Grease & Lightning

 

The House at Number 4 Privet Drive was still in the morning sun. Beams of light played off of the gauzy white lace curtains that hung before the perfectly maintained front window, and not a single sound disturbed the peace.

There had been a glut of activity hours earlier. Enough that it should have woken just about anyone with ears, but the sole occupant of the space beneath the staircase had somehow managed to ignore the kerfuffle. He was well used to his obese cousin Dudley’s attempts at shaking the whole cupboard by jumping up and down the stairs, and Harry Potter had, accordingly, developed the ability to tune out whatever wasn’t meant for him.

It was the only way to endure the endless taunting. Taunting with food he wasn’t allowed to eat. Taunting with toys that were explicitly not for him to play with. Taunting with unkind words, with more than his fair share of work, with unequal treatment that his relatives seemed to make every effort to flaunt in his drawn face.

If the boy hadn’t learned how to let these offenses roll off his back, he’d have gone round the twist. As such, unless he was summoned, for whatever boring, never ending task that he was meant to complete on Dudley or his aunt’s behalf, he made a point of getting as much sleep as he conceivably could, and he blocked out the world around him with prejudice.

It was rather nice, he thought, waking when he wanted, and not a minute before. The boy stretched, his fingertips skimming the exposed beams as his arms scoped as far out as he could reach. It must have been Sunday, he realised. Sometimes, very rarely, the Dursleys would leave for church on Sunday morning and go out for breakfast at a restaurant after the service, and on those mornings, Harry sometimes managed to sleep in.

He dressed at a leisurely pace, drawing up a pair of too-big shorts to his navel and tightening the drawstring as snug as he could make it. When he tied it off it still left a two-inch gap around his waist.

The polo was long enough to hang down to his knees if not tucked in, and had a hole or two in the armpit, but it was clean and smelled nice. He’d laundered it only the day before. The socks were rather dirty, but what could one expect of socks, he thought as he pulled them on and laced up his trainers. Those at least fit, though only because Aunt Petunia had grown tired of him tripping over his own feet in the overlarge pair he’d inherited from Dudley.

She’d swiped these from the church’s donation drive.

Even though he suspected the Dursleys had left for the morning, Harry was hesitant as he peeked his head out the door of his cupboard. He’d been fooled before. Usually, Dudley lacked the patience to lie in wait for him, but there had been a few times where he’d been crafty enough to anticipate Harry’s head emerging from his little bolt-hole. On those occasions he’d slam the door shut on Harry’s face. Sometimes Harry managed to move his head quickly enough to avoid the door shutting on him. Other times he would stagger back, a sizable bump on the head and his ears ringing for hours.

There was no one about this morning. The house was so still that he could make out the dust motes floating about lazily. He almost hated to disturb them, but he knew that his best chance at getting a breakfast of his own was to swipe the food and prepare it while the Dursleys were away.

He’d pay for it later, but it would be worth it. He could practically taste the grease of the bangers now. His stomach rumbled in agreement.

The cooker was too tall for him to properly stand before, thus he drug one of the chairs from the dining nook over and stood upon it as he heated up the cast-iron skillet. Within minutes the sound of popping pork fat filled the house and a heavenly smell accompanied the cheerful noise.

The boy kept one ear trained to listen for the Dursley’s car returning, but he managed to get through breakfast without being interrupted.

Usually, he wouldn’t manage anything quite so filling, but after the bangers he’d tried his luck with a few slices of toast, marmalade, and a hard-boiled egg that had been in the fridge. He washed it all down with a glass of full fat milk.

The resultant milk moustache he licked from beneath his nose, wiping at it with his forearm when he couldn’t get it all. He’d not felt so full since...

Ever.

It was nearing noon now. Usually, the Dursleys would be back from breakfast. He felt gnawing anxiety forming a pit in his stomach.

Harry desperately wished he had the nerve to go and sneak into Dudley’s second bedroom to look for a toy to play with, but it was likely that he’d be caught in the middle of his theft. Having raided the fridge would come with punishment enough. It was possible that he could mitigate the impending disaster by doing his chores without being directed...

And so the small boy headed outside, finding the basket of gardening supplies in the shed. He knelt down in the mulch by one of Aunt Petunia’s courgette plants and began pruning, cutting away large leaves from the base and using the male flowers to pollinate the females as he’d been shown to do. There were a few courgettes growing already, their large bases swollen, but none were ready to be harvested yet.

After a half hour he moved on to the tomatoes. From there to tend the bed of carrots. Then he worked the perimeter, tidying up the flower beds and finishing his rounds with careful weeding.

By the end of it he was caked with dirt and soaked with sweat. The sun was no longer at its highest point overhead, and he felt as hungry as he’d felt before he’d eaten his large breakfast. He slipped back into the house.

It was five in the evening.

The house was silent except for the mantle clock, which played out every quarter hour with a Westminister chime.

Harry was beginning to grow nervous. He’d passed the day without saying a single word, and the Dursleys hadn’t returned from church.

Perhaps it was one of those special church holidays... there were times where he remembered them returning late... that must have been it.

At least the respite allowed him to get another good meal in.

He raided the fridge once more, finding a tupperware with leftover roast, potatoes and congealed gravy. It didn’t look appetizing at first glance, but it reheated well and when the Dursleys had eaten it earlier in the week, Harry’d not been allowed a bite of it. He’d instead been made to eat a thin sandwich on stale bread with luncheon loaf and no cheese, nor condiments.

The boy savoured the meal, holding the plate up to lick at the drops of gravy that had pooled in the crevice of the plate when he’d finished. The remainder of the roast he eyed, a bit greedily, but, in the end, he decided against it.

How much worse would he be punished if he didn’t leave any at all? Surely the leftovers had been earmarked for Uncle Vernon’s lunch the next day.

The dishes took no time at all to wash up and replace in the cabinets, and he was left kicking his legs as he looked around the kitchen, not sure what to do next.

The toys were still dangerous. If he got too involved in playing he might not realise when the Dursleys returned... but the television he could merely click off when he heard them pull up to the front drive.

Harry hopped down from his seat and found the clicker on the arm of the sofa, seating himself, perched at the edge, like he was waiting for someone to come and swat him around the ears for his insolence.

There was nothing much on, but the sheer novelty of being allowed to man the remote control was enough to provide him a few hours of entertainment.

In the end he settled on some strange game show where the announcer seemed more concerned with mocking the contestants than with adjudicating the actual game. The boy roared with laughter, causing himself to cough and sputter, and after the first episode, he managed three more. And then a movie that was airing.

Two-thirds of the way through the film he found himself yawning, and when he looked around he was surprised to find that the sun had long since gone down. The sitting room was dark, and the only source of light was the television itself. He swallowed, his throat feeling thick with tension.

The unease that he’d been suppressing all day began to grow in the pit of his stomach. When he drew the curtain back to peek outside he saw no one on the street. No car in the drive. No headlights approaching.

With nothing else that he felt he could do, Harry drained a full cup of water from the spigot to soothe the ache in his throat and put himself to bed, wishing with all his might that he could lock the door to the cupboard behind him.

Two more days passed in almost identical fashion, and still, Harry held off on playing in Dudley’s room. In that time, however, he had managed to eat through nearly all of the remaining food in the fridge (there hadn’t been much left to begin with, in truth), and he cleaned all of the laundry in the house, also keeping up on the dusting and scrubbing the bathrooms and kitchen.

The house was spotless. And empty.

Harry was exhausted and hungry.

On Tuesday, as he replaced folded shirts in one of the upper level closets he noticed a missing space where the suitcases usually were kept.

At one point during the day, he got the uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching him, but it only caused him to draw the curtains closer.

For lack of anything to do Wednesday, and to distract from the hole that felt like it was forming in the pit of his stomach—not to mention the searing pain that had developed in his throat— Harry let himself out of the house through the garden gate, walking himself down to the playground in the centre of the neighborhood. He watched as the younger children played with their mothers in the sandpit, and shied away from the older children who often spelled trouble for him.

It was hard to play by oneself, but he managed to keep himself busy for hours, until almost sundown. His hunger, by then, having become substantial.

When he let himself back into the garden, he broke off one of the immature courgettes from its place near the base of the plant.

Once inside he ate it raw.

By the time that the rumble of a badly maintained engine broke the silence on Thursday morning, Harry was beginning to think that me might forget how to speak altogether. He’d done his best to put himself to work, to distract himself, and though he didn’t miss the Dursleys one bit, he had developed a rather full-blown terror at night and found he could no longer sleep in their absence.

There were no additional clues to where they’d gone or when they’d be back.

As soon as he heard the roar of the motor pulling up the drive, he dove out of bed, having stayed fully dressed, and rushed for the door, fumbling at the lock. He wrenched it open and prepared to run out to greet his relatives, never mind that he was certain they’d not be happy to see him, but was brought up short.

He'd never seen that car before...

Harry nearly tripped over his feet on the front stoop, his eyes widening at the imposing figure of the young man who unfolded himself from the driver-side door of the early-seventies model, brown Morris Marina.

It wasn’t the kind of car that one normally saw on Privet Drive. The paint was shabby and rust had begun to creep beneath the edge of the fender. It was only a two-door model instead of the more ubiquitous four-door family cars that lined the street.

It certainly wasn’t Uncle Vernon’s brand-spanking-new Vauxhall Chevalier Mark III that he’d gotten with a company lease earlier in the summer.

The man who approached Harry where he was frozen outside the door was also no denizen of the neighborhood. He was the exact kind of person that Aunt Petunia would have shut the freshly-painted door against, likely drawing the curtains just enough to barely disguise the narrowed blue eye that peered through the crack in judgement.

He was tall (at least in Harry’s estimation, though in truth he was an inch shy of six foot). Tall and slim. His long-sleeve t-shirt stopped short an inch above his wrists, looking to be either too small, or to have shrunken from repeated washings. His attire was all black, which Harry imagined should have been far too hot to wear out during the scorching early July heat.

He was like one of those disreputable punk rockers that Vernon steered Dudley and himself clear of on the streets when they were in town, though his clothing wasn’t ripped or torn or adorned with sharp spikes. His jeans were black, like his shirt, and tucked into the cuffs of a pair of tall, army-issue boots.

Before the boy knew it, the stranger was looming over him, peering down at him with a pair of eyes that were black like peat-moss and just as acidic.

Harry scarcely knew what to do or say. He’d been warned against people like this before. Men with long hair. People who wore all black, or really, anything that didn’t appear on the up-and-up.

It probably occurred to him far too late to turn tail and flee through the open door behind him, turning the lock and resting his back against the paint as he tried to catch his breath.

“Don’t talk to strangers,” His aunt had warned him in no uncertain terms. He’d had his ears boxed many times when strangers (and truly odd ones at that) had made it their business to come up to him for a chat in the past.

He knew better. And he certainly hadn’t said a single word to the man on the stoop. If the Dursleys ever made it back, there could be no doubt that he’d not spoken to the stranger outside the door.

Or that might have been the case, had the lock by his elbow not mysteriously clicked back upright, and the door he was resting against pushed open, causing him to slide a foot or two down the hall before he leapt away.

Harry scarpered aside, his eyes rounding behind his glasses as the stranger stood, silhouetted, at the threshold. Looking even more terrifying with the light casting behind him against the darkness and stillness of the Dursley’s domicile.

Thinking quickly, Harry grabbed for a porcelain shepherdess that sat on a small table in the hall, he lobbed it at the man’s head.

“YOU’RE NOT WELCOME HERE! I’M WARNING YOU!” The boy shouted. He winced as the screaming pulled at his vocal chords—probably they weren’t used to being used after nearly a week of silence.

The man had the good sense to pull the door partially closed in front of him, blocking the trajectory of the knick-knack, which shattered and fell to the floor. Harry scrambled for another, this one a tacky decorative egg.

This one met the same fate as the first, and the man stepped casually within the door, looking quite bored. He’d pursed his lips at the boy and then examined the mess on the floor, now crunching beneath the tread of his boots.

“Petunia truly does have awful taste,” he sneered. Then he looked up, his terrifying eyes narrowed at the scrawny boy in front of him. “Where are your relatives?”

He had a commanding voice for such a young man. He had to have been younger than Uncle Vernon, and in truth, didn’t seem that much older than some of the teenagers that his relatives liked to complain about.

Harry gulped. Was this a stranger, if he knew his Aunt? He was in the house... perhaps he’d been given a key?

In any case, the man was big, and Harry himself was small. It was bad odds to try and fight him off physically. He’d learned that much from his scrapes with Dudley and his goons.

“They’re out,” he hedged, looking about desperately.

The stranger crossed his arms across his chest, causing the shirt to ride up his forearms another inch, exposing thin, bony wrists with a smattering of black arm hair. “Out where?” the man demanded, one black eyebrow rising with obvious impatience.

The man only gave him half a minute before his face clouded over. He kicked a booted foot against the wall, and a cloud of dust came away. He’d managed to kick through the drywall.

He pulled it away from the wall, both hands braced against the white-washed surface. He was cursing with a tongue that proved truly foul.

Harry didn’t like the looks (or the sounds) of his visitor one bit. He stared at him for a second, speechless in the face of the dark stranger’s vitriol, and turned his tail, diving for the still-open door of his cupboard.

It was a foolish gambit, particularly as there was no-where to go from underneath the stairs, but if he closed his eyes tightly enough, curled up small enough, maybe he’d be lucky and would find himself on the roof, like that one time at school he’d been chased by Dudley’s gang.

He heard and felt the man’s footfalls as he approached. His stride was heavy, fast, purposeful. For a second, the sound paused, right outside of the door, then the door was wrenched away, and he had a view of the man’s faded black jeans to the knee before he bent, his black hair and scowling face bending into view. He was stooped at a strange angle which might have been amusing had it not been for the terrifying circumstances.

Several fraught seconds passed between them before the stranger let out an aggrieved sigh and crouched on his haunches, now low enough that he could have crawled into the space himself. He didn’t.

“This is how your aunt taught you to greet a guest?” He needled the boy, his voice redolent with sardonic inflection.

Harry peeked out between splayed fingers, his glasses smudged by the assault on the lenses. “You’re… you’re a guest?”

The stranger considered him for a moment before giving a languid shrug. “As a matter of course.”

Frowning, Harry drew his hands away just enough to speak. “What’s that mean?”

The man scowled down at him, his jaw ticking a bit. “It means that I may as well be.” He ground out through gritted, yellowed snaggleteeth.

Harry was caught between glaring at the dark man and ducking his head to avoid his penetrating black-eyed stare.

In the end, he trained his eyes on the ground between his trainers but when he spoke, it bordered on insolent. “That doesn’t really answer my question…”

“As far as you’re concerned, Potter, I’m here in loco parentis.”

This time Harry’s inquiry was nearly belligerent. He was more confused than before, if possible. “Well, what does that mean!?”

“It means get your scrawny arse out of the cupboard and speak to me with the proper respect, Potter.” The man growled, his voice sounding positively dangerous.

Harry scrambled out as soon as the man stepped back and cleared the entrance, patting cobwebs and dust off of his knees and out of his hair. “So, you’re like… the babysitter? Little late, aren’t you?”

“Wise you are not, boy, or else you’d know to watch your tongue,”

Harry frowned at this instruction, but had learned well not to try and interpret things his own way, in the past. He poked his tongue out of his mouth and strained to see it with his eyes, going near cross-eyed in the attempt.

It was no use, he couldn’t see it—and it didn’t seem like this was what the dark stranger wanted anyhow, if his next words were anything to go by.

“Little idiot—is this the sort of cheek you think passes for acceptable? Your relatives allowed such disrespect from you?”

Harry withdrew his tongue into his mouth and shook his head, staring hard at his worn trainers.

He found himself stuck, not knowing at all what he ought to do. He’d only done what the man had asked, but was weary now that the frightening intruder saw it as disrespectful.

He knew what it meant when Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia considered something a sign of disrespect: ear-boxings. Losing his meal privileges. Hours of chores. Being shut up in his cupboard—though sometimes that was alright if it allowed him to stay away from the three Dursleys.

The man said nothing and the silence was terrible... He had to fix it somehow. Had to come up with something to paper over the unintended disrespect to his...

The man had said guest. How did Aunt Petunia treat a guest?

Harry glanced up and saw that the visitor was surveying him closely, his black eyes narrowed in a way that appeared quite dangerous. He felt himself beginning to sweat under the scrutiny and his hands, which had been growing clammy, sought purchase in the fabric of his shorts, twisting the twill material between his fingers.

“Er... follow me to the kitchen,” he announced. He practically fled down the hall, hearing even, measured footsteps follow, and he didn’t look up as he filled a glass of water from the tap to set at the table in the eating-nook.

He avoided the man’s gaze further as he slid open the door to the back garden and ducked outside, ignoring the calls he heard coming from behind him that ordered him back.

“Potter! I’m warning you—you’ll come back this instant—!”

Harry left only long enough to grab another courgette from the plant, and a couple of not-quite-ripe tomatoes to boot. He cradled them in his arms as he rushed back inside, under the arm of the stranger who was holding the door open, glowering at him.

He allowed the harvest to spill from his arms out onto the table, and then he sat, heavily, in the booth.

Trying to ignore the way that the man loomed over him as he stomped back over to the table, Harry pushed the courgette and the ripest tomato at the man—a hopeful peace offering—before grabbing up the greenest, smallest tomato for himself.

“What’s this meant to be?” The stranger had picked up the courgette and was holding it up like he’d never seen one before, examining it with a frown that could have either meant he was offended or confused.

“Food, Mister.”

“Food.” The man deadpanned. He watched, his eyes widening a bit, as Harry took a careful bite of his green tomato.

It was bitter and hard. Not at all appetising... The boy struggled to swallow, certain that the burning it produced going down was likely a byproduct of eating the unripe veg.

Aunt Petunia had always insisted he’d make himself sick if he ate from the garden.

“Nasty boys who steal food will take ill with it,”

But there was nothing else to eat... And this man was a guest.

Guests were to be served food and a drink.

The man set the courgette down in front of Harry and stalked away from the table. He opened up the door to the fridge and peered down into it, shifting through the shelves.

Harry munched at his tomato as he watched. He didn’t think it was really polite that the man should be looking through the fridge on his own... but then what did he know? He’d been told plenty of times that he was possessed of fewer social graces than the beggars they passed sometimes on the street when they had occasion to go into Kingston-upon-Thames.

He eyed the riper tomato, feeling a bit greedy. He’d almost finished his own, and his stomach was aching worse than it had when he’d eaten nothing... Perhaps the man wouldn’t want it after all...

The door to the fridge slammed shut, and Harry drew back as he read the tension in the stranger’s shoulders. He then went through the icebox, apparently finding nothing to his liking there either. Next came the pantry, and that too he slammed—with enough force that Harry was surprised the wood didn’t splinter.

When the visitor turned back around, his eyes were somehow blazing, even as they appeared flinty and cold. He leveled a nasty sneer at Harry. “How long have your relatives been ‘out?’”

Swallowing, with difficulty, around the last bit of tomato, Harry licked his palm to catch the juice as he answered. “Since Sunday,”

“And how long have you been having to eat out of the garden?”

