Rowky Syke Primary School was a dowdy institution, conducted out of a dated, steel, pre-fab building that likely had been erected in the fifties, in order to serve the families of the old Reckitt Blue Works that had closed the doors against the last of its straggling workforce in 1981. Consequently, the school—which previously had seen class sizes of thirty to fifty students per year—saw its numbers dwindle to a paltry ten to fifteen students per year (and that included the surrounding areas from all around the village of Backbarrow).

Not only had families begun moving away in the seventies when the factories in town had begun to slough off workers, but in the interceding years, family sizes had begun to shrink. No longer was it common to see families of five to seven children. It was now quite normal for families of the same means to stop at one or two.

The result was a tiny, impoverished school, operating on a shoe-string budget, and with as many unpaid volunteers teaching as there were actual, bona fide teachers.

Snape didn’t explain much of this to Harry before he was meant to start his classes, and neither did Harry ask. There was too much else to be done. Snape had to scrounge around for proper supplies for Harry’s satchel, and he spent the better part of two hours on the phone with goodness knew who, asking each person he called whether they had a boy’s uniform in Harry’s size. By the end of this exercise—or, truth be told, at the beginning of it—he looked irritated beyond measure, and shamefaced, besides.

And Snape feeling any sense of shame over his pecuniary circumstances was rather unpleasant. Harry had come to find out that the man was as proud as he was surly and ill-tempered, and having to beg for Harry’s clothes had put him in a particularly foul mood.

The night before school was to start, Snape had driven Harry and himself back into town, where they stopped off at Rice Bowl.

To Harry’s disappointment—though he knew better than to hope for Mrs. Padiernos’ cooking after Snape’s talk with him about their dwindling funds—they weren’t there for a clamshell of fragrant braised meat.

For all that, however, Harry refused to give away Snape’s apparent shame over his precarious financial position, and merely smiled his most charming smile up at Mrs. Padiernos before the woman rushed upstairs—where she and her husband evidently lived—and returned with a shapeless bundle, wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with twine.

“I thought that Nap’s uniform would fit best, ‘Rus, but it still seemed a little big,” she chattered, handing over the package. “There’s two in there, but Nap’s been going through a spurt lately, so if Harry grows, I can see about getting you another set.

“Of course, if you’d just come on Sundays, we’ve a whole closet of uniforms for school that we save for children who need them—”

“I’m sure these will suffice, Mrs. Padiernos,” Snape interrupted her, taking the package from her and stuffing it under one arm.

There came a pregnant, and awkward pause, where the woman peered at Snape through her delicate, gold-rimmed spectacles, before she sighed and shook her head. For a moment it looked as though she wished to say something to the wizard, but evidently, she thought better of it, for she looked to Harry with a considering glance, and then pressed her lips together in a tight line.

Severus cleared his throat when it appeared that the silence was going to stretch on indefinitely. “Harry? I don’t think I have to tell you what the appropriate response is, in such situations.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Padiernos,” the boy added, as quickly as he could manage.

She shook her head at him, with another tight-lipped expression that Harry was unable to puzzle-out.

“You don’t have to go calling me that because your kuya insists on it. You will call me Lola,” she announced, sending a look Snape’s way.

Amazingly, the man ducked his head, appearing as though he wished to hide his reaction.

“As ‘Rus used to do, when he was young and innocent enough not to be embarrassed by having a Lola—”

Snape’s voice sounded strangled as he attempted to voice his objection: “That’s not—”

Mrs. Padiernos clucked her tongue over his protest. “It is.”

“I’m old enough to be his father, I can’t be a kuya—!”

“Then why are you acting at being one?” She asked, her voice tart.

“I’m not!”

Mrs. Padiernos turned back to Harry and ignored Snape’s further commentary attempting to dissuade her. And for Harry’s part, he kept his mouth shut when tempted to ask what any of this business might have meant.

But, for Severus’ sake, he didn’t tell the woman that the man often slipped and called her Lola anyway, even if he always tried to correct himself.

“Are you looking forward to starting school?” She asked him, with a slight smile, having effectively walled Snape off from their conversation. The man had retreated to lean against the far wall with ill grace and a bit of a huff.

Not knowing how to answer, Harry shifted from foot to foot, the fingers of one of his hands playing with a hole he’d found in the bottom of one of his trouser pockets where he’d shoved his hands deep into the baggy garment. “I s’pose,” he ventured.

