This time Harry managed to keep from throwing up, though only barely. For a minute or so he just focused on keeping what little may remain in his stomach down, before he looked up to see where they had appeared this time. What he saw was probably the last place in the world he would have expected Snape to bring him.
They were standing on a dirt path that led up to an idyllic-looking cottage. It wasn’t very big or very small, not very modern and not very run down. It was a nice, clean, well-kept cottage that seemed to melt into the surrounding forest as if it had grown up from the very earth it was standing on. The front garden was orderly but not in the clinical way Aunt Petunia preferred, and there were some sort of wine growing alongside the walls. A couple of trees grew in the garden, which was surrounded by a white, wooden fence.
Harry stared at the sight in front of him, wondering exactly where his Potions Professor had taken him.
- “This is my home Potter,” the Professor explained. “For the time being you will have to stay here, until your relatives can be located.”
Snape didn’t sound very pleased but then again, Harry hadn’t expected him to. Frankly Harry hadn’t expected the man to bring him to his own home at all. Possibly to Dumbledore, or maybe someone else who could have taken him in for a couple of days, but not to his own house.
This was where the sour Potions Master lived during the summers, Harry realized as he followed the Professor along the dirt path towards the cottage. This beautiful cottage that seemed to come straight out of some fairy tale was where Severus Snape, who seemed like taken out of a nightmare, lived. It didn’t quite match up. Severus Snape of the Dungeons at Hogwarts lived at a place like this.
It wasn’t until they passed through the gate and Harry’s eyes fell upon a ball lying in the grass that the second realization hit. Not only were this where Severus Snape lived, but this was also the home of Ian Snape. He stopped right there in his tracks.
Until the Dursleys returned from wherever they were he would have to live with Professor Snape and Ian. His father and his brother. In their home. Where they lived, when they were not at Hogwarts. They were a family, who both cared for each other and enjoyed each other’s company, and he was just an outsider that neither of them wanted in their lives. That much Harry had understood clearly from his interactions with the two at Hogwarts.
He couldn’t do it, he thought. There was no way that he could live with them, possibly for days, being so very close to their little family while knowing all the while that he was not and never could be a part of it. And then he would have to go back to the Dursleys whose dislike for him even rivaled that of the two Snapes.
Separately he could manage knowing that all of his living family hated him, but like this? No. Not without the distinction of the Snapes as part of Hogwarts and the Dursleys as part of the summer vacation. That was two separate parts of his life, two separate sets of family that hated him - they couldn’t come together like this!
- “Potter!” Snape snapped at him.
Harry looked up to see the Professor standing by the door, impatiently waiting for Harry to follow him into the house. He gulped, gathering what remains of that bravery he was supposed to possess that he could find and silently followed the Professor. It wasn’t as if he really had a choice, he realized. In any case Snape’s house couldn’t be worse than another night in the streets, right? Right? At least he tried to convince himself so, fighting against the urge to hyperventilate as he crossed the threshold and entered the home of his father and brother.
It was not his home.
As if on cue someone came running down the stairs and Harry steeled himself against the confrontation he was sure would come.
- “Father!” Ian called. “You’re back! You’re… What’s he doing here?”
Ian had grown over the summer, Harry noticed vaguely. Despite the age difference between them Harry was only a little taller and Ian was actually broader between the shoulders. The similarity between them were still obvious, even though Ian had apparently taken to growing his hair longer and it was now just long enough to be gathered in a ponytail.
- “Potter has to stay here until his family can be located,” Snape answered to Ian’s question.
Ian glared suspiciously at the other boy and then glanced questioningly at his father, clearly confused as to why his father was allowing this. Silently Harry agreed with his brother’s sentiment. In his mind it made no sense that Snape would bring him to his own home, no matter what the circumstances were.
- “There will be no disruption to our daily routine,” Snape continued, in a tone that made it clear that it was more an order to Harry than a way of calming Ian. “Potter will behave and he will do so quietly and without any complaints.”
The last part was spoken with a glare at Harry, so Harry nodded to show that he understood. Home wrecking wasn’t one of his usual hobbies anyway and he wasn’t about to start with the home of his Professor. Snape may think he was stupid but he wasn’t quite that stupid!
- “Yes sir,” Harry said when Snape seemed to want a verbal reply.
Snape merely gave Harry a look that told of the horrid consequences misbehaving would earn him. Harry looked down at the floor again, trying to convince himself that it did not hurt that his own father thought so little of him.
- “He’s not sleeping in my room,” Ian stated, obviously unhappy with the unwanted guest.
I don’t want him in there… Harry remembered his cousin complaining to his parents, when Harry had been moved from the cupboard under the stairs to Dudley’s second bedroom. I need that room… Get him out of there! In a way it almost made sense to him that Ian should say almost the same thing as Dudley had back then.