Harry ducked his head. This was it... he’d have his ears boxed for sure. He ought to have known better than to have stolen from his aunt’s crops. “Well, see? It was the last of the bread and roast on Monday... and there were only a couple of bangers left... all the tinned food she’d taken for the donation last week—”

The man appeared murderous and Harry flinched back. “I... I didn’t want to steal it—I wouldn’t have done...”

“This is unacceptable, Potter.”

Harry’s fingers clenched on the edge of the table. “I’m sorry! I... the crackers she normally has for guests are all gone, and so are the biscuits—I’m not supposed to have those, but you’re a guest—”

“Stupid boy! I don’t want any damned biscuits!”

Harry felt like hitting himself, but at this point he could barely help it. His stomach groaned in protest and he doubled over, trying to make the cramping subside. “Do you... do you want the tomato and that?” He asked, pointing at the courgette. “’Cause if you don’t... er... I’ve already gone and picked it—”

“What’s your point?”

“I’m not supposed to waste food.” Harry shook his head, miserable. “I know I’m already a waste of food—”

The next words out of the man’s mouth were deadly soft, and Harry wasn’t sure what to make of them. He would have liked to have hid in his cupboard once more, but that had hardly worked the first time he’d tried. “Are you trying to ask me if you can eat the rest of this entirely unacceptable ‘meal?’”

“Well look, if you don’t want it—”

The stranger strode forward and grabbed Harry by the shoulder, causing the small boy to wince as he pulled him from the booth. For all he had expected it to hurt, however, the man’s hold was surprisingly gentle—at least compared to the vice grip he was often subjected to from his uncle.

“We’ll neither of us be eating this. Come on,” he directed, towing Harry behind him by the fabric of his shirt.

Harry struggled to keep up with the long strides. “Where are we going?” he gasped, as they reached the door.

“Out.”

“I’m not supposed to leave with a stranger—”

The man stopped short of the entrance and spun on his heel, the movement looking lacking somehow. As if he expected it to be more dramatic...

“And your useless guardians weren’t supposed to leave you here alone for five days, without a speck of food in the pantry, to fend for yourself.”

“Still... I don’t know you—” Harry hesitated, resisting the pull of the man’s hand on his shoulder. He grabbed at the hem of his shirt and twisted it, his anxiety manifesting in a nearly full-body fidget.

Sighing like he was being made to do something far beyond tedious, his visitor straightened and canted his head, looking rather put upon as he did so. “You may call me Mr. Snape, Potter.”

Harry blinked. “Mr. Snape?”

Except the way Harry said it distorted the name. He’d lost a couple of teeth earlier that summer—aided, no doubt, by the repeated application of Dudley’s fist to his jaw—and the slight lisp he’d developed as a result made the name come out as: Mishter Shnape.

Mr. Snape winced. “Yes?”

“Where are we going?” Harry asked again.

“For a bite to eat.” Snape stalked out the front door, and slammed it behind Harry once he’d followed.

Harry felt positively mistrustful of Mr. Snape, and his clunky car, but he gamely slid into the backseat when the man pulled his own seat forward to expose the back bench, clipping himself in with the belt and tightening it as far as it would go.

It felt decidedly less comfortable than the Vauxhall, but Harry found he sort of liked it.

Unlike the Dursley’s family car, Mr. Snape’s was cluttered with odds and ends all over. Empty glass bottles littered the back floor, some of them looked to be the normal pop bottles that Harry had watched—with enormous jealousy—Dudley consume, but some of them were tiny, with scraps of paper hosting an inscrutable scrawl affixed to their fronts.

He fished through a couple of Coke bottles to find one and examined it. It was nigh impossible to read what the tiny label said, but he gamely sounded it out.

“Pepper-up...”

“Put that down, Potter,” Mr. Snape snarled, as he climbed into the driver side and clipped his own seatbelt.

Having buckled himself in, he reached across into the passenger seat and seemed to be fumbling with a tape player. There were about fifteen to twenty rogue cassettes lying about that Harry could see, and when he looked to his side he noticed many more.

They were all over the car.

Snape seemed to be rifling through them, searching for one in particular. After a moment or two, he evidently found it, as he pressed the button to pop open the tape player and shoved in his choice.

There was a soft whirring as he rewound the tape, during which he started the car—the clutch sounding as if it were putting up a mighty protest—and popped it into reverse. He didn’t turn to press play until he’d made it to the end of Privet Drive.

Harry had never heard anything like it.

The only thing that his aunt enjoyed listening to was what Harry would have termed ‘stuffy,’ or ‘girly.’ She was a devotee of acts like Rod Stewart, David Essex, and ABBA, and that was when she wasn’t intent on making Dudley and himself listen to opera or classical in some attempt at making them ‘cultured.’ The Dursley’s car also had its tape deck in the car stereo itself, but Mr. Snape’s car didn’t seem to have a cassette player set into the dashboard. Either it had never had one or the thing had been removed at some point in time.

Harry thought that this might have been the electric guitar... but it was almost difficult to say, given the level of distortion. A lick peeled through the air and undulated like a rising and falling wave of sound as two voices sang in a chorus together:

“I knew right from the start you'd put an arrow through my heart—Round and round! With love we'll find a way, just give it time,”

Harry was enraptured, but evidently, Mr. Snape was upset for some reason. He cursed—one of the bad ones that would have had Harry’s mouth being washed out with soap had he the guts to have said it in front of his relatives—and pressed rewind again.

“Damn thing,” Mr. Snape muttered, the car swerving a bit toward the median as he fumbled with the stereo.

Harry clutched at the torn leather of the back seat in a white-knuckled grip, pushing himself firmly into the bench. He felt his stomach churn with terror as he watched the oncoming traffic grow nearer.

Snape righted course after only a second’s inattention, and began the song again, this time in the beginning (as, apparently, he’d started it somewhere in the middle on the first attempt).

The bottles clinked against one another as they rolled from one side of the cab to the other. Mr. Snape was taking the turns quickly and was practically jerking the wheel around as he navigated, his hand never leaving the gear-shifter.

Harry was trying to sink into the seat. He was paying no attention to where Mr. Snape might be taking him...

How could he when the man would aggressively downshift while the engine was still straining? The whole car bucked and jerked as the transmission attempted to comply.

When they came to a stop at a red light, Harry leaned forward and his eyes widened with alarm.

“Why’re you still in gear? You’re not supposed to stay in gear when you’re stopped—”

“Just who is driving whom, Potter? Stay out of it,” Mr. Snape growled. He went back to softly singing along with the cassette under his breath and began rolling again as the light changed.

Harry frowned at his back and reached forward to poke his shoulder. “Hey—stop riding the clutch—”

As Mr. Snape turned to snarl at him for his impertinence, the car swerved in an alarming fashion. “Imagine my surprise to learn that you—at the ripe age of seven—have a driver’s license, Potter... Oh! Wait—don’t tell me you don’t? Then leave the driving to those who do,”

Harry thought that was rather rich. Mr. Snape was liable to get them killed doing as he was. He retreated back and crossed his arms across his thin chest, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see. They were going to crash... he just knew it. License (or as Mr. Snape pronounced it: loicense), or no.”

He could feel the car straining underneath his bum, the engine struggling to keep up with the ridiculous shifting that Mr. Snape seemed partial to. He would slam up and down through the gears, with seemingly no regard for the RPM, and the car would lurch, shudder, and jerk with each shift.

It wasn’t that Harry liked cars. He had no especial attachment to different makes and models like some of the boys in his year. Rather, he was terrified of the things—and accordingly, he’d done as much research as he could in his primary school’s limited library so that he could learn all about his greatest fear.

The teachers, perhaps imagining that he might go on to be a mechanic, had encouraged his interest. He was often in trouble, and presumably, anything they could do to shepherd him into making something of himself later in life was worth supporting.

It was certainly more interest than Dudley had ever showed in a subject.

As a consequence, Harry could tell anyone all about the way a transmission worked, or where the carburettor was. He had memorised the standard operating procedures and knew when someone was violating them.

Mr. Snape was a living demonstration of everything someone ought not to do when operating a car.

Harry couldn’t stand to watch. He covered his eyes and began to chant a prayer in his head that he’d learned on one of the few occasions in which he’d gone along to church with the Dursleys.

“Please God, please God, please God,”

“You’re ruining the chorus, Potter.” Mr. Snape snarled. He must have lifted his hand from the shifter for a moment then, because he turned the volume up. When Harry risked a peek through his fingers it was to see the man’s long, thin right hand drumming on the wheel.

Within minutes, however, the car finally slowed outside of a rather run-down eatery in a part of town that the Dursleys always avoided. When Harry had seen them drive through, they usually made a point of locking all of the car doors.

Mr. Snape whipped into a space in the car park and slammed on the break. He probably hadn’t even been in first gear when he slowed to a stop, and Harry’s head was jerked forward and then back against the leather seat with the inertia.

“Out, Potter, we’ve arrived.”

Harry fumbled with the seatbelt, he was so rattled, and when he exited, he had to suppress the impulse to fall to his knees and kiss the sweet, steady, unmoving asphalt.

Snape took his shoulder once more and trotted him forward in front. He directed to two of them into a dusty, slightly derelict storefront that promised on the sign that they served lunch.

They sat at a table that wobbled terribly, and Harry quickly found out that he’d have to avoid leaning on it, as when he made to plonk his elbows upon the surface it tipped precipitously to the side.

“What are we doing here?” Harry asked, his finger smudging through grease that seemed caked a centimeter thick on the tabletop.

Mr. Snape looked at him with an utterly inscrutable frown. Harry couldn’t figure out if the man was angry with him or not, but accordingly, he leaned away from the table and out of his armspan— just in case he should have a wild inclination to swat at Harry’s head.

“I should think that obvious,” Mr. Snape drawled. He plucked two menus from the caddy that was sliding from one side of the table to the other each time it tipped and handed one to Harry.

“What do I do—“

Snape glared over his own menu at him, obviously annoyed now. “You chose something to eat, Potter. I shouldn’t think it that difficult.”

Harry’s face contorted with misery as he held the menu up to obscure his expression. It shouldn’t have been difficult, no. For Dudley it wouldn’t have been…

But in truth, Harry had never been allowed to order off the menu for himself before.

His eyes frantically scanned down the items, searching out the cheapest thing he could ask for.

At fifty pence, that turned out to be a side order of toast.

When the waitress returned, Mr. Snape began by ordering himself the Welsh rarebit and a bottle of Coke. Once both of their attentions turned to Harry, he found himself dawdling, his hands worrying at the laminated menu.

“Well, boy?” The man prompted, his tone impatient.

Harry couldn’t help his flinch. ‘Boy.’ That’s what Uncle Vernon called him… well, that and ‘Potter,’ which Mr. Snape had also been calling him.

Somehow ‘boy’ was far worse.

“Er… just the toast, thanks.”

Snape’s black eyes, so terrifying even when he was maintaining an emotionless expression turned faintly murderous once more.

As the waitress went to record Harry’s answer Mr. Snape interrupted. “He’ll have the burger with a double order of chips.”

“No, no— I’m fine with toa—“

“The burger.” Snape interrupted, making a rude shooing motion to the waitress. He then pinned Harry with a venomous look. “You’ve not eaten in three days and you think you’ll make do with toast?”

He snorted then, his impressively large schnoz making it all the more dramatic.

Harry grimaced down at the table, feeling his heart rate explode in his chest.

“Please, Mr. Snape... The burger is ten pounds—“

“Did I tell you to look at the prices?” Snape interrupted again, sneering. “No? Then I when I tell you to order it is with the expectation that you choose something that suits you, not that suits my wallet— in so far as you are assuming, in any case.”

Suddenly, Harry realised that he might have inadvertently offended the man, and rushed to apologise.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to say you couldn’t afford it—" he stumbled, thinking of the reaction his Uncle doubtless would have had toward such an implication.

Snape looked at him then rather as if he was a curious and unknown substance that he might have stepped in by mere accident. “My funds are not in question here. You are hungry, are you not?”

It was the first time he’d spoken to Harry where he hadn’t sounded incensed, and the change was startling enough for Harry to agree that he was, in fact, starving.

When their food arrived, he no longer felt any compunction: he dug in, ignoring that the heavy, greasy food left him feeling faintly ill, and not giving any quarter to the scratchy feeling in his throat as he swallowed.

He didn’t even see that Mr. Snape himself wasn’t eating until he was half-way through his double order of chips. He only noticed when he went to squeeze more ketchup on his plate.

When he did notice he froze, as would a rabbit in torchlight. All wide eyes and twitching ears. Nose scenting for signs of danger.

Of course, Snape had driven them there, and he was paying for the meal, (or at least so Harry assumed. He had to quickly quash an irrational idea that the man might leave him there to wash up after other patrons in order to pay off their ticket), so there was no where he could run even if he decided to do so.

He swallowed, and nearly choked, on a half-chewed bit of potato.

Mr. Snape didn’t even take his eyes off of him when he went to take a swig of his Coke. Harry had a wild impulse to tell him that it was rude to stare for so long…

He didn’t quite dare.

Snape’s own meal had barely more than two bites taken from it, but he waved for the waitress and murmured to her something that sounded like “pudding.”

When Harry chanced a glance at his own plate he was surprised to see that there was nearly nothing left: only small, desiccated bits of bread that he’d torn off when the dry texture hadn’t quite suited him.

“Mr. Snape, thanks for the meal— but you don’t have to order me pudding—“

Snape gave him a supercilious raised eyebrow in response. “And if the pudding was meant for me?”

Harry felt himself turn crimson. “Oh…” Of course, it wouldn’t be for him… the rarebit simply must not have suited Mr. Snape…

But for all of that, when the waitress returned she set a dish in front of each of them. Some kind of spotted sponge for Snape and a bowl of vanilla ice cream for himself. It even had chocolate syrup.

Harry felt his jaw drop. He wasn’t even quite sure that he knew how ice cream with syrup might taste… in his recollection he’d never tried it before.

Mr. Snape had already taken three bites of his own before he noticed Harry’s reticence. “Well, Potter? You’re not going to let that melt, are you?” His voice was brisk, but not so very unkind.

Harry was speechless, but shook his head with near violence, digging in and sighing with pleasure as the cold soothed his aching throat.

And on such a hot day?

It might have been his closest approximation of what Heaven might have felt like.

Sweet relief. Blessed satisfaction…

But gone all too soon. As was the unfortunate nature of such earthly delights.

This time they both finished, and Snape seemed far more satisfied with his second order than the first when he rose to settle their bill.

Harry observed him as he frantically made efforts to bus their table— a service always required of him by the Dursleys when they brought him along to restaurants (which was rare, and usually even then he was only to finish whatever Aunt Petunia had decided she was done picking at).

To Harry’s great surprise, when they left, it wasn’t to immediately go back to Privet Drive. Mr. Snape instead fiddled with the tape deck once more before he demanded that Harry scour around the back-seat for one of the albums.

“A crucifix, Potter. Look for a cross, with five heads on it, and red and gold—”

“Is this it?” Harry asked, holding up a cassette in the rear-view. He examined the title: “Appetite for Destruction?”

“Yes, give it here,” Snape demanded, reaching his shifting hand back through the front seats. He popped the new cassette in one-handed, the car swerving a bit.

Harry had immediately sunk back into the seat and closed his eyes again as soon as he’d finished helping Mr. Snape find the tape. It helped when the music came on to distract him from the man’s terrible driving.

It must have been the end of one of the songs, as a man’s voice—pitched higher than Harry had ever heard a man’s voice go—wailed along with the shrieking of the guitar.

“—Won’t you please take me ho-oooooooome! Yeah—!”

Nothing followed on the tape, however, and Mr. Snape cursed again as he fumbled with the player, turning the tape over to the other side and shoving it back in again.

The lede for the next song was a sorrowful refrain of notes followed by a mournful chord, before the electric guitar roared in with a powerful, ferocious peal of sound.

“Your Daddy worked in porno, now that Mommy’s not around—She used to love her heroin but now she’s underground—”

Harry frowned. The song was captivating, but confusing.

“Mr. Snape? What’s ‘porno?’”

That produced a coughing fit and from what Harry could observe of the man—namely only his overlarge ears poking through the curtain of his hair—he had begun to blush. The red colour crept up the helix of his ear and he turned viciously to jam the pause button. “Never you mind that.”

Harry was disappointed. He’d rather liked the music. He’d only asked a question after all.

“Why did the mum’s hero go underground?”

Snape frowned into the rear-view mirror, considering Harry carefully for a moment.

But before he could answer they were pulling into the carpark for Sainsbury’s. Harry knew what that meant.

Almost as soon as the car was put in park, he rushed out the door, ignoring Snape’s calls to halt him, and grabbed a trolley.

Snape stomped up behind him then, looking furious. “Why did you dart off like that? Idiot boy—I could have lost sight of you,”

Harry ducked, hoping to avoid a swat to the head. “Wasn’t I supposed to?” He asked.

“Supposed to what?” Mr. Snape grilled him, prising his hands off of the bar and directing the trolley himself down the produce aisle.

“Supposed to grab a trolley for us before some heifer got to it first—”

A hand clapped over his mouth tightly and Snape stopped, looking around, appearing a bit frantic.

“For Christ’s sake, Potter—you can’t go saying things like that! Where did you learn to talk like that?” Mr. Snape’s expression was censorious in the extreme, and Harry felt abashed, though he didn’t quite understand why.

He’d only gone to grab the trolley.

“That’s what Aunt Pe—”

Mr. Snape shook his head violently, sending his hair—which was long enough to reach down his back— flying in all directions. “Petunia. Of course,” he sneered. “I should have expected.”

He straightened then and began browsing the veg. “Don’t let me hear you say such a thing again.”

“About the trolley?”

“Don’t be obtuse! I mean calling people ‘heifers,’ particularly where anyone might hear!”

Whether Snape was more upset about the word ‘heifer’ or that someone might have overheard, however, was impossible to ascertain.

Harry trailed the dark young man as he pushed the trolley through the aisle. He stopped to examine a tower of apples and selected a few at random that he tossed into a bag he’d seemingly produced from nowhere. Heads of cabbage and broccoli joined in short order, which Harry winced at, but who was he to critique the man’s taste in food? It wasn’t like Harry would be having any of it.

He added a two-kilo bag of potatoes and a half dozen tomatoes that were already ripe enough to be eaten. Finally, he looked satisfied, and he passed into the next aisle, surprising Harry when he asked him whether he cared at all for porridge.

“Erm… I suppose…”

Mr. Snape’s voice was dry when he next spoke. “You suppose.”

“Well,” Harry began, feeling rather sheepish, “I always sorta thought it might taste better with something in it… but I don’t mind it plain, Mister, I swear—" he hastened to assure the man.

Snape treated him to another of those looks that Harry couldn’t quite make heads or tails of before he moved along, swiping out an arm for a bottle of maple syrup without a word.

“How do you take your eggs?”

“I’ve never really had a choice…” Harry hesitated, reading Snape’s mounting fury in the tense set of his shoulders. “But I… er… I always like when Dudley has them scrambled,” he amended, deliberately avoiding mention of the fact that Dudley almost never failed to finish his eggs, which meant that there were scarcely ever any left for Harry himself to have.