“Rowky Syke, won’t it be?” Mrs. Padiernos prodded, though not in an interrogative way. “You know ‘Rus went there, before he went off to go to his mam’s school?”

“My mum went there too,” Harry told the woman, “and my aunt.”

“Did they now?” Mrs. Padiernos looked up to send a slightly assessing look Snape’s way. “Might I know these two young ladies, ‘Rus?”

Looking a bit trapped, Snape gave an asymmetrical shrug of one shoulder and snarled at his boots. “How should I know?”

“Backbarrow’s not very big, and I’ve been here a long time. Perhaps they came to St. Catherine’s, back when your mam would bring you by—”

“They were Protestant.” Snape corrected her, in a somewhat snide tone.

“I seem to remember one summer where you came by with a pretty girl friend—”

Severus’ hands, where they hung at his sides, balled into fists, “She was never my girlfriend!” His face was flushing a deep red, and the colour from his cheeks seemed to be diffusing out to the far extremities that were the shells of his large ears.

Were it possible, Harry thought he might expect the man to start emitting steam from his nostrils, he appeared so hot under the collar.

Clucking her tongue, Mrs. Padiernos shook her head with a roll of her dark brown eyes, “I said a friend that was a girl.”

“But what you meant was—”

“What I meant,” the woman interrupted, speaking over Snape’s wounded pride with ease (the sort of ease that spoke to years of having had to wrangle with the man’s ego), “was that I remembered you had a girl you seemed to enjoy spending time with a long while ago. Red hair, I’m thinking? Tall and thin?”

Snape swallowed, and looked as though he were about to answer, when the phone began to ring, and the woman hurried off to answer, quickly snatching up a small notepad that lay beside the telephone to begin recording the order as it was placed.

They left shortly after, and as they bid Mrs. Padiernos goodbye, Harry could tell that Snape was in a poor mood from the brief mention of Harry’s mother, as Snape’s farewell was colder than usual.

Harry attempted to make up for the man’s reticence with his own warmth, waving emphatically to the woman and testing the name she’d insisted on out.

It felt odd on his tongue. Like some part of him knew that it was more meaningful than a simple four-letter name had any business being.

“Bye, Lola.” Harry had offered his wave with a bit of a shy grin, “Thanks for the uniforms.”

“Bye Harry! And I’m not the one to be thanking: if your kuya ever brings you to Penrith—” she looked to Snape with an eagle-eyed stare, “you can thank Louis yourself. They’re his son’s old uniform. I’m just passing them along.”

When they left and Harry had asked Snape what Mrs. Padiernos had meant by all of it, he’d been reluctant to answer, instead choosing to crank up the volume on Dudley’s tape deck—which had become their car player, whereas Snape’s older model stayed in the kitchen for them to listen to while brewing—and Harry’s only answer came from Sebastian Bach’s voice rising and falling on the Skid Row album that Snape had chosen.

Between songs, Harry persisted with his interrogation.

“Is that her name? Lola Padiernos?”

“No.”

“Then why am I suppose’ta call her ‘Lola?’” Harry asked with a small frown. For that matter, why was Snape himself so resistant to calling the woman that when he frequently did so, by accident, in private?

“’Lola’ means grandmother.”

Harry’s eyes widened behind their frames. “Is she your—”

“No.” The man barked again, “She’s not my grandmother.” Snape was taking the turns more sharply than he usually did, at least since he’d calmed down his driving a few weeks before.

Harry let the man stew in silence and was rewarded when Snape heaved a great sigh through his wide nostrils. “She’s just a friend of the family. Or of my mother rather.”

“Oh,” Harry offered by way of a sympathetic little murmur at the news, “you don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to...” he reassured the man once again.

Although Snape glowered at him in the rear view, and his lips tightened into a grim line, his voice, when it answered him, was more weary than anything else.

“Thank you, Harry.”

Thinking he was perhaps changing tack—and in a very considerate way—Harry chose another question. “What’s a ‘Kuya?’”

Snape resolutely refused to answer. In fact, he acted as though he didn’t even hear Harry’s query.

Dinner that evening was on the disappointing side, although this was largely because both of them had been subjected to the comparatively mouth-watering scents issuing forth from Mrs. Padiernos’ kitchen. When held up against corned beef hash and fried potatoes with eggs—because Snape always, for some reason, insisted on adding eggs to near enough every meal—it was no wonder that the cheap fry-up fare didn’t hold up by contrast.

