They entered back into Grimmauld Place, a tiresome lot they appeared. Harry was visibly shaking, from both the apparition and the shock of the vision, holding onto Dumbledore’s arm to keep him steady, fearing that he would otherwise collapse on his own. Dumbledore himself looked grim, while Snape appeared contemplative.
“Oh, no,” Hermione gasped at the sight of them. “Oh, Harry, I can’t believe- you were expelled! But- there was no case against you, they can’t have-”
“And they did not,” Dumbledore gently cut her off as he guided Harry to the sofa. “Harry was cleared of all charges. However, he seems to have experienced a disturbing vision from Voldemort.”
Harry sat down gingerly, feeling far more vulnerable than he’d normally allow himself to show. Shock, the adults around him were discussing. Ron and Hermione sat beside him, Hermione taking his hand and squeezing it, Ron patting his back. Dudley was sitting in the chair across from them, looking apprehensive, and the sight of him nearly made Harry sick up all over again. This time not out of hatred, but remorse.
Dudley’s father was dead, and it was all Harry’s fault.
“Hey, kid, are you alright?” came the voice of Sirius, crouched down in front of him. Harry nodded, though it was an obvious lie. He was so far from alright, it wasn’t even a question.
“Children, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave the room for a bit- except for Harry, of course,” Dumbledore said, but Ron quickly started to argue.
“You can’t honestly expect us to just leave him like this!” he exclaimed. Hermione appeared torn at the prospect of disregarding authority but nodded along with her friend.
“Ronald-” Mrs. Weasley began, but Dumbledore cut her off.
“Your sentiment is honorable, but we must have an order meeting with the adults-”
“Harry’s not an adult,” Ron said petulantly.
“Yeah, but it’s about me,” muttered Harry dejectedly. “It’s fine, guys, really,” he nodded at his friends. “I’m fine.”
They looked doubtful but didn’t argue. They stood up and left the room as they were told, casting looks behind them all the while. Dudley started to follow them, but Dumbledore stopped him. “Actually, you should probably stay as well, Mr. Dursley.”
“You can’t be serious,” Harry rasped weakly. “Surely, you don’t expect me to go over this in front of him.”
Dumbledore gave him a sympathizing look. “He has a right to know, Harry.”
“Like this?” Harry asked, his strength returning as he felt himself growing angry with the situation. “Pardon me, Professor, but this seems a rather cruel way to go about it.”
“What’s going on?” Dudley asked, voice shaking. “Is- Are my parents okay?”
God, Harry wanted to jump off - something, anything, right now. Nightmare scenario didn’t even begin to cover it. He was still in shock from the vision he had just witnessed, and now Dumbledore wanted him not only to repeat it, but in front of the person whom it affected the most? Yes, Dudley deserved to know, but surely Dumbledore would ask him to go into vivid detail and he just couldn’t, he wouldn’t…
“I’m not going to make you vocalize your vision, Harry,” Dumbledore assured gently, seemingly reading his mind. “I won’t even ask you to allow me to put in my pensive, Professor Snape saw enough of it to do that himself.”
Harry nodded, calming considerably at that pronouncement. He wondered briefly how Snape had been able to see the vision as well, but couldn’t be troubled to ask.
“Now,” Dumbledore began, appearing weary as he looked away from Harry and addressed the room at large. “After the hearing at the ministry today, Harry experienced a vision from Lord Voldemort.” He turned his gaze to Dudley, and Harry felt he himself had to look almost as pale as his cousin did. “Regarding Vernon Dursley.”
***
Dudley was a basket case. Harry, well. Harry existed.
The days following Uncle Vernon’s death were torturously slow. Harry spent most of his time hiding in the room he was staying in, though it didn’t muffle the sounds of Dudley’s constant crying. It was an odd idea, but Harry thought that he might almost feel envious of the boy. Once he’d gotten past the initial shock of witnessing the event, Harry hadn’t shed a single tear. He didn’t know if he should, but it didn’t matter because he couldn’t if he wanted to. He hardly felt anything at all.
