The door swung open and he looked irritated with her for how many times she'd knocked before he could even rise from his living room chair.

"What is so urgent you require me to apparate to my door immediately upon the first rap of your fist?"

She did look contrite for disturbing him, but there was anxiety on her face too. He wondered if Albus had fallen and needed his help or a stronger potion for the pain in his knees.

"My apologies Severus. I know you like to be left alone after dinner, but there's a situation I need your help with."

"Albus?" Severus asked.

"No. One of the students has just come to us straight off the streets."

"The streets?"

"When we received the entrance interview we had some concerns and went to check on him and found him living under a bridge. Under a bridge Severus!" she said, exasperated.

"We got him his school things quickly and fed him and brought him back, but he's very dirty. His hair is long and tangled and when I asked him he said he didn't think he could get it clean by himself. For privacy, you understand, I thought having a male help him might help preserve some of his dignity."

His irritation faded and he gave a nod. "Of course." He couldn't imagine living on the streets and having to fend for oneself at eleven years old.

"Where is the child's family? Unless they were homeless as well?"

"We don't know where his family is. He wouldn't tell us that much. Albus is looking into it now or I would have asked him, and Filius is out for the evening. Is it ok if I bring the boy down here? He's being seen to by Poppy and they're just finishing up."

"I'll gather some potions to help cleanse and detangle his hair," Severus said. "If it's as bad as you say I may have to cut some of it."

"I don't think he'll mind, but you might ask him first. It is very long. I don't think he's had a chance to bathe in weeks."

Minerva left and Severus went to find the necessary potions. They were potions he didn't normally keep in his quarters, but he usually kept the Slytherin supply cupboard in the common room stocked with basic hygiene potions and things like hair gel and detangler. He found what he was looking for in short order, as well as a brand new hair brush and tooth brush and tube of purple toothpaste.

Just after he returned to his rooms, there was a knock on the door, and he found Minerva and a scrawny child whose clothes hung off of him. The boy nevertheless had a smile, and Severus wondered if Poppy had given him candy while he was up there being seen to.

"This is Professor Snape. He's going to help you wash and detangle your hair."

"Hello," the boy said brightly. Severus moved aside to let them enter and Minerva said, "Would you say about an hour? We're looking for some clothes for him now and I'll have the elves bring them down and then I'll be back by to collect him. He's already had lunch and dinner."

"I will send word if it will take longer."

She looked down at Harry and said, "I'll see you soon. Obey Professor Snape."

"I will," he told her with a smile, and then she left and Professor Snape shut the door.

Severus led the boy to the bathroom and said, "There is a bottle of cleansing soap. Take a shower but do not worry yourself about your hair. When you are done, wrap a towel around yourself and open the door and I will come in and help wash your hair."

"Ok!" Harry closed the door and a minute later Severus heard the tap turn on. The boy showered quickly, and Severus wondered if the shower was truly long enough to get clean, but when he opened the door five minutes later with a large gray towel wrapped around his waist, his visible skin looked clean. Severus noted the scars across the boy's back but didn't comment. They looked like lashes from a belt.

Severus conjured a stool and set it in front of the sink and told Harry to sit on it and put his head face first into the sink so he could begin washing his hair. Harry obeyed and Severus turned the sink tap on warm and began wetting the long, matted hair. Minerva had been right, it was going to take some work to detangle it unless they shaved it clean off.

"Do you wish to keep your hair long?" Severus asked.

"What do you think?" Harry asked, and he seemed like he genuinely wanted to know the man's opinion. "Do boys wear long hair here?" He was clearly thinking of his Professor's shoulder length hair.

"Some, but not many. It fell out of fashion several years ago. I would say no longer than three inches is the norm now, and some wear their hair very short."

"I just want to fit in," Harry said. "I want some hair left, but I don't care if it's long or short. Do you know how to cut hair?"

"Not in a fashionable sense, no, but well enough to take some length off and detangle it so you can see a barber."

"Great!" Harry said.

Severus smothered his hair in a deep cleansing shampoo and set to work making sure every part of the boy's tangled hair and scalp was covered. Harry was quiet as he did so until Severus began rinsing the shampoo out. The water was coming away brown and yellow and Severus wasn't satisfied that it was clean yet.

"I will need to wash it again with the shampoo, and once more with the detangler."

"Ok." The boy was silent for a moment more as Severus put more shampoo into his hair and then asked, "Professor McGonagall said you teach Potions?"

"Yes."

"Are there healing potions?"

"Yes."

"I hope I get to learn how to make healing potions."

"Is there something specific you would like to heal?"

"No," Harry said. "I just wondered if there were potions like that because the nice doctor in the Hospital upstairs made me drink a potion."