After that the man stopped asking for Harry’s preferences, which was something of a relief, as the boy got the distinct impression that his answers were only making Mr. Snape angry. That, and he couldn’t fathom why he was bothering…

Maybe, for all of his surliness, Snape was just polite like that.

Harry nodded. That must have been it. He was polite enough to buy Harry a meal when his own offer to the man had so obviously been lacking.

And really— that was so good of the Mr. Snape that Harry felt sweat forming on the back of his neck from the sheer humiliation he felt. He really was a lousy host. All of the sudden he felt like crying, and he had to suppress a sniffle in his sleeve as Snape dithered over the choices of packaged meats, finally selecting two hefty packages of both bacon and bangers.

He appeared to be brought up short when he turned and saw Harry trying to dash his eyes against his short sleeve, and failing miserably to stifle his tears.

“What’s this?” He asked, his voice brusque as he set the packages in the bottom of the trolley. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s n-n-nothing—“

Stomping forward in his black boots so that he was positively looming over the boy, Mr. Snape hissed at him through his higgledy-piggledy teeth. “Do not lie. Not to me.”

Harry was losing the battle with his eyes and, at that point, decided he ought to give it up as a bad job. “It’s only… I’m s-sorry I’m s-such a b-bad host…”

When he chanced a look up into the man’s face, certain he’d find it incandescent with rage, it was to see that Snape looked, for the first time since he’d met him that morning, dumbfounded.

“I know that… that I didn’t get you anything to eat—anything proper that is—and it’s been really good of you to not…” Harry trailed off, not wanting to say anything.

Not wanting to put ideas in the man’s head if they weren’t already there.

Snape’s long pale hand came out to grip his shoulder, and Harry unwittingly made the errant observation that the man’s sleeve was fraying at the wrist.

“Good of me to not—?” He prompted. His voice was softer than Harry imagined it could have gotten.

No one spoke to him like that…

Well… one teacher had once. When he had been about four… and then after a conference with the Dursleys she had gone to being as cold toward him as everyone else.

He felt like sobbing all over again.

“To… to not box my ears or anything…” Harry offered up, ducking his face and having to repress the desire to cover his ears with his hands.

There was that look again… and Harry was beginning to think it might have bordered on sadness, perhaps… or maybe even pity.

But it was gone in a flash.

The man straightened and snatched his hand back from Harry’s shoulder, but not without—at least Harry thought—perhaps having given it the barest hint of a squeeze.

“Yes, well... done’s done. Button it up, boy.” He glanced around, checking their position in the store. “Go and choose a few boxes of biscuits; no less than three, mind.”

Eyes bugging out of his face, Harry hastened to go do as he was bid. He wasn’t a stupid child. He suspected that given Mr. Snape’s generosity thus far, if he was to follow his instructions now, the man might even be willing to share in the bounty.

He came back with his selections: McVitie’s Custard Creams, Jammie Dodgers, and Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers. Snape nodded his approval and pushed forward, selecting a few brands of tea and a package of sugar.

By the end of the trip, the old Morris Marina was overladen with bags and Harry had to sit next to several that wouldn’t fit neatly in the boot (which was no surprise, given that Mr. Snape had at least two, enormous wrought iron pots that took up most of the space. There was no telling what he used the gargantuan vessels for).

The trip back to Privet Drive was conducted in silence, at least in so far as conversation went. Snape had chosen yet another album, though there were no strange allusions to words that Harry could scarcely understand in this one.

Though every song did seem to be about girls. And he didn’t quite understand what a ‘touch too much’ might have meant.

“She had the face of an angel, the body of Venus with arms, dealin’ with danger, strokin’ my skin,”

“Er… Mr. Snape?”

Snape’s eyes met his in the rear-view, giving him a foreboding look.

His voice was gravel-like when he spoke. “Don’t. Ask.”

“Oh.” Harry kicked his legs. “Alright, then.”

Before long they were pulling into the driveway, the car jerking to a stop that had the whole contents of the backseat, Harry included, flying forward.

He pried open his eyes through sheer force of will and forced himself to acknowledge the fact that they had come to a safe stop. The bile rising in his throat he forced down by swallowing. It felt like it burned his esophagus.

Snape departed from the car after turning off his tape player and turned to him once they’d both exited the vehicle.

“Grab a bag, Potter.” He told him.

When Harry went to collect up as many as he could reasonably carry at once, he realized that there was only one remaining.

His mouth nearly dropped open.

Snape was halfway to the door with most of the bags himself, leaving only a single thing for Harry to carry.

Normally, it was Harry who was expected to play the pack mule.

Harry directed the man in the kitchen as they put the shopping away in the cabinets and then, to his bemusement, Mr. Snape shooed him out with an imperious wave of his hand.

“What am I meant to do, Mr. Snape?” Harry asked from the doorway. Mr. Snape had made it clear he wasn’t allowed even a step further into the kitchen.

Mr. Snape had busied himself at the cooker. He’d located a large stock pot and was adding in a package of butter as he began to assemble a small pile of vegetables around a cutting board he’d pulled from a hook on the wall.

“What would you normally do?” He snarked as he began scouring carrots under the tap. He was obviously absorbed in his task, and Harry resisted the impulse to ask if he could stay and watch. The man looked a bit like those contestants he saw on the Iron Chef show he’d snuck to watch from behind the sofa while his Aunt was too absorbed in the programme to notice.

“Er… normally on Thursday I do the linens—“

Snape paused where he was chopping potatoes. “Do the linens?” He repeated, sounding almost stupid. As though he’d never heard such a thing before.

“Yeah,” Harry wedged his body half between the door and half in the other room, ready to dash if necessary. He didn’t mind Mr. Snape so far, but he didn’t quite like the looks of the man with the large cleaver in his hand. “Aunt Petunia wanted me to change them every day, except when Uncle Vernon got the water bill he told her it was too much, so now I do them on Saturdays and Thursdays—"

With the cleaver hanging in the air over a particularly fat tuber, Mr. Snape stared at him for several moments, not saying a word. Then he brought it down and the potato split clean down the middle with a dull thump.

“Go… just… go find something to read, Potter.”

Harry’s eyes widened behind his glasses.

Finally, after another beat of tension between the two, Snape’s lips twisted into a snarl, baring a yellowed canine. “You can read, can’t you?”

Harry felt sweat bead at the back of his neck.

“Mrs. Hendricks gave me a score of sixty on my last test…”

Harry thought he heard Snape cursing under his breath. “Merlin preserve me—“

Huh. An odd choice of words, Harry noted, someone distantly.

“What, pray tell, is a sixty supposed to mean?” Mr. Snape bit out, looking impatient as he began to unwrap a whole chicken from butcher paper.

Harry winced as he noticed that the man put aside the giblets and organs instead of throwing them away as his aunt would have done.

A thousand to one that would be his supper, he wagered.

“Sixty out of one-hundred…”

The man’s eyes narrowed at him, and he turned to face Harry, his arms crossed against his chest, the cleaver still clutched in his right hand.

He looked like a mad butcher.

“In my classes, I consider sixty out of a possible one-hundred points to be ‘Poor.’”

Harry ducked his head, avoiding the piercing gaze directed toward him.

It was no good. He could feel the man’s eyes on him. Like a raven’s beady stare, only more foreboding.

He didn’t know what to say to that, and he felt too ashamed to explain that while he’d gotten a sixty, at least it was far better than Dudley’s score of twenty-five. Particularly since his cousin had spent much of the test period sending spit balls careening into the back of his head.

All things considered; Harry thought a sixty quite good.

So, he said the only thing that came to mind in the wake of the man’s statement.

“You’re a teacher?” He managed to keep his voice from wavering, but only just.

Mr. Snape snorted. “After a fashion.”

Blinking, Harry couldn’t help but to begin to ask: “What does—“

“Don’t ask what that means,” Snape snarled. “Yes. I am a teacher.” He turned back to chopping things to put in the pot.

“You’re kinda young, aren’t you?”

This earned another poisonous glower as Mr. Snape added carrots, celery, and onion to the butter he’d melted.

In for a penny, Harry reasoned. So far, Mr. Snape hadn’t done anything to him except for to glare. By Dursley standards, he was the absolute soul of kindness.

“I mean, I’ve never seen a teacher with long hair before,” he began to natter, “and you dress like—"

Snape spun to face him, expressionless. “I dress like—?” He prompted.

His voice sent warning claxons ringing through Harry’s brain.

Unfortunately, he was far too committed by that point. Too committed and too curious by half.

“Like… er…” Harry’s hands began to wring the fabric of his too-large shirt between his sweating palms. “Well… Uncle Vernon would probably say you were in-dole-ent.” Harry sounded out.

“Indolent.” The man repeated, his voice deadpan.

“Yeah...”

Seeming to think for a moment, Mr. Snape ultimately turned back to mind the pot, which was by now emitting an enticing fragrance as the onions sweated in butter. “My wardrobe notwithstanding, Potter, my credentials are such that I am what you would call a teacher.”

“You could’ve just said ‘yes,’” Harry found himself griping, beneath his breath.

Incredibly, the man still heard him— though with his enormous ears, roughly proportionate to a bat’s, though rounded instead of coming to points—it should have been no wonder. “And allow you to persist with your poor vocabulary and comprehension? Not a chance. If you don’t know what else to do, go find something to read that’s more challenging than what you’re used to.”

That seemed to be the end of the conversation, and Harry backed out of the kitchen with a frown.

More challenging than what he was used to?

He felt far too self-conscious to admit to the man that the only reading he ever accomplished was in the classroom proper. All the Dursleys had about were glossy magazines, the business section of the newspaper (Uncle Vernon threw out the other pages most mornings, and Harry couldn’t ever make heads or tails of the strange verbiage left behind that told of acquisitions, stocks, and something called ‘futures’), and the books that Petunia kept stowed away in her bedside drawer.

Of course, there were Dudley’s comic books, but Harry wasn’t to touch those—

Actually, he wasn’t meant to touch any of the Dursley’s reading materials.

After shifting from foot to foot and painfully clearing his throat a time or two—which Snape pointedly ignored—the boy decided his best course of action was likely Aunt Petunia’s books.

That’s what a teacher would expect, right? Books?

He certainly hadn’t read very many. In class they mostly did read-alongs with books for children his own age, or they read selections of bigger things. Of course, he’d been sent home with assignments to read things like the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe… but when Aunt Petunia had found his copy and had viciously torn it to pieces before his very eyes (and Dudley’s too), he’d been forced to guess at the plot and details when they’d discussed it as a class over the next few weeks. He’d only managed to get to the part with the Badgers, which had disappointed Harry greatly.

He’d gotten poor grades for that— and a striped bottom for his bad showing when the Dursleys had been called in to discuss his marks with the teacher.

Of course, Dudley had done worse— but he’d been comforted with an ice lolly when he’d begun to bawl about how unfair it was. After all, how could the teacher expect him to know anything about a book that was so objectionable as to have been worthy of the kind of treatment his aunt had subjected the text to?

He snuck into his uncle and aunt’s bedroom, somehow worried that they would find him there, even though he knew they’d been gone for days.

Sometimes, everything felt as if it existed to entrap him.

The Dursleys’ room held two beds, his uncle’s and his aunt’s. His uncle’s was a double wide, with a neutral, navy counterpane—undisturbed since Harry had last laundered the bed clothes. His aunt’s was nearer to the door, and featured a twee floral covering next to her side table.

Harry meandered to it, trying to stuff down his misgivings. He turned on the small, fussy lamp at her bedside and crouched down beside the side table, opening the tiny drawer like it might awaken to bite his hand.

Inside was an assortment of odds and ends: reading glasses (that Aunt Petunia would never admit to needing), what seemed to be a small bottle of prescription pills that bore the lable ‘zopliclone,’ a manicure kit, and three battered soft-cover books.

Harry drew out the pile as he settled cross-legged on the floor in front of the small lamp. The room was still dim enough that he had to squint, and the covers were so creased and faded that he had a difficult time making out the titles or cover-art.

He thought the first one might have featured a woman precariously swinging from the mast of a ship, the second—if he squinted hard—a lady of means sipping tea in a posh café, and the third, he noted with some confusion, appeared to be a couple embracing.

A very pretty couple, Harry thought, as he tried hard to figure out just what he was seeing.

Somehow, it appeared that the man’s blond hair was longer and more luxurious than the woman’s, whom he was holding tightly in his over-muscled arms.

It wasn’t long like Snape’s, however—who was the only man that Harry knew personally with long hair. His was like a stringy net of swamp gook, somehow tousled and tangled even though it was poker straight.

The man on the cover’s hair was like the hair featured on the covers of some of his aunt’s fashion magazines…

And Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman so beautiful in real life. She was turned slightly to the side, her eyes cast down and aside as she reclined into the man’s chest, her own hair long enough that it cascaded down her front almost to her navel. She wore a dress that appeared to be of the softest shade of pink and laced in a way that suggested it might have been hinting at a somewhat medieval setting.

And that seemed to bear out—upon a second appraisal, the long-haired man was wearing a suit of chain mail.

He rose from the floor, and then hoisted himself up to sit on his aunt’s bed, promising himself that he’d smooth the counterpane before he left, just in case she should come back and realise that he’d had the gall to perch where she slept.

The first two books he piled on the table beside her bed, and he began to thumb through the third, finding the text to be smaller than he was used to, and more densely packed.

Well. He stared at the book like it might bite him. He supposed the title page would be the most likely place to start. There was the least amount of text there anyway.

His Earthly Rewards

By Clementina Montgomery

That wasn’t quite as interesting as a lion and a witch, though it did promise to be an improvement over the promise of a wardrobe…

He continued on to the first chapter, his feet swinging beneath him, too short to touch the floor.

He found himself frowning a short time later.

How could adults stand to read anything quite so boring?

According to the story, there was a fair maiden, the daughter of a poor farmer (of course, the book had called him destitute, but Harry couldn’t quite fathom what that meant, at least not until the narrative went on to describe the rags the family was obliged to dress in).

The maiden’s family could no longer afford to feed her, and come chapter two, a knight in service to a local lord had spied her and offered to make her his… something.

Harry had no idea what a ‘consort’ might have been.

From the way she balked at the offer, he imagined it wasn’t very nice—

“What on earth are you reading!?”

The book was snatched from his hands with such speed that the page he was on tore.

“That’s—! You can’t! That’s not my book!” He protested, grabbing for it as Mr. Snape held it out from himself as if it were utter filth.

His fingers were holding the cover in a pincer grip, seemingly trying to make as little contact with the book as possible. “When I instructed you to go and find challenging reading material what could have possibly made you think that this would be in any way appropriate?”

Harry peered at him, and his confusion must have shown on his face.

“Do you know what this is, Potter?”

Harry shook his head and ducked his head.

“So, you didn’t choose it because it was… illicit?”

“Illicit?”

Mr. Snape drew his free hand down his face, appearing exasperated, weary, and prematurely aged with the gesture.

“If you don’t know already, I suppose it will suffice to say that this is material that is… too old for you. Choose another book.”

“These are the only books in the house, Mr. Snape—" Harry protested. He clawed the counterpane in with his hands, twisting at the material as he fretted over what his punishment might be.

“The only—?” Snape began, sounding a bit gobsmacked. Then he said something quite shocking.

“Fucking Petunia,” he snarled, spitting on the floor boards.

Harry’s eyes had grown comically large behind his glasses. He eyed the glob of spit on the floor, wondering if he should run for a towel, and he couldn’t quite help himself from making an inane observation, “You swore…”

Snape sighed and tossed the book into the corner, where it smacked against the wall and fell to the floor with the pages face down and the spine cracked. He repeated his earlier motion of rubbing down his face, but this time with both hands.

“I suppose I did.” He admitted, glaring at Harry with an expression that made his irritation clear.

“In any case, I came to fetch you for dinner. I called for you at least five minutes ago. I suppose you didn’t hear me through the haze of smut,” he spat, “that you were absorbed in. We will address the lamentable lack of suitable reading material after supper.”

He began to lead Harry out of the room, and Harry didn’t even bother to spare a glance for the thoroughly confusing novel he’d been wrapped up in for the afternoon.

It had been difficult to understand what the author meant by any of it, anyway.

Snape bade him to sit and Harry was amazed to discover that the taciturn young man had evidently taken it upon himself to prepare a thick chicken dumpling soup.

Soup in the middle of a hot July wasn’t precisely his first choice, but it looked and smelled delicious, and Harry hadn’t had anything fresh and hot in… well...

Actually, months if one discounted that morning’s burger and the food he’d stolen to eat right when the Dursleys had been gone.

Usually even when his relatives were home and the house was stocked with food he was only ever fed thin sandwiches on the most squashed pieces of bread or other second-hand fare.

The soup was served with a crusty slice of bread that Harry didn’t hesitate to dip in the broth—a rich golden hue that showed glossy pools of fragrant oils on the surface.

Unlike Aunt Petunia’s cooking, the vegetables weren’t cooked within an inch of their lives— they retained a bit of firmness. And flavour.

“You can’t expect me to believe there are no other books in the house,” Mr. Snape began, his tone nearly conversational, between bites.

Harry laid his spoon down and felt himself flushing and beginning to sweat. “There aren’t!” He swallowed, the action difficult. Perhaps the soup was too hot—it felt as if it had scalded his esophagus.

“I think not, Potter! Pick that spoon back up and keep eating.” Snape barked, pointing a finger at the utensil.

Harry scrambled to do as he asked, but for all that, only played at scooping up more soup to eat. He felt as if he could barely swallow, and the bread, though delicious, scratched at him terribly.

Snape eyed him critically. “You’re not eating.”

“I’m… er… I’m full still. From earlier.”

He felt the man’s black-eyed gaze on the top of his bowed head.

“I don’t believe you.” The comment was crisp, but not cruel or unkind. “When you sat down and took the first few bites you seemed ready to tuck in.”

Harry didn’t respond except to take a bite of the soft, inner flesh of the bread and to soften it over his tongue for a full minute, hoping it would go down easier that way. He added a spoonful of broth, to no avail. He still winced as he swallowed the wad of wheaty paste.

Snape set down his own spoon and crossed his arms over his chest as he surveilled Harry from beneath a furrowed brow. “You’re in pain.”

“No!” The boy hastened to object, “I’m just… it’s hot. I need to let it cool…” he prevaricated, stirring the bowl and dipping the spoon in such a way as to draw up almost nothing in the basin of the spoon. He took a pantomimed sip for good measure.

Looking like he didn’t believe him for a second, Mr. Snape merely carried on eating. Harry couldn’t shake the feeling that he was watching him closely for the remainder of the meal.

He was forced to eat at least half the bowl… and at least it tasted good… but by the time Snape had finished and the bread was gone, eating had become an utterly torturous activity.

“Er… may I be excused?” Harry asked, not looking up from the bowl. He felt like he might lose his dinner if he looked anywhere but down.

The man appeared torn, though Harry couldn’t quite imagine why… no one ever cared how much he ate, so maybe it was because it was terribly rude of him to refuse the food that he’d prepared.

And he had been so good to him so far... he’d not even made Harry eat the chicken offal bits!

