“Potter...”

A hand was shaking him by the shoulder. But he was comfortable—this wasn’t his bed. This was far too soft to be his own pallet on the ground of the cupboard. Harry’s eyes fluttered and he tossed his head to the side, encountering a soft cool pillow against his face.

Odd. He didn’t have one of those...

When he tried to open his eyes, they felt crusted over, and the world was wholly out of focus. He thought he might have spied a large black smudge to his left, looking over him, before the smudge pushed something onto his face—his glasses.

Above him, Mr. Snape came into view, sheets of black, greasy hair hanging down, limply against his high, sharp cheekbones and the stoic set of his jaw.

“Back in the land of the living, are we?”

Harry struggled to sit, propping himself up on his elbows so that Mr. Snape took a few steps back.

“Your throat is swollen,” the man commented, his voice dry.

Harry reached up a hand to feel for himself and pulled it away with a wince. Both sides of his neck seemed to be bulging outwards to a noticeable degree. It felt like he’d drunk a petrol cocktail, and he felt again that he couldn’t swallow... this time there was nothing for it but to spit down to the side.

That was when he noticed that he had been put into Dudley’s bed. One of his two.

He nearly fell to the floor in his haste to get out.

“Potter, what do you think you’re doing—?”

“I-I c-can’t be in D-Dudley’s be-bed,” he gasped, scrambling to make the bed up once more so that it appeared immaculate.

“This isn’t your room?”

“N-no,”

“I thought… it’s the smaller of the two…” Snape reasoned aloud, looking perplexed.

“N-no, this is his s-second bedroom,” Harry explained, stopping to spit again. He’d have to come buff the floors later. “The b-bed is for g-guests,” he finished with a violent cough that produced stringy sputum.

His eyes closed and he leaned against the freshly made up linens, tears coming to the corners of his cheeks.

“And you sleep… where?” Mr. Snape nearly growled. His arms were crossed and one hand rested against his face, the pointer finger tapping at a hollowed out cheek— he seemed to have sucked it in and was chewing it with his molars. The look on his face was as forbidding as it was ferocious.

Harry winced and looked away, “You saw—"

“Remind me then.”

“You pulled me out of my cupboard this morning…”

“Your cupboard.”

Harry’s voice hurt worse with every word he spoke, so this time he only nodded and let himself collapse down onto the floor. When he spat again in the same place, he used the hem of his shirt to mop up all of the spots he’d made on the wood. It’d do in a pinch… but he desperately wanted a bottle of wood polish…

Snape stomped over to stand before him and hoisted him up by the armpits, “Damnit, boy, leave the spot where it is!” He braced Harry with his own weight and peered down into his face so that Harry would have to meet his gaze. “Show me.”

Then, for some reason wincing, he softened his voice a touch. “Show me,” he repeated himself. “Let’s see this… this cupboard of yours.”

He’d sneered the last portion of the sentence, but his anger seemed displaced. Far away.

Nodding, and moving sluggishly, Harry led the way down the stairs, turning at the entry way to swing open the half-sized door that led to his own little scrap-sized portion of the house.

He stood aside then, shaking in the face of the fury that seemed to be sloughing off of the man, so thick Harry imagined he could almost see the black anger made manifest.

He wished he could run away… but he somehow knew that Mr. Snape could probably find him, even if he did manage to wish himself onto the roof again.

The man crouched and pulled the filthy, stained pallet from its place on the floor.

When next he spoke, it was in a soft murmur. More to himself than to Harry.

“And here I thought that perhaps there was a dog.” He stayed crouched there for several long moments, his black eyes fixed into the shadowed nook under the stairs, taking in each paltry detail of Harry’s existence.

Then, just like he was flipping a switch, he stood and marched back toward the kitchen, motioning for Harry to follow with a crooked finger.

The boy trailed behind him, his hands pressing at his neck, wishing that a bit of pressure would help ease the pain. It didn’t.

As soon as he was through the doorway, he bumped into Snape, who had stopped in front of him.

He was brandishing some sort of dark stick, perhaps a bit longer than a foot in length, and with a strange little curly-Q at the tip where the wood twisted, vine-like. He tapped it to each side of Harry’s neck in turn.

The burn receded into the faintest scratchiness, and for the first time since eating supper, Harry felt able to swallow.

Aware that he was likely gawking at the man, Harry took in several deep breaths in a row.

“How—?” He made to gasp, but Snape interrupted him.

“Not like that, Potter,” Mr. Snape said with a shake of his head, seeming a bit amused. “You’ll hyperventilate.”

“Hyper—?”

“You’ll make yourself light-headed.” This time his voice was crisp with annoyance, which seemed more the man’s usual style.

“Now,” he began, turning to look out the window, “I had considered going back into town to remedy the shameful lack of any appropriate reading material, but it seems that a detour will be in order.

“Likely it’s too late to see someone this evening, but we’ll be going anyway.” He said, his voice firm. Brooking no arguments.

“Going where?” Harry asked, thinking of the terrifying car rides from earlier that day and wincing in remembrance.

“It still hurts?” Snape asked, withdrawing the stick once more, his expression closed off, clinical. As though he was evaluating Harry’s suitability for some experiment.

“N-no.” Somehow Harry didn’t think Snape would welcome more criticism of his driving, but so far, he’d shown an uncanny ability to know when the boy was lying. There was nothing for it.

“I… I don’t like cars.”

Snape glared down at him, but after a moment, his expression seemed to lighten a touch, and his thin lips curved into an amused smirk.

“You don’t like cars, or you don’t like my driving?”

Harry couldn’t help but to grimace, and he avoided looking up into the man’s face, knowing that Mr. Snape would likely be able to read the truth in his expression.