"What did it taste and smell like?"

"It was orange and tasted like carrots, but it smelled like apples and broccoli."

"A nutritive potion," Severus commented, "to replenish vitamins and minerals you might be low on. She will probably give you more of that to drink for several days."

"It wasn't so bad," Harry commented. "I like carrots." He fell silent again and Severus wondered how uncomfortable this must be for the boy, so he decided to fill the silence on his own.

"What house do you want to be in?"

"They asked that on the survey, but I didn't see houses on the grounds when we came up to the castle. I do want to live in a house, and Professor McGonagall said I'd get to stay in a house with a bed!" He seemed very excited by that prospect.

"It is not a physical house. It is a group of students you will stay with for the remainder of your schooling at Hogwarts. There are four and they are based off of different traits. Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor."

"What traits?" Harry asked. "But I still get to sleep in a bed right?"

"Yes. Each student is assigned a bed that will be theirs for their seven years of schooling. One house values bravery and is known for sometimes rushing headlong into things without thinking of the consequences. Another values learning. Another values honesty and kindness Another values cunning and ambition and is known for building businesses." Severus rinsed his hair again and this time the water came away mostly clear, so he applied the detangler and began massaging that into the hair.

"Which do you think you would fit well with?" Severus asked.

"I don't know," Harry said. "I like reading a lot. I go to school by myself and read all kinds of things. So that one that likes learning might be nice," he said. But after a moment he said, "I like people who are kind. That one would be good. But I am very brave."

"Are you now?" Severus asked.

"Yes," he said confidently as Severus rinsed his hair a third time to remove the detangling potion. "When I first got to London I slept in a big dark drainpipe for three weeks. There were mice and it was cold and damp. You have to be brave to sleep with mice in a drainpipe."

"Yes you do," Severus agreed. "You may sit up." When he sat up, hair dripping into the sink and then down his front, Severus put another towel over his head and began pressing the towel into the hair to dry it. When he was satisfied the majority of the water had been soaked into the towel he removed it and brought the new brush out and showed it to Harry. "This is a new brush. When we are done with it, it is yours to keep with you and use."

"Thank you!" Harry said brightly. Severus wondered how thankful the child would be after the detangling process.

"Detangling hair may be painful. If it gets to a point where we cannot remove a tangle or it is becoming too much to handle, let me know and we will cut that tangle out. I promise there will be enough hair left to go to the barber when we are done."

"Yes sir."

Severus set to work, brushing slowly through the lowest ends of Harry's hair and working his way up. Severus could tell right away that there were some tangles so bad he couldn't attempt to brush them out and would have to cut them. He let Harry know and the boy assented, and three tangles were cut out in moments.

"What is your name?" Severus asked. Perhaps he should have started with that. It was rude of Severus as the adult not to even assure a proper introduction, especially when the boy already knew who he was.

"Harry," he said simply.

"Is that short for Harold?" Severus asked.

"I don't know," Harry admitted.

"Your parents did not tell you?"

"I don't think I have parents," Harry said. "I have an aunt and uncle and cousin, and they never said."

"Every child has parents."

Harry shrugged. "Just Harry."

"It has become a popular name in recent years. There are four or five other Harry's already attending school in upper years. Generally their full name is Harold, but not always. One boy's name is Henry, but he goes by Harry."

"Do you think since my name is Harry, I could make a friend named Harry? Are people named Harry good to be friends with?"

Severus considered his answer for a moment. The boy seemed as though he hadn't spent much time around children before. "Are you a good person to be friends with?" Severus asked.

"I don't know," Harry said truthfully. "I've never had a friend before. I want one though."

Severus murmured his assent as he worked through another tangle carefully and then brought over the small pair of scissors to cut a tiny piece of it free.

"Ow," Harry said, and Severus apologized and moved to a different spot for a moment to give that side of the boy's scalp a rest.

"Why's the name Harry popular?" he asked a minute later.

"It was just becoming popular right around the time you were born," Severus said. But because of what happened with he-who-must-not-be-named and The-Boy-Who-Lived, it has become very popular. I suspect many incoming students in the next few years will have the name."

"Who are they?" Harry asked. "The man with no name and The-Boy-Who-Lived?"

"You have not been told the story yet?"

"No," Harry said, and then he sat and listened raptly to a much abridged version of the story, ending with a baby named Harry getting a lightning shaped scar and mysteriously defeating He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, who had since then vanished.

"The boy got a what on his face?" Harry asked.

"A scar shaped like lightning, or so they say. I have never met him. He is due to come to school soon, if not this year, then next."

"But-" Harry said, looking up into the mirror, where his scar was newly visible thanks to the hair that had been cut away and detangled, "I have a scar like that."