Ron and Hermione tried their best to cheer him up, as did Sirius and most of the other adults, but he really just wanted to be left alone. It was how he had spent most of the summer up until that point, and now that it was a choice he found that he preferred it to company. Mrs. Weasley tried to coax him out of his room with all kinds of foods, but perhaps she didn’t realize that he didn’t feel much like eating, and the pressure of all that only made him stay away more.
Sometimes he would wander Grimmauld Place, and though he had been warned that it wasn’t exactly the safest of homes, Harry didn’t exactly care these days. He’d best not stumble into a room with a Boggart as he’d heard Mrs. Weasly had a few days ago, for if he were faced with a Dementor at the moment he really wasn’t sure if he could cast a Patronus right now, or if he would bother even if he could.
One day on one of these trips around the house, Harry locked himself in a bathroom on the third floor, hoping no one would bother him up there. He stared at the mirror, the faintest of hand-shaped bruises still visible on his neck. Was that the end of it, then? The last of Vernon Dursley’s handiwork, the last string of violence he’d ever inflict upon Harry, maybe anyone, was here upon his skin, lasting longer than the man himself had in Voldemort’s captivity.
Harry blinked at himself in the mirror. And then he began to laugh. Quiet chuckles that grew into bellowing laughs, that soon turned into hysterical sobs.
Well, shit. Turned out he could cry after all.
Harry got himself back under control after a while, wondering why on earth he had ever lost it in the first place. He wasn’t quite sure how he was feeling about his uncle’s death, but it certainly wasn’t sadness. Maybe that was the problem though, he felt guilty because he didn’t feel sad about it. But he also couldn’t feel all that guilty because he didn’t feel sad about it. All in all, he barely felt at all, which somehow felt like he was feeling everything all at once. It was maddening and exhausting and Harry just wanted to escape from it all somehow. Was it really just a couple of weeks ago that Uncle Vernon had been screaming at him and kicking him out of the house? It seemed like a lifetime, and it ended up leading to the end of his life.
Growing slightly disturbed by the direction of his inner monologue, Harry left the bathroom, bumping into something as soon as he exited. He looked up into the onyx-black eyes of Snape, because why the hell not?
Snape scrutinized him. “What were you doing in there?”
“Do you want the details on number one or two?” Harry asked.
“You were in there for quite a while.” Snape pointed out, ignoring his quip.
“Monitoring my bathroom habits, are you?”
“Someone must.”
“I’m lactose intolerant,” Harry offered in explanation.
“I don’t recall asking.”
“Mrs. Weasley made loaded potato soup last night.”
“And I’m sure you ate every bit of it.”
Harry flushed. “What business is it of yours, anyway? Surely, you’re taking this guardian thing a little too far. We both know you’re merely a placeholder.”
“It’s been my responsibility to keep you alive since you were an infant. That hasn’t changed.”
He turned to leave, not giving Harry any time to ask for context on that statement.
“Where are you going?” Snape turned back around at Harry’s question, an irritated expression settling on his face.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to my house where I can brew potions in peace without the presence of horribly annoying children and adults alike.”
“Can I come?” Harry blurted out before he could fully form the thought in his head.
Snape raised an eyebrow. “You wish to accompany me to my home where I will be brewing potions?”
“Er, not exactly. But I wouldn’t mind getting out of here for a few hours,” he said, glancing at the dank hallway behind them.
“You’d prefer my presence over that of your friends and godfather? I feel I must ask if perhaps you’ve recently hit your head.”
“I don’t really feel like talking to them right now,” Harry muttered. “Besides, you’re my guardian now, aren’t you? Isn’t it your job to take me home like a new puppy or something?”
“You just described me as nothing more than a placeholder in that regard.”
Harry shrugged helplessly.
Snape studied him steadily. “Very well,” he conceded. “Come.”
The man turned abruptly and stalked off down the hall, and Harry stumbled after him once he’d recovered from the shock of the man actually agreeing to allow him to leave Grimmauld Place and accompany him to his home. Harry had to wonder if perhaps he had hit his head after all, as he was quite relieved rather than horrified at the prospect of going with his potions professor.