All of the sudden he felt like crying, but he didn’t want Snape to see. Whenever he’d cried in front of his family it had been met with either taunting or he’d been tossed into his cupboard and locked away until he could ‘fix his face.’

“At least as much as a foul boy like yourself can fix such a scruffy mug,” he heard his aunt’s voice echo in his memory.

“Please, mister… I need the loo—"

“You’re excused.”

Harry almost fell to the floor, he had scurried away from the table so quickly. He stumbled out of the room, hoping his wretched sobs—that he no longer could contain—wouldn’t reveal his state.

The bathroom door slammed behind him, and he began retching into the toilet, the entire meal coming up from his depths. It was even more painful going out than in.

By the end he couldn’t stop spitting any saliva that gathered in the corners of his mouth—swallowing just wasn’t an option. His face was a mess of tears, snot, and the dregs of dinner.

After a few moments that he spent heaving over the bowl, he drew himself up against the sink basin and rinsed his face. He didn’t look in the mirror. He had it on good authority that there was nothing he could do to improve on that.

He felt better, but he still couldn’t keep his saliva down. He felt it filling over his tongue and spat into the basin several more times. He had to get that under control. He couldn’t go back out there and keep spitting.

Not on the floorboards and rugs… his relatives would have his hide, and there was no telling what Mr. Snape would do in response to that kind of disrespect.

He made himself gulp down the next time. It was barely tolerable, but he managed, his throat protesting the entire time. It felt like fire.

When he went to open the door, it was to find the young teacher standing at the threshold, his peat-coloured eyes bearing down on him.

“Problems, Potter?”

“N-no,” Harry gasped, feeling a cold sweat bead out across the skin of his neck.

“Because it sounded as though you were getting violently ill in there.”

“I… I’m allergic—"

“Are you?” Mr. Snape canted one of his eyebrows above the other. “To what, pray tell?”

“Er…” Harry was so disoriented that he could scarcely remember what had been in the soup. Worse, his salivary glands were overproducing as he thought of food. After everything… he was still hungry. “Potatoes,”

“Which you ate at lunch without issue.”

“Erm, I did..?” He nearly slurred.

“A double serving of chips.” Snape frowned. “I’d prefer the truth, if you would.”

Harry nearly swooned against the door jam—bile was rising in his gorge once more and his mouth was too full of retained spit to even speak… he couldn’t bear to swallow it back, and it was threatening to spill out the corner of his mouth.

He made a quick about face and ducked over the sink, turning on the spigot to rinse down the resultant overflow as he hawked into the porcelain.

Snape stepped forward beside him and Harry couldn’t protest. He was too weak, leaning against the counter.

But the teacher didn’t grip him by the roots of his hair and send him careening into the crawl space in order to sleep and sweat it off.

One of his hands, spindly and pale, passed by the corner of Harry’s vision where he was propped, doubled over the sink, to grab one of the towels from a dowel on the wall. He wet it under the faucet, allowing the water to sluice over it until it saturated the fabric, then he pressed it, without ringing it out, to the back of Harry’s neck.

His left hand came around the other side to press against Harry’s forehead, which he almost didn’t feel, by then nearly insensate.

His eyes were half-lidded, seeing almost nothing as the edges of his visions began to tunnel.

There was one thing though… something that was surprising enough to cut through the fugginess of illness.

Harry’s gaze focused on the only thing in front of his eyes, where Mr. Snape’s worn, ratty shirt had ridden up from his forearm stretching to cradle the boy’s fevered forehead in his palm.

“Hey… you have a tattoo… Thas’ c-cool…”

“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.

---

Mr. Snape escorted Harry from the recovery ward the next morning.

Before they left, Mr. Snape had inspected his throat himself, and seemed satisfied with what he’d seen. He gave Harry more of the magic medicine, but told him that, so long as Harry didn’t scream himself hoarse, he should be able to speak without incident.

Mr. Snape did another of his Jedi mind tricks thingies with his stick in order to get them out of hospital with no more questions asked.

Harry was ushered into the back of the Morris Marina, and when he slid back into the torn leather seats, he laid his head back and forced his eyes closed, anticipating the jerky motions of the car with dread.

They never came, however. The car reversed out of the parking spot and then sped out of the car park in a smooth motion.

He risked opening his eyes, feeling incredulous. Both of Mr. Snape’s hands were on the wheel. At ten and two—just as Harry had always read was the prescribed procedure. When he shifted up to merge onto the faster lane, it went smoothly, and when he shifted down to slow his merge onto the round-about, the car didn’t jerk once.

Harry, feeling somewhat bold—Mr. Snape hadn’t even once tried to hit him round the head for any perceived slights—noted the change.

“So you can drive—”

Snape glanced back at him in the rear-view, bearing a tooth in an almost feral grin, before he hit the accelerator as he merged onto the M40, headed north.

“I can’t drive 55.”

Harry’s hands were clutched in the material of his shorts once more, his back pressed firmly against the bench seat. Mr. Snape was easily traveling fifteen to twenty miles per hour above the posted limit.

“Where... where are we going?” Harry asked, noting out the window that they were going far afield of Little Whinging.

The car swerved a bit as Snape, once more, fumbled with the tape deck in the passenger seat. He handed the whole thing back to Harry over the back of the seat.

“Do you know how to use that?”

“Er... sorta?”

“Press that button to the right to pop the door open. See if you can’t find the case with the animal pelts on the front.”

Harry kicked through the tapes on the floor behind the seat with one scuffed trainer, until he unearthed a glimpse of zebra. He leaned down, doubled over at the waist, to shuffle through the piles of plastic and cardboard until he unearthed what he thought was probably the correct album.

“Kiss?” Harry read out loud.

“That’s the one. The triangle button.” Snape added, distracted as he passed a Ford Anglia.

Harry removed the tape from the player and swapped it out, depressing the large play button as instructed.

It seemed that the song was midway through, though Mr. Snape didn’t seem to mind. It must have been where he’d last left off before he’d switched to a different tape.

The lyrics were almost a sort of chanting, culminating in a refrain of “Heaven’s on fire,” though it was difficult for Harry to make out the rest of what they might have been saying.

In truth, once he’d pressed play, he had ceased paying all too much attention.

Snape, while speeding, was at the very least shifting smoothly, and Harry watched outside the window as the mile markers advanced, and they passed endless exits for cities and towns further and further north.

He was made to switch the tape several more times, at Mr. Snape’s direction. Apparently, the man had all of his albums memorised and knew precisely what he wanted to hear at any given moment.

It was more rock music than Harry had ever heard in his short life, and by the time they were passing through Preston, he was kicking his legs along to an album Snape had selected where a kneeling hulk of a man was holding a giant silver orb emblazoned with the letters ‘VH’ on his shoulders.

Nearing the end of the song, Harry had learned the refrain well enough to mumble along.

“Tell me why can’t this be love?”

Mr. Snape’s eyes caught his own in the rear-view, apparently checking in on him, and the man gave him a terse nod. His thin slash of a mouth, with its petulant lower lip angled in an expression which may have spoken of amusement.

They had reached Cumbria, and the car moved down a new lane once they approached the signs that told them they were coming to Backbarrow.

They had been in the car for hours at that point.

Snape finally pulled off at a petrol station that seemed to be a lone island of development in the far north hinterlands they had entered. For being so barren and decrepit, the town of Backbarrow was surprisingly picturesque, with ancient-looking plastered houses that lined the rolling streets.

“Enjoy the view now, Potter.” Snape told him, over his shoulder. He was waiting on the attendant to fill the petrol tank.

Kicking his feet—they were too short to reach the floor—Harry frowned up at the man. He had to raise his voice slightly for it to carry. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.” Mr. Snape had crossed his arms and was scowling, but he was then distracted from the boy for long enough to pay for his purchase. The boy was left to ponder the meaning of his words.

Though he wasn’t left in the lurch for too long. Eventually, the man started the car again—once more being curiously gentle by his normal shifting standards—and they passed over a crumbling brick bridge that spanned an odourous river (if one could call it that. It was so polluted that the water nearly stood still, and looked to be mostly mud, besides).

Curious splashes of bright ultramarine were all over this part of town, marking buildings, and streets, old push-carts that looked as if they’d been abandoned where they’d broken on the side of the road. The houses here were uniform, cramped, and constructed of brick—so close together that the window of one house almost kissed the front door of its neighbor.

The walls had to have been paper thin.

In the back gardens, which butted up to the next row’s back gardens, laundry was out to dry, and Harry witnessed several irritable inhabitants slamming the door behind them as they ducked into tiny hut-like structures that abutted the backs of the houses. They all were throwing suspicious looks at the car, each other, and even the laundry, as if anything and everything was just a second away from declaring itself an imminent threat.

“Mr. Snape? Where are we?” Harry asked. Earlier, when he’d wondered aloud where they were going, Snape had neatly side-stepped the question.

And though the man had been nothing but kind to him, he, for the first time since the journey had begun, began to worry whether he might not turn out like that story he’d heard on the news a few summers past—of the little boy who had been abducted and found months later in the brush...

Dead.

Harry’s legs began to kick at a more furious pace, and as the car rolled around some of the curves in the road, he wondered whether it was slow enough for him to tuck and roll if need be...

“This is Cokeworth.” Snape said at last. His hand was holding so tightly onto the steering wheel that his knuckles were bloodless. “This is my home.”

The man swallowed. It was the first time Harry had ever seen him nervous, and that alone made Harry nervous. He scooted sideways on the bench until he was adjacent to the door, considering his options.

It would be difficult. The car was a two-door model, so he’d have to be quick about squeezing past the front passenger seat if he had any hope of jumping...

“This was your mother’s home.”

Harry stopped with his little hand a scant two inches short of the door latch. Mr. Snape’s eyes sought his own in the rear-view mirror. It seemed like he could nearly read his mind...

“You’re welcome to run off on your own if that’s your wish, Potter. I won’t stop you. But I will caution you that I am likely the only thing in this place that would promise not to harm you.”

The car pulled off into a side street (Heddle Place) off of a main thoroughfare—Swift Street if the sign could be believed—and Snape slowed until they were stopped before one of the boarded-up houses, somewhere near the centre of the row.

Speaking over his shoulder, Snape kept his eyes firmly trained on the façade of the building. “Hard to imagine your aunt grew up in a place like that, isn’t it?”

“Aunt Petunia? She lived there?” Harry asked, his voice faint. Though these houses looked to be a bit newer and perhaps nicer than some of the other streets and houses, it was still incredible to imagine that his judgmental, all-correct and superior aunt would have come from such humble beginnings.

“This street housed the plant managers and their families. It doesn’t look like much now, but it was once the nicest street in town.”

“What happened?” Harry asked feeling as though the words were being drug from him. He felt curiously detached. Like the house—where once his mother and aunt had played—was somehow pulling him in; such that Mr. Snape felt a world away.

“The plant closed down.” Snape answered. When Harry looked at him, his own black eyes were as focused on the run-down domicile as Harry’s own had been. The man’s jaw was clenched tight, and for all that he was a young man, in this moment he looked old. Ancient even. His long, thin face was drawn with a criss-cross of conflicting lines and angles.

“The plant closed. Families like your mother’s moved away. Got jobs elsewhere.”

“But you still live here, you said—”

The car began rolling again, and Harry wanted, with every part of his being, to pound on the car door and demand to be let out... like his mother waited for him inside. Just on the other side of that door...

Perhaps he would even get to see her face.

“Families like mine stayed.” Mr. Snape growled, sounding bitter.

“Families like yours?”

“Poor families, Harry.” If possible, Snape’s hands got even tighter on the wheel, until Harry was surprised that it didn’t break. “My father was not a manager, like your grandfather. My father never found work again when they started laying off. That was years before they finally closed the blueworks, mind you. If I’m not mistaken, your grandfather was able to find work elsewhere when rumours began to spread about the plant’s failure.”

“Where did they go?” Harry asked, his fear of abduction all but forgotten. In point of fact, he had been abducted... but could it be called that when first he had been all but abandoned? Was that abduction, or familial abdication... or could it be something better? Something which was too far-fetched to even be worth considering? Something like...

Something that surely wasn’t worth wishing for, in any case.

“Somewhere south. Some place outside Manchester, I believe.” Mr. Snape looked to be far away, and Harry felt lucky that the man was able to drive at all, given the evident state of his preoccupation. “The Evanses left in ’76. I didn’t know about it until I saw the house empty.”

Harry’s voice was nearly timid as he glanced up from beneath his fringe. “You knew my mum, then?”

The car swerved a bit, reminiscent of Snape’s earlier method for driving—that is to say: poor—before he corrected course and turned down a street that was perhaps half a mile from Heddle Place. Spinner’s End.

Many of the houses had been torn down, and empty lots remained in their place. Nothing more than a footprint of some family’s life. The rest were all boarded up.

Snape stopped before the final house on the street and indicated to Harry that he should exit the car with him.

Harry didn’t get an answer to his question, though he suspected he knew the answer anyway. They were approaching the front door, the paint of which had largely peeled away and left behind a flimsy wooden barrier that might have been rotting, it was so old and damaged, and Harry braved another question.

“Mr. Snape, what are we doing here?”

The man in question was busy unlocking the door and swinging it open. Harry followed him into a cheerless, musty-smelling sitting room that was home to a wall of poorly built wooden book-shelves, a mouldering couch, and an armchair whose cushioned seat bore a foot-long slash to the fabric upholstery.

There was a single, naked bulb that hung from the ceiling, and Snape made quick work of pulling the string to light it.

Somehow, the scant light from the bulb made the sitting room look less hospitable than it had appeared with nothing lighting it at all.

“I had need of supplies. I couldn’t very well leave you in order to come pick them up myself, and I didn’t want to leave my car.” Mr. Snape answered. He made his way toward a doorway that opened up into a tiny kitchen. On the ancient cooker (and on every other available surface) there were more of those odd pots Harry had seen in the boot of the man’s car, some of them appeared to be full of fantastically coloured substances.

It was the most magnificent thing Harry had ever seen. They appeared to be mid-bubble. Like they’d been frozen while boiling. His hand reached out to touch the cast-iron of the nearest pot.

He seized it back just as quickly with a startled yelp. It had been blazing hot! Mr. Snape spun on his heel at the noise and towed him away, towards the door.

“Can’t I trust you for even a moment, Potter!?” He shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. In spite of his anger he was jerking Harry’s arm forward by his wrist and examining the boy’s scorched finger tips. They were a brilliant scarlet and beginning to blister already.

Gasping, and doing his best not to begin sobbing, Harry felt like his knees wanted to buckle from a combination of pain and shame. “S-sorry, Mr. S-snape...”

That weird stick thing appeared once more in the man’s right hand, and he tapped it to the three affected fingers each in turn. They began to cool, and eventually, the fingers felt almost entirely numb.

“How are you doing that...?” Harry asked, dazed.

Mr. Snape didn’t answer, but pointed the stick through the doorway they had just come through, flicking the curly-Q point of it up in a sharp jerk with his bony wrist. “Accio burn paste.”

And then, an amazing thing happened. A tiny pot came sailing of its own accord from down the staircase that led upstairs, flying as quickly as a cricket ball. It smacked into Mr. Snape’s palm and he made quick work of working loose the large cork cover. Inside was an oily orange substance that looked a bit like it was composed of used cooking grease. Mr. Snape scooped up a bit of it on his index finger and daubed it onto Harry’s fingertips.

The blisters receded after only a moment and the skin underneath lost its red colour.

“Don’t wipe that off—leave it.” Snape told him, releasing his wrist.

“How did you do that?!” Harry demanded again, his eyes wide with wonder.

Snape was treating him to a look that could have either been annoyance or evidence of the man’s pity for him. Snape, himself, didn’t seem like he could settle firmly on one over the other.

“You’re telling me you really don’t know?”

“Know what?” Harry asked, somewhat testily. He was often made to feel the fool, but it had been an exhausting few days for him. An exhausting week, really. He had no clue where he was, and no clue what Mr. Snape could have been playing at. He was in enough pain—if the man decided to knock him around for his rudeness it would make little difference.

“You’ve not just been playing dumb for the sake of the muggles?”

Harry nearly squawked. “For the what?”

Mr. Snape seemed to be steeling himself. He’d drawn himself up to his full height and his brow was creased in a frightful frown.

When Harry chanced a look down at the man’s hands, that were held at his sides, it was to see that they were clenched into two fists, though one held that curious stick that seemed to be so disconcertingly troublesome.

“It’s like I said when you were in hospital, Harry. Magic.”

Feeling his gorge rise a bit—though it may easily have been a consequence of having had surgery—Harry barely restrained himself from stamping his foot with irritation. Truly, it was most unlike him. He usually had a handle on his temper. It simply wasn’t safe to let fly with any little thing he might have wanted to say to his relatives.

But Mr. Snape wasn’t his relatives.

Mr. Snape hadn’t hit him, or tossed him into his cupboard, or threatened to withhold supper.

Mr. Snape had been good to him. And for some reason, that made it easier, by far, to lash out at the man.

“I thought you were having a laugh! That’s not real! Do you think I’m stupid!? Only babies believe in stupid fairy tales—" Harry struggled near the end, feeling like he wasn’t getting enough air.

He had to say the words. Had to, because for so many years the mere mention of something like magic had produced the worst excesses under his Uncle Vernon’s tyrannical rule over the Dursley home.

“You just—" Harry gasped, “you’re trying to get me in… in trouble!”

Mr. Snape appeared entirely flummoxed for almost a full minute as he watched Harry spiral further and further from equilibrium, before he muttered something under his breath; a vicious remark about a ‘Tuney,’ and gripped Harry’s shoulders tightly.

He looked like he might have wanted to shake the boy, though he didn’t.

“How would you explain the burn salve flying then?” Mr. Snape challenged, his eyes flinty.

“Someone tossed it to you..." Harry accused, though when he tried to pivot and look back into the lounge, he saw no one.

“We’re alone in the house, Potter.” Snape told him. “What about the numbing charms?”

“You… you tricked me—"

“How? I didn’t tell you how they worked, or lead you to expect any specific outcome. I didn’t say a thing.”

“I… I just wanted it to stop hurting,”

“Didn’t it?”

“I—"

Snape tapped the capped salve with the stick where it sat on the kitchen table, and it began to rise in the air, spinning slowly of its own accord.

Harry’s eyes widened and he felt himself begin to shake slightly.

“Go on.” Mr. Snape challenged him. “Prove it to yourself.”

Harry braved a glance at the man, but Snape’s expression told him nothing. It was as placid as a still lake. After several seconds of watching the salve dip and sashay through the air, as if it was doing a strange waltz, Harry reached a hand out, feeling the air around the glass pot.

No strings. Not above, nor below. And upon swinging around the sides for good measure, he encountered no resistance of any kind.

It was well and truly levitating.

By magic.

For that was the only possible conclusion.

And when Snape directed it downward with that stick, it obeyed him.

“Need I perform anymore stunts for your disbelieving eyes?” The man asked, the question sounding snide and put-upon all at once.

Harry gulped, and it hurt his throat enough that he had to wince. “Er… no?”

“Marvelous,” but Snape’s expression and tone of voice told him that it was anything but. “Then we can move on with our task.”

