Acid Reigns

The first weeks were like an awkward foxtrot of missteps and stubbed toes. Life inside the stuffy house on Spinner’s End took place at an odd pace, in stops and starts.

Beginning with the ride back from Surrey, Harry and Snape, realising that the scope of their relationship had shifted, fumbled around one another with the sort of lack of finesse that would have impressed only the clumsiest of social pariahs.

***

Harry wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about Snape swiping Dudley’s tape deck. Somehow, he was certain that such a theft would only come back upon his own head ten-fold, though given the apparent abdication of the family, he couldn’t exactly articulate how such a consequence might have manifested.

His initial excitement over not having to stay at Privet Drive took a sharp swerve when he realised that there was no telling what Snape might do with him now.

Maybe he’d get back to Cumbria and would immediately summon those two terrifying men once more. He could give Harry over to them and wash his hands of the inconvenience of Harry’s wretched existence with ease.

From what Harry was given to understand, were he to be given over to Yax, he’d likely never have seen the light of day again...

His thoughts were interrupted when Snape, with a smooth skill that belied the purposefully poor technique he’d been employing in the beginning, shifted into fourth and urged the car faster onto the expressway, heading north.

His pale, thin hand was beating on the top of the steering wheel, the other tapping on the downbeat against the shifter (which he still insisted on holding with his left hand).

When the song went faster, so did Snape, his hair flying every which way; a consequence of both his own head bobbing up and down to the music and the wind from the cracked window catching it.

“She’s runnin’, I’m flyin’... right behind in the rearview mirror now... Got the fearin’, power steerin’, pistons poppin’, ain’t no stoppin’ nowwwww—”

“PANAMA! Panamaa-a-a-a-ah!”

He wasn’t whipping around the other motorists, but it was a close thing, and Harry felt the urge to lean forward with his head between his knees. The only thing that stopped him was the certainty that such a position would put him in considerably more danger should they careen into the rear end of another car.

It was strange, knowing now that his parents had not only not died in a car accident, but that they likely hadn’t even owned a car to begin with.

Strange in that it did absolutely nothing to discourage or deprogram the fear that by now felt very much a part of himself.

It was as much a preoccupation—a deep fascination—as it was a phobia. Cars were complex, and enormous, and heavy. Sometimes crass and plain and at other times elegant, or even graceful.

Snape’s car was... it was difficult to say.

Plucky. Determined. Put-upon.

Certainly long-suffering, for all of the abuses that Severus heaped upon it.

Harry patted the seat beside him with a bit of sympathy, as if to soothe the steel-framed beast beneath his bottom. As if to say ‘There, there.’

For the Marina’s part, it strained to meet demand; feeling as though it were surging forward, urged on as a thoroughbred beneath the power of a jockey wielding a crop in hand. The combination of the fast, upbeat music and the speed of the car barreling up the M6 was producing something heady. A rush—a desperate tattoo of his heart beating down his ribcage like it wanted to escape the confines of his chest entirely.

For a moment, he almost felt as though if he were to jump out of the car and run alongside it—he’d be traveling seventy miles per hour too. As though through sheer force of adrenaline he could sprint that fast, that eagerly, forward.

In spite of his nerves and his fears, Harry felt himself grinning—not in spite of his terror, but maybe even because of it—and he scooted to the side of the back bench seat to catch the wind coming through the passenger window on his face. The speed was intoxicating. It felt like life itself.

They made it through the remainder of the album like that, until the tape ran out and Snape only was content to suffer for two minutes in silence before he made up his mind that he’d like another.

“There should be one up here on the floor...” Snape peered down and to the left, his black eyes scouring the passenger-side foot space until he seemed satisfied.

“I won’t climb up there,” Harry protested. He may have been feeling gutsy, but should they come to an abrupt stop he’d fly through the windscreen. Harry had only done so earlier in the day to save them both. There was no pressing need at the current moment to stick his neck out in such a way.