Even so, Harry had made a promise to Severus not to complain about the food, and truthfully, it wasn’t bad at all, even for being simple. The meat was spicy, the potatoes salty, and the egg rich in flavour.

For all that the man refused to cook—or at the present moment in time was unable to do so—Harry had never gone to bed hungry, nor had he left the coffee table (where they ate the majority of their meals) feeling unsatisfied.

Snape sent him off to bed early that evening, and Harry could scarcely sleep. The next morning, the twenty-ninth of August, was a Monday, and Severus had told him that they’d be waking earlier than usual so that the man could walk him to school and show him the route.

By the time that Snape poked his head in the door to rouse him, Harry was still only half-snoozing, and he woke easily, jumping from the old bed that used to belong to Severus and pulling on his trousers and socks with a mix of eagerness and dread.

How many times had he wished for a fresh start? For a school or a classroom where he wasn’t already known to the biggest gang of bullies? How many times had he yearned for exactly this? A bedroom of his own. A uniform that fit—even though he had to roll the trouser legs up a couple of times to accommodate the short length of his shins. An adult to walk him in to school, even if only for the first day? (Aunt Petunia had always driven Dudley to school, and left Harry to walk all by himself, which, after a fashion, became the best part of Harry’s day; Dudley-free as it was).

Snape was never talkative in the early mornings, and Harry was fine with that. The man drank a cup or two of strong NesCafé (with two, heaping spoonfuls of instant coffee granules and a generous pour of sugar), and would munch his toast in a mulish, mechanical fashion as he discarded the paper’s salient news section for the puzzles near the back.

Harry still wasn’t sure why Snape seemed allergic to reading about current events, but he took advantage of the situation by swiping the paper for his own perusal. Since that first article that had been about his custodianship and Snape’s trial, Harry had made it his business to familiarise himself with The Daily Propheteach morning, heedless of Snape’s repeated warnings about the rag’s accuracy and its lack of candor in reporting.

Though he knew he lived with a wizard, and though he got to witness small feats of magic every day, that was nothing compared to the glimpse of the enchanted world he managed to steal through reading the wizarding world’s premier paper.

Part of the wonder of it all was that it was seemingly so mundane to wizards and witches themselves. There were sports played on the back of brooms that were apparently as engaging as football was for normal people, and where the financial portion of Uncle Vernon’s Sunday Times spoke about assets such as oil or land, the magical world seemed concerned with trades in things like dragon eggs and goblin-wrought goods.

That morning, Harry didn’t make it to the pages concerned with business. His attention was caught up almost immediately by an item half-way down the front page which appeared upon unfolding the paper from its rolled presentation.

HOGWARTS IN DIRE STRAITS AS STAFFING PROBLEMS PERSIST: Departure of former Head of Slytherin and Potions Master, Severus Snape, has left storied institution in the lurch; lacking for qualified applicants.

A photograph of a splendid castle accompanied the article and Harry had to gnaw on his lower lip to stifle the gasp that wanted to escape. That was where Severus had worked?

Why come back to Spinner’s End at all?

Harry began to feel uncomfortable in his seat as he risked a look up at Severus, absorbed, as he was, sipping his coffee and noodling over an across row for his crossword.

Snape had given up what appeared to be a high-ranking position at a prestigious institution with pay that could sustain him for…

Well.

For chasing after an eight-year-old whelp, eating tinned meat on toast for every meal, and staying in a house he clearly hated to its very foundations. All so that Harry might not be alone.

It was enough to cause the boy’s stomach to churn with a sick sense of guilt.

Although at that moment Snape didn’t seem terribly bothered, Harry knew that the man wasn’t exactly happy with their current situation. He’d made that clear enough whenever he attempted to portion out food, or when he thought Harry wasn’t listening while he puttered around the cauldrons that littered the kitchen.

Ducking his head behind the paper that he’d folded backwards on itself once more, Harry began to slowly work his way through the meat of the article.

The sudden departure of preeminent Potions Master, Severus Snape (28), one month ago has sent Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry scrambling for a solution as they careen towards what may prove to be a catastrophe of pedagogy.

No matter how Harry tried to sound the last word out, he couldn’t fathom what it might mean.

“Severus,” he ventured, with a sense of prickly foreboding.

“Mmm?”

“What’s ‘peed-a-goggy’?”