He turned back to the strange assortment of pots that occupied every bit of available space in the kitchen, poking and prodding about with the branch in his right hand and causing wispy little signals to spout out of the curly-Q tip.

They must have meant something to him, as he would either nod or curse under his breath whenever one of his little motions produced results.

“Mr. Snape… why did you bring me here?” Harry asked. He was leaning against the doorway now, feeling exhausted after having gone through the rigours of surgery, and having endured a lengthy car ride with the taciturn young man.

Even though Snape’s driving had inexplicably improved, he was still a menace behind the wheel, and he had, by turns, driven too fast, passed too aggressively, and had loudly abused other drivers around him in fits of pique whenever anyone so much as slowed down to turn off onto an exit.

“None of this ought to have been left for so long.” Snape’s comment brought Harry back to the present moment. The man was surveying the assembled pots, and their contents, with a critical frown. “I didn’t think I’d be gone for more than an afternoon.”

Approaching the same pot that had burnt him, though with a touch more trepidation, Harry risked a peek over the rim. At the bottom was a fuchsia substance that seemed caught mid-whirl. 

“What are they?”

“Do you ever stop asking questions?”

Suddenly self-conscious, Harry shrugged and backed up to the doorway once more as Mr. Snape waved his stick over one of the pots—this one a medium-sized copper. It seemed to come alive and began belching aqua-coloured clouds into the air. The steam smelled a bit like roasted pork loin.

Evidently this was not the desired outcome, as Snape started cursing in a way that would have made a sailor blush, and he began sprinkling bits of crushed something-or-other from a cutting board that lay to the side.

After a fashion the clouds dissipated, and the surface of the pot fell into quiescence. Mr. Snape leaned back and let out a sigh, seemingly relaxing after his apparent panic.

“That one almost was a whole waste,” he spat.

Harry desperately wanted to ask what it was that was such a waste, but, remembering Snape’s earlier gripe about his questions, he didn’t quite dare.

“Go ahead.”

“Uh—"

“Ask.”

Harry’s mouth worked mutely for a moment, wondering how it was that Mr. Snape always seemed able to anticipate what it was he was thinking.

“What… what are they? What happened with that one? What—"

“Jesus. One at a time,” Snape snarled, appearing tired.

“You’re not…”

“I’m not what, Potter?”

Harry shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “You’re not meant to say that, I think… the Lord’s name in vain, I mean…”

Snape looked over one of his shoulders at him, pinning Harry with a sour expression. “I’ll thank you not to go about auditing my speech in my own damn home.” However, he then turned and leaned one thin hip against the rickety table. It seemed as if his weight should have caused the table to crumple, or at least to have swayed a bit, but it didn’t budge.

Then again, it had at least five of those massive pots fitted together on the crowded surface. Perhaps it was more ‘magic.’

“These are potions. That one,” Snape sneered, imitating the juvenile way in which Harry had phrased his question, “was almost spoilt. It was nearing the end of the time where it could safely be kept under stasis.

“As for what that particular potion is... That’s none of your business.”

“Oh…” Harry murmured in a small voice. He looked down at his trainers, wiggling his toes a bit just for anything he could do to avoid the black void of Mr. Snape’s glower. When he chanced a look up, however, it was to find that the man was considering him thoughtfully, one thin finger tracing his slightly droopy, asymmetrical lower lip.

“Can you mince garlic?”

The question, unexpected as it was, caused Harry to start a bit. He was surprised enough that he forgot his reticence and answered with a firm nod of his head. In spite of himself, he felt slightly excited; Mr. Snape seemed a difficult man to impress. He was happy that he could answer in any way that might not prove to be a disappointment.

And if it came to be that the man was satisfied enough with his mincing that he didn’t toss Harry out on his ear, then all the better.

It wasn’t really a conscious idea, but the thought that maybe he could prove that he was useful enough to keep around had Harry cautiously approaching Snape and taking the large knife that the man was offering to him.

“I better not regret this. One wrong move with that and I’m banishing you from the kitchen.”

Harry met the man’s frown with a solemn nod. Aunt Petunia had trained him well on knife safety, if only to avoid having to take the boy to the A&E department herself after he’d had an accident the year before that had led to questions that the Dursleys had seemed loath to answer.

Snape assembled a line of five odd-looking ingredients in front of Harry. He pointed to one that looked like a star, but it was some sort of root.

“Mince that one.”

“Where’s the garlic?” Harry asked, frowning at the odd root.

“Garlic is too mundane to be of much use in most potions,” Mr. Snape told him. His voice was devoid of his normal acrimonious intonation. Like he was simply imparting neutral information.

Harry’s eyes traveled down the line of things, lingering over one pile that looked like a bunch of dead spiders with shriveled-in legs.

“Do I mince all of them?”

“No,” Snape returned, in the same even tone of voice. He was seemingly absorbed in his task at the copper pot, observing the thin, broth-like potion in the belly of the vessel. “Stop once you’ve finished with the orion root and ask me what to do next.”

Harry started in on the root, having to bear down with all of his weight in order to bisect through the rock-hard centre. The blade wanted to wobble to the side and Mr. Snape stilled him with an iron grip on his shoulder.

“Stop. You’ll lose a finger that way.”

Harry gave a violent wince, though whether it was because he’d disappointed the man or because he was reacting to Snape’s warning was impossible for him to say.

“Cut halfway at the centre, beginning with the point, turn it around, and complete the slice from the other end. Keep your left hand clear of the blade.”

After that, Snape had little to say to the boy, beyond cautioning him to skin the root before he began mincing.

“The skin has undesirable properties for this brew.”

When next Harry glanced up, it was to see Mr. Snape laying paper-thin slices of a membranous thing flat onto the still surface of the potion. The slices seemed to be eaten through from their centre out, turning a terrifying shade of red-black before they dissolved into the caustic mixture.

Snape would snatch his fingers back as soon as he’d settled each slice on the placid surface of the potion. He did it gently, as one might cover a child with a blanket for bed.

“What next?”

Snape risked one sideways glance to his minced root and seemed satisfied. His left hand reached out and nudged at the pile of dead spiders with one yellow-stained fingertip.

“Strip these of their legs. Put those in one pile, and the thoraxes and abdomens in the other.”

Harry must have blanched at the instructions as Snape turned his attention back to the copper pot with a mocking sneer. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of spiders.”

“I’m not!” Harry disagreed, a bit too loudly. “It’s only… I rather like them…”

Mr. Snape let out a low chuckle, “Ah, so you feel slighted on their behalf,”

Harry wasn’t entirely sure he knew what the man meant, but he didn’t appreciate the mockery. His green eyes met Snape’s black ones in defiance as he picked up the largest spider in the pile he could find and he plucked the forelegs off with a sharp motion.

“Hmph.” The man rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Mind you choose the medium sized ones. The big ones and small ones are outliers—potions rely on consistency as much as on numeracy. Far better to use eight similarly sized legs than two large and four tiny ones.”

“Why don’t you just weigh them?” Harry asked, thinking of the way in which his aunt weighted ingredients with her kitchen scale when preparing puddings for guests.

“We often weigh things, but sometimes the number is just as important as the weight. Because magic, Potter.”

“That doesn’t make any sense—"

“It does. It’s counter intuitive, and goes against arithmetic, but it is perfectly logical when considered arithmantically and alchemically.”

Harry continued to pick through the spiders, frowning with irritation. He hated not understanding things.

“I don’t get it…”

“And you won’t for many years, I’d wager.”

The rest of the piles were processed, and before long, Harry was standing around without much to do as Snape went from pot to pot—though the man had finally admonished him that the strange things were, in point of fact, cauldrons—adding in the ingredients that Harry had prepared for him.

Some of it had been tossed after Mr. Snape had evidently found Harry’s method for preparation wanting, but well over half of it was salvageable.

“Hold still, you’re distracting me.”

“I can’t help it,” to Harry’s dismay it came out as a bit of a whinge. “I haven’t had a wee in hours...”

Turning to face him, Snape looked irritated in the extreme. “Why didn’t you mention that earlier? The loo’s out back, Potter.”

“Out... out back?”

“Through the door there,” Snape pointed at the door that clearly led to the back garden. “The little building to the left.”

Harry wanted to question the man further, because really—who had ever heard of someone’s loo being in the back garden?—but he was in too desperate to do so. He darted for the door and found himself in a walled enclosure that surely hadn’t seen anything growing in it for years, if ever. There was a bit of straw on the muddy ground, and clothes lines that had a few rags hanging from them, and to the left, as Mr. Snape had promised, was a stooped out-building, the likes of which he’d seen the residents of Cokeworth ducking into when they’d arrived in town hours earlier.

Using the loo was a bit of an experience, but all in all, it wasn’t so very different. There was nowhere for him to wash his hands after, so he rushed back in to wash them in the kitchen sink.

Mr. Snape had ceased his operations in the kitchen and was watching Harry’s back as he scrubbed at his palms with the bar of soap.

“I expect you’re hungry.”

Harry merely shrugged. It was true. He was hungry. But he’d gone far longer without food before. He could manage. “I’m alright...”

Snape shook his head, looking mildly irritated. “It’s been all day. I’ve been remiss in my duties. You were ill fed enough before.”

The young man glanced around the kitchen quickly and strode forward, throwing open a cabinet here and a tiny pantry there.

There weren’t cobwebs, but there may as well have been. They were almost entirely empty except for a few tins that looked to be perhaps a decade old each based on the antiquated labels.

The doors were slammed shut again, and Harry forced himself not to jump backwards in alarm. Mr. Snape was cursing again.

“Nothing here will suit,” he grumbled, finding the keys to the Morris Marina where he’d left them beside one of the smaller cauldrons. “We’ll have to go into town.”

“I’m fine with whatever you were eating here, Mr. Snape,” Harry told him, though he followed the man through the sitting room and back out the front door.

“I finished all but the last of it for breakfast before I departed for Surrey,” the man grumbled, “and I doubt you’d care for potted meat on toast, besides.”

Harry shrugged, though Mr. Snape was facing away from him and didn’t see it. “That doesn’t sound bad...”

“I suppose it wouldn’t if one is used to eating raw courgette.”

As they climbed back into the car, Snape himself set the tape deck, which he’d placed in the passenger seat once more.

“Oh no, there goes Tokyo— go go Godzilla! History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man— Godzilla!”

Harry kicked his feet to the refrain as the car began a slow crawl down the street and pulled out onto Swift.

“What is this?”

“Blue Oyster Cult,” Mr. Snape answered, distracted as he whipped the wheel around.

After a manner of minutes, the decrepit environs of Cokeworth gave way to the more lush and picturesque Backbarrow. They soon came upon the town centre where Mr. Snape found a place to pull over in a car park that abutted a seemingly derelict building that may once have been a corner store.

When they left the car, Mr. Snape used the stick—a wand, he’d told Harry—to swoop around the vehicle, laying shimmering, iridescent wisps that sank into the car and the cracked pavement that it sat upon.

“So no one bothers the car,” he murmured, perhaps anticipating Harry’s question. “Strictly speaking, we’re not meant to park here.”

“Won’t… will we get in trouble?”

Harry received a loud scoff in response to his question as the man towed him by one arm through the streets and past the other people out for Friday supper or shopping.

Their first stop of the evening was into a tiny back alleyway. In one building—that had windows covered by thick, red, brocaded curtains, and with a door so low that Mr. Snape had to stoop to avoid hitting the top of his head—they came to a counter that was being manned by a short, aged, Asian woman who, in spite of her years, had a youthful, becoming, heart-shaped face. Behind her was a loud, busy kitchen that let off fragrant bursts of flavoursome scents.

When she saw Snape her mouth twisted into a wide grin that sent both of her cheeks curling into deep dimples.

“‘Rus? Come to see us again, twice in one week?”

“It’s that good, Mrs. Padiernos.”

“And who’s that?” Mrs. Padiernos peered closely at Harry behind her bifocals. “Your son, ‘Rus?” She clicked her tongue, “I didn’t think you married.” She threw a vaguely disapproving look at Snape who, unbelievably, seemed to be colouring with a blush up to the helix of his over-large ears under her scrutiny.

“He’s not mine. I’m watching him for a friend.”

“Mm. He looks a bit like you.”

Mr. Snape turned his eyes on Harry with an appraising look. “Perhaps the dark hair… otherwise I see no resemblance.”

Mrs. Padiernos shrugged, apparently not swayed from her opinion. “What’ll it be this evening?”

Snape made a bit of a show of looking at the laminated menu that was sellotaped to the peeling countertop and selected an assortment of dishes.

“An order of four of the siopao, a large order of rice, chicken afritada, vegetable pancit—"

“With spam?”

“With spam,” Snape agreed, one index finger prodding at his lower lip as he thought, “and… er… that is...”

Harry couldn’t help but to find it oddly uncharacteristic the way the man was stammering. He’d not seen him lost for words before.

“Champorado?” Mrs. Padiernos prompted, with a bit of a sly smile.

“Yes. That.”

“That sweet tooth, ‘Rus. It’ll rot your mouth.”

“A penny, a pound,” Snape sneered with a shrug, though not unkindly. Only so much as to bare one of his yellowed snaggle-toothed canines. “I see no difference.”

“Pah, at kung hindi, ikaw ay kaya makisig. What a waste.”

Before Snape could ask what she meant, she was calling their order out over her shoulder to an elderly man that was probably her husband.

She collected the money for the till and offered back a written ticket as she hurried off to begin assembling their order into cardboard take-away boxes.

Harry and Snape found seats by the wall of the tiny ante-chamber and didn’t speak much in the ten minutes it took for Mrs. Padiernos to return with their meal.

“Come back soon—" she admonished Snape, tapping him on the cheek with one hand across the counter.

Mr. Snape looked unaccountably flummoxed and gave the woman a smile that may also have been a grimace. Though, for all that, he endured her affections.

“Likely within the week.”

Mrs. Padiernos shook her head. “We’ll find you someone, ‘Rus. No good coming to me to feed you up all the time.”

“I’m perfectly capable of cooking—!”

“Yes, but you don’t, do you?” She asked, her tone a bit patronising.

In an undertone, Snape murmured something that he perhaps thought Harry couldn’t hear, but due to a lull in the sounds from the kitchen, it was audible.

“Mine just doesn’t taste right,”

Mrs. Padiernos nodded sympathetically. “She was extraordinary in the kitchen.”

Snape’s hand clenched on the counter into a fist. “She was.”

“If you can’t cook for her sake, then come light a candle for her,” Mrs. Padiernos challenged with a small frown.

“I can’t…”

“Pah!” Mrs. Padiernos threw her hands up, “Now I know how she meant when she’d say you were impossible!”

“I wouldn’t even remember how,” Snape argued back, throwing a suspicious glance at Harry. He made a sharp motion with his head, indicating the door. “Take the bag outside and wait for me there, Potter.”

Harry did, and as the door swung closed he could hear Mrs. Padiernos urging Mr. Snape to “Come by St. Catherine’s, ‘Rus. It’s the least you could do for your mam,”

“That’s all the way out in Penrith—!” Came Snape’s faint objection.

Clutching the warm, fragrant bag to his chest, and doing his best not to allow it to slip given its weight, Harry leaned his back against the white-washed plaster exterior of the building. He had several minutes where his—captor?—remained inside the establishment to look around.

He found that, though it was an alleyway, it was kept scrupulously clean. Swept.

On the door was a small sign that he’d not noticed before.

Rice Bowl

Cumbria’s premier Filipino restaurant

Snape ducked out after a matter of minutes, looking slightly harried, and incredibly weary to boot. He spotted Harry and made a bee-line for him, snatching the paper bag out of his hands and jerking his head in a clear indication that he wished for the boy to follow behind him.

They reemerged out onto the street, and the silence felt laden after the uncomfortable exchange.

It made Harry wonder why Mr. Snape had taken them to Rice Bowl, if he’d had any inkling that it might have lead to difficult questions...

But then again, the food did smell fantastic.

As soon as the thought occurred to him, Harry felt his stomach lurch into his throat, and his salivary glands began to over-produce. While better than the day before, his throat was still on the mend.

“Erm... Mr. Snape?”

Snape’s head swiveled to pin him with a glare. Somehow, even looking back over his shoulder, the man managed to avoid running into the foot traffic.

Perhaps it was because he was so scary looking that the foot traffic avoided him.

“I’m growing tired of hearing ‘Mr. Snape, this—’ and ‘Mr. Snape, that,’ all the time, Po—Harry. You may call me Severus.”

“Oh...” Harry said, thinking this over for a moment. “Your name’s not Russel?”

The man gave a snort, “Russel? Why’s that? Because of that ridiculous diminutive from Mrs. Padiernos?” He shook his head. “She’s known me since I was a boy. She always thought my name was too big for me. Anyway, ask your question.”

“Can you do that thing again? To my throat?”

“That thing?” Snape frowned. “Is it hurting you again?”

“A bit...”

Mr. Snape steered them over to a small alcove between two store fronts. He apparently had the wand up his sleeve as he withdrew it only enough to tap the very tip against each side of Harry’s neck, before he slipped it back up against his arm.

“Better?”

Harry sighed, “Yeah.”

“Before we eat, I’ll dab you with some Essence of Dittany. I had wished to avoid that but,” Snape gave a gallic shrug, “needs must.”

“Why would we avoid it?”

Snape began leading them back down the lane again—and, incidentally, further away from where he’d parked the car—before he spoke.

“Essence of Dittany is primarily used in a topical application. It won’t poison you, but I’d not like you to swallow much if any of it as it may make you feel... a bit woozy. And naturally, dabbing at the back of your throat will prove uncomfortable, particularly after surgery, though this should complete your healing.”

“I’ll be cured?”

“Cured. Yes.” Snape drawled. “Fresh as a newly minted crown.”

Harry frowned. “I didn’t think we used those anymore...”

“We don’t.”

“Oh.” Harry looked around and saw that they were now at least three or four blocks from the car, and down a separate street. “Aren’t we going back to your place?”

“We have one more errand to run while we’re out,” Snape told him. They’d come to a storefront that had a wide assortment of animals in the window. There were puppies, gamboling around a small enclosure, and cages of parakeets and budgies that were hanging from the front-most rafter. A kitten licked its paw, and on the other side, there was an aquarium of turtles that had banked themselves on a rock, while besides them rested a type of monitor lizard on a stick under a heat-lamp.

“The pet store?”

Severus opened the door and bade Harry pass underneath his arm. “Sometimes, the prices here are better than I can get at apothecaries.”

“Prices? Prices for?”

“Parts.”

Harry gasped in horror, but Snape was already striding forward toward the one of the tanks, where he began to look over a tarantula with a critical eye.

“Mr. Snape, Mr. Snape, please no—” Harry begged, under his breath. He came up to the man’s elbow and tried to tug him away by the hem of his shirt. “They didn’t do anything—”

“Neither did the ones that are pre-processed at the apothecary: the difference is only in window-dressing.”

“But...”

“Oi! You!” A voice interrupted Harry’s pleading and a beefy man who was entirely bald strode out from the back room. “I thought I told you not to come back in here, you creep! I warned you off years ago—this store’s for customers who want a pet, not a snack!”