Though he looked a bit put-upon, Snape did glance back at him and give a wry twist of his lips. “Calm yourself, I’d not dream of asking you to,” he drawled.

Though he was clearly being sarcastic and uncharitable, Harry didn’t really think the man would have.

From what he’d learned of the wizard in their shared week working in the kitchen, Snape was more safety conscious than he’d appeared at first blush.

“We’ll pull off for a bite and make the rest of the trip after,” the older wizard decided. They were coming up on Newcastle-under-Lyme and were about half-way, but given that they’d been in such a rush to leave, the Marina was, by now, likely low on petrol. 

Pulling off into town, Snape took a slow circuit of the winding roads, apparently scouting for a promising lunch. Once he’d earmarked a likely establishment, he doubled back to a petrol station.

“Up here,” he commanded over his shoulder, patting the seat beside him.

Harry unbuckled himself and scrambled over the seat, having to shove five plastic cases to the floor to make himself space. There, he found his feet kicking a clinking pile of glass bottles.

“It could use a bit of a clean, couldn’t it?”

Snape was peering with languid boredom out the window and watching the attendant in his side mirror with a small frown. “Is that you volunteering?”

Harry nosed at one of the Coke bottles with the worn toe of his trainer. “Coke has sugar in it, right?” He asked, thinking on the tiny slice of health-consciousness that had interrupted his nearly seven years in the Dursley household.

He remembered quite clearly his aunt carping on about how sugary pop was and why she’d not be supplying it in the fridge any longer.

It had been a lie, in any case. The beverage had reappeared by the end of the week, once Dudley had led a campaign of increasingly vitriolic tantrums with the aim of conquering his mother’s concerns over his weight.

“It may,” Snape answered, with a bit of obvious evasion.

“‘Cause sugar attracts bugs.”

“And spiders eat bugs,” Severus observed, his expression glib, “perhaps if you’d be so kind as to lend me your ‘Wheat,’ we may find a mutually beneficial solution.”

Harry’s eyes widened a fraction. “You’d let him stay in the car?”

“Of course not. You could catch the bugs and take them to him.” Snape took a moment to pay the attendant before he pulled away from the pump, whipping the wheel to bring the car into the lane.

Harry did his best not to show that he was clenching his teeth in fear. “Or…” he began, breathing deeply through his nose to quell his nausea, “you could bin the rubbish on the floor—"

“I could do,” Snape shrugged one shoulder with the arm on the wheel. “But that would deprive you of a perfectly simple chore.”

“What—me?”

“You didn’t think you’d be coming to stay without pulling your meager weight, did you?”

Truth be told, Harry hadn’t really considered what it meant to leave Surrey with Snape for the second time. He was too consumed with his relief over not seeing the combined force of his relatives’ sneers upon him as soon as they’d opened the door to number four.

“Because, if you find picking up ten glass bottles to be too great of a task then I could scrounge up a few more line items, I’m sure. I’ll not see you turn into some slothful idler—"

“You… you want me to clean the car?” Harry asked, feeling curiously distant from the conversation. “That… that’s it?”

Snape threw him an annoyed but somehow curious glance, looking a bit bemused. “Are you asking for more?”

“What about the baseboards?” The boy found himself objecting. “And… and the linens?” Harry winced, thinking of the poor state of the porcelain throne in the shack that abutted the back of Spinner’s End. “…the loo?”

The car dipped as Snape nearly seemed to convulse with what appeared to be scarcely contained rage. He corrected course with a dearth of grace, as far as automotive handling was concerned.

“You may help me with potions in the kitchen—”

Harry felt his hopes rise and soar. He enjoyed his time in the kitchen more than anything he’d done in his short life thus far—!

And then his grand aspirations and dreams were dashed with the finishing of Snape’s sentence.

“—for the remainder of the summer.”

Harry blinked at the man, hoping he didn’t appear like a dullard as he did so. “…Oh.”