Distractedly, Snape frowned as he made a mark with his pen on his portion of the paper. “Where are you reading that?”

Instead of answering directly, Harry offered the fragment of the sentence giving him trouble: “a ca-tas-trophy,” he sounded out, “of peed-a-goggy—”

“That’s ‘pedagogy,’ Snape corrected his pronunciation, “the ‘e’ is short,” then, finally seeming to snap to, Snape’s eyes sharpened in a split second. “What’s supposed to be the catastrophe?”

Harry tried to think fast to come up with a pretense, but before he could get out a single syllable, Snape had snatched the paper back from him and scanned it himself. Then, with a look of mixed disgust and, oddly,triumph, he threw the paper back down between them.

Before Harry could reach for it once more, Snape stood from his seat and knocked back the rest of his sludge-like coffee in one dreadful slug. “Let’s be off. You’ll be wanting to leave the house with at least twenty minutes to spare if you don’t want to be tardy in the mornings.”

He didn’t wait for Harry to follow but strode from the room, his boots making the aged floorboards creak beneath his weight.

Harry scrambled to catch up and found that Snape had waited outside the house for him, watching as he closed the door firmly behind him to make sure that the wards sealed their home securely.

Apparently satisfied that it was so, Snape gave a short nod of his head and turned again to lead the way down the street.

They walked the entirety of Spinner’s End without conversation, as Harry was far too absorbed in studying the derelict houses and empty lots to say much.

Somehow, it looked different walking than it did riding in the car. Through the window, one didn’t get quite such a feel for exactly how abused the old town was.

Several times, Harry stumbled, either over places where the pavement seemed to have risen at least two inches from the surrounding blocks of cracked concrete, or over assorted pieces of trash that impeded their way.

He’d been about to tread on a broken bottle while distracted by an old, boarded-up mechanic’s shop (which had apparently, at one time, been called Culpepper Motors), when Snape grabbed him by the upper arm and manoeuvered him bodily out of the way.

Glancing back, Harry could see why: the thick glass shard was big enough that it likely would have torn through the sole of his trainer and lodged in the bottom of his foot.

“Thanks, Severus,” he stammered out, feeling embarrassed that he’d nearly injured himself.

The wizard didn’t look his way, he only kept walking forward, his stride so long that Harry felt winded attempting to keep up with him.

“You’ll need to pay attention,” he lectured over his shoulder, “stray bits of glass are the least dangerous thing you’ll likely encounter in this part of town.”

Harry shuddered as he looked around their surroundings quickly, imagining what might be lurking behind some of the derelict buildings. “You mean like Yax and Wulf—”

“Not exactly, no. Though I’ll expect you to be on the lookout for the likes of them too,” Snape told him. “In fact, we likely should have discussed the particulars of how you ought to conduct yourself through town before today. We’ll be having that conversation over supper this evening in order to remedy that oversight.

“If you’re still worried about Yaxley and Mulciber, don’t be,” Snape added. “I’ve taken measures.”

“Measures?”

“Never you mind.” Snape said with a short shake of his head. He led them over the small bridge that spanned the stinking creek, and then, a short while later, over a much larger bridge that had been built to connect the two sides of town built along the River Leven.

When Harry placed both hands on the short wall that bordered the bridge and tipped forward enough to get a good look, he was yanked back by a sharp tug on his jacket.

“Don’t do that!” Snape snapped at him. “You could fall to your death!”

“I just wanted a better look,” Harry whinged, though he did start back following the older wizard when he turned back to their course.

“The river is dangerous and rather violent. You wouldn’t survive a fall.” Then, relenting ever so slightly, Snape’s shoulders drooped and he added, in an even tone: “If you’re lucky, perhaps I can find an embankment someday soon where you can see it a bit closer up.”

Nodding enthusiastically, Harry grinned and looked back out over the water. Nearby, a large, writhing shape emerged from the churning water and landed back into the depths with a loud splash.

“What was that?”

Snape gave an unconcerned half-shrug. They were coming to the end of the bridge. “Likely a salmon.”

“Severus, I read in The Pro—”

A hand came down over his mouth, Snape having spun quickly to slap it over the boy’s lower face. “Don’t mention that here. Don’t mention anything about... about our world while you’re at school, or out in town. Do you understand?”

He only released his hand when Harry nodded frantically.