Snape led the way down the stairs and to the Floo where he’d originally brought Harry through to this miserable house. Harry had been fairly pleased with himself that day, having finally escaped the Dursleys and getting to see Sirius in the summer. Only a week ago…
They didn’t stop to tell anyone that Harry was leaving with Snape and the former wondered absently if they should, but didn’t really care all that much. Snape allowed him to go first so he could ensure that he didn’t “viciously mangle the pronunciation of Spinner’s End.”
Harry, of course, fell flat on his face as soon as he’d arrived on the other side, sneezing from soot and dust as he lifted his head in time to see Snape’s flawless entrance. He sneered down at him and pulled him up by the arm none too gently.
“Er, thanks,” mumbled Harry, who received nothing but a glare in response. Snape was back to striding off somewhere and as uncomfortable as he was following the man down unknown hallways in his house, he figured that he was expected to follow. Snape opened a door that revealed a set of stairs going down to what Harry assumed would be the basement. Following Snape down into his basement wasn’t a very comforting thought, and Harry wondered if perhaps he’d been coerced into a trap, but followed nonetheless. Nothing to lose, right?
Luckily, the basement wasn’t any type of torture room. Well, it depended on one’s definition of torture. Harry himself wasn’t too terribly fond of potions and thought that it might be just one or two steps above actual torture. He had volunteered for this though, hadn’t he? His head had been in the clouds a lot lately, maybe that would explain his moment of insanity, though he still believed that this might be better than spending another afternoon in Grimmauld Place.
“Might as well make yourself useful,” Snape said, assigning Harry to chop up some disgusting substance in jars. Harry made a face, but didn’t outright reject the chore. He had been the one who’d ask to come here, after all, and Snape had been - dare he say it - kind enough to oblige him.
Snape went to start a potion, a very complicated one by the looks of it. He had all sorts of ingredients out, most of which Harry couldn’t identify.
“What are you making?” Harry asked at last.
“Nothing of importance.”
“Why are you making it, then?”
“Allow me to correct my previous statement, nothing of importance to you.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “It can’t be that super secret, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it in front of me.”
“Yes, because you, a D on a good day Potions student, are certainly someone I should fear identifying the potion that you just asked was.”
“You’re really not gonna tell me, then?”
“Patience is a virtue, Mr. Potter.”
“So I can know eventually?”
“Please, Potter, enough with your incessant babbling.”
“What did you let me come here for then?” Harry huffed. “If you’re just going to ignore me the whole time.”
“I have yet to ignore you, and you did not ask if we could have a chat, you asked if you could accompany me to brew potions. Furthermore, I thought that your desire to get out of the house was a reasonable request, one that might help to aid in your grieving process-”
“I’m not grieving,” Harry corrected sharply. “I've nothing to grieve for.”
Snape eyed him curiously. “There are several forms of grief, Mr. Potter. You needn’t have cared for the person to care about their death.”
“Well I don’t,” Harry lied irritably. “I don’t give one single crap about the state of the Dursleys, not one of them. And it’s not my fault, either, because they’re the ones who kicked me out and they actually knew about the- the blood wards, or whatever.”
“I never said it was your fault, though I do have a hard time believing that you don’t care at all.”
“I don’t!” Harry insisted brashly. “I hate that everyone expects me to care because I really don’t give a single fuck.”
Harry was breathing heavily now but Snape didn’t seem bothered by his outburst. He simply began stirring his now bubbling purple potion in a counterclockwise direction.
Harry glared at his worktable, though he found himself calming down with the lack of further provocation. Snape hadn’t even said anything all that scathing, so why had he flown off the handle? Perhaps it was because he was sick of everyone assuming that he cared about his family just because they were family. They weren’t anyone that he would like to claim as so, they just happened to be related is all. Harry just happened to be dropped on their doorstep. They just happened to be captured by Voldemort because of Harry.
“Odd for you to accuse me of being the one off of his Prozac,” Snape muttered offhandedly. Harry’s eyes widened. Snape hadn’t commented at all on his perhaps slightly disrespectful quip about the muggle drug, and he hadn’t expected him to even know what he was talking about if he ever did. “You have perhaps the most volatile set of emotions I have ever witnessed.”