This time Snape slanted a clearly annoyed glance at him, his lip twisting in a faint sneer. “Well, if my plans for you are so detestable, pray tell what you thought it was you’d be doing holed up with me. Because I’ll not be tolerating any latent slugabed loafer tendencies you may have been hoping to indulge. You may be a southerner by birth and breeding, Potter, but in the north, men are expected to work—"

“Well, what made you think I wasn’t planning to work!?” Harry objected, feeling slighted. Had he not worked? Had he not proven he would? “It’s only… why only until the end of summer? Can’t I do potions with you whenever?” To his horror, his voice had adopted a faint whinge, like he’d heard Dudley do when he was only just winding up for a strop.

The car bore left into a crowded car park for what appeared to be a tourist-trap style café.

When Harry managed to open his eyes again—he’d shut them out of terror, even though Snape had managed the turn with as much gentleness as could have been expected—it was to find himself at the end of a disconcertingly assessing look from his saviour cum captor.

The shocks did little to blunt the rattling of the frame as the tyres ate up the final few feet over rough gravel until they finally came to a full stop.

Even though they were clearly at their destination, Snape made no move to exit, nor did he turn to the door. He crossed his arms over his thin chest and pivoted to face Harry, pinning him with a heavy, expectant stare.

“And precisely what did you expect you’d be doing while school was—"

The man’s eyes lost focus as he paused, his face taking on a shocking pallor. More than looking like he’d seen a ghost, Snape was pale enough to have become one, himself.

“—in session…” he finished, appearing rather faint.

It took him only a moment to recover himself, however.

“Never mind. Don’t answer that,” he commanded, shaking his head so his hair flew in an arc about his shoulders. “Come on, if we don’t put our orders in now, we’ll get beat out by the supper crowd.”

He leapt out of the door like a tightly coiled spring and Harry was left to follow at a more sedate pace, pondering the wizard’s abrupt about face.

When he closed his own door, he realised that Snape was already the entire length of the car park ahead of him and was nearly to the door. Harry had to jog to catch up.

Little was said as they were seated by one of the white-shirted waitstaff, but Harry felt his concern and anxiety mounting with each step.

For one thing, he could read the tension in Snape’s tight shoulders. He’d seemed ill at ease since they had exited the car.

For another... this was the nicest restaurant that Harry had been to with the man. He wasn’t quite sure how he was meant to conduct himself. The first time they’d eaten out together, Snape had been upset when Harry had chosen toast for himself. And the past two times, Snape had taken the initiative in ordering when Mrs. Padiernos had asked for their choices—which was just as well, really, as Harry had never heard of any of the foods that Rice Bowl offered.

Ultimately, Snape must have anticipated the difficulty, as he dictated to Harry the terms of his lunch.

“Something with meat and veg. At the least.”

Harry’s legs kicked and he ducked his head to hide a smile. The relief he felt was almost instantaneous. “’Kay, Severus.”

His finger listed down the fussy paper menu as he tried to find something suitable.

“What’s ‘Kichee?’”

“Kitschy?” Snape asked, “Where are you seeing that on the menu?”

“What’s it mean?”

“Kitschy means something tasteless or tacky but I’ve never heard of food described that way. Show me where you’re seeing that.”

Harry turned the paper around and indicated with his finger. “A ham and cheddar kichee—”

Snape sighed, sounding annoyed as he did so. One of his hands came up to poke his thumb and index finger deeply into his eyes, massaging around the socket. “That’s quiche, Harry. ‘Keesh.’ It’s French.”

“Oh...”

“Quiche is like a savoury pie made with egg for the filling.”

Harry’s eyes widened. He quite liked egg when he was allowed it. “Can I have that?”

Snape seemed to frown for a moment before he shrugged that odd half-shrug he seemed partial to. “It says it has ham and spinach in it, I suppose that fits the rule. You’re to finish it, mind. I’ll not see you take two bites of it and stop eating—”

“I’ll finish it!”

“See that you do.” Snape barked back, having returned his attention to his own menu.

When the server came back, Snape placed their orders, and he even shelled out extra for a second bottle of Coke for Harry.