Casting about for a way to phrase his question, Harry began with a bit of a stutter. “I read in the... the paper about erm...” He hit upon a brick wall. How on earth did one construct a euphemism that was appropriate for something quite so singular?

Sighing, Snape leaned forward and brushed his hair back from one enormous ear. “If you must—and only if you think you must—you might at least consider whispering, rather than shouting it to everyone on the street.”

Feeling grateful for the opportunity to voice his curiosity aloud, Harry leaned in closer. “I read there were mermaids—are there mermaids in the river here?”

Snape pulled back from him with a frown. “Why would you be interested in a thing like that?”

They resumed walking.

“Well, they’re supposed to be really pretty, aren’t they?” Harry asked, with a bit of a sheepish smile. “I thought, maybe I’d get to see one...”

“They are not as ‘pretty’ as they are purported to be, and neither are you likely to ever lay eyes on one.” Snape answered him. “As for the river? It’s likely they’d prefer a deeper, less turbulent body of water. As I understand it, the school you’ll be attending a few years hence has such creatures living in the lake—though they’re not often sighted.”

“Really?” Harry chirped, feeling a thrill of excitement at the thought.

“Really. Though I still can’t say that I understand the appeal.” Snape snorted. “Scaley beasts that will sooner spear you with a trident than grace you with a Mermish serenade. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to be under the water with them when you hear it. Out in the air, their singing is purported to sound positively ghoulish.

“However, if you find yourself so interested in creatures of the deep, I have it on good authority that the River Leven is home to a flourishing community of plimpies.”

Upon further interrogation, Harry found that there was nothing so very interesting about the rotund, magical fish. He stopped asking questions after, faced with a distraction that made it rather hard for him to voice the products of his curiosity aloud. 

After the bridge there came a steep hill that they were made to climb, and Harry found himself getting winded before they’d even made it half-way. Atop that hill was Rowky Syke Primary School, and, to his dismay, he entered the hallway for the first time sweaty, disheveled, and unkempt from the hike.

It seemed as though most of the other students weren’t in such a state, either having come from a different direction, or having been driven by their parents, but when Harry turned to ask Snape about it, he found that the older wizard was already disappearing down the hill, apparently not having wanted to walk the halls that memorialised his childhood.

Harry had to furiously fight the impulse to begin crying.

Breathing deeply through his nose, an attempt to stave off the gritty feeling in his eyes that always presaged a bout of weepiness, Harry pressed himself back against a wall and watched as the other students passed him by, headed into classrooms—apparently already familiar with the school—or talking gaily with friends they’d grown up with.

He witnessed parents pecking their children on the head as they dropped them off, and teachers hurrying about in some vain attempt at corralling the irrepressible energy evidenced by their young students returning for their first day of term.

Where was he meant to go? Who was his teacher? Snape had sent him in with a bag of essentials: a notebook and a zippered pouch of pens and pencils. Would that be enough? It was more than his aunt had usually sent him with... yet less than he’d seen from some other students, notably Dudley.

Maybe, if he crept out now, he could make it back to Spinner’s End before anyone saw him leaving, and they could forget about this whole school business. Then, Severus could teach him magic until he was old enough to start at Hogwarts himself. After all, Severus himself was a teacher—

“Excuse me! Young man!”

A shrill voice interposed on Harry’s spiraling thoughts and he glanced up to see that the hallway was now mostly empty. A large, older woman in a long skirt hurried toward him as fast as her shuffling gait would permit.

“Young man! Why aren’t you in the classroom? Who’s your teacher this year?”

“Err... I dunno,” Harry ducked his head and attempted to melt against the wall, wishing it would absorb him. He had no such luck.

“Your name, if you please?” The old woman demanded, in a tart voice.

“...Harry...”

“Your surname.”

“Potter...”

The woman frowned as she considered him. She was obviously wracking her brains for something and coming up empty-handed. “I don’t remember ever having a Potter before...”

“I’m... this is my first term here,” Harry explained. Now that it had become clear that there was no means of escaping back down the hill and over the river, he felt his sense of panic rising. “Severus... Severus dropped me off here, but he didn’t tell me where to go!” He told the woman, his anger at his situation rising.

“He didn’t... he didn’t say ‘bye’ or... or... he didn’t say anything!” Harry’s voice had grown tremulous as he reached up to dash at his eyes with one fraying sleeve. His chest was hurting, the same feeling he’d experienced when Snape had disappeared upstairs while Mr. Harrogate had gone around Privet Drive taking pictures.

