Severus never thought the day would come that he would miss groveling at the Dark Lord's feet.

Now, however, he found himself missing it. Sort of?

Kissing the Dark Lord's ass seemed mildly appealing compared to the hell in which he was currently residing.

Actual hell. At some point, he'd died - he hadn't figured out when or how - but he had. And now he was in hell.

They'd been living with Petunia for almost a week, and while things hadn't gotten worse after that first day, they hadn't gotten better either. For the most part, they all tried to ignore one another, but as upper-middle-classy as the Dursley's residents were, with five people living under the same roof they all felt a little cramped.

Especially, when it came to sharing the bathroom. Sharing a bathroom with one preteen had been bad enough, but sharing with two was nearly intolerable.

Then there was Harry's cousin: Dudley.

The child was the spawn of some diabolical entity. Like something from a horror movie. And was nearly the reason his plans to torture Tuney and Vernon into insanity had gone all to hell. (And he was planning on spending the next three weeks slowly driving Tuney and Vernon mad in ways that could never be proven.)

Snape had been teaching for over ten years. It was his first job after completing his Potions Mastery. He had met and educated a large number of children in that time. He'd even taken on two apprentices who were both fairly young. But he was always in a position of authority over his students. They bestowed some level of respect to him simply by the nature of his position. He was a teacher. They were students. It was simple enough. Even the more rebellious ones he had the ability to discipline, and for the most part they all learned that - after McGonagall - he was by far the strictest professor and not one to mess with.

When faced with Dudley Dursley, however, Snape could not leverage the same teacher/student authority over the boy. To the child, Severus was only what Tuney and Vernon had told him: Harry's cowardly, skint, deadbeat father. And if Severus even so much as looked at the boy he would go running off to Tuney swearing that "Harry's dad" had threatened him in some dastardly way.

Walking downstairs could be a perilous task for anyone. Slide on the edge of a step, and next thing you know you've made it to the bottom in record time; however, you can't enjoy the record because you've snapped your neck. Or leg. Or arm. Or ribs. Or tailbone.

Snape knew this but had never had any problem with stairs or fear of them.

He was simply walking down to the kitchen to get something for himself and Harry to eat for lunch. Apparently, Dudley also wanted lunch. Snape heard the boy pounding down the steps behind him, but assumed the child would stop or slow down or at least say 'excuse me.'

Instead, Dudley elbowed Severus in the side, as he pushed by while shouting, "Get out of the way!"

A few things happened very quickly. Snape felt his foot slip out from under him and grabbed the railing at the same time as he reached out and grabbed the back of the boy's shirt, yanking him to a stop in the middle of the stairs. This motion caused the child to give a little scream of surprise.

Severus glared at the child, but didn't raise his voice as he spoke, "idiot boy! Are you trying to kill someone? You do not go around pushing people on stairs! How-"

Petunia's voice cut him off, "Severus!"

Snape waited a moment then released the back of the boy's shirt who ran to his mother with crocodile tears already streaming down his face. Severus rolled his eyes and crossed his arms.

Petunia coddled her child at the base of the steps for a moment before sending him off to the kitchen and turning her furious eyes toward Severus. She stormed up to him on the stairs, "How dare you lay a hand on my child! Under my own roof!"

Snape met her glare with one of his own, his voice became gradually louder as he spoke though it never reached the level of a yell. "Your bloody child tried to shove me down a flight of stairs, Tuney!"

"Dudley would never do such a thing!" Petunia yelled at him. Any fear she had of him and his magic flew out the window when her child was involved. Another time, some part of Severus might have respected that she would be willing to face certain death for her child. Right now, was not that time.

"Your son is a menace!" Snape snapped at her, "he's going to kill someone one day. How will you protect him then?"

"That's rich coming from you, you... horrid little man! You're too much of a coward to stand up to other adults so you bully children! Well, I'll not have you abusing my son!"

"Abusing your son!" Snape could hardly believe the woman would suggest he was the one guilty of abuse. His incredulity saturated his tone, "How dare you talk about abuse when you and your husband-"

He was cut off as Dudley pounded his way back upstairs - cake in hand - the boy shoved his large frame between him and Petunia once again shouting, "Out of the way!"

This time, Petunia was the one who lost her footing, and if Severus hadn't reached out for her, she most certainly would have fallen backward down the stairs. He took a moment to steady her before crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. He didn't need to say anything. The child had proven his point for him.

"He didn't mean to!" Petunia immediately defended, "he's just a boy! He gets overly excited and doesn't understand his own strength!"

"Then teach him!" Snape snapped back and made to continue his way down the stairs. At the base of the stairs, he turned back around to face her. "You're his mother, he nearly broke your damn neck, and you're making excuses for him. That's not teaching him a damn thing."

"Do not tell me how to raise my child!"

"You're not raising him at all! You're just giving him everything he wants!"

Petunia's next words froze the very air around them, and hung in awkward silence for a moment after the last word was shouted, "Why shouldn't I give him more than what we had growing up in that miserable working-class hovel of a town?"