- “Of course not,” Snape assured his son. “Your room is your own space. There will be other arrangements for Potter.”
With a nod Ian returned up the stairs, still obviously unhappy with Harry’s presence in their home but willing to accept it as long as he got to have his room on his own. Harry looked after him, wondering silently what these “other arrangements” would be. Did Snape have a cupboard waiting for Harry somewhere in the house?
- “Both Ian’s and my room are off limits Potter,” Snape explained, turning to Harry once again. “As is my laboratory upstairs and the office down the corridor. There will be no sneaking around!”
Again Harry nodded to show his understanding. Limits he could understand. He wasn’t allowed in any of the bedrooms save for his own, back at Privet Drive either, unless his aunt was there to supervise him. And honestly most of the snooping around he had done at Hogwarts hadn’t even been his fault really!
- “You do not touch anything without my permission and theft will not be tolerated here,” Snape continued. “I don’t care that your relatives are unable to put up rules for you to follow, you will follow mine! Do you understand Potter?”
- “Yes sir,” Harry answered quietly.
Snape didn’t seem at all happy with him, despite the effort Harry was making to remain polite and respectful. Then again, Harry did not doubt that disrespect would get him in even more trouble.
- “I will not have you soiling my house,” Snape added. “Go take a shower. The bathroom is the first door to the left up the stairs, Potter.”
At the prospect of a shower Harry looked up to meet the Professor’s eyes again, realizing just how long it had been since he washed last time. Snape simply raised an eyebrow at him, apparently waiting for Harry to do as he was told.
- “Thank you sir,” Harry said as he climbed the stairs, feeling eyes burning in his back.
The bathroom was just where Snape had said it would be. Harry locked the door behind him and then looked around. It wasn’t big but it wasn’t small either, clean and tidy in a way that even Aunt Petunia would have approved of. He almost jumped when he spotted himself in the mirror.
He was dirty. Though he had tried to keep himself reasonably clean the last couple of days there were still some dirt in his face and his hair was standing wilder than ever before. The clothes were the worst though. Dudley’s old clothes never looked good on Harry as they were always several sizes too big, but now they were also extremely dirty and wrinkled. Aunt Petunia would not have allowed him into the house looking like this. It almost surprised him that Snape hadn’t had him strip outside, especially as that would have been extremely humiliating for Harry.
It was with a sense of relief that he removed his clothes. They were not only dirty but also sweaty and they stank. Shoes, socks and pants gathered in a pile on the floor before it came to removing the shirt, the part that Harry dreaded the most. He winched a little as some of the wounds in his back re-opened. They had begun to heal at the Dursley’s, but then been re-opened a couple of times when he had been forced to look through trashcans for food the last couple of days.
Looking in the mirror Harry deducted that some of the wounds were infected. He had suspected as much. The welts were the belt itself had struck him had healed mostly, but the wounds were the buckle had hit him always took longer to heal, especially when he didn’t have the chance to clean them out properly.
Once naked he entered the shower and allowed the warm water to wash over him. It felt good even as it stung a bit on his back. He focused on getting the dirt off him first, washing his hair several times with the shampoo that was already there. The shampoo stung even worse in the wounds on his back.
As he worked his mind wandered. He wondered what the Dursleys were doing. Where were they? He had thought that they had dumped him and then returned home to Privet Drive, but apparently they had not. As Mrs. Figg had stated it was not very likely that they had decided to visit Aunt Marge, though how the old woman had known that he had no idea.
How did Mrs. Figg know Snape anyway? For a moment he thought that maybe his father had asked her to look after him, just to make sure that he was safe, but then he realized that it was impossible. Mrs. Figg had been there for as long as Harry could remember and Snape really hadn’t known about him until Harry came to Hogwarts.
His hair clean Harry cleaned off the worst of the dirt on his skin before he got to work on the wounds on his back. With the help of a brush he managed to reach all of the wounds with some effort and clean them out. It hurt quite a lot, especially ripping some of them open again, but he knew that if he did not clean them out thoroughly the infection would only get worse.
To distract himself from the pain he thought about what Mrs. Smith had said. She was a friend of Aunt Petunia and as such listened to all of the lies about Harry that she was told. She had called him a thief – accused him of stealing her son’s stupid video games. Never mind the fact that Harry had never been in her house. Dudley had, mostly because of those video games. It was also Dudley who had stolen the video games. Why he had bothered to steal them, when he could have just asked his parents to buy it for him, Harry did not know. But when Aunt Petunia found the stolen video games in Dudley’s room she immediately blamed Harry for it.
- “Those stupid games were returned anyway,” Harry muttered to himself as he scrubbed his back with the soap, which seemed to set his whole back on fire.
