The next morning, Harry felt a bit more positive. He arrived at Snape’s house having eaten both cereal and cake, and not feeling quite so hungry.

“I’m here. Hello?” he called, finding the living room empty.

Molly appeared from the kitchen. “Oh, morning, dear. Professor Snape’s still asleep, but he gave me instructions to give you.”

“How is he?”

Her face softened in sympathy. “Not very good. He still can’t get up of his own accord. Poor dear looks terrible—and he’s not very good at accepting help,” she added, sounding exasperated. “Rather like you, dear.”

Harry grinned awkwardly, not trusting himself to speak. She took a good look at him, and frowned.

“Talking of which, dear, you’re looking very peaky. Are you sure you’re eating enough? You should be having more than usual with all the work you’re doing for Professor Snape.”

“I’m fine,” Harry lied. “What’s, um, wrong with Professor Snape, anyway?” He was interested to know if Snape had actually told her.

“Acute Lacerti Pestis. He’ll be fine, dear, he just needs a few days of rest.”

“Er … that’s what he told you?” Harry asked slowly.

“Yes, why?”

Snape really was a world-class liar. Not that Harry was one to talk. Although he wasn’t convinced Snape was doing the right thing, refusing to tell Molly or Dumbledore what was really wrong with him, Harry could understand keeping something like that to himself.

“Nothing.”

Harry didn’t see hide nor hair of Snape all day, for because it was good weather, Snape had him continuing to work in the garden. Molly alternately fussed over Snape and supervised Harry to make sure he didn’t fall into anything else.

When Harry took his break for lunch, Molly took one look at his single round of jam sandwiches and insisted on making him two more from Snape’s own food stocks.

“You need more than that to eat, dear—my goodness, no wonder you look so peaky—”

“But it’s Snape’s food,” Harry insisted. “If he wanted me to eat it, he’d have offered—”

“You let me handle Severus, dear. You need a decent-sized meal and you need some protein, too—where was that peanut butter I saw?”

It was only the knowledge that Molly Weasley could be scarier than Snape when she wanted to be, and of all the people Harry knew she was one of the few that probably could handle him, that made him accept the peanut butter sandwiches. For the first time in days, he didn’t still feel hungry after eating, and attacked his afternoon’s work feeling a little better.

When Harry arrived home late that afternoon, he was hit with a delicious smell of cooking food.

“When’s dinner?” he asked Petunia, who was checking on something in the oven.

“Not for an hour or so.”

“Okay. Please call me when it’s ready.”

She mumbled an agreement, and Harry retreated upstairs. With no other job on that evening, he was determined to make some progress on his homework.

He opened the textbook he’d been reading at a bookmarked page, spread out a fresh roll of parchment, and inked his quill.

The next thing he knew, his alarm was going off.

Harry jerked awake, blinking stupidly. Why was his alarm going off? He was resetting it every morning for the next one …

Then he saw the daylight creeping through the curtains, and realised it was morning. His parchment was blank apart from an inky smudge. He’d fallen asleep the moment he sat down—he must have been asleep for over twelve hours!

And he’d missed dinner AGAIN!

Cursing his aunt for not waking him up, Harry hurried to silence his alarm, reset it for the next morning, and began getting ready for his paper round.

If he made himself three rounds of sandwiches for his lunch, that would mean nothing for breakfast again except a handful of grapes. So he ate one of the rounds with the grapes, leaving two for his lunch. That should hopefully keep Molly from giving him Snape’s food again—even if Snape were to tolerate a one-off, Harry didn’t want to push it by eating his food daily. Nor did he want Snape—or even Molly—to find out why he was eating his food.

Before he left, Harry left a note for Petunia on the bench.

PLEASE LEAVE ME SOME DINNER! HARRY

-

“Morning, Potter,” Snape said when Harry Flooed in. He was lying on the sofa with a blanket over him—Molly’s doing, no doubt—and holding a mug of coffee.

“Morning, sir. How are you doing?”

“A little better,” Snape said shortly, and quickly changed the subject. “I want you working in here today.”

“Yes, sir.”

Working was worse when Snape was right there watching. He didn’t criticise as much as he did while watching Harry brew a potion, but his gaze was very off-putting.

The soft furniture had all been cleaned by magic, so that left Harry to wash the rugs and curtains, and dust and varnish everything else. His lack of proper meals was definitely taking its toll. He worked as hard as he ever had, but doing so drained him more than it had to begin with. Thankfully, Snape didn’t seem to notice how much more effort it took him.

Molly didn’t seem to notice either, for she only came in and out, and hadn’t seen him working beforehand anyway. Snape didn’t seem to like relying on her to do everything for him, going red every time he had to ask, and bemoaned her constant “mollycoddling”, but Harry had a sneaking suspicion he actually liked the affectionate attention.