“That’s what I thought. Well, there’s nothing for it, Potter—”

“It’s true!” Harry objected, feeling panicked. “I don’t—”

“Which is naturally how you knew enough about them to have an opinion on my shifting technique.” Snape scoffed.

Harry shifted from foot to foot and brought up his hands to rub at his neck. It was numbed, but the feeling of the sides bulging out further than was natural was still disconcerting. “I know lots about cars, Mr. Snape.”

“And how did that come about, hmm? Did your relatives decide to use you as a stand-in mechanic in the same way that they’ve made use of you as a house-elf?” Snape sounded almost incredulous, though for all that—the question he was asking seemed in earnest.

Harry didn’t have the faintest clue what a house-elf was, but he felt his face heating at the implication that he may have been lying about his knowledge of automobiles.

“I know all the parts of the engine, Mr. Snape—and I’ve got the operations checklist memorised...” the boy protested, adding under his breath— “that’s how I knew you were shifting wrong.”

Snape straightened and crossed his arms over his thin chest, looking even more like a surly teenager than he already did. “Have you? And I’m meant to believe this, coming from a boy who scored barely above a failing grade in reading comprehension?”

“There’s lots of pictures that show the inside of the engine compartment.” Harry protested.
“And you studied this, hmm? These pictures?” Snape grilled him, as he began to walk toward the front door. Harry followed him and they both edged toward the car for the second time that day.

He felt a bit ill at the prospect... but then again, that could have been because of his sore throat, which was still throbbing fiercely.

“Yeah—”

“Get in, Potter,” Snape directed, as he climbed into the driver-side door.

Harry did, with supreme reluctance, and once he’d sidled into the backseat, Snape turned about, shuffling through the glove compartment with one arm as he turned the key in the ignition. After a moment, he seemed to find what he’d been looking for.

A tattered operator’s guide landed in Harry’s lap, looking to have had all manner of engine oil and sundry mechanical fluids spilled across it’s worn pages over the span of a decade. He picked it up gingerly, feeling the grease on the pages as he handled the shabby manual.

“Mr. Snape—?”

“If you can’t stomach my driving, distract yourself with that for the duration—it’s at least preferable to Tuney’s smut stash.” He snarled. “And do try to read the actual written portions—perhaps you’ll improve on your reading scores if you focus your efforts on something that interests you.”

Harry blinked at the man, unable to find any words to say to him, though he desperately wanted to ask him who ‘Tuney’ was supposed to be...

He couldn’t have meant Aunt Petunia, could he have? She’d have never tolerated being called... that.

Snape, once he’d cleared the drive, took off like a bat out of hell, and Harry diligently applied himself to examining the operator’s guide, trying not to wince as the car jerked and swerved dangerously.

It wasn’t quite as fun to read as some of the more general car guides he’d found in his school library—it was, after all, specific to this one model of car—but he learned a fair deal about peculiarities of the Morris Marina’s construction that probably wouldn’t have interested anyone else, had he a mind to harp on about it.

And really, that suited Harry just fine, anyway.

When he got to the operating procedure portion, he felt vindicated to see that, indeed, Snape was seemingly breaking all of the rules.

“Be sure to release the clutch—” he read along, pointedly, his voice nothing more than a murmur. He hoped Mr. Snape would hear him anyway...

As if to spite him—and in truth, he probably really was doing it to spite Harry—Mr. Snape down-shifted with a rough jerk while the engine was still plugging along at 3000rpm. The whole car shuddered and Harry let loose with a loud yelp.

“Oops,” Mr. Snape drawled, his black eyes, narrowed in challenge, seeking out Harry’s in the rear-view.

The boy had gone ashen, and his teeth felt like they might shatter, he was grinding them together so forcefully.

Harry didn’t read aloud anymore, but did his level best to ignore the way the car felt as if it’d break down beneath his bum—he kept his eyes trained on the book Snape had handed him.

Not ten minutes later, Snape pulled into a jam-packed car park and whipped the wheel sharply to turn into an empty spot near the back.

Harry finally allowed himself to look up from the manual he held in his hands.

“Mr. Snape—why are we at the hospital?”

Snape didn’t answer but exited the car. He pulled the seat forward for Harry and helped the boy to scramble out, frowning as Harry spat onto the pavement.

“You still can’t swallow?” He asked, his voice grim. The man stooped to examine the sputum that Harry had expelled at their feet.

“Hurts—” Harry answered. His throat felt like it had been torn, whatever Snape had done with that stick having worn off entirely.

The man swiped two fingers through the saliva on the ground and visibly grimaced as they came away red with blood.

“The blood—when did that start?”

Harry shrugged, helpless. “I dunno—I thought I could maybe taste some after you did that thing,” he pantomimed tapping each side of his throat.

Snape winced. “Bugger.” He stood quickly and grasped Harry at the upper arm, his long fingers nearly able to close all the way around Harry’s tricep. He was muttering furiously to himself: “I wouldn’t have thought a numbing charm would cause you to haemorrhage...”

Harry swayed on his feet and barely noticed as Snape directed them toward the entrance for the Accident and Emergency Department. He felt curiously detached as Mr. Snape stalked forward and began explaining Harry’s symptoms to the on-duty nurse.

Together, Mr. Snape and the older woman peeked at Harry, their brows furrowed and their heads bowed together, but Harry was feeling too wobbly by half to pay much attention to what they might have been saying. He leaned against a nearby wall and spat into a wastebasket at his feet.

It was mostly blood. His mouth tasted like he’d been licking an expanse of copper piping.

“Oh! Oh, dear—”

It was the nurse Mr. Snape had been speaking to. She rushed over to Harry and knelt down before him, her fingers coming up to bracket his cheeks.

“Open for me, please.”

Harry did, feeling his salivary glands over-producing and mixing with the blood that was now a steady flow coming from the back of his mouth. He felt it pooling behind his bottom teeth, then spilling over to drip down his chin and when he glanced down, saw that it was staining his shirt.