They hadn’t even been lost for two days when Aunt Petunia forced Harry to walk over to the neighbors, give the video games back and apologize. Uncle Vernon had ended up buying the video games for Dudley anyway, while Harry had barely eaten at all for two weeks. After that everyone in the neighborhood knew exactly what a delinquent Harry was. Every time something went missing he was blamed and it was a miracle that the police still hadn’t come for him.
Are you sure it was him? Snape had asked, when Mrs. Smith told him. The thought made Harry halt his movements for a moment. As much as Snape hated him he had questioned it when Mrs. Smith told him that Harry was a thief. Are you sure it was him? It was more than his Aunt and Uncle had ever done. They must have known it couldn’t be him. Especially Aunt Petunia, who had been the one to supervise Harry when he had been doing his chores all day, should have known. She must have known that Harry would never have had the time for it, and yet she had not hesitated to blame it on him.
I shouldn’t be surprised really. The memory of the words hurt more than he would have expected, diminishing the pain of his back for a moment. Snape had questioned it first but then, when he had thought it over, he really did think that Harry was a thief. Theft will not be tolerated here, he had said, just a few minutes earlier, as if he seriously expected Harry to try and steal from him.
Angrily he returned to the scrubbing of his back, ignoring the stinging in his eyes.
His Aunt, Uncle and cousin hated him and Snape had always made it quite clear what he thought of Harry. Why was it that he kept hoping that the man would see that Harry wasn’t really like that? It was foolish, he knew that! And yet, when Snape actually came to the park as he had asked… For a moment Harry had thought that maybe the man didn’t hate him after all. Maybe it was just that they were still strangers to each other, despite the blood they shared. Running away from your relatives? Can’t go a summer without getting in trouble? The words had shattered the illusion and forced Harry to see the reality as it was.
Snape hated him. To Snape, Harry was nothing but a spoilt kid he never wanted. A bother. He hadn’t had the strength to tell Snape the truth, couldn’t expose himself so to a man that would taunt his every weakness, real or imagined. So he had told the first lie that he could come up with, anything to keep up the illusion that there was still someone who cared for Harry Potter when the school year ended and he had to leave his friends.
Finally clean Harry turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around himself. He spotted what looked to be clean clothes laid out on the toilet, where he was sure there had been nothing before. There were a toothbrush and toothpaste by the sink as well, and his old clothes had somehow disappeared. Snape must have been there when Harry was too lost in his own thoughts to notice. It made him a bit uneasy. At least at the Dursley’s he could trust locked doors to remain locked, but Snape was a wizard and so normal rules didn’t apply to him.
Perhaps it had been a house elf, he thought. The thought did not make him any happier, as he suspected that any house elf working for Snape must be a really mean one.
To be able to brush his teeth again was almost as nice as it had been to be able to wash off all of the dirt. He did it twice, just because it felt so very nice.
It was when he opened the cupboard to put the toothbrush and toothpaste away that he spotted a small basked with a number of small bottles and jars in it. Curiously he pulled it out and found each container to be labeled. It was the equivalence of a medicine cabinet, Harry realized. There were things such as sunburn salve and headache potions, but also a salve against blisters and a dreamless sleep potion.
When he found a salve that was supposed to go on wounds Harry hesitated. Snape had forbidden him from touching anything without his permission, a rule that he had technically already broken. Snape would kill him if he found out. But the wounds on his back really hurt and though he hoped that they would heal now when they were clean, the thought if speeding the healing up a bit was really tempting.
Nervously he glanced at the door, almost expecting to find Snape there, glaring murderously at him. He was alone. What should he do? He could ask, but Snape would not agree without an explanation, which would require Harry to reveal that even those who had raised him hated him. Snape would never let him live that down. So he could either use the salve anyway, which would technically be theft, or he could put it away and hope for the best.
Hoping for the best was more often than not foolish, Harry had learned. It was better to take things in his own hands and risk suffering the consequences.
With a deep breath to steel himself he opened the jar, thinking that the little “pop” sounded much too loud for his comfort. However no Snape came barging through the door so he dipped his finger in the light blue salve and began spreading it over his wounds as gently as he could. At first it hurt when he was there touching the already sensitive areas but then a cooling sensation began to spread from the salve. Slowly the pain disappeared almost entirely.
He only dared to use a very thin layer, afraid that Snape might notice otherwise. When he was done he quickly placed the jar back in the basket and put it back in the cupboard.
The clothes he figured must belong to Ian. Other than underwear there were a pair of grey soft pants and a blue t-shirt. The pants were only a little too short for Harry and the t-shirt fit him perfectly. All in all it was a lot better than Dudley’s old clothes. He tried to make his hair a bit more presentable as well but as always it was impossible. Finally he could not procrastinate anymore and decided to head downstairs.