Harry bit down on his tongue but the retort still managed to find a way to escape his lips. “Are you accusing me of being unstable?”
Snape didn’t answer.
“You’re not too far out of line I guess,” Harry said after a moment. “I have seen what they’re saying about me in the papers.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Snape. “That sorry excuse for a news outlet hardly holds my interest. I doubt they’ve posted a truthful story all summer.”
Weird. Was Snape… defending him? Or something? He decided to ignore it for the time being in favor of a different topic.
“So, you’re a spy, right?” Harry asked conversationally.
Snape gave him a blank look.
“Okay, yeah, no shit, I guess.” Snape’s look wasn’t improving any with his choice of wording, so Harry hurried on. “Why don’t you know anything about where he’s keeping… my aunt?”
“Surprising as it might be, I don’t hold all the answers in the world.”
“Isn’t it like your job to know that kind of stuff though?”
Snape was growing irritated, though he was trying to hide it. Harry was very familiar with people and their facial expressions right before they blew up and therefore could tell. Somehow that never stopped him from egging them on, though.
“Why would he kill my uncle but not her? Or did he kill her too and I just didn’t see it? If he trusts you so much then why don’t you know anything about where he keeps his prisoners? Why-”
“Potter. Shut up.”
Well, that was a rather anticlimactic response. Harry was counting for steam to come out of Snape’s ears or something more entertaining than a simple rebuttal. Shame.
“It’s not a question of not knowing because he won’t tell me,” Snape said after a moment. “I simply have not conversed with the Dark Lord in several weeks.”
“Oh,” said Harry.
“Yes, oh. Not that it’s any of your concern when or what I speak to the Dark Lord about. Besides, I thought you didn’t give ‘a single fuck’ about your relatives' wellbeing.”
Harry dropped his knife in surprise at his teacher’s use of a curse word, especially one that was repeated from Harry himself. The clatter of the knife falling on the table was surprisingly loud and Harry felt himself flushing at all of these things combined.
Snape smirked. Harry didn’t offer a response, instead picking up his knife again and continuing his task. It was silent in the potions lab, sans the sound of Harry’s sloppy chopping and Snape’s steady stirring.
“You know, I think it’s fair if I were to ask you if you’ve hit your head, too,” Harry said after a while. “Because it wasn’t that many days ago you were ready to wring my neck, and now you’re, well… not nice, but not… murderous.”
“I’ve never had any intentions to murder you,” Snape replied, rolling his eyes. “No matter how relieving of a headache draught it might provide.”
“Well you don’t act like it,” Harry said. “Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. You are being nicer, or something like that… why?”
Snape didn’t respond for a bit, still steadily stirring that potion. He seemed content, which was why Harry hadn’t been too terribly afraid to ask the question. He realized that while the man was his potion’s professor, he couldn’t recall ever actually seeing him brew something himself. Harry had always wondered why the man taught it if he hated it so much, but it definitely seemed like simply brewing for himself made him a lot happier than teaching students to do it themselves.
“It has recently come to my attention that perhaps I was… wrong, in my assessments and assumptions of you.”
Harry raised his eyebrows. “And what changed your mind so suddenly?” Though he realized he knew the answer to the question as soon as he asked it, and Snape’s not-so-subtle look at the remnants of bruises on his neck only served to confirm it.
Harry broke the gaze, feeling discomfort and all sorts of emotions rising up in him. “I don’t need your pity, Professor. I think that’s the last thing I’d ever want.”
“Yes, I think I’m beginning to realize that,” Snape responded distantly.
Harry looked back up. The man was still stirring away as if nothing about this conversation was uncomfortable for him. Maybe that’s what made Harry feel more comfortable. He could never have this sort of conversation with his friends or Sirius without some form of tears or yelling or both, and more looks of pity than he could stomach. It was odd, that somehow it was the man who’d spent the past several years doing his very best to make Harry miserable would be the one to make him feel almost like a normal human being now.