Snape straightened, but he seemed almost chagrined, if his blushing ears were anything to go by. He shifted the weight of the bag of food in his arms. “I don’t eat them,” he complained.

“I heard tell from that Evans girl that you did! And I told you not to darken my doorstep ages ago—thought I wouldn’t recognise you, did you?”

Snape’s sour expression said as much.

“If you’re not here to buy a pet you can walk right on out!” The shop keep insisted.

Snape threw a considering glance at Harry, who was standing between the two men, rooted to the spot.

The large man’s yelling had brought back uncomfortable memories, and he wasn’t sure whether he felt more the urge to run, or to stand his ground and absorb the anger...

Then again, the man wasn’t angry at him. He was angry at Snape.

And as he should be! Harry frowned. Buying pets to... to kill.

“Who said I’m not here for a pet?” Snape argued, affecting a disingenuously casual posture. “I’ll have this tarantula. It’s for the boy.”

The man blustered a bit, and his eyes, a deep grey, seemed to shift between Harry and Snape for a moment. “Is it true? Is that for you?”

Harry glared up at Snape who was apparently trying to look quite innocent.

He couldn’t quite pull it off.

“It’s for me,” Harry agreed. But if Snape thought he’d be sharing his new pet ‘for parts’ he had another thing coming. Harry intended to keep it. He couldn’t wait to show his aunt—she’d scream herself silly.

What if he could set it on Dudley?

Maybe on his pillow...

He’d never been allowed a pet before, unless you counted the tiny spiders underneath the stairs. Somehow, they didn’t count like the behemoth in the tank.

The shop keep looked like he didn’t quite trust the pair of them, but he could smell a sale. The next ten minutes were spent with the man piling an assortment of odds and ends into Harry’s arms, including a small terrarium and bedding.

Snape’s expression throughout the exchange had blackened considerably.

It seemed he’d finally cottoned on to the fact that he actually was, in point of fact, buying Harry a pet. By now he’d be spending far more than he otherwise would have at whatever an apothecary was.

They left the store toting bags, and Harry carried the terrarium carefully in his hands. He blinked down at the tarantula’s eight eyes. They stared steadily back. Or at least he thought they did.

“What did he say it was again?” Harry asked. He couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice or off of his face. He was positively beaming as he stared down at the tarantula, a hulking black creature that easily would dwarf Harry’s palm.

“A Brazilian Black, I believe.”

“What are some words for eight?”

Snape helped him to load some of their purchases into the car as they reached it, and he settled the brown bag of food into the passenger seat. “Words for eight?”

“Yeah...” Harry couldn’t take his eyes off the creature. “You know... like in other languages?”

Snape slid into the driver’s seat and started the car.

“Walo. Ocho. Acht. Vosem’.”

“No… I don’t like those,” Harry told the man, as he gazed down on his new pet, utterly captivated. “What are some more?”

“What exactly is the point of this exercise in linguistics?”

“I want a name for him…”

“Given that he’s supposedly Brazilian in origin, what about Portuguese? Oito.”

Harry rolled the word over in his head and found he hadn’t a taste for it. He shook his head, sending his fringe flying back and forth.

“No… that’s not ‘fisticated,”

Snape sent him an annoyed glance by way of the rear-view mirror. They were passing back over the bridge into Cokeworth, and the car jumped as he took the bump too fast.

“Sophisticated.” He corrected him.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, “Aunt Petunia thinks France is so-‘fisticated…”

“Then the word you’re looking for would be ‘huit.’”

“Wheat?” Harry grinned.

“Huit. Ou-eet—"

“That’s how I said it!”

The car was back on Spinner’s End now and Snape was bringing it to a stop along the kerb. “No, Potter, you’re saying ‘wheat,’ like the crop. Like what bread’s made of.”

Harry shrugged. “Well… I like it.” He climbed out of the back and helped Mr. Snape to carry things into the crumbling terraced house.

“Just like I like it better when you call me ‘Harry’…”

Snape deposited their food in front of a threadbare sofa. The telly that sat in the place of honour, centred before the sofa, appeared ancient, and when Snape made to turn it on, it clicked and buzzed frightfully before the image swam into focus; as though it had to fight its way forth from the bottom of a bog.

“Noted.” He sat and began removing the contents of the brown paper bag to the crowded surface of the coffee table. “Now set that thing down and join me for a meal or else I will make good on carving it up for parts.”

“You wouldn’t really!” But Harry did sit, just in case.

“I would. The pedipalps and eyes first, then the legs from the cephalothorax, down to the abdomen and the spinnerets. And the wheat from the chaff for good measure.”

Harry glowered at him. “Now you really are making fun—"

“I’d grind him into flour,” Snape continued, with a smirk. His hands were opening all of the boxes, and with another flick of his wand, two ancient-looking stoneware plates sailed in from the kitchen. He filled the entirety of one plate with glassy, tender noodles, a sort of braised chicken, and two enormous, steamed buns.

“Spider flour?” Harry’s face must have made an impressive grimace, for Mr. Snape actually laughed.

“Yes, and you’d best be on your best behavior or else it’ll find its way into all sorts of things that I cook for you. Now,” Snape passed him the heavily laden plate. “You’re to eat all of that.”

Harry’s eyes fairly bugged out. “I can’t—"

“You can and you will if you want pudding.”

“Pudding?”

“Chocolate rice pudding. With sweetened condensed milk.”

Harry swallowed. It did sound good. But the idea of the full plate of food was daunting. And the idea of it had his throat throbbing in sympathy.

“What about my throat?”

Snape paused from where he was fixing up his own plate. “Ah,” he sighed, and made to rise from his seat. “I’d nearly forgotten.”

Dinner commenced after Snape used a stick topped with a bit of cotton wool to dab at the back of Harry’s throat with the potion he’d promised. It should have hurt, but after another numbing charm, he hadn’t felt a thing. Mr. Snape had lit the tip of his wand up and taken a look at the place where his tonsils once had been and seemed satisfied that all was well.

The food was so good that Harry didn’t have any trouble at all clearing his plate. He’d not eaten since the previous day, and that after a week of nearly starving. Even so, Snape made him wait an hour for dinner to ‘settle’ before he served him a bowl of the rice pudding.

“I thought I was meant to eat ice cream,” Harry mentioned around a spoonful of cocoa-flavoured rice gruel. Snape had added so much sweetened condensed milk (between the two of them, he’d used almost the full tin) that each bite sang on his tongue.

“Would you rather have had ice cream?”

Harry shook his head. The ice cream had been good, but the rice pudding was more substantial.

“In any case,” Snape told him, between bites of his own, “the ice cream would be to soothe your throat. Muggles—those who can’t rely on magic to heal them, that is—would still be in a great deal of pain for another week or more.”

“Why don’t magic people just heal them too?” Harry asked, allowing the spoon to hang from his mouth as he slurped the confection from the metal.

“That would be a ridiculous waste of our powers.” Snape countered, “What, do you think we have nothing better to do than to go around playing superhero for the denizens of mundanity?”

Harry frowned, not entirely sure what that might mean. “Then why—?” He scraped his bowl clean, feeling a bit crestfallen that he’d finished his portion. “Why did you help me?”

Snape merely stared at him for the full span of at least ten seconds before he went back to eating his own champorado at a sedate pace.

“Why do you think I stepped in to watch you?” Snape asked, his black eyes trained on Harry as he answered his question with a question.

“You knew my mum… did Aunt Petunia call you to watch me?” Harry asked. “Usually, it’s Ms. Figg, only she must’ve been busy…”

Snape shook his head, the motion slow, but enough to send greasy locks of his hair swinging about like black ropes. “No one called. And no one reached out to Arabella Figg either.”

“You know her too—?”

“Your relatives told no one of their intention to leave you home unattended while they swanned off to parts unknown.” Snape had, by now, set aside his bowl and spoon. He was facing him on the sofa, one leg pulled up to rest over the other, with his ankle set upon the opposite knee.

The answer made Harry’s stomach—for the first time feeling comfortably warm and full from a good meal,  particularly one he’d enjoyed in the absence of pain—feel as though it were going to drop out from between his legs.

Suddenly, he felt quite ill. In a way that had nothing at all to do with his recent internment in hospital.

“So—"

“You were abandoned.”

“Then how… how did you know to come...?”

“While no one told Arabella that you’d been left to your lonesome, she did, by Wednesday, notice when Petunia failed to crane her over-long neck into her affairs as often as would be expected.”

“Ms. Figg watches us—?”

“Like a hawk. And what should she see but you, scurrying around like a rat trying to survive a capsized ship.”

Harry nearly choked. “A rat!? I’m not—!”

“No. You’re not, Harry. But the simile is apt. You were left to drown on your own. Eight is no age for self-sufficiency.”

“I’m seven…”

“For two more weeks,” Snape said with a shrug.

Snape seemed to know far too much as it was. Harry didn’t even consider asking how it was that the man knew his birthday on top of everything else.

“If that’s true, why didn’t Ms. Figg come get me? Why you?”

Snape adopted a faintly scandalised look. “Well. And ought I feel offended by that?”

Shaking his head violently, Harry hastened to defend his question, “No! No, not like that, Mr… Severus. I just… I don’t get it,” he murmured, glancing down at his trainers as his legs began to kick in time with his rising agitation—which was to say, at a rapidly quickening pace.

“I’m not actually upset.” Snape answered him, pulling a small grimace. He almost looked regretful, but Harry couldn’t be sure. It was a weird tightening of his mouth, such that the lines that bracketed his lips and chin pulled into near dimples, and his black eyes darted aside, as if avoiding Harry’s own gaze.

“I was sent because Arabella Figg was not considered equal to the task.” Mr. Snape shook his head, sending his unevenly chopped hair flying once more. “As for why I was chosen? Well. Take it as read that everyone else was considered unsuitable.”

Harry drew his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them, his hands gripping his shins. “Why?”

Severus gave Harry another look that made the man look a bit like someone’s drowned hound. It was an expression that spoke to misery. A kind of misery that Harry was surprised to find that he understood.

“Finally, you’ve asked a question I can’t answer. I don’t know any better than you do.”

---

They stayed at Snape’s house in Cokeworth for nearly a week. In truth, time seemed to pass differently there.

Every day in the sour little house followed a nearly identical routine, which was quite unlike Harry’s existence in Number Four Privet Drive where every day had its own chore list and a set menu that Harry was expected to follow to the letter.

Snape had sent Harry up to bed following their meal, directing him toward one of two bedrooms on the upper floor of the narrow house.

It was cramped, mouldering, dark, and—at least as far as Harry was concerned—palatial.

He could nearly spread eagle on the single-wide bed, and though the sheets looked to be older than him by several decades, and smelled slightly musty, they were clean.

Snape had assured him of that, looking rather embarrassed for reasons Harry couldn’t quite fathom.

“It’s not that I’ve not washed them,” he had hastened to assure Harry, “only... no one’s slept here for years. So, they’ve not been laundered in near as long…”

Even so, one flick of the man’s wand and the linens seemed to floof out, as though an invisible wind had disturbed them, and afterwards had smelled like they’d been freshly scrubbed in a tub of washing powder and left to dry in the purifying rays of a bright, sunny day.

That first night, Harry had been too tired to investigate the room he’d stayed in. It was so late that the whole upper floor was dark, and the single bulb that was meant to light the room had long ago burnt out.

It was only in the morning light—unconscionably early as Snape had complained a bit later—that Harry realised the room he’d been boarded in was likely Severus’ own.

Or at least it had been at one time.

The walls were almost entirely papered over with glossy posters for rock acts that Harry was only now familiar with after having spent so much time in the car with the man.

When he woke, it was to see the terrifying sight of four heavily made-up men snarling at him. All had ratty, long, black hair and faces painted white and black. He was frozen to the spot where he lay, wondering for one delirious moment whether this was more magic and whether it might have been dangerous.

But the poster didn’t move. And after the fog of sleep had slipped from Harry’s mind and he’d fumbled for his glasses, he was able to make out the text on the poster.

KISS.

It was that band from the tape with the animal pelts.

The rest of the ceiling was covered as well. Apparently, the only surface that had survived Snape’s penchant for posters was the floor.

Harry rolled out of bed and crawled over to where he’d placed Wheat the evening before; on the floor and up against one of the walls. He took his time feeding the tarantula as the store keep had instructed him to do and watched with a strange mixture of fascination and revulsion as the spider systematically hunted and devoured the live crickets Snape had purchased for him. The man had helped him settle a tiny dish with water in the corner of the terrarium before bed, and had spelled it to keep it from spilling everywhere.

Watching Wheat only provided perhaps ten minutes of entertainment, however, and after, Harry was left wondering whether he should go and find Snape, or if he should poke around the man’s childhood bedroom a bit.

He had no way of knowing how early it was... Aunt Petunia always expected him to get up at least an hour before Dudley and Uncle Vernon for the sake of cooking the family’s breakfast and then he was meant to give the baseboards a good wipe. His uncle liked everything to be spic and span, all right and correct when he descended the stairs in the morning.

Harry didn’t know where to go looking for a rag and a washbasin in Snape’s house...

Would the man expect breakfast?

‘No...’ Harry thought, mentally kicking himself. Severus had all but told him that the kitchen was basically devoid of food...

And after he’d gone through all the trouble of grocery shopping back in Surrey... Oh well. Most of it would likely keep for a few days.

In the end, Harry settled for allowing himself his poke around the man’s belongings, finding what looked to be a school scarf and tie in a deep green colour, and a stack of photographs. To his amazement, half of them moved.

He didn’t think he’d ever quite get used to magic...

It was clear who Snape was. He looked the same. And he must have grown into his nose rather recently, as it looked to be the same size in all of the pictures, even the ones from when he was around Harry’s age. Between the beak and the dumbo-esque ears, he’d not really been a very attractive child. Harry felt his heart going out to him then.

He knew a target for bullies when he saw one, being one himself. There was no way a kid like Snape would have gotten by unscathed.

There were pictures where groups of twenty or more children were assembled—likely class photos from Snape’s primary school—the boys to one side and the girls to the other. Harry was curious when he thought he spied little pencil hearts sketched around one girl who kept showing up in the stack of photos.

She was fair skinned, lightly freckled, with a becoming smile and deep, garnet-red hair. While in the pictures from Snape’s childhood they were always away from one another—probably having been positioned there by teachers as they were lined up for the shot—in the newer photos where Snape looked to be a gangly adolescent, she stood at his elbow, beaming a cheeky smile up into the lens. In one of the moving pictures, she was attempting to get Severus to uncross his arms from over his chest, but he wore a mulish expression and seemed determined not to relent from his chosen posture.

It sure seemed like Snape had had a thing for her from all the hearts circling her face in the earliest pictures. And in the most recent ones, his face seemed twisted in a way that seemed somewhat uncharacteristic for him.

Scowls, frowns, smirks, sneers, snarls, and dramatic eye-rolls: all of these Harry had seen in abundance since he’d met the man just a couple of days earlier. This ambiguous, restrained quarter-smile, however? The embarrassed—dare he say shy—look that Snape wore next to his red-headed friend? Harry’d not yet seen anything that resembled that look on the young man’s expressive face.

Having reached the end of the small pile, Harry set the stack of pictures back in the drawer he’d pulled them from, pressed into the back corner of the space, just as he found them.

The sun was still coming up, and the impetus to leave the room was soon strengthened by his awareness that he desperately needed a wee.

When he snuck out of the room, it was to find the house silent and still in the early morning hour. On the upper floor, the corridor leading to the stairs was nearly pitch-black. There were no lights and no windows, excepting those that looked into the bedrooms, so the hallway was cast into shadow. He had to feel his way down the narrow, steep stairs and he nearly fell over his own feet a couple of times.

The bathroom out back was even more strange and unwelcoming with the odd unreality that often came in with the morning dew. The air was slightly wet. The back garden was cast in shadow from the shallow position of the sun on the horizon, and Harry felt struck by the surreal nature of his morning route to the loo.

It lasted even as he snuck back into the kitchen and stood in the door, glancing around.

He was nearly afraid to touch anything... every surface was occupied by cauldrons, and Snape seemed quite particular about how they were to be handled. Even so, Harry managed to wash his hands at the sink.

All of the books in the sitting room seemed far beyond his reading level, and on topics that he hadn’t the faintest idea about besides, so after five minutes of shifting from foot to foot in indecision, Harry went back out to the garden where he’d spied an old, enameled wash-basin nested inside of a larger tin tub.

He filled the tub with water from the faucet and used his hands to produce enough lather from the block of soap on the edge of the sink that the water became sudsy. Tossing in a few rags that he found in the cavity beneath the sink-basin, Harry carefully carried the sloshing dish out into the sitting room where he settled it on the floor near the door.

The rag he wrung out into the water—which, somehow, already appeared dirty—and wrapped around his index finger, the bulk of it being held against his palm with his other three fingers and thumb. He began furiously scrubbing at the filthy baseboards.

It took several minutes before he could even tell whether he was making a difference, and a tiny, shiny spot seemed to let go of the years of dirt to which it had clung.

It was no bigger than a one-pound coin. Harry’s eyes traced the perimeter of the room, taking in the expanse of what remained to be cleaned...

He didn’t let himself wince.

Had Aunt Petunia caught him wincing she’d have swatted him and told him to fix his face.

He spent the rest of the morning thus engaged, until a bleary-eyed Snape emerged, rubbing at his blood-shot eyes, from the flight of stairs.

The man nearly lost his footing when his boot trod in a wet puddle Harry had left.

“Bloody buggering bicorns—”

Harry’s head whipped up from where he’d been crouched behind the sofa, seeing that the man had barely caught himself against the wall and was attempting to stagger to his feet. The boy snapped to attention, though he found himself wringing the soiled rag between his two hands.

“Good morning, Mr. Snape...”

“What are you playing at, Potter? Is it not enough that I put you up in my own bloody bedroom? Do you also have to go around trying to get me to break my neck—and why is the floor all wet...?”

Belatedly, Harry realised that the way he was twisting the cloth between his hands was wringing out yet another puddle of water onto the floor and he quickly moved to hide his hands behind his back, feeling his face flush.

“I’m sorry... I didn’t mean to leave puddles. Have you got a mop?”

Snape strode over to him and loomed above him, his eyes taking in all that was beneath his beak-like nose as a bird of prey might have, lingering first over the washbasin, then over the variously sized puddles that spotted the floor, and finally, on the baseboards that were so clean that they looked nearly out of place flush against a floor that was stained beyond even magic’s ability to fix.

The man’s face seemed to be flushing with anger, red suffusing his neck, then his cheeks, and finally gathering in the tips of his round ears, but when he spoke it was quiet. So quiet that Harry had to strain to hear.

“I didn’t bring you here to scrub the filth from the walls.”

Harry felt his heart sink. “I... I just thought...”

But Snape shook his head and pointed a finger at the enamel tub. “Go dump that in the garden and join me in the kitchen.”

Hastening to obey, Harry barely noticed as Snape’s wand was withdrawn and the puddles cleared from the floorboards.

When he reemerged into the kitchen moments later, it was to find that Snape had withdrawn a battered old skillet and was heating it over the cooker. Oblong slices of something pink sizzled and popped over the heat and emitted a meaty aroma. For all that the pink-whatzit looked unappetising, it smelled heavenly.

