Once Poppy had stabilized and released Potter to Snape with detailed instructions regarding Potter’s continued care, Snape had carried Potter through the Floo connection to his quarters and set him carefully on the couch. He perched Potter on his side in a nest of pillows, such that most of the boy’s weight was on his hip and he was in a semi-upright position. Potter didn’t look at Snape as he pulled his legs up tight and wrapped his arms around them.

The teen looked lost and scared. He was shaking like a leaf and looked ready to jump out of his skin at any moment. His panicky gaze darted around the room.

With exaggerated movements, so as not to startle the boy, Snape drew a blanket up over him.

“How are your wards, Professor?” Potter asked.

“My wards are quite sufficient, I assure you.”

Potter glanced at the Floo. “Can you close that, sir? Please? It’s just…”

“My Floo is already keyed to only let a select few individuals contact me.”

“But if Hogwarts is overrun, sir…”

Snape studied Potter. Clearly the boy was terrified, but did he know more than they had realized?

“Give me a moment,” Snape said, throwing Floo powder into his fire to speak with Albus. He pulled his head out, cast a few different spells, and turned back to Potter.

“My Floo will now only allow access to the headmaster, and only if the correct password is provided. Will that suffice?”

Potter looked uncertain but nodded.

When Snape reached for a pitcher of water, Potter flinched.

“Relax, I am only pouring you a glass of water. I imagine you are both thirsty and hungry.”

Potter nodded.

“Sir,” Potter asked. “I am sorry to ask, but I… I really need… that is… can I…”

“Spit it out, Potter, I cannot read your mind.”

Harry shivered. “Can I have a bath? Please?”

Snape set down the water pitcher and really looked at the boy. He was curled in on himself, sick with pain and exhaustion, and what he really needed was sustenance and sleep.

“After what they did to me,” Potter said, mumbling into his knees as a shiver wracked his body. “I feel… dirty.”

Snape let out a long breath. He couldn’t fault the boy for that. “Of course, Mr. Potter. Let me run the water for you.”

Snape typically showered, but he did have a small tub. He enlarged it so that Harry would be more comfortable and filled it with warm water. Then he searched until he found the one other tap he was looking for.

He returned to find Potter staring into the fire, having not moved at all.

“Two conditions, Mr. Potter,” Snape said.

Potter looked up, his expression wary.

“First, you are in no condition to walk just yet, so I will carry you. Second, I will stay with you while you bathe.”

As Potter opened his mouth to protest, Snape held up a hand.

“I know you would prefer your privacy. And I would prefer not to have to babysit you. However, you are in no fit state to be left alone, and I will not be responsible for you drowning in my tub.”

Potter seemed to think it over before finally nodding.

Snape divested himself of his robes and unbuttoned and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

“Ready?” Snape asked.

“I’m ready, sir,” Potter replied.

Snape lifted the injured teen carefully from the couch and carried him to the bathroom. Potter was wearing only an outer robe that Albus had transfigured from a handkerchief in his office. Snape frowned at how light and bony the boy felt.

Feeling Potter’s apprehension, Snape set the teen—robe and all—into the bathwater, grateful he’d thought to turn on the bubble tap. Once Potter was situated in the tub, Snape banished the robe, leaving the boy naked yet fully concealed by a thick layer of lavender-colored foam. It wasn’t much but, after what the boy had been through, Snape was keen to give him any privacy he safely could.

Potter leaned his head back and sank beneath the water up to his chin. “Thank you, Professor,” he breathed.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Snape said, handing the boy a flannel and a bar of soap. “Wash up so I can get you out of here.”

Snape watched as Potter tried to bathe himself under the cover of the bubbles. He regularly fumbled the bar of soap and every movement seemed to make him wince. A fine sheen of sweat had broken out across his forehead.

“Do you need help?” Snape asked.

“No, I got it,” Potter said, his voice strained.

From the look of pain on the boy’s face, Snape knew Potter needed help. On the other hand, Potter needed some sense of control in all of this and if he could manage to bathe himself, Snape would let him do it.