Severus stopped what he was doing and looked up into the mirror and at Harry's reflection. Harry leaned forward and examined the scar. It was a bit like lightning, wasn't it? It wasn't exactly a lightning bolt, but it was close enough. And his name was Harry...

"That boy's name was Harry Potter."

Very quietly Harry said, "My name's Harry Potter."

He and Severus looked at the reflection of the scar again, and Severus began brushing his hair again, though a little more vigorously this time, and Harry said, "Ow," again, which caused Severus to slow down in his brushing once again.

"You are The-Boy-Who-Lived," Severus said. "Your parents were Lily Evans and James Potter."

"I never heard their names before," he said. "Aunt Petunia said they got drunk and died in a car crash."

"Is that why you ran away?"

"I didn't run away," Harry said. "They moved." He was silent for a moment and then finished, "without me."

"They left you behind?"

"They took me to London and left me and said they were moving and there was no room for me where they were going."

"Do you know where they went?"

"No," Harry said. "I haven't seen them since. Uncle Vernon worked for a big drill company, but I don't know the name."

Severus looked down at the scars on the boy's back again and then noted in the reflection he could see several on his chest as well. "What happened to you on the streets to cause the scaring?"

"Nothing," Harry said. "I had those from before."

"From the night your parents died?"

"No, from when I lived with my relatives. No one would let anything happen to me in London. My bridge family and the people at the library take care of me."

"Your bridge family?"

"I live under a bridge with Ben and Natty and Gemma and some others. Ben and Natty and Gemma save some of their food each day to give to me and the staff at the library takes turns bringing me a sandwich or some fruit for lunch each day. When I'm done with school and I know all sorts of vitamin potions, and spells to grow food, and things I can do to make money, I'm gonna buy a big house for my bridge family, and grow a big garden with food, and use potions to take care of them like they took care of me."

"An admirable goal," Severus said, not realizing he was echoing something Albus had told the boy earlier that day, though he found he was having trouble speaking to the boy now that he knew who he was. "How do you know they will still be there?"

"Well I'll go back for Christmas and summer right? Besides, where will they go? Uncle Vernon told me when he pulled me from school that those who don't get an education will always be poor and hopeless. So in London I go to the library every day so I don't stay poor and won't be hopeless. But my bridge family didn't go to school. I will though," he finished brightly.

"You will not be returning over holidays," Severus said. "The Headmaster will find a family for you to stay with."

"But-" he trailed off. "That never works out."

"What do you mean?"

"Well with my aunt and uncle... and then the nice lady came and made me go to a foster family and they didn't want me either when the freaky things started happening so I went back to my bridge family."

They were quiet for the next five minutes as Severus finished detangling the hair, which was now clean, dry, and soft, and then cut most of the length of the hair away so it wouldn't get tangled again. It didn't look beautiful, but looked a thousand times better than it had, and Severus was sure Minerva would get the boy to a barber in the next few days to style it for school, which started in four weeks.

"Done," Severus said quietly, eyes traveling to the reflection of the boy again. His eyes were as green as Lily's, and without glasses he wasn't so sure the boy looked like James. In fact, without the green eyes and black hair and scar, Severus wasn't sure he ever would have recognized the boy had they not come to the conclusion together that he was The-Boy-Who-Lived. He was just another student. A student from the streets apparently.

"Thank you," Harry said, taking in his own clean reflection again as well. "I haven't been this clean in years!" he said brightly. Then he turned to the Potions Master and said, "Erm... do you really think they'll let me go to school here?"

"Why wouldn't you attend?"

"I'm not really magic." He played with his hands. "There's nothing special about me."

"You got your school supplies already?" he asked. He thought that was what Minerva had said.

Harry nodded. "Maybe I can keep the paper and pencils anyway? When they send me away?"

"You received a wand?"

Harry nodded.

"Then you are magic. You are not going anywhere but to classes for the next seven years."

"How do you know? I've never done magic before."

"Ollivander would not issue a wand to a student if the student could not produce magic with that wand. The wand must have glowed or sent sparks out for him to sell it to you."

"It did-" Harry said cautiously. "It- it sent a chair through the roof. The first one I tried I mean."

"The magic is not in the wand, it is in you. The wand just channels the magic so you can use it."

"I really get to go to school?"

"Yes."

"And they'll put me in a house?"

"Yes."

Harry once again viewed the reflection of himself and seemed uncertain, but relieved. There was a knock on the door, and Severus went to let Minerva back in, disturbed by the fact that he'd come face to face with the humble Boy-Who-Lived and not even known it, and that the boy had spent years living in dark drain pipes and bridges under the city streets of London. This was not the boy he'd expected to show up to Hogwarts.