"He is willing to be the Bad Guy, as long as the boy stays aware that the fairytale has its holes. But then he must teach the boy to block his mind from the Real Bad Guy."

"Legilimens!"

With a rush, memories that were not his own were racing through Severus's mind. Cedric Diggory, dead in the graveyard...Wormtail tying Potter to a tombstone...Lily screaming...

And then...

A fat boy, chasing after Potter...Petunia Dursley holding Potter's arm to a cooker...long hours stretching to days locked and starved in darkness...a fat hand crashing across Potter's face, sending him crashing to the ground...the snap of a deliberately broken finger...

Get out!

The shout was not his, and before he knew it, he had been expelled from Potter's mind. The boy in question was on his hands and knees, sweat dripping into a puddle on the floor.

Severus looked at him for a long moment, and Potter didn't look up. For a while, all that could be heard was the loud, heavy panting of a child whose deepest secrets had just been revealed to someone he hated.

It took Severus a moment to realise the boy is hyperventilating.

"Come, Potter," he said, hauling the boy up from the floor, and seating him in the chair. Tentatively, he patted him on the back, gaining a rhythm and more confidence, as it seemed to calm him down.

When, finally, his breathing was back to normal, Harry - Potter! - looked up at him. With the same look he usually has when looking at his potions master, albeit amplified.

Severus wondered how he ever mistook that terror for arrogance.

"Please, sir..." Potter began quietly, nervously. "Can I please go?"

Severus knew there was no way he could continue to be around Potter today, so he nodded. Potter grabbed his bag and was out of the office like a shot, leaving Severus to stumble to his quarters and reach for the Firewhiskey.

He'd heard the stories, of course. Stories of cupboards and starvation and abuse. He'd always dismissed them as exaggeration. So what if Potter wasn't idolised as a prince at home? That could only be good for him.

But now...now he'd seen those memories, he couldn't brush them off so casually.

He'd thought - assumed - that Voldemort was the biggest threat in Harry Potter's mind. He now knew that was not the case. Because while the boy did fear the Dark Lord, Potter also knew that every confrontation he'd had with him, he'd won, more or less. Suffered losses, but won.

He didn't have that comfort with Vernon Dursley.

Severus also knew it would be harder to hate the boy. Harder to glare down at the messy-haired head, and see James's son, rather than look into the green eyes and see Lily's.

Harder to see ‘Potter' not ‘Harry'.

It would be harder to continue protecting him at a distance, knowing that the threats against the boy didn't just come from the magical world.

It would all be a lot harder.

It was then that Severus realised things just got a lot more complicated.

"Several people know that their hero was raised in a cupboard. Snape knows that he never left it."