After ten minutes of fussing over the crispiness of the potted meat, Snape decanted the slices onto pieces of toast he pulled from the oven, passing Harry a plate with an equal portion to his own.

For the rest of the day, they worked at the potions Snape had on stand-by.

And then too the next day.

The whole week was spent chopping, and slicing, carefully sprinkling in herbs and parted-out monsters that Harry had never heard of into bubbling tallow or alcoholic bases.

Snape didn’t make him clean anything at all. Not for the entire rest of the time they spent at his home.

They broke to go pick up groceries on that first day, and had picked up more food from Rice Bowl a few days later—with Snape hurrying them out of the establishment after Mrs. Padiernos had begun asking him pointed questions about why she hadn’t seen them at mass on Sunday—but otherwise, every day was exactly alike.

And Harry found that he quite enjoyed his days with Snape.

For one thing, the man always had his tape deck blaring rock ballads. The only time it had failed was when the batteries had needed replacing, and rather than suffer in silence, Snape had dragged them out to the store that very instant for replacements.

By Thursday, Harry found he was getting rather good at it all. Snape scarcely needed to correct him anymore—though the man seemed to restrict Harry’s part in the preparation to simple, repetitive iterations of the same ingredients, while he handled the more exotic and disgusting samples himself—and he’d even begun to let Harry add ingredients in himself at certain stages.

“Keep your right arm moving anti-clockwise... no—” Snape shook his head and directed Harry’s arm with his own hand around Harry’s wrist. “Faster, like this. Now, while whisking, you shake in the desiccated liver. Slowly. No more than one fourth of the powder should be added in for each rotation of your arm. But not too slowly, or it won’t be integrated properly—”

The tiny house nearly shook.

Booming knocks were emitting from the front door accompanied by raucous laughter.

Snape swore. Loudly and with great feeling. He finished directing Harry’s hand to add the liver and cast a stasis over the cauldron.

Seizing Harry’s shoulders up in his large hands, he shook the boy and his eyes were urgent as they met Harry’s own.

Harry felt his blood run cold. Snape had never manhandled or shook him before... and the look in the man’s eyes was enough to make him want to turn tail and flee out the back door.

Which, incidentally, was precisely what Snape instructed him to do.

“Go—hunker down in the privy. Don’t come out until I come for you,”

Harry desperately wanted to ask questions, but the look of mingled fear and fury in Snape’s black gaze was enough to dissuade him. He merely nodded in a single, jerky motion, and scurried from the kitchen, ducking into the brick structure and pulling the door behind him.

Waiting in the loo seemed to make time stand-still, and after he’d spent as much energy as he could doing things to occupy himself—counting the tiles, rubbing at the porcelain of the toilet with a spare rag until it shone, trying to peek through the crack between the door and the frame—Harry felt as though he’d been contained in the tiny room for hours.

Had it really only been a week before that he’d done this for hours at a time in his cupboard... it shouldn’t be so difficult. The walls shouldn’t have felt as though they were going to collapse in on him. He should be able to breathe... logically there had to be enough air in there...

But logic is nothing in the face of fear, and so Harry burst out of the tiny shed gasping for breath and doubling over his knees to try and fend off the sensation that his vision was growing black at the edges.

When his sight began to creep back from the abyss he’d felt himself rapidly spiraling toward, Harry risked a glance up at the house. It was silent. He heard none of the cackling he’d heard from the front stoop which had precipitated his banishment to the privy.

Surely, it had been long enough? Time had been passing differently recently, admittedly, but his time in the cramped, stinking loo had felt like it spanned for hours.

Shuffling onward on all fours, moving rather like a chimpanzee in a crouched position, his arms scoping out to balance himself as he hopped forward, Harry crouched beneath the window that looked in on the kitchen and slowly inched his way up until he was eye level.

Inside, Snape stood with his back to a stocky, broad-nosed man who was garbed in what looked, at first glance, to be a giant black blanket.

The interloper was leaning against the doorframe to the sitting room and seemed to be conversing quite comfortably with Snape as the thinner man putzed around the assembled cutting boards with a speed and dexterity that had been lacking in his potion making instructionals with Harry. 

Snape was turned away from the big man and so Harry was able to see that his face appeared lined with strain. Impatience. The man behind him cracked a joke and lacked the good grace to not laugh uproariously at his own jocularity, such that he didn’t notice when Snape cringed rather than joining in with his own display of mirth.

The only other sign that might have shown that Severus was ill at ease was the barest tremour in his right hand, which he deftly disguised as an intentional shake and flourish as he finished pouring a phial of pre-prepared tincture into the cauldron he was attending.

“Ooo, fancy that! Snape’s got himself a lookie-loo,”

Harry spun so quickly that he fell against the ancient, cratered woodgrain and the back of his head cracked against the surface of the door.

Once he’d managed to recover enough to stop clutching the back of his head, Harry’s eyes tracked slowly upwards.

First, he saw an impeccable pair of slim boots. They appeared to be one, seamless piece of leather, with no zipper, laces or elastic panels in evidence. The fit should have been impossible…

Without magic…

And that was his first clue.

The second was that this man wore a similar blanket-like garment that seemed only loosely tailored to suggest that a man wore it and not some formless homunculus.

Beneath the elaborately draped front panels, he seemed to be wearing a rather old-fashioned set of trousers, creased at the front and waist-high, though beyond that was hidden beneath the blanket. The man’s neck and chin seemed afflicted with a bad case of razor-rash, and his blonde hair was haphazardly chopped in mismatched layers around his ears.

A pair of watery, red-rimmed eyes stared down at him, narrowed in predatory delight.

It was difficult to tell how old he might have been. Harry would have suspected he was of an age with Snape, except he had the look about him that hinted at many long nights spent staring into the fathomless bottom of a full stein.

Of course, Harry wasn’t instantaneously aware of the signs of perpetual drunkenness… all he knew was that somehow, for all the man’s evident youth, he looked hardened to a crust, and faintly dangerous for it.

A bare moment after their eyes chanced to meet, one rough hand whipped out in the periphery of Harry’s vision and seized a hank of the boy’s black cowlicks in a punishing grip. The man pulled forward, hard, and brought Harry to heel by his side before he used his other fist to pound out a tattoo against the door, so forcefully that the glass pane rattled.

The door was pulled open from the inside to show Severus at the threshold, his black eyes darting between the man who had Harry by the hair and the pitiful wretch of a boy that knelt at his doorstep.

“What’ve you found yourself there, Yax?” Snape’s gaze was faintly amused, even in spite of Harry’s pleading look—one which begged for salvation, for respite. For clemency…

Because he had left the safety of the privy.

“A chew toy, I think.” The man—Yax—choked, smothering a cruel laugh.

“Pity your mother never told you not to bring in refuse off the street,” Snape intoned, with no little irony. He drew himself up to his full height—which was perhaps an inch short of six-foot— and at least half a head short of the man that had Harry by the roots of his hair.

“Ah, but it wasn’t on the street, Snape. It was hiding out in your garden. Where, evidently, you weren’t planning on sharing with the rest of the class. So selfish… though you always were the most self-interested in our year.

“Haven’t Wulf and I been good enough sports to rate a piece of the pie when one’s on offer?”

Snape’s hand surged forth and smacked Yax’s away from Harry’s hair and then twisted in the collar of Harry’s shirt, pulling him beside his own legs as though he was taking back possession of his dog from someone who’d come across him as a lost stray.

“As it happens, a pie is not on offer. Congratulations, you’ve spotted my… assistant.”

“Your assistant? This young? My my, Snape— it seems you’re not as above the rest of us as you like to act. No wonder you became a teacher,” Yax delivered the last bit of the filthy allegation in a delighted sing-song that made Harry’s blood slow and freeze like an ice floe.

A cautious glance into Snape’s face showed undisguised disgust. “Hardly. As it happens, the disinterest I feel in joining in with your own extracurriculars is rivaled only by my disgust and incredulity that you are so eager to find others to do it with you. Nay. The boy is my assistant… and donor.”

“Donor?” Yax sounded confused, but also eager. Too eager. “You mean…?”

“He is being well trained, gentlemen. Spit. Blood. Tears, on occasion. Doubtless when he reaches a suitable size, more considerable and substantial harvests will follow.”

Harry desperately hoped he was misunderstanding the man, but somehow, he didn’t think he was.

Even Yax and the stocky man known as ‘Wulf’ appeared a bit squicked.

The latter gave a laugh that sounded more nervous than the spirited guffaws he’d loosed earlier in his visit. “You’re twisted, Snape.”

“And he likes to act all high and mighty.” Yax rolled his blue eyes.

They all piled onto the kitchen and Snape gave Harry a shove into the corner. “Stay out from underfoot, boy. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your ears and your eyes and forget anything you hear and have seen here today.”

The two stranger’s voices rose in a chorus of dark laughter and Snape’s familiar face twisted into a terrifying smirk that made Harry forget every moment he’d spent in the past week where the man had helped or been kind to him.

“Who knew you were ready to travel down that storied path, Snape,” Yax was saying as he reclined with one thin hip braced against the ancient counter-top, “how long do you think you can keep harvesting for? Months? Years even?”

Snape, who had turned from the men and was back to finishing off the potion in a tiny silver cauldron answered over his shoulder. “It depends on the order of the extractions. If I time it correctly, and do my utmost to preserve the integrity of the charitable party, I daresay I can make use of him until he’s at least thirteen, at which point I’ll be forced to begin a wholesale divestment of his resources.”

“Morgana’s malignant heart—just think of what you could sell some of that for...”

“Not half as much as I can sell the potions I could personally make with my gleanings should I keep them for myself.” Snape replied, his voice crisp. “Why should I risk a short-sale? It’s far more difficult to trace the potions back to me than to sell off one of the boy’s kidneys in a jar that, under the right circumstances, could be linked to myself.”

Yax sniffed. “If you’re sure...”

“This is non-negotiable.” Snape turned the burner down under the cauldron and used a wooden stirring rod to lift up a bit of the gelatinous goop for inspection. It must have passed muster, as he removed the cauldron to a portion of the table that he reserved for cooling and set about arranging a line of glass phials to decant into.

“And this was all you came for? Why else darken my door after so much time away?” He asked, rhetorically. “After all, what good am I except as a potioneer?”

Wulf rolled his eyes at the man’s dramatics. “Don’t get uppity, Snape. Why would we bother to invite you to things you’ve made clear you have no interest in? So that you can stand around in the corner and pass judgement on us? Just give us our galleons worth and we’ll leave you to your brewing.”

“What are you planning on using it for? A numbing agent of this strength?”

Harry found he could find nothing in the universe that he thought he hated more than the terrifying smile that crept across Yax’s face. His flinch must have betrayed him, as Yax’s smile widened.

“That’s right, boy. Be glad that Snape’s spoken for you. You’re luckier than the rest. At least for a little...” But then the man’s face had frozen, the smile dissolving off of it in an instant. He strode toward Harry, clasped his jaw between his fingers and yanked up his face, peering down into it.

From behind him, Harry thought he saw Snape make a sudden, jerky motion. “What are you doing to my assistant—”

“Your assistant, Severus? No, no—you’ve not been honest, have you? Well, Wulf, we knew even ten years ago to never trust a half-blood.”

“If you’re going to stand around insulting me in my own house, you can keep your galleons,” Snape spat, striding over to Harry and Yax. It looked as if he might have planned to rescue Harry from the man’s grip once again, but the larger man forestalled him, pulling out his own wand—a pale, lifeless-looking branch—and holding it against Snape’s chest. Directly over the man’s heart.

Snape stilled instantly. Tension radiated off of him as steam did off of a boiling pot.

“You’ll stay where you are, Sev, and you’ll take any and every insult I can manage. For a start: turncoat, traitor—”

“What are you nattering on about? Have you finally lost what tenuous hold on reality you’d retained—?”

The hand on Harry’s jaw tightened, and he could feel the jagged tips of the man’s fingernails digging into the tender skin of his face. He couldn’t help it, he let out a small whimper, desperately trying to catch Snape’s eye. He was having a time of it, as Severus’ gaze was trained firmly on the man who had him at wand-point.

“Come help me out here, Wulf, I need a second pair of hands.”

The man lumbered over, seemingly servile to the whims of his compatriot, and came to stand beside where Harry knelt.

“Lift the boy’s fringe, Wulf. Tell me what you see there.”

Harry felt the beefy calloused hands parting the fine hair that covered his forehead. He closed his eyes. Something about the man’s touch made him want to be violently ill onto Snape’s peeling linoleum floor, and somehow, given the circumstances, he understood that this was possibly the worst time he could find to indulge such a weakness.

“Bit of a scar,” Wulf responded, tracing the zig-zag configuration with a fingertip.

Yax’s hand wrenched Harry’s face forward, his fingers squeezing his cheeks. “Not just any scar. The scar. Harry Potter’s scar.”

It felt impossible to breathe. The feeling that he was about to upchuck his breakfast intensified to an almost irresistible urge. Harry’s whole body felt as though it was composed of pinpricks of agitation. He was quite certain that all of the blood in his head had deserted him and headed for greener pastures. Had Yax not been holding him in such a firm grip, he surely would have crumpled over the man’s impressive leather shoes.

Why did they know him? Why did it matter that he had a scar on his face?

Why did they sound so dementedly eager about it?

Harry turned his shaky gaze upon Snape one last time, begging and pleading with the God he’d been raised to fear to please let everything be okay. Please let Snape know what to do. Please... please...

Please...

As he watched, Snape’s own eyes, which had largely been unreadable throughout the entire exchange with the two strangers, widened almost imperceptibly. For the barest half of a second. They didn’t so much as meet Harry’s own, as to dart, rather as a cornered rat’s might, from Yax’s wand, to Wulf’s stocky figure at Harry’s side, and then all around the kitchen.

In the space of time it would have taken to merely blink Snape threw himself into action.

His hand, which had been holding a cluster of leaves—presumably to add right before bottling the potion he’d been preparing—tossed the ingredients into the nearest cauldron, which began to hiss and spit as its contents roiled over the rim of the hardy pewter vessel within which it was contained.

As Yax and Wulf recoiled in fright from the cauldron that was moments away from exploding, Snape dove for Harry and bodily wrestled him from Yax’s loosening grasp.

They were in an awkward embrace on the floor together, with Harry’s face pressed into the black fabric of Snape’s shirt, and when he peered over the man’s bony shoulder, he saw a shimmering wall of iridescent purple against which the neon-orange potion was splattering.

Neither Yax, nor Wulf had managed to shield themselves, though they had turned away, and they were now on the dirty floor of the kitchen, sprawled out and wailing in agony as the potion burned wherever it touched.

There was no time for Harry to look his fill, however, as Snape struggled to his feet, still holding Harry to his front, clutched to him as a koala holds itself on a tree branch, and staggered out of the kitchen.

Harry’s weight must have been a bit difficult for the scrawny young man to manage, and yet he manoeuvred the two out into the sitting room and snatched his keyring from the hook by the door. Within seconds they were ambling out of the house, the aged wood of the door slamming behind them, and Harry was being thrown into the back of the Morris Marina.

By the time that Snape was seated behind the wheel, Harry thought he saw two figures, rising in the air from behind Snape’s house, cloaked in flowing black, bearing down on the car—

“Mr. Snape! Mr. Snape—” Harry cried, inarticulate with fear. His face was pressed against the window and he was pointing wordlessly at the spectres of rage that were now flying—yes, flying. On broomsticks!—over the roof of Snape’s house.

“SHUT UP, POTTER, I SEE THEM!”

The car jerked forward so hard that Harry’s head smacked against the headrest, and then Snape began the terrifying process of bringing it up into third gear in a narrow, winding neighborhood that was much too small and confined to be speeding in.

For the first time, Harry felt no compunction to critique the man’s driving.

The car dipped and wove through the other parked cars, and then blew past the posted signs and signals that said they should rightly have slowed down or come to a stop.

Harry felt himself sliding from one side of the back seat to the other as Snape took the turns at a break-neck speed, banking left, left again, right—

And all while overhead the two wizards on brooms gained on them and bore down, casting jets of light from their wands that narrowly missed the car.

Harry could hear, from the street, a few shrieks, and knew that people must have been witnessing what was happening, though it couldn’t have been too many. Cokeworth seemed nearly abandoned, as far as villages went. Then again, it was a surprise, with the way Snape was driving that they hadn’t attracted the—

The loud claxon rent the air, intruding upon Harry’s reflections and disproving his assumptions and hopes.

“Fucking bleeding filth!” Snape snarled. They had reached a straight-away now, and he poured on more speed. So much so that Harry thought his foot was probably to the floor.

The arrival of the police on their tail did have one salutary effect, however. As Harry watched through the back-window, the two wizards looked to one another, and turned off course, slowing their pursuit until, eventually, they looked to be retreating all together and turning tail.

“Yax and Wulf are turning off, Severus,” Harry dutifully reported.

“Marvelous!” Snape spat as he coasted right, executing a dangerous turn onto an expressway that was far more crowded than the street they’d been driving on. “Now there’s only the local fuzz to worry about—”

The sirens followed them as Snape conducted the car through traffic, the other cars scattering as they saw that a chase was in progress.

Harry gnawed his lower lip, tasting blood. Sure, it was better to have the police after them than the two wizards that were so utterly terrifying, but he didn’t really want Snape to be in trouble with the law either...

Unless what he’d been saying about carving Harry up for parts was in any way true.

“What are we gonna do?” Harry whinged, his hands working their way into his hair and pulling helplessly.

“Climb up here, Potter, into the passenger seat.”

“But that’s dangerous—”

“DO AS I FUCKING SAY!” Snape shrieked. “FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST IF YOU VALUE ANYTHING YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME THIS TIME!”

It was true... this had all started because he’d disobeyed Snape’s order to stay hidden in the privy... Harry’s guilt compelled him forward, scrambling between the two front seats and into the passenger side.

Rolling down the window with his right arm, Snape cast a glance out behind the car. The police were perhaps three car lengths back and were attempting to close the gap.

“Take the wheel,” Snape ordered him, grasping his hand at the wrist and forcing it onto the steering-wheel. “Hold it steady—”

Before Harry had time to protest, Snape was leaning out the window he’d rolled down and was firing off spells onto the street; right behind the back wheels of their car and in front of the police’s vehicle.

Whatever it was must have made the road slippery, as when he retook the wheel and Harry had a chance to look back behind them, it was to see the police car pulling off onto the shoulder in haste after violently fishtailing.

For the next several moments, Severus pushed the car to the limit of what it seemed to want to run at—the RPM needle was all the way to the right, showing that he was taxing the engine far past it’s designed load, until he abruptly began to shift down (Harry having to hold onto the seat to keep from being bucked about) and decelerate.

The car pulled off onto a country lane that seemed to be in the middle of no-where, and, after having checked that no one was in front of him or behind him, Snape banked left, into a nearby field and parked.

For several moments neither said a word to one another. Both of them were panting and white-knuckled; Snape’s hands clenching the steering wheel and Harry’s the sides of his seat, before the boy crumpled to his side and heaved several times.