The nurse was shining a light into his mouth, her expression business-like, but slightly concerned.

“It’s his tonsils,” she told the man who’d walked up behind her. Snape loomed over her and they both were looking into Harry’s gaping mouth. “We’re not terribly busy today—which is good—follow me.”

She led Harry deeper into the ward and set him up on a flimsy bed that was in a long line of beds. Most of them were empty at the current moment, but some of them seemed to contain other patients in varying degrees of severe circumstances. It was hard to say more, however, as the occupied beds had been blocked by privacy partitions.

As soon as Harry sat, the nurse drew one around his bed as well. She hurried off, mumbling about paging a doctor, and returned only for a moment in which she gave Harry a shallow bowl to spit into, and passed a clipboard to Mr. Snape.

“Fill these out and bring them to the desk,” she instructed him. When she turned back, Snape had his stick out and pointed it at her back.

“Confundus,” he hissed. The tip of the stick flashed with a sort of muted light for a moment and Harry saw the nurse’s posture change—going from straight-backed and confident to slightly slouched. She looked back over her shoulder once, appearing confused, then walked back up to Snape.

“I’ll take those, thanks,” and she collected the clipboard from him, even though Mr. Snape hadn’t filled in even a single field.

It was only a few minutes of waiting before a harried looking doctor stalked by the partition, her eyes darting about before they landed on Harry.

She had long, dark hair, held in a plait down her back that seemed to be coming loose, and her white coat appeared dirty. Checking a clipboard that she carried under her arm quickly, she turned toward Mr. Snape and began grilling him with a series of terse questions about the onset of Harry’s illness.

“When did you notice the bleeding start?” She asked, as she stooped over Harry and bade him to open his mouth for her. She looked all the way to the back, her face set in a frown, and then pulled out a wooden tongue depresser that she used to get a better look.

Harry choked on the stick and felt the dread pain of his mixed saliva and blood back-flowing over the spot where it hurt the most.

“It didn’t seem that he started bleeding until we got to the car park,” Mr. Snape answered.

The doctor handed Harry the bowl once more and instructed him to spit before she took another look.

“And how long has his throat been hurting him?” Her hands came up and felt at his neck, slightly under both of Harry’s ears. She turned his head this way and that, her eyes narrowed critically.

“All day, it seems—”

“Since Sunday,” Harry corrected him.

The doctor turned to Snape to glare at him. “Your son has an acute case of tonsilitis and you didn’t notice it was hurting him until just this morning? Spontaneous tonsillar haemmorhage is incredibly rare—you’d have to have been ignoring his symptoms for a long while for it to have gotten to this point—”

“My son,” Snape drawled, “had been staying with his maternal aunt for the duration—he’s only been back in my custody since this morning.”

Harry started violently, his eyes widening behind his thick lenses. Mr. Snape sent him a glower that seemed to indicate that he should keep mum about the circumstances surrounding their trip to hospital, however.

But really? His son?

Mr. Snape’s son?

Harry felt unaccountably warm under the collar—perhaps it was the fever?

It wasn’t because the thought of being the son of the taciturn young man who insisted on ordering him a double portion of chips at lunch, had taken pains to let Harry have his choice of biscuits at the supermarket, and had allowed Harry to eat the same food (and in equal portions) that the man had served for himself made him feel a rising tide of giddiness. That couldn’t have been it... or if it was, it simply was beside the point.

In any case, the feeling didn’t last very long, as within seconds the doctor was informing Mr. Snape that Harry would be requiring an emergency tonsillectomy.

“Surgery?” Snape spat, looking incredulous. “It can’t be as bad as all that—"

“And yet you brought him in to A&E. That tells me you had at least some inkling of how serious your son’s condition was,” she argued. “Open,” she told Harry once more.

When he did so, she used the depresser again to hold his tongue down as she took a long swab and brushed it against the back of his throat.

Harry couldn’t help but to sputter and choke, sending blood spewing from his mouth, and partially out his nose after he aspirated it.

She dropped the swab into a tube and sealed it, stowing it in a pocket. “We’ll be getting this cultured, but in the meantime, we’ll proceed with surgery prep—did Nurse Robards collect your paperwork.

“She did,” Snape answered, his expression giving no indication whatsoever that he’d sent it off without filling it out.

“Good. There’ll be additional waivers to sign, naturally—"

Harry was by now looking anywhere but at the doctor. Which was just as well, she hadn’t paid him the tiniest bit of attention in all of this besides in her attempts to assess his condition. It seemed her chief concern was with Snape, whom she’d seemed to have taken a disliking to.

“And his surgeon will be—?”

“We’ll be contacting a surgeon who’s on call. He should arrive within the hour.”

Mr. Snape looked like he wanted to argue, but the doctor headed him off once more.

“We’re short staffed, sir, and it’s after hours. Your son needs a care from an Otolaryngologist. That’s beyond the ken of most of our trauma surgeons.”

Snape snarled, his eyes cutting to Harry for a moment. He looked faintly apologetic when he did so.

“And what, in your estimation, rates as more traumatic than helping a boy whose throat is fountaining blood all over?”

The doctor gave an impatient shrug, “Things like knife wounds, perhaps? Automobile accidents and the like.”

Harry gave a full-body wince at the mention of the automobile accidents, but neither adult noticed.

The two stared at each other, eye to eye. Both had an impenetrably black shade of iris.

Apparently, Snape lost. Or he let himself lose. He broke the connexion first, scowling.

“Your assistance is… appreciated.” He ground out. His pale hands were clasped in front of him, the long digits latticed together at the knuckle. “Thank you, Doctor—“

“Doctor Santos,” she supplied. Apparently satisfied with her victory. “I’ll instruct the nurses to prep your son for surgery.”

Then she turned on her heel and was off, down the hall.