The same feeling he’d felt when he’d been stuck in the privy, waiting until the coast was clear...

The crushing fear of clear and present abandonment.

The woman’s face had blackened considerably as Harry went on. She drew her arms up over her bosom and scowled. “You wouldn’t mean Severus Snape, would you?”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, “I don’t... I don’t even know if I’m meant to be repeating a year, ‘cause... ‘cause last year when I got my final scores back, my teacher said I might not make it on to year four—”

Ignoring all of this, the woman gripped him by his shoulder and began to frog-march him down the hallway, to parts unknown.

“That little hoodlum!” She muttered to herself, “and here I thought I’d seen the last of his sorry hide when he transferred out!”

Harry couldn’t help himself, he glanced up at the woman’s cross face and nearly tripped over his laces as he was no longer paying any attention to his feet. “Who? Severus?”

“’Severus’ indeed!” She snorted, her grip on his shoulder growing painful as they approached a door with the word ‘headmaster’ emblazoned upon it in faltering, faux gold-leaf. “Little wonder he’d permit his son to call him by his Christian name—”

“I’m not his son,” Harry interjected. His earlier feelings of sorrow and fear were being routed now by frustration and, curiously, indignation on Severus’ behalf. Though he was still angry with the man, he found that he didn’t quite like hearing this sour woman speaking badly of his custodian. “He has ‘custody-ship’ of me.”

“Custodianship?” The woman scoffed, “They would trust the likes of him with a child’s welfare?” She shook her head.

“And he’s apparently doing as good a job as anyone who’s known him might expect of him— filthment that he is!”

Harry hadn’t the faintest idea what a ‘filthment’ was, but the way that the woman snarled it suggested that it wasn’t anything very nice. His gorge rising a bit in his throat, he began to dig his heels in ever so much, attempting to put a stop to her relentless procession toward the head’s office. “Severus isn’t like that! He’s not so bad.”

“You told me yourself, Mr. Potter, that he dropped you here today without the faintest instruction! Nary a word to direct your course!” It was a wonder that the woman had taken in any of that, given, as Harry suspected, that she’d been so incensed over merely hearing mention of Snape’s name that she had taken it upon herself to...

Well. He supposed what she meant to do remained to be seen.

“A l’al bairn like you... what in heaven’s name were they thinking!?” She prattled on. Harry’s attempts at forestalling her from the office were for naught. She was strong for a woman so old. “But we’ll see you sorted. That we will.”

The door thudded open as she forcefully shoved against it with an open palm, the old wood ricocheting off of the wall and causing a loud bang.

“Headmistress! Headmistress, you’ll not believe whose feckless self decided to show his face back at this school—!”

“Mrs. Murray, for goodness’ sake,” came an exasperated voice from behind the cheap metal desk. “I’ve asked you on a hundred different occasions to give me a bit of lead time before you stampede into my office!”

“Headmistress, this will not keep!” Mrs. Murray insisted, with one stocky finger waving in the air for emphasis.

“Nothing ever does,” the woman behind the desk groused with ill-grace. “Very well, take a seat.”

Harry didn’t think Mrs. Murray heard the nearly silent “if you must” that the woman—evidently the headmistress—added at the end of her sentence. Or, if she did, she resolutely ignored it.

“Now, I haven’t got much time this morning, being that it’s the first day of term,” the headmistress continued with an impatient twist of her lip, “What can I do for you, Judith? Who’s this here that you’ve brought me?”

Harry remained standing as Mrs. Murray helped herself to a seat, arranging herself in a way that she perhaps imagined made her look more presentable. Harry thought that was something of a lost cause. There was nothing about the frumpy woman that inspired much in the way of respect, nor that suggested much in the way of any real refinement.

“This here is Mr. Potter, and you won’t believe who brought him in to us this morning—”

“Mrs. Murray!” The sharp tone of the headmistress cut across Mrs. Murray’s salacious introduction. “This is precisely what I don’t have time for. If you could kindly explain to me why it is that you’ve brought Mr. Potter in to my office this morning so I can sort the issue out directly, I’d be most pleased.”

“But Aida! Aida, it was that Snape boy! It was that claggy Snape boy who brought Mr. Potter, here, in!”

The headmistress frowned and seemed to pause for a moment, giving Harry time to finally study her features. She looked to be an age with Mrs. Murray, and evidently, they’d both been at the school for some time, if they were both familiar with Severus.

