“Up, Potter!”

Harry was disturbed from his rest by what sounded like Aunt Petunia, only the register was not quite right. For some reason it was a lot deeper than usual.

“You’ve been abed for long enough—it’s nearly half-seven! Up , I said.”

Letting out a sleepy noise that could generously be interpreted as “coming, Aunt Petunia,” Harry pulled the covers further over his head.

“Alright then.”

If Harry had been more awake, he would have known to be wary of the quiet words, but as it was his head was muzzy and his eyes were stuck together.

That changed rapidly when his covers were ripped off him, exposing him to cool morning air. Harry jolted upright, eyes blinking rapidly.

“Don’t, Ron!”

There was a pause, then, “I assure you I am not your aunt nor your red-headed friend, Mr Potter. Do I need to fetch a basin of water?”

That was when the events of the previous day came flooding back to him. He hurriedly wiped his eyes and rubbed his face, then said reluctantly, “Morning, professor. No. No need. Please don’t.”

Snape was standing beside Harry’s bed, all the covers in hand. 

“Now that I have your attention,” the man said with a twisted look on his face, “Care to explain why you were sleeping in your clothes?” He folded Harry’s bedclothes at the foot of the bed, then said sarcastically, “In your shoes, Mr Potter?”

Harry glanced down at his feet, and noted they indeed still had the shoes he’d worn while running from Privet Drive. Thankfully, he’d wiped them well at the Leaky Cauldron, because he’d wager galleons that Snape would not appreciate mud on the bedding.

“Take them off , Potter.”

He swung his legs off the bed, then started unlacing. “I was tired,” he objected. “Last night, I just fell asleep.”

He would have cause to regret those comments soon enough. But now, he just slipped his shoes off, then followed Snape downstairs.

It felt decidedly odd to eat breakfast, sitting at a small kitchen table with Snape in the room. Harry would have felt self-conscious, but he was very hungry so ignored it and ate spoonfuls of porridge as quickly as could be good manners.

The man had evidently already eaten—either that or he didn’t eat at all. On the whole, Harry knew that was probably unlikely, as the vampire theorem had been disproved several times, because the man attended quidditch matches in the sun with no ill-effects (apart from his usual mien). Unless there was some kind of potion he took, perhaps a vampire-strength suncream…

Snape, who had been leaning against a cabinet tapping his fingers on his folded arms, moved once Harry had scraped the last bits out of his bowl. He was now standing directly opposite Harry, in a way that demanded attention. The boy reluctantly raised his eyes.

“Potter,” the man said, “I have no desire to spend every minute of the holiday breathing down the back of your neck so as to ensure you do not get into mischief. Though you may not believe it, I have better things to do.”

Harry squirmed the tiniest bit at the way Snape’s eyes bore into him. 

“As such, for now I find myself in the strange position of giving you the benefit of the doubt. That is, until proved otherwise, I shall treat you as if you were sensible and capable of occupying yourself in a relatively productive and responsible manner.”

The meaning of Snape’s words hit Harry after a small delay, and he found himself gaping a little. This was unprecedented—when had Snape ever done that?

“Oh for—Potter, focus !”

Harry shook his head to free it from wondering if Snape was being polyjuiced. “I’m listening,” he said. “Sir,” he added hurriedly when he found himself receiving a pointed look. “I’m—I’m listening, sir.”

“Breakfast will be six-thirty, lunch at one and dinner at seven —you will be expected to be prompt, and to assist where necessary. Apart from then, you may be in the house or garden—though stay away from the daisies. Any questions?”

The boy remained in a stunned silence for a moment or two, then asked, “Daisies?”

“They are combative in the summer months. Do you desire bruises all down your legs?”

What sort of question was that? “Err… No?” Harry said. 

“Then avoid them.”

Harry, remembering Herbology, the Burrow and his experiences with gnomes, decided that Snape wasn’t joking. Maybe they were duelling daisies, or something. A thought popped into his head. “Um—”

“Yes?”

“Did you say six-thirty for breakfast?” 

Harry thought he had been mistaken, surely—though Aunt Petunia had him up around then to cook for Dudley, at Hogwarts breakfast started at quarter past seven.

“Indeed I did, Potter—no layabouts here. Today is the first and last time you will laze about in bed like that, thank you very much.”

It hadn’t been that late, had it? Harry had only been tired from the stressful evening. “I—” 

“Six-thirty, Potter, and no amount of complaining will change it.”

Harry bit back a comment about how he hadn’t even said anything or even thought a complaint in the man’s direction. He’d only been clarifying. “Right, sir” he forced out instead.