The next minutes were terrifying.

Harry had never known anyone who had had to have surgery, though his uncle had been threatened with a terrifying thing called a ‘heart stent’ should he not get his obesity under control.

Harry didn’t have much of a clue what that entailed, but from the way his uncle’s habitually purple face had gone a startling white told him that it was likely something worth fearing.

It was also a sufficient enough threat to inspire a short-lived dietary change in the Dursley house. For about three days—until his cousin and uncle tired of the heart healthy menu and began browbeating his aunt instead of just taking it out on Harry, as was their usual practise.

While they waited three or so nurses came by in succession to draw blood, check Harry’s breathing, and to conduct seemingly endless tests. They recorded the results with frowns that did absolutely nothing to reassure the boy.

Snape watched it all, tight lipped, and only spoke when Harry’s face had blanched lily-white as he watched a team rush into the ward with a new patient, the man moaning behind an oxygen mask.

His bottom half had been covered with a sheet, but it looked suspiciously like his leg was at the completely wrong angle.

“Right. Give that here, Potter.” Mr. Snape commanded, pointing at the auto manual.

It took several seconds for Harry to grok on, and when he did hand over the manual, which he’d been wringing between his hands, it was only with supreme reluctance.

Mr. Snape actually had to grasp his wrist and prise the booklet from his clenched fist.

He opened it with an audible snap as he sat back in his chair, flipping until he came to a seemingly random point. One finger of his opposite hand cradled his face, his index finger tapping on the side of one thin cheek.

“Describe to me the principal function of the exhaust manifold,”

Harry blinked at the man rather stupidly before venturing an answer. “Er… it passes exhaust off the engine?”

“Mm. Half points, Potter. It consolidates the exhaust from multiple cylinders into a single pipe.”

Snape proceeded to grill him on the parts of his car’s engine as the doctor came back and took Harry’s arm.

When she’d tied a rubber band around his upper arm and then stuck him quickly at the juncture of his elbow, Harry swooned and nearly fainted dead away—he was only rescued from such a fate by Snape’s quick thinking. The man had grabbed up a handful of disposable alcoholic wipe packages and had opened the contents under Harry’s nose, wafting the tiny, saturated cloth to and fro until Harry’s vision crept back from the blackness.

“—breathe. Not too fast, not too shallow—"

Harry did, his eyes fluttering as he fell back against the paper-covered bed he occupied.

His neck was flush with a cold sweat and he was sure he’d be ill.

“What’s the colour of brake fluid?”

“Errr… red?”

“Not unless you want to die in a twisted pile of metal when your brakes fail. That’s transmission fluid. Which a proper car wouldn’t need in any such case,”

Harry, who was slowly coming back to himself peered at the man at his side. He didn’t bother to tell the man that his driving may well be greatly improved by using an automatic. He was in no position to dodge a blow if Mr. Snape took exception to being criticised. He did, however, frown at the man and murmur: “Manual transmissions do need fluid, Mr. Snape...”

Somehow, the idea that the man had been neglecting his engine maintenance and that he’d not kept the transmission flush with fluid didn’t quite surprise the boy—though he did find it, if possible, even more worrying than Snape’s lamentable driving habits.

“And when not shifting, where should one keep his hand?”

His eyes widening with incredulity, Harry looked at the man as if he’d lost his head. He took a minute to gather his nerve before he answered.

“… not on the shifter, Mister,”

“Incorrect— it is a matter of personal preference,” Mr. Snape drawled with an amused smirk.

Rising up on his elbows, Harry couldn’t help that his voice was rising, “That’s a trick! That’s a trick and you know it! It says—" he grabbed at the manual and flipped to the operating procedures section at the front, “it says not to keep your hand rested at the stick!” He turned the book about and thrust it into Mr. Snape’s face.

Looking as bored as can be, Snape took the book back and tapped at it with is odd stick, like one would do with a pencil when puzzling out a difficult answer. “No—I dare say it is quite explicit,” he said, pointing to an item on the printed page. “Where the operator of the vehicle rests his hand is a matter of personal comfort,”

Harry gaped at the passage.

It had not said that only a moment earlier.

“That’s—no! No! It didn’t say that before, Mr. Snape!”

Snape looked almost apologetic, except the expression wasn’t quite natural on him. It was a facile affectation. A falsehood. “I’m afraid the burden of proof rests on you, Potter. It seems quite clear to me—and I wasn’t the one who scored so poorly on my reading comprehension assessment.”

Harry gawked at the man… he knew what he was about. He may have been wrong about the brake fluid, but he’d read dozens of books about the basics for cars—at least as many as there existed that had been written for his age and level of understanding.

They were all in agreement about that basic precept.

While he was distracted staring down Mr. Snape, who wore a victorious and amused curve to his thin, slash of a mouth, Harry scarcely noticed when the Doctor re-emerged with a surgeon in tow behind her.

At the very least he’d forgotten all about his near fainting spell, and the needle taped into his vein.

“Mr. Snape, we’re ready for your son—"

“Harry.” Mr. Snape supplied.

The boy felt himself start a bit. Up to that point he hadn’t been in any way aware that Snape even knew his first name. He’d not used it once.

“‘Lo, Harry,” the surgeon, a middle-aged, small, balding man gave him a small wave from behind his clipboard. “Has it been explained to you what’s going to happen?”

Harry shook his head, peeking up from beneath his fringe. Oddly it seemed longer than it had been when he’d first followed Mr. Snape into the A&E.

“We’ve already got you hooked up to receive medicine into your arm. You’ll fall asleep for a while and when you wake up you should feel a great deal better,” the surgeon told him, smiling like someone might have smiled at a boy three to four years younger than Harry.

“And,” the surgeon added, grinning down at the boy, “your father will be under explicit orders to give you as much ice cream as you can eat after. How does that sound?”