After the waitstaff left them to their lonesome, an unsettling silence fell over the two, and Harry peered out at the stoic statue that Snape presented from beneath his fringe, feeling wrong-footed.

What now?

His fingers played with the starched white fabric of the tablecloth in front of him.

How had they ended up here? In this fancy café that both of them looked so ill-suited for. Just that morning it had seemed as though they could have gone on forever making potions in Snape’s kitchen, until those two oafs had showed up and changed everything.

Would Snape have even tried to take him back to the Dursleys had they not come to call? Or was it only a matter of time—

“I can almost hear you stewing over there, Potter,” the man across from him snapped, looking ill-at-ease. “Out with it now so it doesn’t spoil this doubtlessly over-priced meal we’re to share.”

Harry winced, thinking how his kichee-thing was going to cost Snape a neat eight quid...

Uncle Vernon had probably never spent so much on Harry.  The price and peril of being an ‘ingrate.’

“What... erm... what if Yax and Wulf are still back at the house—”

“I thought I made that point plain to you—they can’t get in on their own.”

“Well, no... but they could wait for us, right?”

Snape was surveying him with an inscrutable expression. “It’s possible. Many things are possible. But I have reasons to believe it unlikely.”

“What reasons—”

“None that concern you.”

Harry felt his face heating as he tried to quash the glare he could feel himself leveling in Snape’s direction.

‘Fix your face. Fix your face before he fixes it for you, like Uncle Vernon would do—’

“Like that little book—the one with my name in it—didn’t concern me?”

Against all odds, the man actually smirked, seeming genuinely amused. “Precisely like the little book.”

Harry frowned thoughtfully. “Is that like a magic telephone?” He asked, picking up his fork where it lay beside his water glass and playing with the tines with the fingers of his opposite hand.

“Mm. After a fashion,”

There was that damn answer again. Why couldn’t Snape ever just say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ like a normal person?

“Who’s talking on the other end?”

“Never you mind that,” Severus growled. He almost appeared to be sulking, and for some unnamable reason, a blush was rising up in his ears—it was all Harry could really see of the man, as he’d ducked his head even as he evaded the question with his verbal answer.

Harry didn’t get much further with his questions on the subject, as their meals were deposited before them and they each tucked into their provisions.

As it happened, Coke was a syrupy, bubbly concoction, and Harry hated it as soon as he felt the beverage on his tongue. He spent a whole minute after trying to quaff his water to wash down the sickening sweetness that lingered on his tastebuds.

It was, perhaps, his luck that Snape seemed to have a tooth for such a thing, as the older wizard quickly surmised that the drink hadn’t suited Harry whatsoever, and he snatched the bottle back from him to settle next to his own, taking it as a backup for when he finished his first.

The quiche, on the other hand, was magnificent, and Harry had no trouble finishing it as he’d promised.

Snape, for his part, seemed less that satisfied with his fisherman’s pie, and though he finished it, he grumbled under his breath for the duration about how he had been a fool to expect he could get a decent one this far inland.

Harry was just finishing with his flaky crust when he looked across the table to where Snape was spearing peas with his fork.

“Hey—you’re a teacher...”

“I suppose I should be glad that not every fact you gleaned in the past week was lost on you.”

Harry frowned, but ignored Severus’ snide response. He got like that sometimes... it was just best to let it go. He never tried to get even the same way Dudley might have.

Then again, Dudley could never have come up with some of the things Snape would respond with when Harry said something stupid.

Dudley would just get angry, and that always preceded a sporting round of the Harry hunt, which usually ended with his cousin—sat with his fat arse upon Harry’s chest—smacking, hitting, and pinching any part of Harry he could reach.

“Does that mean I’ll be in your class, Severus?” Harry asked. The man had said something about school... and it stood to reason that Harry and Snape would both be occupied come the autumn term. That would neatly explain why he couldn’t make potions with Harry any longer after that...