She looked tired. Even though it was a fresh term, one would have been forgiven for thinking that the headmistress was nearing the end of the school year. Her iron-grey hair was frizzing out from the low-fuss pony-tail she’d pulled it back into, and although it was still warm, she wore a pilling, bordeaux-coloured, knit-lace shawl over her thin shoulders. Her blouse underneath was a hideous brown paisley which made her aged features look all the more pinched and exhausted.

For all that, Harry didn’t hate the sight of her. There was something—if not kindness then he didn’t know what to call it—in the deep tea-tone of her eyes as she looked him over.

Apparently content to ignore Mrs. Murray’s attempts to gossip, she addressed Harry directly. “I’m not even sure where to begin with you, Mr. Potter. It seems you’ve done nothing wrong, yourself—”

“He was standing out in the hall! After the bell! Couldn’t even tell me his year—”

“Judith!” The headmistress hissed between her teeth. “Enough!”

She drew another deep breath and seemed to forcibly look past the woman sat before her to survey Harry once more.

Not liking the scrutiny, Harry ducked his head to frown down at his trainers.

“As I was saying, I’m not precisely sure why it is that Mrs. Murray felt the need to bring you in here this morning, besides the obvious issue of who brought you to school today—”

Feeling his hackles raise once more, Harry lifted his head to pin the woman with a baleful glare, “Why’s that an issue? What’s Severus done?”

“Good heavens, what hasn’t the l’al gowk done?”

“Must I send you from the room, Judith!?” The headmistress’ beleaguered voice raised once more to cut across Mrs. Murray’s indignant squawking. “In point of fact... yes. Yes. Please leave us for a few moments, I’ll send Mr. Potter out shortly.”

“Headmistress Shaw, you’re not serious—”

“I am, indeed, Mrs. Murray. I’d like to talk to Mr. Potter alone for a few moments, if you please.”

What followed was a sort of stare-down between the two women, which Headmistress Shaw evidently won, given Mrs. Murray’s retreat. Although she didn’t leave without voicing her complaints in a stage-whisper beneath her breath.

When they could be sure that the door had clicked behind her, Headmistress Shaw heaved a great sigh and folded her long fingers together, flush at the knuckle, over the pile of ledgers on her desk.

“Have a seat, Mr. Potter.”

Harry sat. The seat was still warm from Mrs. Murray’s large backside, and he felt faintly bothered by that fact, though he quickly forgot his irritation when the Head Mistress leveled her gaze at him once more.

“Allow us to clear the air, young man. Is it true that Severus Snape was the one to bring you by this morning?”

Harry stared hard at the woman, feeling his expression become near enough incredulous. “Yeah... but I don’t understand... erm... Headmistress Shaw,” Harry tried the woman’s title out, feeling decidedly wrong-footed as he did so.

“Ms. Shaw is acceptable, Mr. Potter.”

“Erm... okay. Ms. Shaw, what’s wrong with Severus?” Harry asked, feeling slightly crest-fallen for reasons he couldn’t quite name.

It hurt. It hurt some part of him to hear that yet more people in the town of Backbarrow had cause to think the worst of his friend or custodian, or whatever it was that the man was to him.

Was Severus really so very bad?

It was true that he had fallen in with bad people... but for all of the wizard’s craggy, cracked edges and rough spots, Harry genuinely liked him. Even when he was spinning a yarn about grinding up Harry’s tarantula for flour or selling Harry out to a roving band of carnies. Even when he got up Harry’s nose about his method for mashing ginger root into a paste... Severus was someone he looked up to. Someone he wouldn’t mind being like one day.

Severus was cool.

Looking as though she were sucking a slice of lemon, Ms. Shaw drew her eyebrows down as she glanced about the room, apparently undecided on how to say whatever it was that she’d decided upon.

“I can’t know for certain that there’s anything wrong with Mr. Snape, Mr. Potter—and is there a first name you’d not mind me using?”

“Harry.”

“Harry,” she amended, her words coming forth in a slow, deliberate manner, “and I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive Mrs. Murray for her... for her enthusiasm, when she heard who had brought you here today. She’s not quick to forgive, nor to forget a transgression against herself, nor against any of her boys—”

Harry seized the material of his trousers up in his hands and twisted the twill between his fingers. He didn’t dare interrupt again. It had been foolish to have done so in the beginning. He hoped, if he was to be ratted out to Severus over the ordeal, that the man would be lenient, given that Harry had only wanted to defend the older wizard’s honour.

