturbed from his rest by what sounded like Aunt Petunia, only the register was not quite right. For some reason it was a lot deeper than usual.

“You’ve been abed for long enough—it’s nearly half-seven! Up , I said.”

Letting out a sleepy noise that could generously be interpreted as “coming, Aunt Petunia,” Harry pulled the covers further over his head.

“Alright then.”

If Harry had been more awake, he would have known to be wary of the quiet words, but as it was his head was muzzy and his eyes were stuck together.

That changed rapidly when his covers were ripped off him, exposing him to cool morning air. Harry jolted upright, eyes blinking rapidly.

“Don’t, Ron!”

There was a pause, then, “I assure you I am not your aunt nor your red-headed friend, Mr Potter. Do I need to fetch a basin of water?”

That was when the events of the previous day came flooding back to him. He hurriedly wiped his eyes and rubbed his face, then said reluctantly, “Morning, professor. No. No need. Please don’t.”

Snape was standing beside Harry’s bed, all the covers in hand. 

“Now that I have your attention,” the man said with a twisted look on his face, “Care to explain why you were sleeping in your clothes?” He folded Harry’s bedclothes at the foot of the bed, then said sarcastically, “In your shoes, Mr Potter?”

Harry glanced down at his feet, and noted they indeed still had the shoes he’d worn while running from Privet Drive. Thankfully, he’d wiped them well at the Leaky Cauldron, because he’d wager galleons that Snape would not appreciate mud on the bedding.

“Take them off , Potter.”

He swung his legs off the bed, then started unlacing. “I was tired,” he objected. “Last night, I just fell asleep.”

He would have cause to regret those comments soon enough. But now, he just slipped his shoes off, then followed Snape downstairs.

 

---

 

It felt decidedly odd to eat breakfast, sitting at a small kitchen table with Snape in the room. Harry would have felt self-conscious, but he was very hungry so ignored it and ate spoonfuls of porridge as quickly as could be good manners.

The man had evidently already eaten—either that or he didn’t eat at all. On the whole, Harry knew that was probably unlikely, as the vampire theorem had been disproved several times, because the man attended quidditch matches in the sun with no ill-effects (apart from his usual mien). Unless there was some kind of potion he took, perhaps a vampire-strength suncream…

Snape, who had been leaning against a cabinet tapping his fingers on his folded arms, moved once Harry had scraped the last bits out of his bowl. He was now standing directly opposite Harry, in a way that demanded attention. The boy reluctantly raised his eyes.

“Potter,” the man said, “I have no desire to spend every minute of the holiday breathing down the back of your neck so as to ensure you do not get into mischief. Though you may not believe it, I have better things to do.”

Harry squirmed the tiniest bit at the way Snape’s eyes bore into him. 

“As such, for now I find myself in the strange position of giving you the benefit of the doubt. That is, until proved otherwise, I shall treat you as if you were sensible and capable of occupying yourself in a relatively productive and responsible manner.”

The meaning of Snape’s words hit Harry after a small delay, and he found himself gaping a little. This was unprecedented—when had Snape ever done that?

“Oh for—Potter, focus !”

Harry shook his head to free it from wondering if Snape was being polyjuiced. “I’m listening,” he said. “Sir,” he added hurriedly when he found himself receiving a pointed look. “I’m—I’m listening, sir.”

“Breakfast will be six-thirty, lunch at one and dinner at seven —you will be expected to be prompt, and to assist where necessary. Apart from then, you may be in the house or garden—though stay away from the daisies. Any questions?”

The boy remained in a stunned silence for a moment or two, then asked, “Daisies?”

“They are combative in the summer months. Do you desire bruises all down your legs?”

What sort of question was that? “Err… No?” Harry said. 

“Then avoid them.”

Harry, remembering Herbology, the Burrow and his experiences with gnomes, decided that Snape wasn’t joking. Maybe they were duelling daisies, or something. A thought popped into his head. “Um—”

“Yes?”

“Did you say six-thirty for breakfast?” 

Harry thought he had been mistaken, surely—though Aunt Petunia had him up around then to cook for Dudley, at Hogwarts breakfast started at quarter past seven.

“Indeed I did, Potter—no layabouts here. Today is the first and last time you will laze about in bed like that, thank you very much.”

It hadn’t been that late, had it? Harry had only been tired from the stressful evening. “I—” 

“Six-thirty, Potter, and no amount of complaining will change it.”

Harry bit back a comment about how he hadn’t even said anything or even thought a complaint in the man’s direction. He’d only been clarifying. “Right, sir” he forced out instead.