Harry glanced over at Mr. Snape, his uncertainty showing on his face. Snape’s expression betrayed nothing. He looked utterly impassive.

“That… that sounds ok.”

“Spectacular!” The surgeon cried, giving Harry another annoyingly condescending look. In that case, I’ll leave you with this gown and we’ll be back to bring you into the theatre in a few moments.” He handed Harry a mint-green, paper-thin cotton gown.

“It laces at the back, mind you. You’ll need to be completely bare underneath.”

Then, turning to Snape, he began grilling the man about the last time Harry ate and how much he’d had.

“It was a couple of hours ago. Most of it came back up.”

“And before that?”

“He ate a burger, chips, and ice cream nearly eight hours ago.”

“Goodness, when he was feeling as poorly as he was?” The surgeon asked, tutting a bit.

Snape flushed, and curiously, the brunt of the colour collected in the shells of his enormous ears. As if to defy the crimson climbing up his face, he skewered the surgeon with a glower. “He’d been with his mother’s family—I only just got him back with me today.”

“Is his mother aware that he’s here in hospital?” The doctor asked. “Do you have legal custody at the moment?”

Snape sounded as if he were speaking through clenched teeth: “His mother has departed this world.”

“Oh… my apologies, sir.”

Harry had never seen Snape look quite so angry throughout everything that had happened thus far. In the end, all he said was “Quite.”

Once the doctor had left, Harry turned around in order to undress and fasten the hospital gown about his frame. He needn’t have bothered, as Snape had turned away entirely and was finicking with something he’d withdrawn from a pocket.

Once Harry had managed to fumble the laces closed, he tried to peer around the man’s shoulder to get a good look— it appeared to be a tiny diary of sorts, no larger than the man’s palm.

He had a tiny stub of a pencil, the likes of which Harry had only seen in libraries, and was scrawling furiously onto the pages. Once he’d stopped he stared at the page, fixated.

And to Harry’s amazement, more text appeared beneath Mr. Snape’s, looking like it was being drafted by a phantom hand directly onto the paper.

Whatever it was saying had Mr. Snape frowning, before he closed the diary with a snap and turned, catching Harry looking over his shoulder.

“You realise it is the height of discourtesy to loom over one’s shoulder when someone is conducting business which has nothing to do with you.”

“I saw my name, Mr. Snape,” Harry challenged, “seems like it might’ve had something to do with me.”

“Nothing you need to know about.” Snape tucked the diary into the one of the pockets of his jeans. It didn’t seem as if it ought to have fit.

“Are you prepared?”

Harry realised that the subject was being changed, but he honestly was too afraid to press further.

“I… I don’t exactly know what I’m supposed to be ready for?” He admitted, kicking his short legs from the side of the bed.

The look Mr. Snape leveled at him was faintly pitying.

“Surgery, Potter—"

“I liked when you called me Harry…” the boy interjected, in a near whisper.

Snape paused and evaluated him with a frown before he began again. “They will be removing your tonsils… Harry. You’ll be asleep for the procedure, and when you wake there may be some pain—"

“Am I… will I feel it?” Harry spat again into the bowl, and to his dismay, felt a rising tide of nausea cresting and pressing against his chest. He felt as if between the spitting and the desire to vomit he could scarcely breathe.

“You’ll feel nothing.” The man told him, looking a bit uncomfortable. “They’ll be giving you medicine through that tube in your arm, and when you wake up it’ll be over.”

Harry ducked his head, his bare feet twisting toward each other and rubbing together as he fought back tears. He was only partially successful, and he felt one trailing down his cheek and dripping from his chin.

From out of nowhere, a pale, spindly hand appeared beneath his face, where he was looking down at the floor, and snapped several times in succession.

“I don’t want any of that, Potter!”

The fingers tipped his face up, where Mr. Snape’s frowning visage came into view; only for a moment though, as in the next second, the man was removing Harry’s glasses and stowing them away, seemingly into thin air.

“I don’t want to see another single tear coming out of those eyes of yours,” the man looked angry, but sounded curiously frantic. Like he was out of his depth.

“If you handle this like a man, it’ll be just like that dunderheaded Doctor promised, we’ll go straight away to pick you up your favourite flavour of ice cream—"

“Like at the restaurant?” Harry asked, hopeful. In spite of himself, he felt his curiosity and eagerness over the prospect eclipse the terror he was experiencing.

“Vanilla is it?”

Harry shrugged, “That’s the only ice cream I’ve had.”

Mr. Snape merely looked at him, his face an impassive mask— his eyelid may have twitched a bit violently, however, at this news.

“We’ll choose an assortment for you to try.”

By this time a few nurses were approaching and began to prepare to take Harry into the operating theatre, starting the fluids dripping into his arm and instructing him to lie back as they wheeled him away from Snape who’d risen as they departed.

Harry could barely speak, let alone yell, with his throat as shredded as it was, and when he did, red spittle flew from his mouth, but he was desperate.

“Mr. Snape! Mr. Snape— you’ll be there after? Will you be there??”

But he hadn’t time to get his answer before he was started on the anesthesia. Consciousness fell away from him all at once, like the sloughing off of a constrictive skin.

But then… just as suddenly as the lights had been flicked off, they flooded back in again— though it was impossible to see properly.

He could feel himself blinking, but he hadn’t the faintest idea of how he’d ended up where he was.

It was too bright to be his cupboard.

Or even the sitting room.

Beside him, a blurry black shape shifted and spoke, though it sounded as if it were coming from far away. Nearly ethereal in its intonation, as deep and resonant as the voice was.

“Harry? You’re feeling alright?”

Harry felt himself smile. The movement of it strained around his jaw, though he couldn’t imagine why that might have been. But that didn’t matter… no one called him ‘Harry.’ No one but his parents, in his dreams.