“I, on the other hand, didn’t have quite such a difficult relationship with your...?” she trailed off, clearly wishing for Harry to supply whatever Snape’s relationship to him was.

“He has custody-ship... custodialship—”

“Custodianship.” Ms. Shaw supplied with a short, jerky nod of her grey head. “Well, that’s no easy feat. I should suppose that means that he was fully evaluated for his suitability, and that such considerations into his character were not found to be antithetical to his ability to provide for your needs.”

Harry’s mouth twisted a bit as he tried to wade through the thick, soupy mess of difficult words and clauses. In the end, deciding that it probably all boded well for Snape, he merely agreed with an, “Er... yeah?

“Ms. Shaw,” Harry began, feeling desperate now to defend his... whatever. “Severus’s been really good to me. He got me a pet, and lets me help him with stuff, and he quit his job to take care of me—”

“Quit his job?”

“He did! He was a teacher at a big school,” Harry drew his hands apart, palms facing one another, to show the approximate size of the institution he’d only seen in photographs. “And he was a Head of House, and—”

“He taught?” She looked a bit dumbstruck, her mouth lolling the tiniest amount. “At an institution with houses?”

“Yeah! And he quit that, so he could stay with me while I finish school here...”

“Ah yes. His transfer.” Ms. Shaw sat back in her chair with a considering look on her face. “If I’m not in error, I believe it was himself and another student in his year that we lost at the same time.” She drew a thin finger over her lips as she appeared to think.

“I recall, at the time, that the story around Mr. Snape’s departure was centered around his behavioural difficulties and disciplinary history here at Rowky Syke. Which—you’ll have to forgive me, Harry—was a bit more colourful than we like to see in our students.

“But the other student, she was a little dear. Very personable. Pleasant. A hard worker...” Ms. Shaw smiled in remembrance.

“I remember thinking it odd that they’d both leave at the same time. Odder than the fact that they were friends in the first place,” she shook her head. “Is he still friends with her, that you know? A Ms. Lily Evans?” She gave Harry a small smile, perhaps hoping to hear how one of her favoured pupils had fared in life.

She was to be disappointed.

“That’s... that was my mum,” Harry forced himself to say, past the clogged-up feeling that had begun to manifest in his throat and chest. “She’s... she...there was a car crash...”

The lie felt so natural to say, given how many times he’d heard it. He almost had to remind himself, once more, that it was nothing but an ugly fabrication.

Unfortunately, it happened to be an ugly fabrication that was convenient enough to trot out for curious muggles. So, Harry repeated it. He hated himself for it, and he did it, even so.

“Oh dear... I am very sorry for your loss, Mr. Potter,” the headmistress murmured, grabbing for a preemptive handkerchief to pass over the desk to him. Harry didn’t use it, but he twisted it between his fingers. It had a different texture than his trousers did. That alone was enough to distract him for a moment.

“I’m sure it all must feel very fresh at the moment—”

Harry looked up, startled. “Oh... no. I don’t... I don’t even remember. That happened when I was a baby,” he told her. “Then I went to stay with my Aunt Petunia, and... and I dunno. Then Severus got me.”

Ms. Shaw peered at him with a quizzical expression. “You ‘don’t know?’”

“Er...”

“Mr. Potter, it would help me to understand the situation a great deal if you could explain to me how you went from staying with Petunia Evans to Mr. Snape.” Something seemed to occur to her then. “Please don’t tell me that Petunia passed as well—?”

“No!” Harry interposed, “No, but erm... I don’t exactly understand. She and Uncle Vernon didn’t come back from church this summer. Not for days and days, and then Severus showed up, but I got real sick, so he had to take me to hospital and they took my tonsils out. And I stayed up here in Cokeworth with him for like a week, but then he took me back to Surrey, and there was someone there in my aunt’s house saying that they were gonna move to Brighton... so Severus brought me back with him and then quit his job to be my custodian.”

Put that way, the whole sordid ordeal sounded entirely trumped up. And Ms. Shaw’s expression seemed to bear that out. She looked like she was some strange combination of horrified and confused beyond measure, and all Harry could think to do in response was to give a sheepish shrug of his thin shoulders.

To lie would have been more believable when the truth was beyond plausibility.