Snape knew how she felt about their upbringing. The Evans weren't much better off than the Snapes. They still lived in the same neighborhood in Cokeworth. In the shadow of a textile mill destined to go bust. Neither family had much money to spare on frivolous luxuries for their children. No one in the neighborhood did, really.

Snape's voice was softer when he spoke. He understood Tuney's shame about where they came from. He'd felt that same shame for years. Felt it strongest when he'd started at Hogwarts where there was a greater mix of social classes than at his and Lily's primary school. Felt the anger and embarrassment at showing up in second-hand clothes with second-hand books.

Knew what it was like to be picked on and bullied simply for being born into circumstances beyond his control.

But unlike Petunia he had grown up. He'd learned some sense of respect for people like his parents and Lily's who had tried their best to swim against the current of a polluted river that was a carefully disguised caste system. He may not brag about where he came from, but he wasn't humiliated by it any longer.

"You're right, Tuney. Your child deserves everything we couldn't have." He hesitated for only a second, "And so does Harry. But there is one thing that you haven't bothered giving to your son: the common decency not to push his mother down a fucking flight of stairs."

He stormed off into the kitchen.

Severus wanted badly to give Tuney's boy a talking-to that would leave his ears burning for months. He contemplated finding a way to get the boy to Hogwarts to scrub cauldrons until he learned some proper respect and civility. At least towards his own mother.

Instead, he'd borrowed Harry's owl to send a letter to Dumbledore ranting about their circumstances.

The Headmaster sent him a bottle of Fire Whiskey in return.

And through it all, Severus tried very, very, hard not to think about the fact that Dudley Dursley was everything he'd thought that Harry Potter would be and wasn't.

Harry, during their first week at the Dursleys, had remained unusually quiet. The nearly constant chatter and never-ending questions he'd associated with the boy during their week at Hogwarts seemed to have come to an abrupt end. Severus didn't know what to make of that, and he absolutely did not miss the sound of the boy's voice.

That was an absurd thought.

Severus shook such foolish thoughts from his head as he left his bedroom. Now that it had been a week, and the Dursley family had let their guard down slightly, he had a plan to put into place. Harry was in the sitting room and appeared to be looking for something he'd lost. He was spinning around in circles, his eyes searching high and low.

A flash of gold caught Snape's eye as something zoomed around his head, and he reached up a hand quickly to catch a golden snitch. He raised an eyebrow at the child who'd seen the action and was now sitting on the couch, "I told you to leave this in your room at Hogwarts."

"Yes, sir," Harry agreed, moving to sit on his hands that clearly wanted to jump up and grab the golden snitch.

"Then what is it doing here? And loose, no less? What if it had escaped the house and took a trip around the muggle neighborhood? This isn't a quidditch pitch. There are no boundary spells to keep it from straying too far!"

"I wanted to bring it with me. I like looking at it...and, I didn't mean to let it out! I was just holding it for a minute."

"Well, you won't be looking at it for some time now. Accio, Snitch Box." A small golden box - just the right size to contain a single snitch - flew from Harry's room and into his hand. He placed the snitch inside the box causing the wings to stop their fluttering. He tossed the box into his own room and closed the door. Then he made the mistake of looking at the child on the couch. Severus found himself overwhelmed by the emotions floating through the child's mind. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose before looking back at the child. "You'll get it back once we're at Hogwarts."

The child looked like he might start crying.

Severus briefly considered throwing a wobbly himself. It might make him feel better. It seemed to work for the Dudley brat.

Instead, he started to leave their modified bedroom/sitting room and the boy. He had things to do after all, and figuring out the complex emotions of an eleven-year-old was not on his list.

"Please," The single word from Harry's lips was a plea.

Severus stopped but didn't turn back around.

"Please," the boy repeated. "I won't let it out again, I promise. It's just...I don't...I've never had..."

Severus turned back around. The boy was on the sofa still, scrubbing at his face in a vain attempt to hide his tears. The child hadn't completed his sentence, but Snape had a suspicion he knew what the child was trying to say.

Harry didn't have any toys in 'Dudley's second bedroom.' The entire week they were at Hogwarts together he hadn't seen the child playing with any other toys. Or occupying himself in any way except by reading and homework. The only toy he had was a stupid snitch.

The fucking snitch he'd bought the boy.

Snape hated the realization that he was the only person to buy the boy something to play with in the decade since Lily died. The only person since then to give the child something to hold onto.

Shit.

Did the idiot boy sleep with the damn thing next to him at night?

Severus walked back to his room and picked up the haphazardly discarded golden box. He handed it awkwardly to the child who was silently crying on the couch. The child cautiously reached for it, but Snape didn't release his hold right away, instead waiting for teary eyes to meet his own.

He cleared his throat. He was only doing this because a bored and pouting Potter would ruin everything. "If it leaves this box, again, I will confiscate it. Do you understand?"

Harry nodded his head, "Yes, sir."

He released the box and watched how the boy pulled it quickly to his chest like it was his most treasured possession.

Severus left the room.