It was difficult to be sure whether it was with imminent tears, or retching—either way, his body was rejecting all that had preceded their arrival in the field with a clear message that told all present that it was not okay with what had just happened.

When Snape next spoke, he was almost wheezing. “You’re alright—we’ll be fine...”

Harry looked up at the man, incredulous. But it didn’t seem as though the man was trying to tell him to stiffen up his upper lip, rather, Severus himself appeared shell-shocked and shaken. He was looking off in the distance at nothing.

Perhaps, if anything, he’d been telling himself.

“Severus... will they go back to your house? Will they wait for you there...?” Harry asked, worrying at a tear in the seat with his fingers once he’d regained his breath enough to speak. “What about Wheat? What about your potions?”

Snape shook his head, dazedly, his hair dancing around his face in long ropes. “They can’t... they can’t get in. I had to let them in... the wards reset as soon as they left the premises.”

The man swallowed and his adam’s apple bobbed in his thin throat. “God knows how much damage that potion did to my kitchen... but the rest of the house has been reinforced against potions mishaps. It shouldn’t have harmed anything else except all of my other works in progress—”

At that, Harry glowered at the man and raised his head in an open show of defiance. “And you were gonna use me for those? My... my kidneys... and... and blood—”

Snape began to violently shake his head, still looking decidedly out-of-it. “No! No—I would never... You don’t get it. You wouldn’t understand what they—what Yax...” He suddenly appeared haunted, and finally, his black eyes caught Harry’s green ones.

“I would never want to tell you what Yax and Wulf do. It is... beyond words. It is nigh unspeakable... If I wanted them to leave you well enough alone, I had to... I had to suggest I was doing something as bad, or worse.”

Harry’s face twisted with anguish. “And they’re... they’re your friends? They’re sick!”

Snape appeared pained. “You have no idea how sick, Harry.”

“They’re evil!”

“Yes.”

“And they’re your friends!”

His hand coming down to slam against the steering column, Snape finally seemed to collect himself, and he loomed over Harry with a glower. “You are too young to understand! Too young for me to explain myself to you—”

“Explain what? How you’re friends with a couple of nonces!?”

Snape’s eyes widened. “Where the hell did you learn a word like that?”

“Answer the bloody question!”

“Potter, you didn’t really ask a question. And yet I did,” Snape said with a sigh. “How familiar are you with what a nonce is?”

“Uncle Vernon told us. Me and Dudley, I mean—they’re kiddie touchers,”

“Quite.”

“And you’re friends—”

Snape motioned for them both to exit the car, which Harry did reluctantly. Over the bonnet, Snape pinned him with a glare. “They are not my friends, Harry.”

The man withdrew his wand, which had Harry flinching for a moment before he realised that Snape was running it over the paint on the car, gradually changing the hue to a deep red. He approached the boot and tapped his wand to the license plates for good measure.

“Then what are they?” Harry demanded, his arms crossed.

Snape pinned the boy with a considering look and climbed back into the driver side, leaving Harry to decide whether he’d like to join him back in the car at all.

It took several moments of stewing in his anger and fear before he decided to trust Snape—after all. He’d saved him something like three times now—and he settled into the back seat once more, feeling safer there than in the passenger side.

As Snape pulled off out of the field and onto the country lane, directing them toward the road they’d abandoned half an hour earlier, he started in on a story.

A story as improbable and ridiculous as it was likely true.

Just like the fact that magic was real, and evidently wizards rode on brooms and brewed potions.

“You might have guessed that growing up only a few streets away, that I knew your family.”

Harry frowned at the back of the man’s head. As far as opening lines went, that one was rather lame. “Well, I already knew that.”

“Your mother was my best friend.” Snape snapped, his voice sharp. “Didn’t know that did you? No? Then button your lip and pay attention.”

He was holding the steering wheel in a death grip, so tightly that his arms appeared to be shaking.

His mother’s best friend? Odd, wasn’t it? For it to have been a boy?

Harry ignored the proscription against speech and voiced his confusion. “Your best friend was a girl? What about my dad? Did you know him? Was he your friend too?”

“I knew him. Unfortunately. No one in their right mind would have called us friends, however,” the man ground out, sounding furious. “Your mother—Lily—and I met when we were eight. Or... perhaps I should say we became friends at eight. We’d been in school together for years. She never took much of a notice of me in primary school, while I—”

“You liked her...” Harry ventured, feeling himself blush.

Snape didn’t speak for several moments, and Harry felt, rather than saw, the man’s eyes resting on him in the rear-view mirror.

They were back on the M40 again, headed south.

Snape’s voice emerged sounding rather raw, and when he spoke it was with a sort of derisive self-mockery. “Picked up on that rather quickly, didn’t you? Amazing how you could know in just seconds what Lily seemingly never realised in all of my years of knowing her.”

“Maybe she did know,” Harry told him, kicking his feet. He felt bad. Bad for the man in front of him. It was too bad that Lily hadn’t liked Snape back—or at least so he could assume—because he thought, as far as people went, that Snape was pretty much alright. Or even, as he’d earlier decided, a bit cool.

“Perhaps.” Severus said, wincing. “If she did, then... when it all fell apart, perhaps it was her sparing my feelings. Not that it worked that way,” he scoffed.

Harry couldn’t really understand his meaning, given the missing details, but he understood one thing: by the time his parents had perished in that frightful accident, his mother and Snape had no longer been friends.

“That red-headed girl... in the pictures in your room. Was that my mum?” Harry asked, his voice soft. Hopeful.

Snape nearly choked. “Beautiful, wasn’t she?”

Finding himself at a loss for words, Harry could only nod. She had been pretty. Prettier than he could ever have imagined...

“I suppose I mentioned a bit about Hogwarts to you? When we were at Spinner’s End.”

“You work there—”

“I do. It is a school for magical children. I knew I was meant to go there ever since I was old enough to know what magic was. My own mother was a witch.”

“That’s lucky—”

Snape shook his head. “You misunderstand. Or rather, you have no conception of what that might mean.

“My mother was a witch, and my father, like your relatives, had no magic.”

“Like me,” Harry said, trying to follow along.

The car swerved a little when Snape violently shook his head. “No, Harry. That’s where you’re wrong. Like me, your mother was also a witch. You have magic. You are magical.”

“What... me?! My mum... mum could do what you do? With a wand?”

“Just as well, and sometimes better.” Snape laughed a laugh that lacked any true humour. It sounded nearly demented in how morose it came across. “And there was the trouble. Neither of her parents were magical. And in our world... in our world that means rather a lot.”

Harry’s head swam as he passed several hours listening to Snape speak. His heart had crawled up from his chest and seemed to have made a home for itself in his throat, and he could scarcely breathe past the obstruction as his mind tried to make sense of the varied details and new information that Snape was feeding him.

Purebloods, and half-bloods, and muggleborns. Blood prejudices, and Death Eaters, and some nutter calling himself the Dark Lord. Gryffindors, and Slytherins. Some group known as ‘The Marauders,’ and Snape himself going about as a self-styled Prince.

Pranks, and hatred, and someone trying to strip Snape naked before the school... a word. An ugly word... that Harry could tell was hateful and cruel as soon as he’d heard it—and Snape had used it against his mother.

“She never, ever forgave me.” Snape’s voice was raw. “A few years later she married your father and had you. I... I joined with the Dark Lord. With the likes of Yax and Wulf.”

Harry glowered at the man. “Wasn’t that why she couldn’t forgive you? ‘Cause you would be friends with people that were nasty—”

“That was exactly why.” Snape replied. They were past Manchester now and still traveling. “And she was right to reject me... she was. I didn’t deserve her friendship.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you said you’re ‘not friends’ with Yax and Wulf, but they still come around,” Harry complained. He still wasn’t sure he was right to have put his trust in Snape. It reminded him of a tale he’d read once—or rather, part of it. His aunt had destroyed the book as soon as she’d noticed it—The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Lucy had been lured into a friendly faun’s house, only to have the faun turn her over at the last moment to the witch... even though he’d come to regret his part in the deception.

Was the whole thing about using Harry as a donor really a bluff?

He couldn’t ruminate on his terror further, however, as Snape was back to speaking. “Our days at Hogwarts were only the preface to a rather more tragic story.”

If the first part of the story had Harry’s head full to bursting, the second part made him want to sick up all over the backseat.

His parents hadn’t died in a car crash... He’d been lied to... had formed his deepest fear around a tall tale he’d been told by his uncle and aunt.

Murdered... they’d been murdered... and he had been allowed to think that his father had been drink driving. Encouraged to believe it, in fact.

When Snape began, in faltering tones that suggested he himself was on the brink of some sort of emotional meltdown, to talk about a prophesy, Harry could nearly feel his brain melting.

His parents had been murdered.

Snape had been responsible. Snape had told the murderer about the prophesy... and then had turned spy against him—against the likes of Yax and Wulf—to try and buy his mother’s life.

Silence reigned in the aftermath. Apparently, the man had nothing more to say. Given that he was heaving with heavy breaths, like he had stepped immediately from the confessional into running a marathon, it should have been unsurprising that he had no more words left.

So. Was Harry sitting with a murderer? With someone dangerous?

Undoubtably the latter, if what Snape said about his time with the Death Eaters could be believed. And to think—Harry had thought his tattoo was cool.

That same tattoo that meant Snape was an enemy to everything his mother was...

But in truth, was he?

Harry stewed over this question, feeling far too shell-shocked to say anything for several long minutes.

“Harry...?” Snape asked, over his shoulder. He appeared almost nervous when their eyes met in the mirror. “I—”

“Don’t... don’t talk.” Harry demanded; his hands clenched in the material of the back bench seat. “I’m... they’re dead ‘cause of you,”

Snape’s head bowed and his shoulders came up in a full body cringe, the car shuddering as its driver nearly seized over the wheel.

It sounded as though the man was chanting something, and for a terrifying moment, Harry thought it might have been some strange spell... and he was so angry that had he not been fearful of what the spell did, he wouldn’t have bothered listening.

But he was fearful, and so he cast his head forward, his ears perked up to hear what the words might have been.

“I’m sorry... I’m so, so sorry—” a constant refrain. “Please forgive me, God... please forgive me...”

As Harry ducked his head forward, he saw an amazing thing: Snape’s eyes, so wet with tears that driving should have been impossible, and his cheeks and chin fairly dripping with water.

He was not the sort of man that Harry thought cried. He looked like the sort of street toughs that Harry was used to seeing in some of Dudley’s favourite films, and here he was, bawling—though so quietly and with such a private sort of pain that even Harry felt a bit of pity for the man.

It was Snape’s fault. That much was true... but he didn’t know... he didn’t know that this Dark Lord person would go after Harry’s family.

“So you spy on the Dark Lord now?” Harry asked at last, feeling bad enough for the sniveling man before him that he felt he ought to extend an olive branch of some sort. “And that’s why you have... you have evil gits like Yax buying potions from you—”

Sniffing, Snape’s eyes, wide with amazement, came to rest on Harry. He had great difficulty in correcting the course of the car given his shock. “He—The Dark Lord is dead. He died that night.”

Harry blinked, nonplussed. “How?”

“You. When he got done with your father and your... your mother, the Dark Lord turned his wand on you. He didn’t survive the attempt.”

“That makes no sense!” Harry argued, feeling a sense of panic overtake him. “Why me? He could kill all the adults he liked but couldn’t kill a baby?”

Snape, in spite of his heightened emotionality, seemed to recover himself enough to snort. “Quite. It’s why you’re considered such a curiosity.”

“I am?”

“You could not have failed to notice that our unwelcome visitors recognised you. Everyone in our world knows about you. About your scar.”

“My scar?” Harry asked, bringing one hand up to rub at the rough ridge where the skin of his forehead had been split ever since he could remember.

“Your scar,” Snape agreed. “The physical evidence of your triumph over the Dark Lord. You sustained that injury—that injury, and nothing else, mind you—that night. You were otherwise completely unharmed.”

“If the Dark Lord is dead, why do you still need to be around people like... like that? Death Eaters?” Harry asked, feeling mulishly annoyed on this point. Yax and Wulf had terrified him beyond measure. To think that Snape spent any amount of time, willingly, amongst such company was a worrisome thought.

“The Dark Lord is dead, but my job is yet unfinished,” Snape intoned. “Or... I expect that was the case. Before today.”

The car pulled off onto a confusing exchange and drifted toward an exit that told Harry they were headed back to Surrey.

Back to Privet Drive.

Given all he’d learned about Snape’s past, that should have been a comfort. To leave the man... but somehow it was anything but.

“How do you mean?” Harry asked, wondering if this would be his last chance to grill the man over their shared history. He had to get all the answers he could in the time they had left... doubtless when they reached Privet Drive the Dursleys would be waiting for him, ready to thrust him back under the stairs.

Back to his daily list of chores. Back to his spiders for friends—spiders that were too small to be proper pets—back to lies about magic, and his parents, and... and...

It was too much to think about.

“After today I somehow doubt that my cover is intact. They saw you, and they saw me protecting you. I ran from them.” They were now in Little Whinging. Harry felt the moments ticking by, like he was headed for the inevitable end to something he’d only just come to decide that he liked very much, even in spite of Snape’s dubious history. “I don’t imagine I can do much good as a spy anymore, given the circumstances.”

The car pulled up into the space at the front of the Dursley’s house, and Snape exited the vehicle, Harry following only with supreme reluctance. How the hours had passed so quickly, even in the absence of music, was a testament to the nature of the story Snape had told, and to its aftermath.

Number Four looked the same as it ever had: all correct.

Perhaps the grass was a little higher, for Harry’s negligence, and it looked as though a bit of post had piled up but then—

Did that mean that the Dursleys hadn’t returned? Not even once? Not to check the mail, or to check in that Harry was taking proper care of the lawn, or... even to check that Harry was alive at all?

Given the lack of food he’d been left, Harry doubted he would have been. Not without Snape having stepped in.

And that was even before one considered the lamentable state of his health that had necessitated a trip to hospital.

They had well and truly left him to his death. Should they have been home, Uncle Vernon’s Vauxhall should have been occupying the space that Snape had pulled into, and Aunt Petunia’s blonde head should be visible over the curtains, peeking through a crack in the fabric with a beady blue eye trained on her unwelcome visitors.

Snape did something at the door, something to unlock it, and they made their way into the entryway, seeing dust motes floating lazily to and fro in the late afternoon air.

The refrigerator still had all of the provisions Snape had purchased, and the left-over chicken soup he’d prepared for them a week earlier.

Had Aunt Petunia been home, she’d surely have thrown that out.

Snape was looking murderous at this point, and clearly had reached the same conclusion Harry himself had. Yet before he could voice his ire, there came a noise from the front door. Someone was attempting to enter.

The man turned and strode down the hall, cautioning Harry with one palm raised to him to stop where he was, further up the corridor.

After the debacle with the two Death Eaters at Snape’s house, Harry was happy to obey. He paused by his cupboard and watched with trepidation as Snape cracked open the front door before whomever was on the opposite side could manage to open it themselves.

“Oh!” A voice cried from the other side, “My apologies, I was under the impression there’d be no one home!”

Snape evidently sensed no danger, as he had decided to open the door in full to reveal a smartly dressed man on the other side.

He appeared like a normal sort. Sort of dumpy, though in a freshly pressed, well-fitted suit. He had a wide, flat face, and the top of his head was shiny and nearly entirely bald, while the hair around his ears and the back of his head remained.

He was someone Harry’s aunt and uncle would have found no objection to. That is to say—not magical.

Snape appeared as though he was only barely keeping his anger at bay. “You thought no one was home, and so you’d decided to let yourself in, Mister...?”

“Mr. Harrogate, sir, pleased to meet you,” Mr. Harrogate chirped, his wide face adopting a solicitous grin. He’d extended a hand toward Snape, which the wizard blatantly ignored, and after a few moments of his hand hanging, open-palmed, in the air, Harrogate sheepishly withdrew it. “Did no one tell you I was coming? I... I wasn’t aware there were any more residents, or else I’d have knocked.”

“Perhaps it would be best if you explained your business, Mr. Harrogate.”

“Er... yes. I suppose,” Mr. Harrogate agreed, with apparent caution. “Though, I’ve already been authorised to walk and survey the property. I’m here to take some photographs,” he answered, withdrawing a camera from the bag he toted with him, “and to take some measurements.”

Apparently flummoxed, Snape frowned down at him. “Why would you need to do that? Who authorised you?”

Mr. Harrogate had apparently realised by now that, if Snape had it his way, he’d have kept him out on the stoop all day, and he had begun to edge his way past the man, manoeuvering himself into the hall and setting the aperture of his camera as he liked. He spotted Harry, but seemed utterly disinterested in the boy, instead waving him aside a bit—out of frame—and hoisting the camera in his meaty hands.

Harry ducked aside into the sitting room and watched as the man began to snap photos of the entryway from every conceivable angle, even going so far as to open up his cupboard.

“I say... it looks as though they had a dog living here! That’s a clever use for the space—I ought to consider adding that as a suggestion on the detail sheet.”

“Mr. Harrogate,” Snape growled, his voice becoming that soft, dangerous one he used when he was only a second away from blowing his top, “kindly explain what it is you’re doing here.”

“Oh! Right, apologies,” the man with the camera flushed and faced his ungracious host. “I’m here from the estate agency. Mr. Dursley called a couple of days ago and asked me to come out and to photograph the property for him... Though he didn’t mention that he had a son here to watch for me—”

Blanching with horror, Snape’s voice was incredulous, “A son?”

“You are his son, aren’t you? Or... or some relation?” Mr. Harrogate appeared nervous now. Possibly, he had reasoned that if the strangers were in the house and unknown to the Dursleys who had conscripted his service, that they were here as squatters.

In fact, the dirty pallet in the cupboard seemed to bear that out.

“You said you were an estate agent?”

“I’m with the agency,” Mr. Harrogate answered, somewhat sheepishly. “I’m just here to do the pictures and measurements.”

“So the house is to be sold.” Snape demanded, his eyes narrowing and turning flinty.

Apparently having decided his best course of action was to get through his appointment as quickly as possible, Harrogate moved on to the sitting room, shooing Harry from this place too, so that the boy retreated back into the hallway once more. “That’s the way of it,” the man agreed, “Mr. Dursley was saying that they liked it so well in Brighton this week when they took their family holiday, that they found a place they’d rather like to buy, and they’re arranging a sale on this property as quickly as our agency can find a buyer.”

Harry was speechless. They... they’d left to go on holiday. They’d abandoned him in the house for nearly a week and a half. Closer to two weeks, really.

And their plan was to sell it out from underneath him...?

“Ah. No, I was not made aware of the Dursley’s intention to sell,” Snape quipped, having recovered himself from the unexpected turn of events. “I’ll be but a moment,” he told Harry, rushing upstairs.

Harry felt for a moment as though Snape was abandoning him too. It took everything in him not to begin hyperventilating as Harrogate stalked through the house, snapping pictures of this and that corner and cranny.

But then—

“Harry?”

The boy turned to see Snape resting against the bannister, Dudley’s tape deck under one arm and an uncharacteristic grin on his face. He climbed down the final few stairs and came to stand before him, patting his purloined treasure with satisfaction.

“Let’s go home.”