Snape tapped a thoughtful hand on the table, and threw a shrewd glance at Harry. “If you are in doubt whether you are permitted to do anything, assume that you are not. You may ask— however, I am under no obligation to accede to frivolous requests.”

It took a moment for Harry to parse that. 

“Any book that lets you open it you are free to read—don’t pester them if they don’t want you sticking grubby fingers on their pages.”

Was Snape’s book collection sentient? Harry wouldn’t put it past them. He wasn’t much of a reader anyway, really. And his fingers weren’t grubby. He scowled for a moment, then, catching the man’s gaze, quickly straightened his expression. 

“I expect confirmation, Potter, that you understand and will abide.”

Harry nodded, then mumbled a “Yes, professor.”

He understood—sure, he understood. Avoid the daisies, don’t bother books unless they don’t mind it, and (undoubtedly) keep out of Snape’s hair. Not that Harry wanted to be in it, anyway.

Harry could feel Snape looking at him for a long moment. It was an uncomfortable sensation, and after a second the boy couldn’t help but avoid the man’s gaze by staring into his empty bowl. Harry didn’t like to think that he was a coward, but there was something about the situation that was awkward and unbalancing enough that made him instinctively act that way. Thankfully, finally, Harry wasn’t pinned to his chair by nerves, because Snape was no longer looking at him. In fact, Snape had moved towards a door that clearly led outside, because high up on it there was a clouded window. Below its panes was a hook, and Harry watched as the man lifted off what seemed to be a raincoat, folded it over his arm, and headed outside without saying another word.

Maybe Snape had even meant what he’d said about not wanting to be breathing his nasty breath over Harry’s shoulder all day…

Harry decided to take this day as it came, and reassess the truthfulness of the statement later. So, after washing his bowl and spoon, he walked out of the kitchen. It was nice not to have to do everyone else’s washing up for a change, and this was reflected by the slight bounce in his step.

With his potions teacher out of the house, he decided now might be a good time for some judicial snooping. Really though, he ought to learn where everything was located if he was staying here… 

It did not take very long for Harry to realise that there was not much to explore. There was the kitchen, which seemed ordinary, if a bit less modern than the Dursley’s. The window over the stove was cloudy but seemed to look out onto the garden. It was framed by faded floral-pattern curtains. 

Opposite the kitchen was the rickety staircase Harry had come down. Behind the staircase was a toilet and then a laundry-room. In front of the kitchen was what must have been a dining room, clearly unused. It was dark, with curtains drawn, cramped and dusty. It seemed all foreboding stiff furniture. Harry coughed and sneezed and exited promptly. 

On the other side of the hallway was one large room. This, Harry discovered on entering, was filled with books. Books sprawled on coffee tables, and teetered in precarious stacks on the floor. Tall shelves lined all the walls—and there were more shelves essentially dividing the room into two areas. One was like a study, holding a writing desk and chair, while the other looked to be for leisure. In there was a fireplace; in front of it was a sagging sofa that looked like it had long been in use. A wingback chair looked similarly worn in. Faint light streamed in from the windows, which faced the street. It was raining.

This room marked the end of exploring, unless Harry wanted to sift through Snape’s collection of kitchen utensils. Upstairs, from what he’d seen already, only had Harry’s small room, the bathroom, and what was presumably Snape’s bedroom. Harry felt no desire to trespass in there. So after half-heartedly scanning the shelves—there were just so many books, and eclectically mixed—he went upstairs to fetch the broomstick kit Hermione had given him for his birthday. 

If she’d been there, she would have been in raptures of ecstasy, collecting about her a pile of reading. But Harry just did not feel that way—there were too many books for him to sift through to find something, and probably there wouldn’t be anything he’d want to read anyway, because it was Snape’s house. As he curled up with the kit on the sofa, he was hit with a palpable pang of loneliness—no Ron, no Hermione, no one but Snape. And he was staying here for the rest of the holidays—he might go mad from extended Potions master exposure.

But Harry, living with the Dursleys as he had for most of his life, was very good at pretending that he was somewhere else completely. So he forced himself to stop contemplating whether the Potions Master was likely to poison him and imagined that he was at Hogwarts. The library would have been easiest, considering the number of books surrounding him. But Harry would never use his broomstick kit in there: instead, he focused until he could almost see the red-and-gold hangings of the Gryffindor common room and began to use the kit. Several hours were to pass him by like that, until his stomach gave a gurgle and jolted him out of his imagined surroundings.

From what Harry could see, there wasn’t a clock in the room, but it must have been near one o’clock. When he gathered up his Nimbus and the accoutrements of the broomstick kit and walked them up to the small room that was his for the summer, the grandfather clock in the corridor confirmed the time for him as a quarter to the hour.

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.