Snape tapped a thoughtful hand on the table, and threw a shrewd glance at Harry. “If you are in doubt whether you are permitted to do anything, assume that you are not. You may ask— however, I am under no obligation to accede to frivolous requests.”

It took a moment for Harry to parse that. 

“Any book that lets you open it you are free to read—don’t pester them if they don’t want you sticking grubby fingers on their pages.”

Was Snape’s book collection sentient? Harry wouldn’t put it past them. He wasn’t much of a reader anyway, really. And his fingers weren’t grubby. He scowled for a moment, then, catching the man’s gaze, quickly straightened his expression. 

“I expect confirmation, Potter, that you understand and will abide.”

Harry nodded, then mumbled a “Yes, professor.”

He understood—sure, he understood. Avoid the daisies, don’t bother books unless they don’t mind it, and (undoubtedly) keep out of Snape’s hair. Not that Harry wanted to be in it, anyway.

Harry could feel Snape looking at him for a long moment. It was an uncomfortable sensation, and after a second the boy couldn’t help but avoid the man’s gaze by staring into his empty bowl. Harry didn’t like to think that he was a coward, but there was something about the situation that was awkward and unbalancing enough that made him instinctively act that way. Thankfully, finally, Harry wasn’t pinned to his chair by nerves, because Snape was no longer looking at him. In fact, Snape had moved towards a door that clearly led outside, because high up on it there was a clouded window. Below its panes was a hook, and Harry watched as the man lifted off what seemed to be a raincoat, folded it over his arm, and headed outside without saying another word.

Maybe Snape had even meant what he’d said about not wanting to be breathing his nasty breath over Harry’s shoulder all day…

Harry decided to take this day as it came, and reassess the truthfulness of the statement later. So, after washing his bowl and spoon, he walked out of the kitchen. It was nice not to have to do everyone else’s washing up for a change, and this was reflected by the slight bounce in his step.

With his potions teacher out of the house, he decided now might be a good time for some judicial snooping. Really though, he ought to learn where everything was located if he was staying here… 

It did not take very long for Harry to realise that there was not much to explore. There was the kitchen, which seemed ordinary, if a bit less modern than the Dursley’s. The window over the stove was cloudy but seemed to look out onto the garden. It was framed by faded floral-pattern curtains. 

Opposite the kitchen was the rickety staircase Harry had come down. Behind the staircase was a toilet and then a laundry-room. In front of the kitchen was what must have been a dining room, clearly unused. It was dark, with curtains drawn, cramped and dusty. It seemed all foreboding stiff furniture. Harry coughed and sneezed and exited promptly. 

On the other side of the hallway was one large room. This, Harry discovered on entering, was filled with books. Books sprawled on coffee tables, and teetered in precarious stacks on the floor. Tall shelves lined all the walls—and there were more shelves essentially dividing the room into two areas. One was like a study, holding a writing desk and chair, while the other looked to be for leisure. In there was a fireplace; in front of it was a sagging sofa that looked like it had long been in use. A wingback chair looked similarly worn in. Faint light streamed in from the windows, which faced the street. It was raining.

This room marked the end of exploring, unless Harry wanted to sift through Snape’s collection of kitchen utensils. Upstairs, from what he’d seen already, only had Harry’s small room, the bathroom, and what was presumably Snape’s bedroom. Harry felt no desire to trespass in there. So after half-heartedly scanning the shelves—there were just so many books, and eclectically mixed—he went upstairs to fetch the broomstick kit Hermione had given him for his birthday. 

If she’d been there, she would have been in raptures of ecstasy, collecting about her a pile of reading. But Harry just did not feel that way—there were too many books for him to sift through to find something, and probably there wouldn’t be anything he’d want to read anyway, because it was Snape’s house. As he curled up with the kit on the sofa, he was hit with a palpable pang of loneliness—no Ron, no Hermione, no one but Snape. And he was staying here for the rest of the holidays—he might go mad from extended Potions master exposure.

But Harry, living with the Dursleys as he had for most of his life, was very good at pretending that he was somewhere else completely. So he forced himself to stop contemplating whether the Potions Master was likely to poison him and imagined that he was at Hogwarts. The library would have been easiest, considering the number of books surrounding him. But Harry would never use his broomstick kit in there: instead, he focused until he could almost see the red-and-gold hangings of the Gryffindor common room and began to use the kit. Several hours were to pass him by like that, until his stomach gave a gurgle and jolted him out of his imagined surroundings.

From what Harry could see, there wasn’t a clock in the room, but it must have been near one o’clock. When he gathered up his Nimbus and the accoutrements of the broomstick kit and walked them up to the small room that was his for the summer, the grandfather clock in the corridor confirmed the time for him as a quarter to the hour.