When Potter attempted to lift his arms out of the water to wash his face, he let out a sharp cry.

“Allow me,” Snape said, removing the flannel from Potter’s loose grip. He summoned the bar of soap from the bowels of the bathtub and proceeded to build up a lather on the soft cloth. When he brought it towards Potter’s head, the boy flinched.

“Relax, I will not hurt you,” Snape said. Slowly, so the teen could watch, Snape laid the flannel against the boy’s cheek. He gave the boy a moment to compose himself.

“Can you close your eyes for just a moment, Mr. Potter?” When he did, Snape drew the cloth over the boy’s eyelids, brows, and forehead, before wiping away the soap residue with a clean flannel. “You can open them now.”

Snape proceeded to gently wash away the blood and grime on the boy’s face, leaving behind a bruised visage and a few thin scraggly patches of facial hair. Snape ran the flannel over Potter’s shorn head, around his ears, and over his neck and shoulders. Then he used the clean flannel to rinse the boy.

“I am going to summon a house-elf,” Snape told Potter, not wanting the boy to startle at the sound of Apparition. When the elf arrived with a crack, Potter jumped anyway.

“Master Snape is calling Tulip, sir,”

“Yes, please retrieve a pair of pyjamas for Mr. Potter, and his toiletries as well. Bring those here at once. And then, bring us some soup and pumpkin juice, if you will.”

A moment later, a folded set of emerald green cotton pyjamas and a small basket arrived. Snape studied the contents of the basket.

“Would you like me to shave you?”

Potter hesitated for a long moment, then finally nodded.

Snape conjured up some shaving foam and wiped it across the boy’s upper lip and over his jaw. He made quick work of it, holding the razor with one hand and the back of the boy’s skull with the other hand to keep the teen steady.

Potter raised his hands to splash water on his face, rinsing away the foam.

“I can dry you off with a spell and dress you with a spell as well, but unfortunately, I can’t afford you the same privacy I did when I put you in the water with your robe on.”

“It’s okay, Professor,” Potter said, yawning and then grimacing at the pain of stretching his newly mended jaw.

Snape laid a towel over the toilet and then lifted Potter out of the tub and set him on it, throwing another towel over the boy’s lap for privacy. Then he cast a drying charm on the teen. Looking in the basket, he pulled out deodorant, removed the cap, and handed it to the boy, who struggled but managed to put some on. Snape recapped it and returned it to the basket. Frowning at the toothbrush and toothpaste, he grabbed a potion vial off the vanity and handed it to Potter.

“Swish this around in your mouth. It will suffice until you are able to brush your teeth.”

Potter did so and Snape held a cup for the boy to spit it out when he was finished.

“Now,” Snape said, “let’s get you dressed.” He cast the dressing spell, pleased to see that Potter was wearing the pyjamas that Snape had had custom made for him over the summer.

“Ready to go back to the sitting room?” Snape asked.

When Potter nodded, Snape scooped him up and carried him back to the couch, where a tray of various foodstuffs and drinks were waiting for them. He poured the boy a glass of pumpkin juice, to which he added a dose of Dreamless Sleep. Knowing Harry’s hands were still healing, and likely strained and sore from bathing, Snape conjured a straw and held it to Potter’s lips.

“Drink,” Snape said.

Obediently, Potter drained the glass.

“What kind of soup would you like?” Snape asked. “There’s beef barley, ham and bean, cream of chicken…”

Potter made a retching sound and turned his face away, startling Snape.

“I can’t eat,” Potter choked out.

“Surely you are hungry,” Snape said.

“Yes but... I can’t… not after…” Potter let out a sound like a wounded animal and buried his head in the pillows.

“Mr. Potter,” Snape said, sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Think of some food you like.” Something that hasn’t been tainted. “Something that won’t turn your stomach. Malted milk perhaps?”

Potter raised his head. “Maybe,” he uttered. “I’ll… I’ll give it a try.”

