As Harry descended the stairs, he realised he could smell something cooking. After three weeks living on salads and stale pumpkin pasties, Harry would have been happy with just a ham sandwich; but he located and entered the kitchen to find Snape squashing some sort of dough into a ball, a casserole dish in the oven.
“Wow, that smells good. What is it?”
“Lamb cobbler,” Snape said without looking up, reaching for a knife. “Though I had to add beans to make it stretch to two portions. I wasn’t expecting company this evening.” He began cutting the dough into pieces.
Like it was Harry’s fault Snape had had to adopt him.
“That’s okay, I like beans. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Snape looked at him for the first time, a strange expression on his face. “You want to help?”
“Er … yes. Why not?”
“Because I do not want my kitchen destroyed, that’s why not. If you’re even half as bad at cooking as you are at Potions—”
“I’m good at cooking,” Harry insisted. “And Potions requires way more precision, so there’s far more ways it can go wrong.”
Snape hesitated. Harry felt smugly that he had actually out-debated him.
“Fine. If you insist. You can prepare the vegetables. I take it you know how to do that?”
Harry looked over at the chopping board, upon which was sitting a large carrot, a courgette and a handful of cherry tomatoes.
“I can do that.”
“Good.”
Snape washed his hands, took out the casserole dish and began arranging the dumplings in the top. Harry turned his attention to the vegetables. Silence fell as they both worked, and Harry found his mind wandering back to their new, very uncomfortable situation.
How was he going to tell his friends? He couldn’t risk putting the truth in a letter, not unless he wanted Fudge to get his way. But Ron and Hermione would never, in a million years, believe Snape had willingly adopted Harry. He would have to break it to them in person. That meant he would have to see them soon, before the news got out.
He decided to raise the subject with Snape after dinner. Hopefully the man would be in a slightly better mood with a full stomach. Most people were.
Once Harry had finished peeling and chopping, he looked around to find Snape watching him.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Snape said, looking away quickly. He tapped his wand on the saucepan and said, “Aguamenti fervidus.” Steaming water gushed from the tip and filled the pan. He tapped the hob and lit the ring. Harry passed him the vegetables.
“If you want to make yourself useful instead of standing there staring in that off-putting way,” Snape said, “you can lay the table. The cutlery’s in the drawer on the end and the crockery’s in the cupboard below.”
Snape obviously didn’t get many guests, Harry thought as he found that three out of four of the plates were dusty. He gave one of them a good wash in the sink and lay the table. The whole dinner set matched the curtain designs, which Harry rather liked. Maybe it had come with the house. Or Snape was just a bit obsessive compulsive about things matching. The only exception seemed to be an extra mug, which was pattered with little animated reindeer that danced around the name Severus, and Harry was sure must have been a Christmas present.
“Done it,” he said after placing the second glass in place. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“If this is an effort to placate me into going easy on you the next time you get yourself into trouble, it’s not going to work,” Snape said without looking at him. “Check on the dessert.”
Harry’s eyes lit up. “There’s dessert?”
Snape rolled his eyes. “In the fridge. Make sure it’s set properly.”
Intrigued, Harry discovered two small glasses filled with something pink and creamy. That explained why he had only found two glasses but four of everything else.
“What is it?”
“Strawberry panna cotta.”
“Ooh.” Aunt Petunia had made panna cotta for dinner parties before. Harry had never been allowed to try it. “Do you normally make dessert?”
“Usually at the weekends,” Snape said. “Is it set?”
“Oh—yeah, it is.”
Snape checked on the cobbler. “It won’t be ready for a while. Maybe now would be a good time to resume our conversation from earlier.” He pulled a chair out from the table.
“Okay … Father.” Harry sat down as well. He knew he was going to have to get used to saying that, but he hated it.
Snape acknowledged his attempt with a slight nod. “Our cover story, then. Realistically, the Ministry could come knocking on the door at any minute, so we need to … synchronise our pasts, if you will, as soon as possible.”
“Okay.” Harry thought. “When do you think we should have met?”
“Hmm … better make it during a school holiday … 1988 seems reasonable.”
“Why ’88?”