He’d never imagined his voice would sound like that… then again, he usually didn’t actually hear his parents’ voices, even when he had the sense that they might have been speaking to him.

His head tracked the black-haired man sat beside his bed.

“M’good, Dad.”

His father drew in a sharp breath and grew rigid.

“Where..? Is Mum—?”

“She’s not here, Harry.” The voice said, sounding firm. “Neither is your father.”

Harry frowned. How odd— for the man to refer to himself in the third person. And so angrily at that.

Harry felt himself falling backwards into sleep once more—but perhaps he was waking up. After all, this was the dream. This was where he wanted to be!

He fought, clawing his way back toward wakefulness (or perhaps it was sleep?)—his dreams were never so good—what if this was like those weird shows on the telly that Dudley watched sometimes where there was a second chance, but only if Harry could warn the man…

Hand flying out almost before he could stop himself, he seized the front of his father’s shirt and drew him forward, his father’s hand coming up to grasp him by the wrist, the grip surprisingly strong.

“Harry—”

“Dad, you gotta... gotta be—”

“I’ve got to be what?” The voice, which had sounded somewhat cross before, had grown softer. His father leaned forward, his long black hair swinging around the face whose features Harry couldn’t quite make out.

Of course, Harry had never seen what his father looked like... though that he should have black hair was no surprise given Harry’s own head of dark cowlicks.

He’d never quite counted on his father being the type to be cool enough to have a long, rock-star style, however.

“Gotta be careful. Very careful.”

Harry swallowed, and he couldn’t quite fight the black tunnel rushing for his vision.

“I’m to be careful?”

“In the... in the car, Dad. Be careful—cause—”

The hand around his wrist tightened spasmodically, and his father’s shoulders stiffened. “Because?”

“Don’ want you to die ‘gain,” Harry slurred. “You gotta...”

Harry’s hand dropped and his eyes fell closed like they’d been weighted closed with lead.

“Gotta drive safe.”

The blackness he fell into was comforting. Warm. There was no pain. No fear. No urgency.

He fought valiantly to hold onto it when a steady litany of sound began to encroach upon his peace.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Harry turned his head to the side, wrinkling his nose against the offending noise.

It followed him, however... or at least it wasn’t warded off by simply positioning his face away from the source.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Muffled words were being exchanged somewhere close, but distant enough that he couldn’t make them out.

One of the voices deep and smooth and the other a brisk, somewhat posh inflection—one belonging to a woman.

“It looks like he’ll be with us in a second, Mr. Snape.”

“When he woke earlier, he seemed to think—”

“Oh, it’s quite normal,” the posh voice interrupted. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things people say when coming out of anesthesia. It makes the most sensible of us run our mouths like fools. Anything he said was likely a consequence of the medicine.”

The deep voice made a sort of humming voice, and Harry’s eyes opened, in spite of his best efforts.

Two looming shapes stood above him, one an indominable black, the other clothed in white.

“Harry?” An unfamiliar voice asked, “How’re you feeling?”

When Harry swallowed, his throat felt as though it were tearing, and he couldn’t force the words out past his lips. His mouth moved but no sound escaped.

Likely he could have spoken if he had forced himself, but his sudden awareness of the pain prevented any attempts he might have made to communicate.

His hand came up to probe at his neck, and the white-coated woman brought it down with her own.

“No, no—try not to prod at it. You’re in a bit of pain, hm?” She asked, her question inane and somewhat irritating.

Of course he was in pain, Harry thought, wasn’t he meant to have had surgery?

The black figure seemed to be fussing with something in his hands—which were a stark white—before he extended them towards Harry’s face, and the boy felt the familiar sensation of his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Finally, the world came into focus, and he was confronted by the vision of a frowning Mr. Snape, considering him like he was some sort of bug he’d squashed under his boot.

The doctor beside him was unfamiliar, and she proceeded to put him through his paces with yet another tongue depresser, as she peered down his throat and asked him questions about how he fared that Harry could mostly answer with nods or shakes of his head.

She then turned to the man sitting at Harry’s bedside and began to list off a series of instructions for taking Harry home, by which time Harry tuned her out and directed his attention toward the television mounted up on the wall.

Snape was silent throughout these proceedings, his dark eyes fixated on the doctor as she went about conducting her examination and then debriefing him. When finally she finished, she excused herself and exited the room, though after she’d passed by the small privacy screen adjacent to Harry’s bed, he could no longer see her.

Harry barely noticed her leaving.

He wasn’t unfamiliar with television, per se. Certainly, Dudley watched enough of it—though it usually consisted of programmes that were animated and for children—but the movie that was airing was something that Harry was certain wouldn’t have ever graced the box that sat in the Dursley’s parlour.

For one, it was an American movie, and while those weren’t entirely verboten for the Dursleys, Uncle Vernon was often too much of a snob to want to indulge the Yanks in their ridiculous flights of fancy, unless it was a film that was popular enough for Dudley to throw a fit over.

Given the sheer number of films produced by the United States, it severely limited their options.

Yet, even had they been enormous fans of the creative exports hailing from Hollywood, it was very likely that this particular film never would have been allowed.

There was a long-haired, wild looking man swiveling around with a cherry-red electric guitar. He prowled across the stage in a red, zebra print sleeveless shirt and black leather trousers as a black woman in a ruffled dress danced an accompaniment behind him.

He was terrifying. Aggressive. He bore down on the young man opposite him as he shook the guitar by the tremolo bar attached to the bridge into the younger man’s face, his own face set into a toothy snarl.

The younger man—not much more than a boy himself—frowned back and played his own solo back; the two engaged in a battle of virtuosity and precision.

Harry had been staring—gaping rather—for the past three minutes or thereabouts, and when he chanced a look at Snape, it was to see the man observing him with a clearly amused expression on his face. The slight not-quite-smirk stretched at his thin cheeks and sent his face into an asymmetrical rictus of non-complimentary planes.