Snape summoned a house-elf to request the item and, when the elf returned with it, Snape added two doses of nutrient potion to it. Then he took the straw from the empty pumpkin juice glass, put it in the malted milk, and held it for Potter to drink.

The boy reached out and took it instead, cradling it in his mending hands around the cool glass for a long while.

Snape had to bite his tongue so as not to snap at the teen for not drinking it.

Finally, Potter sniffed at it and took a tentative sip. Then another.

Snape breathed a sigh of relief. “Drink as much as you can. You need the nutrients.”

Potter drank half of it and then handed it back to Snape.

“Professor?” Potter said, “Promise you won’t leave me alone? They said… I can’t… Just please… Please stay?”

“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere, Mr. Potter,” Snape said, watching as Potter’s eyelids began to droop and he slid down on the couch a bit further.

“Will you sleep here with me?” Potter asked. At Snape’s look of confusion, the teen added, “In this room, I mean? I just… I can’t…”

Snape was stunned at how frightened Potter looked. Yes, the boy had been through hell, but what had made him feel so unsafe here at Hogwarts, of all places?

“I’ll stay,” Snape said, making a show of configuring one of the chairs in the room into a cot.

The boy was slipping toward sleep but even so, he made an effort to speak. “Please make sure your wards are extra strong and your Floo is blocked.” Yawning, Harry added, “They are coming for us, Professor.”

And with that ominous warning, Potter was out cold.

Snape didn’t dare leave the boy. Instead, he requested Dumbledore’s presence. He transfigured the bed back into a chair and seated himself to wait for the headmaster to step through.

“How is he?” Dumbledore asked.

“Traumatized,” Snape said. “He is also convinced that the Death Eaters are planning to attack Hogwarts, presumably to retrieve the boy and me. Or perhaps murder us in our sleep. He warned me to reinforce my wards and close my Floo.”

Dumbledore stroked his beard, glancing between the sleeping teen and Severus. “I would have said that Hogwarts was impenetrable. But then I would have said that Harry was too well protected to be taken.”

Sighing, Dumbledore removed his glasses and polished them on his robes. “I must admit I had anticipated this possibility.”

“Which possibility would that be?” Severus inquired, infusing his voice with a calmness that he did not feel.

“That one of you would need to go into hiding. Harry, for his own safety. Or you, for yours, if you were discovered a spy. I admit I hadn’t foreseen the possibility of needing to hide you both at the same time.”

Snape watched as the headmaster paced the length of his study. At one time, the thought of being forced into seclusion with Potter would have had Snape vehemently rejecting such a ludicrous plan. Now, he found himself rejecting the idea of not being the one sent into hiding to protect the boy.

“Perhaps it is for the best, though,” Dumbledore said. “Harry shouldn’t be alone, and you can help him recover so he can be trained.”

Snape’s ire rose at the headmaster’s choice of words. “He is not simply a tool to be honed for war,” Snape bit out.

“No,” the headmaster agreed, “he is much more than that.” Dumbledore settled back into a chair. “Still, we all have a role to play, and Harry’s task is not yet finished.”

Snape cursed. The boy had been traumatized, yet all the headmaster cared about was using Potter as a weapon. “What would you have me do, Albus? Turn Potter into a killing machine?”

“Only what you must so he can fulfil his role,” Dumbledore said. “And no more than that.”

Snape got to his feet, feeling impotence and anger well within him. “He is in no state to be trained for anything at the moment.”

“Yet I trust you will do your best, Severus, for Lily’s sake, if not for the boy’s,” Dumbledore replied calmly.

Snape swore. Leave it to Albus to use whatever means necessary to get his way. “When do you intend to move us?”

 “I think it’s best you leave within the hour,” Dumbledore said. “Pack what you need and I will have the house-elves bring Harry’s belongings here. I need to make a few arrangements, and then I will have a Portkey for the two of you.”

“As you wish,” Snape replied, knowing that his own wishes in the matter were irrelevant.

“I will return in one hour,” Dumbledore replied as he took his leave.

“Good riddance,” Snape uttered after the headmaster was gone. Then he re-warded his Floo.