Harry returned to chopping the… Well, whatever it was. Harry was pants at Potions and he doubted that any random acts of kindness from his professor would change that anytime soon. Though he did realize he was feeling a fair bit calmer than he had earlier in the day, perhaps the minimal task wasn’t as much of a chore as he was dreading. And somehow he got the feeling that Snape realized that, too.
“You said it was your duty to protect me or something,” Harry said. “What did you mean by that?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” said Snape, though it didn’t sound like he was reprimanding him as Aunt Petunia always had.
Harry shrugged. “I’m a curious child.”
“Ah, and a child you are,” Snape smirked, though it almost seemed closer to an actual smile. “Which means I don’t have to answer to you.”
“I never said you had to. It was a request, not a demand.”
“That it was,” Snape murmured, his stirring slowing to a stop as he turned the burner off. He set the cauldron to the side to cool before turning to face Harry fully. “I made a promise,” he said at last.
“A promise?” Harry questioned.
Snape nodded. “To your mother.”
Harry wasn’t as shocked by this revelation as he could have been, he’d somewhat been prepared for it. “So you weren’t just acting for the ministry, then? You really knew my mum?”
“I did,” Snape confirmed. “Your aunt as well, but we can ignore that bit.”
“No wonder you hate me then,” Harry said, feeling almost defeated. “You already hated my dad, and then knowing I was raised by someone like my aunt…”
“Precisely. I should have remembered, of course, that the most vile thing about your aunt was her hatred of your mother and all things magical.”
As Snape took his focus from the potion to Harry, Harry concentrated more on his chopping. “Can’t quite blame her. All she’s ever wanted is to be normal and she got stuck with me, and now she’s trapped in some magical prison with the world’s darkest wizard.” Harry snorted but it was without humor.
“I can blame her,” Snape said simply.
Harry was rather fond of subject changing. “So, my mum. Was she nice?”
“Sometimes,” Snape responded honestly, returning to his now cooled potion and bottling it into small vials. “Her personality was as fiery as her hair.”
“Red,” Harry nodded, wondering why he didn’t seem to care about this bombshell all that much. Maybe he knew that it was just easier to talk to Snape this way. If he bombarded him with a bunch of questions about his mother he wasn’t likely to answer them. They’d known one another for nearly five years now and the subject of Lily Potter had never come up once before. It was clearly not a subject the man was interested in speaking to him about. And yet, here he was, talking about her.
“I’m sure that you’ve heard by now that you inherited her eyes.” He had, but somehow it felt different coming from this particular man.
“Yeah,” mumbled Harry.
Snape was looking into those eyes now, and Harry wondered when he had gotten so close. He set a vial of the potion down on the table in front of him. Harry raised his eyebrows.
“Am I allowed to know what that is now?”
“We’ll call it a wizard version of Prozac,” Snape smirked, though his eyes were serious. “Missing a dose or two shouldn’t throw your nervous system into catastrophe, but taking it daily certainly wouldn’t harm it.”
Harry stared at the vial. “And you want me to take it.” It was a statement rather than a question.
“You’ve been under a great deal of pressure as of late, Mr. Potter,” Snape said. “You’re becoming a dreadful sight to behold. Eating at meals and sleeping at night would likely do us all some good.”
“Why?” asked Harry. “So I can be in full form to take on Voldemort again, or whatever the hell it is Dumbledore wants me to do?”
“No,” said Snape, and he left it at that. Harry somehow believed that he was sincere.
Snape had been brewing a potion all this time for him? Harry was uncomfortable with the idea. “You didn’t already have this on hand?”
“Of course I did,” responded Snape. “But brewing it fresh was better, don’t you agree?”
Harry thought that he might.
Author's Chapter Notes:
it only seems fitting that since I posted the first chapter on Harry's birthday, I should post one on Professor Snape's as well! Happy birthday, Sevy :D
You've Been Hurt Before (i can see it in your eyes)
Chapter End Notes:
sometimes stories really do take a mind of their own, this was absolutely not where I planned for this chapter to go, but alas! hope you enjoyed!