Huh.

“Mr. Snape,” Harry ventured, his voice raspy. He was rather annoyed with the persistent pain—though it didn’t touch the agony he’d felt before his tonsillectomy.

The man’s eyes glinted back at him in challenge. “Potter.”

“Is that...” Harry swallowed with great difficulty. “Is that you? On the telly?”

Evidently, this was not what Snape expected, for he blinked, and his face appeared surprised. It was an odd look for the man. He didn’t seem like he could be caught by surprise by anything.

He glanced up at the screen and frowned. Then, incredibly—the man snorted a laugh.

The man on the screen was playing a seemingly impossible guitar solo, before he ultimately fudged it on the final scale, his devilish face blanching with horror.

“No.”

“Oh.” Harry twisted his hands in the thin hospital blanket at his hips. “He looks like you. And that’s your kind of music—”

One of Snape’s eyebrows shot up. “My kind of music?”

“You know...” Harry’s voice came out a bare rasp, so he stopped short and pantomimed the guitarist on the wall-mounted television, holding up an invisible guitar and frantically moving his fingers along an invisible neck, his fingers playing soundless chords as they mimed the fretwork of the red-clad guitar player on screen.

Mr. Snape snorted and crossed his arms as he leaned back in his chair. “Would that I were so talented.”

“You can’t—” Harry strained.

“I cannot play, no.” Snape told him, shaking his head. “And I’m not sure whether I should be flattered to be compared to Steve Vai, given his regrettable decision to join up with David Lee Roth.”

“Oh. ‘Cause he looks like you.” Harry’s eyes were nearly watering, and Mr. Snape, perhaps finally taking pity on him, or else simply not realising that there had been a glass of water available for him until that moment, located the glass and handed it to him.

“Only...” Harry began as he reached for the glass, “his nose isn’t as big, is it? And his teeth are straight—”

Snape glowered at him, his expression beyond poisonous. “Anything else?”

“Erm... no,” Harry shook his head and took a tentative sip of the water.

How was it that something like water could actually taste sweet?

Harry was quite sure that he’d never tasted such delicious water in his short life... even after having been locked away without it for hours at a time under the stairs. Even when deprived of it until such a time as he had completed his chores outside in the back garden.

The cool tidal wave crested down his tongue and quenched the flames licking at his throat, if only for a second.

Why did it have to be that as soon as he’d finished swallowing, the pain was back with such a vengeance?

When he opened his eyes once more, Mr. Snape was peering at him, his expression thoughtful.

“It still hurts.”

Harry considered answering, but ultimately decided against it, deciding that a nod would have to do.

The man stared at him for another minute, seeming as if he must have been doing very complex maths or something in his head. He was looking at Harry a bit like the boy was an incredibly intricate problem he wanted to solve, and then without even a second’s warning, he shifted and craned his neck to look out around the privacy partition.

Apparently, he’d seen no one, though he still appeared cagey, as he reached one milk-white hand into his trouser pocket.

It seemed as if his arm went down far further than should have been allowed given the appearance of the garment. He was up to his elbow, fishing about, before he shifted sideways to withdraw his arm, victorious.

In his hand was a tiny glass receptacle. It looked a bit like some of the things Harry had seen for sale at traveler stalls. Little glass bottles, in a rainbow of merry colours, containing questionable mystery liquids.

Then Harry remembered that he’d seen a similar assortment of the tiny bottles on the floor of Snape’s car.

“Hold out your tongue.”

Harry could almost feel his eyes growing comically wide. He leaned back away from the man, who merely sighed with obvious annoyance.

“Of all the times for me to choose to hurt you, sitting in the middle of the ward in hospital would not be it, Potter.” He snarled, his tone long-suffering. “I had several opportunities to poison you, thus far.”

This did nothing to allay the boy’s fears, and he began to twist the thin blanket between his hands with even more strength as he deliberated.

It was true that Snape had fed him. And he had trusted the man’s cooking earlier when he’d eaten the supper Mr. Snape had prepared.

In truth, nothing Mr. Snape had done had brought him any harm, thus far—

“Harry,” Mr. Snape sighed, pitched over his legs. His elbows rested on each knee as he leaned forward. He was so bony that he almost looked like a pitched tent—his shirt the tarp thrown over the stick-like bones of his shoulders and arms. “It’s up to you if you take it. While I could force you, I see no reason to. If you’d rather be in pain, so be it.”

“What is it?” Harry mouthed, grabbing up his glass of water for another draught. Again, it only soothed him for a moment.

“Medicine. For the pain.”

There was something of a stand-off for several moments after, Harry’s eyes darting between the man’s face—which was uncharacteristically candid—and the tiny bottle he was twirling between his bony fingers.

His decision made, the boy tentatively stuck out his tongue. Even doing that seemed to sear his throat.

Mr. Snape was quick, however, and he unstoppered the glass bottle. The top was fashioned into a sort of glass-stylus which he used to drop exactly six drops onto the boy’s tongue, as far back as he could manage.

It tasted of something sweet but faintly foul. Like an over-ripe, rotting fruit. Harry fought the urge to smack his tongue about in order to dislodge the offensive flavour, and seized the glass as Snape offered it to him.

“Drink the rest of that.”

By the time the glass was empty, Harry could feel nothing. This time it was as if the water had truly washed away all traces of his agony.

“How—”

“Don’t speak, still. It didn’t make the wound heal faster, you just can’t feel it. Speaking will only hinder your recovery.”

“But how—?”

Mr. Snape clapped a hand over Harry’s mouth and scowled at him. He made a big show of rolling his eyes, “Magic, alright? It’s magic.”

Harry scowled and shoved the man’s hand away. “You don’t have to make fun...”