He paused his scrubbing of the floorboards to eat his lunch. Molly tutted again at his sandwiches.

“What? I’ve got more than yesterday,” Harry said.

“I’ll make you another round, dear, and you should really have a different filling.”

“What’s wrong with honey? It’s got energy in it.”

“Yes but it goes quickly. You’d be better off with protein.”

“The Dursleys don’t keep peanut butter anymore, not since Aunt Petunia had a reaction to it.”

“What about cheese or ham or something?” Molly asked, cutting slices of cheese for Harry’s sandwich.

“Don’t have any of that either.”

“Well maybe you should get them to buy some. Here you go, dear.”

-

Once five o’clock came, Harry headed straight to Miss Price’s house. She was an elderly neighbour who needed someone to help her with housework.

She was very chatty, and seemed to take a liking to him. He listened to lots of stories of her youth as he did her laundry, ironing, vacuuming and cooked her dinner. His back was aching by the time he had finished, but his working day wasn’t done.

He headed straight to Mr and Mrs Jenkins’ house to babysit their kids for the evening. Gillian, Tommy and Amanda were much less well-behaved than the Barker twins had been, and he spent most of the evening running around trying to chivvy them into bed.

I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, Harry finally admitted to himself, collapsing on the sofa once the kids were finally asleep. His eyes were starting to close when he heard a key in the lock, and the parents came home.

It was ten o’clock, and he could hardly walk the short distance back to Privet Drive. He let himself in quietly, hearing the television on in the living-room. Without much optimism, he checked the kitchen.

For the first time in days, Harry found a plate of dinner sitting in the fridge for him. At last!

He had a small piece of gammon with a spoonful of mashed potato and the rest was vegetables. Although it didn’t fill him up, it tasted wonderful after days of bread, cereal, fruit and stale biscuits.

Once he’d eaten, he wrote his note out again (the previous one seemed to have disappeared), stumbled upstairs and fell into bed.

-

After his paper round the next morning, Harry had to remind himself not to head to Mrs Figg’s—it was Friday, which meant he wouldn’t be seeing Snape again until Monday.

He was dogsitting for Mr Ferrero today, which meant he had checked in on them and put out food and water before his paper round, and he headed back to the house to check on them again. He spent a little while playing with them, then headed to Mr Ellis’ house, where he was hired to spend a couple of hours cutting the lawn and weeding the flowerbeds. He checked on them again afterwards, ate his measly lunch at their house, then headed to his fourth job of the day—helping the Wilkinsons decorate their spare room, mainly painting the walls and assembling a shelving unit. (Harry had done both before when Dudley’s room was decorated.)

It was definitely his busiest day, Harry thought as he took the dogs out for their evening walk. But on the plus side, it was also his most lucrative.

When he got back to the Dursleys’, he was disappointed to find Petunia had ignored his note and not left him anything to eat again. He didn’t know if she had mistaken it for the previous one, or was just being difficult because he’d forgotten to wash up his dinner things last night, and couldn’t be bothered to try and pry her attention away from the television to find out.

-

“This is your list of duties, all the phone numbers you can reach us on, and you’ve seen where everything is—any questions?”

“Um, no.”

“We’ve left you milk and bread, there’s cereal in the cupboard, and a shop just around the corner.”

“Thank you,” Harry said gratefully.

Mrs Morrison held out a bunch of keys. “Here are the keys.”

“Thanks. Have a good time.”

Mr and Mrs Morrison left, leaving Harry in charge of their home.

He collapsed on the sofa, wondering about having a doze before he got on with his duties. He changed his mind, afraid he might end up sleeping for twelve hours again—it was getting more and more difficult to wake up in the mornings despite his alarm.

“Right,” Harry said, getting to his feet and looking at the list.

He saw to the needs of the Morrisons’ five cats, brought in and sorted their mail when it arrived. He put the radio on with the windows open, and sat in the front garden to deter any burglars. The Morrisons were only going away until Sunday night, but there had been a number of break-ins in the road.

Harry sat in one of their sun loungers with his homework, the phone and a pad to take any messages. He hoped his teachers would accept an essay written in biro on Muggle paper, since he didn’t dare use parchment and quill outside the Dursleys’ house. At least it was for Charms rather than Potions.

He spent the weekend, when he wasn’t doing his chores, doing his homework in the garden or catching up on some sleep. Early on, he had gone to the corner shop and used some of his precious earnings to buy himself a large jar of peanut butter, but was saving it for his more strenuous days, making do with the food the Morrisons had left him in that time.