Harry resolutely refused to consider that perhaps Snape would try, once again, to reunite him with his relatives in a few short weeks.

Snape gave up on his pie with a look of disgust and pushed the dish away from himself. “I... you would be. One day.”

“I will?”

“You... you would.”

Something about the phrasing was planting the seeds of misgiving in Harry’s fertile imagination, but before they could take root into anything that fruited, Harry needed more context. He cautiously ventured a grin.

“That’s good. So it won’t matter that we can’t do potions in the kitchen anymore. Not if I can see you in class... hey, what is it you teach, anyways?”

“Potions... but, Harry—you wouldn’t have had for a professor for a few years yet.”

There was that odd niggle at the back of Harry’s mind again. Something was decidedly off. Snape looked like he was almost embarrassed, and he was making an effort of hiding it, although he wasn’t quite succeeding. If anything, his closed off expression only belied the fact that he was deeply uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken.

“What school will I go to?”

“Rowky Syke Primary School, same as your mother and I attended,” Snape answered.

That response didn’t garner the same strange affectation that the previous two had. Harry almost felt his suspicions ceding ground.

“Rowky Syke teaches potions..?”

Snape hissed at him with a roll of his black eyes, “Don’t be daft!” He snarled, his words hissed under his breath. “Of course it doesn’t. Rowky Syke is a muggle school. The school I teach at requires its entrants to be at least eleven before they begin under our tutelage.”

“Ohhh,” Harry mouthed, his eyes widening. That would be like that school he’d heard of from Uncle Vernon: Smeltings Academy. Though it had been impressed upon Harry that he’d not receive such a premier education. Harry had it on good authority that he, himself, was meant for a state school: Stonewall High.

Snape paid their ticket when it came and they both rose in tandem to start back for the car.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, but for Snape demanding that Harry stay silent so that he could think properly.

Thinking properly apparently involved cranking the volume up as far as it would go on an album by some band called Poison.

Harry had been enjoying his musical education until that point, but found the ringing in his ears that this produced to be a bridge too far. He leaned against the car door, miserable, and tried to block out the sound all the way from the café until they pulled onto the streets that he recognised as belonging to Backbarrow.

He might have considered risking a request that Snape knock it off and turn the dial down a bit, but the man’s grim expression disabused him of any such notions.

With no little dread, Harry gnawed his lip as the car pulled to a stop before the kerb. He peeked out the window, his head ducked down low, to try and survey the skyline above the roof—in case Yax or Wulf were flying low as they’d done when in pursuit.

“They won’t risk coming after you again. Not now,” Snape said, apparently having anticipated Harry’s concerns, or possibly, having divined them from the boy’s cagey behaviour. He made to exit and didn’t wait for Harry to follow.

It took nearly a whole minute before the boy decided that he’d rather be with Snape in the house than alone, sitting like easy prey, in the car.

He sprinted to join the wizard on the stoop where Snape was mumbling to himself over the lock.

Harry had seen the young man work on the complicated spells that barred entry to the house before but hadn’t paid it much mind. It looked, if one wasn’t paying close attention, as though Snape was merely jiggling the key in the ancient lock. In truth, he was incanting a long, complicated-sounding litany of foreign nonsense over the keyhole with his wand.

“What’s that gobbledy-gook mean?” Harry asked, his voice hushed.

Snape paused, his wand poised over the doorknob. “With almost no exceptions that I can imagine, Latin—which I was speaking—and Gobbledy-Gook are completely different languages with no identifiable commonalities.” He finally managed the door and pulled it open, stepping across the threshold in a smooth motion.

Harry was left to noodle over the surprising revelation that such a language could be real when he ran straight into Snape’s back.

“Buggering fu—”

“Ah ah ah, Severus,” began a warm voice in admonition. Harry froze, not daring to look around Snape’s back to see who it was that could possibly have broken into the man’s sitting room. The wizard standing in front of him seemed to be faintly vibrating with anxiety.

“That’s no language to use in front of such young ears.”