Snape’s scowl broke somewhat, and it looked as if he were amused—though in spite of himself. “Desist immediately, Potter, or you’ll be in worse pain when it wears off.”

Finally, Harry did, though he continued to send appraising looks Snape’s way.

They spent the evening watching the series of movies that were airing on the telly. It was a bit less fun than it could have been, given that Harry couldn’t make any commentary. Then again, he’d never been allowed to watch movies with the Dursleys.

The three of them would gather around in the parlour, shoulder to shoulder on the couch with all of the lights off to facilitate the atmosphere of a theatre, and if Harry was lucky, he could sometimes edge himself out of the cupboard and scoot along the floor until he could sort-of view the television through the door-way.

He’d been caught and punished for encroaching upon the family’s time before, but it had been worth it to watch Star Wars. He’d managed to watch most of A New Hope that way.

In the moments where Harry felt the loneliest, he sometimes imagined himself as Luke, and he’d fantasise about an old Jedi like Ben Kenobi finding him and taking him away on a space adventure.

Harry slanted a sideways glance at Snape, who was tipped back in his chair, surveying the flashing images on the screen.

Just his luck that The Empire Strikes Back was airing. He’d not had a chance to see it. And to be able to do it without sneaking—and with a bowl of ice-cream, courtesy of the hospital—it was almost better than being whisked away to learn that he had Jedi powers.

Though Mr. Snape, with his all-black ensemble, and his face bracketed by two falls of long, lank, black hair, reminded him far more of the titular villain of the series, particularly with his incongruously deep and melodic method of intonation.

In Harry’s experience, most people he saw who dressed like or looked like Mr. Snape spoke—in the words of his uncle—like ‘cockney trash.’

At that, Mr. Snape’s rather brusque attitude was a far cry from Ben Kenobi’s wise and eminently kind manner. Snape was perhaps more of a Han Solo type, with his rock music, and his scrappy dress—his devil-may-care driving. His tattoo.

And to Harry, Han was the height of cool. Especially given that, when the Dursleys had been watching the film, his aunt had sternly cautioned Dudley against getting any ideas about acting like the pilot of the Millennium Falcon.

In fact, she’d wanted to turn the movie off as soon as Ben Kenobi had begun to explain the nature of The Force, but the promise of an epic Dudley meltdown had forestalled her. Even so, she had huffed and puffed throughout the movie, her head canted at a high angle on her over-long neck, so that she could stare down her nose imperiously at the ‘utter tripe’ she was witnessing from the television.

It had endeared the movie to Harry all the more for her hatred of it.

The nurses, at a certain point, had attempted to chase Mr. Snape off, as it was now past the time for visitors, but he had done another weird number with his crooked stick-thing, and the nurse had left after bidding the two a pleasant evening, her eyes glassy and a vacuous smile gracing her face.

Harry couldn’t quite make heads or tails of it, but it was nothing if not fodder for Harry to glance up at the man beside him and to ask about how he’d managed.

“Mr. Snape, are you a Jedi?”

The man in question snorted and looked down his hawkish nose at him. “Should I be worried that we’re watching television given your apparent inability to sort fact from fiction?”

Harry’s mouth twisted in indecision. Mr. Snape hadn’t answered the question, and something about the evasion struck him as insincere.

“No... but it’s only that Obi-wan does that thing, right?”

“That thing.” Snape drawled, his thin lips growing tight into something of a sardonic—and indulgent—almost smile.

“You know—!” Harry challenged him, “You said you saw A New Hope!”

“I have, in fact, seen all three films.” The man informed him, his voice a bit tart.

“Then you know what I’m talking about,” Harry struggled, his eyes slightly accusing. He’d forgotten that he wasn’t meant to be speaking, and it seemed as if the ‘magic’ medicine that Snape had given him was beginning to wear off. “’Move along.’” Harry affected an officious American accent.

“Stop that, Potter. You’ll injure—”

“Harry!” The boy cried, ignoring the way he felt his throat straining. He felt nearly frantic, and not entirely sure why it mattered so much to him.

“Harry,” Mr. Snape hissed, “if you have any idea of what is good for you, you will cease speaking this instant.”

Harry felt his face crumple, though he felt somewhat mollified, even though he realised that Mr. Snape had again dodged the question of how he’d managed to get the nurses to go along with the man’s whims.

“It’s getting late. We’ll leave first thing, but you ought to sleep.” Snape murmured. He leaned further back in his chair, like he was making himself comfortable for a long stay.

Harry glanced down at his lap, trying to stifle a yawn, and in the time he’d taken to do so, looked up and was amazed to see that Mr. Snape was now covering his long legs in an afghan that Harry was quite certain hadn’t been there before.

“Where—?”

“Shh.” Snape drew the afghan up to his shoulders and sent a baleful glare in his direction. “Have you need of more potion?”

Harry’s confusion must have shown on his face, for Snape sat up and withdrew the glass container from where he’d returned it to his pocket hours earlier.

Dosing him again, though with fewer drops this time, Snape settled back and closed his eyes.

Evidently, whether Harry slept or not, Mr. Snape was making it clear that he would be incommunicado for the next few hours.

It was obvious, however, that the man was not asleep.

With a soft sigh, Harry mimicked the man’s actions, tucking himself behind the thin blanket, and watching the film that had followed Empire Strikes Back. The volume was low—a nurse had come by earlier and turned it all the way down in preparation for most of the inhabitants of the ward wanting to sleep, and so Harry could barely comprehend what the programme was supposed to be about.

Between Snape’s loud breathing—really, the man’s nose made his soft inhalations and forceful exhalations sound rather like an idling engine—the muffled noise coming from the television, and the beeping of machines throughout the ward, there was enough white noise for Harry to find himself floating off into the land of nod within five minutes.

He probably imagined it when he felt his glasses being gently removed from his face.