“The longer we are supposed to have known each other, the more difficult this would be. ’88 sounds like a good compromise taking into account the time it would take to form a bond prior to Hogwarts and come up with the plan to fake antipathy.”
“So … summer ’88, then?”
Snape considered, then shook his head. “Christmas. The holiday is supposed to evoke sentimentality in people, which would be an acceptable reason for my having decided to visit out of the blue.”
Harry privately thought it would take a lot more than Christmas to get Snape sentimental, but he couldn’t argue with his logic. “Okay. What about Christmas Eve?”
Snape nodded. “Christmas Eve it was, then. So … what did you do at Christmas?”
“Sorry?”
“Well, if we’re supposed to have spent a Christmas together, I need to know what it would have been like. That one would have been pretty memorable, so the details need to be exact.”
“Oh.” Harry inwardly squirmed and tried to think. “Well, Dursley Christmases are always the same. Aunt Petunia tries to outdo all the neighbours with as many Christmas lights as possible. One year she overloaded the plugs and all the power went out—I think that was ’89. Uncle Vernon picks up the turkey on Christmas Eve. Aunt Marge—Uncle Vernon’s sister—comes over in the evening to stay overnight, usually with her bulldog Ripper. (She breeds bulldogs, but the others get looked after by one of her neighbours.) Dudley gets impatient about opening presents and is allowed to open one before he goes to bed.”
Snape raised an eyebrow at this, but didn’t say anything. Harry tried to continue, feeling more and more embarrassed as he continued.
“The stocking’s about the size of Hagrid’s socks, and always overflowing in the morning. Aunt Marge generally sits drinking wine all morning and trying to engage Dudley in conversation, which is impossible when he’s got his presents, while my uncle refills her glass and my aunt does the dinner. Christmas lunch gets demolished in about five minutes, then the afternoon’s spent watching Christmas stuff on telly. At teatime there’s the Christmas cake, which also lasts about five minutes, and then more telly, and that’s it. Oh, and whenever carol singers come by, my aunt and uncle let them sing for a while but then shut the door in their faces when they ask for money. Unless there’s neighbours watching, in which case they’ll make a big show of giving a large donation.”
“They sound delightful, your relatives,” Snape said drily.
As far as Harry was concerned, that was the pot calling the kettle black. Why did he have such bad luck with family? He bit his tongue.
“And I can’t help but notice you’ve told me details about what the rest of your family do at Christmas, but not what you do.” Snape narrowed his eyes at him. “Might I remind you that this charade is for your own good?”
Harry ground his teeth. “No, you don’t have to, Father. I just thought it was irrelevant, since if you were there I would presumably be spending time with you instead of what I would normally do.”
“Which is?”
Listen to the Dursleys through a locked cupboard door, wonder if there’s any leftovers and if they’ll remember to give me any, and if it’ll be coat hangers or second-hand socks or something else just as worthless for my present this year.
Harry pursed his lips and said nothing. He didn’t see why Snape needed to know, and was determined not to give him that much ammunition against him.
“Potter,” Snape said in a warning tone, before hastily correcting himself. “Harry. I should know what you would have been doing when I turned up to visit, should I not?”
Oh crap. Snape had him.
Harry swallowed, wondering how big of a risk it would be to lie. What would be the bigger risk—letting Snape past his defences, or a flaw in his cover story that could give the game away? The second was the smaller risk, right? What were the chances of one small lie being the one detail that destroyed the whole thing?
Far too high, with Harry’s luck.
Merlin, what do I do?
Well, desperate times called for desperate measures. Harry jumped to his feet, startling Snape, muttered something about needing the toilet, and ran upstairs.
Once he’d located the bathroom, Harry locked himself in and sat down on the side of the bath, wondering what to do now.
He strained his memory, hoping there was something he was actually doing on Christmas Eve ’88 that would be acceptable to tell Snape, but nothing came to mind. Harry spent the time prior to Aunt Marge’s arrival as Aunt Petunia’s house-elf, and the time after her arrival in the cupboard counting down the hours till Christmas was over and he was allowed out again.
How could he tell Snape that?