“So where are we exactly?” Harry asked, looking about him eagerly in the misty twilight. He didn’t recognise the landscape at all: it was less bleak and craggy than the countryside around Hogwarts, with low, hummocky hills nestled together like green apples in a giant fruit-bowl.

They had Floo-ed from Snape’s office. It must have been a direct flue because Harry hadn’t heard Snape shout any destination. They had emerged, after what seemed a very long journey (though Floo trips could be deceptive) in a dirty, cobwebby grate, littered with hazel twigs and dried bird droppings. The room was unlit and unfurnished. A maroon of panic flared in Harry’s mind as, for an irrational instant, he thought Snape had taken him back to Voldemort’s cellar. He trailed after Snape, out of the empty building - it was a small, single-storey labourer’s cottage, stone-built and thatched, and in a state of total disrepair - and into a grassy field.

Harry wondered where in Merlin’s magic they were, and where they were going.

“That’s not your house, then?” he quipped, hoping to elicit some kind of a response from the Professor. They had not spoken to each other all afternoon. Snape had assented to Dumbledore’s plan with bad grace: a week in the company of Harry Potter was not his idea of a quiet convalescence. His only reply to Harry’s query was a snort of derision.

They crossed the field in silence, the wet grass draggling their trousers. A knot of woolly sheep, their fleeces tinged ginger from rolling on the reddish soil - no need of a Reddleman in this part of the country - stared at them nonchalantly as they approached, holding their ground in mock defiance and, at the last minute, breaking and scattering in manic disarray.

“Where are we going, Sir?” Harry persevered.

“There is a short walk to reach the house,” Snape answered curtly. “I prefer not to use the final grate in the Floo - the house grate,” he elaborated, seeing the confusion on Harry’s face. “In my profession it pays to be…”

Paranoid, thought Harry.

“…cautious.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to Apparate here, Sir?”

Sometimes Harry felt he would never fully grasp the subtle protocols of wizard travel.

“Underage restrictions still apply, Potter, despite you eagerness to disregard them. You may be anxious to flaunt your newly acquired skill, but I doubt if Professor Dumbledore would share your enthusiasm. He has had enough trouble in dissuading the Ministry from pressing charges for your last Apparating escapade.”

Harry bristled. Had Snape forgotten that that last ‘escapade’, as he chose to call it, had saved his life? The memory of the blinding green Curse forked into his mind and for several missing heartbeats he was locked back in the cellar, dragging the unconscious Professor upright, beseeching every unseen Power on the planet to enable them to Apparate away from that death-trap. He could feel again the unresisting, dead weight of the man in his arms… Was it only a week ago? How immeasurably had his life changed in seven days.

Harry hurried to catch up with Snape who had not noticed him lagging behind.

“…geological formation and resultant magnetic distortion,” he was saying, “can make Apparation unreliable.”

Harry prayed that the Professor wasn’t planning to test him on all this later.

From the field they continued into a narrow lane, wide enough for a single vehicle only, and sunken, with bushy hedges rearing up several feet atop already banked verges. After about fifty yards they branched into a side road. Snape stopped and muttered a sequence of passwords.

“My property is protected by boundary spells similar to those at Hogwarts. Once inside you must follow me closely; there are still… ..dangers. Without the password you would not be able to proceed beyond that gateway.”

Harry had not even noticed a gateway. He could have sworn that the verge and hedge continued uninterrupted until they merged into the evening gloom. He suspected that the gate had only become visible after Snape’s incantation. But there it was, indisputably: black, strong, wrought-iron vertical bars, rising in an elegant arc, topped by arrow-head finials. On each half of the gate the initials S D were wrought into the iron-work, entwined as though the very metal had woken briefly to organic life, snaked itself into a living signature and then coiled once more to sleep.

“What does S D stand for, Sir?” Harry had to ask.

“Snape Delaford. That is the name of the village. My house is part of the original Delaford estate.”

This raised a host of new questions. Harry realised, with a shock, that he had never seriously considered Snape’s family background. He would never have imagined that he had an entire village named after him. After a moment’s thought, Harry rationalised that most Death Eaters came from Pureblood families, and most of those were, or at some time had been, fairly affluent. Snape probably lived in a whopping great mansion with turrets and secret passages and reverberating baronial halls.

“Is it a big house, Sir?”

“Snape Manor is large. Too large for my purposes. It has been unoccupied for many years. Too big, too cold, too many…” he checked himself, mid-sentence. Harry was sure he had been about to say ‘memories’, though it could just as easily have been ‘rats’.

“Do not nurture any grandiose expectations, Potter. My house is small and unpretentious. ‘Multum in parvo’, remember that. What it lacks in character, it gains in anonymity - never underestimate the value of anonymity if you want to be left in peace.”

They were passing along a walk of evergreen, small-leaved yew trees, densely planted and clipped into submission. Snape suddenly swung left, through an archway in the dark foliage.

“Snape Cottage,” he announced succinctly.

It was like a bigger, well-maintained version of the derelict building where the Floo had deposited them. The walls were of the same red sandstone, but the roof, instead of a romantic, rustic thatch, was plain tiled. They entered a white-washed, candle-lit passageway with two doors leading off either side. Harry followed Snape into a compact sitting room. An embryonic fire was already glowing in the grate; Snape snapped his fingers and it immediately leaped into flame, casting a fiery sunset into even the dimmest corners. Throwing his cloak over the back of a low, dark armchair near the fire, Snape sank down heavily into it, with something between a cough and a sigh.

Piqued, Harry stood fidgeting with his hands in his pockets. He had expected a guided tour, or at least to be shown to his room, and Snape was all but ignoring him. What was this - more psychological mind games? What mental hoops did he have to jump through now, before the man would condescend to talk to him?

“Sir?” A shade of self-assertion coloured the word.

“What is it now, Potter?”

Having spent the last hour or so traipsing along behind him, Harry had not really seen much of Snape that afternoon except the back of his coat. Now he observed that the Professor looked pale and shattered. He was still not well. Suddenly Dumbledore’s parting words sounded in Harry’s brain as clearly as if he had been in the room with them: ‘Allow yourself to be kind’.

“Can I get you anything, Sir? Do you want some tea, or something?”

There, he’d said it! And his tongue hadn’t shrivelled like an African tribal trophy; he had not been reduced to a quivering gelatinous mass like Porlock trotters in a stockpot.

It was so obvious that Snape’s instinctive reaction was to yell at Harry to go away that he might just as well have said it out loud. But he made the effort to be civil.

“You can pour me a drink, if you want to make yourself useful,” he said, inclining his head to indicate a rosewood tallboy near the window on which there was a chunky decanter and several shot goblets. Harry poured out the entire contents, a generous two fingers, marvelling at the way the thick, unadorned glass of the decanter reflected a shifting kaleidoscope of rainbow light, as though the plain, smooth surface were cut into a million crystal facets. He inhaled the sharp, spicy tang of Firewhisky.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Harry’s first impression was, despite Snape’s warning, one of anticlimax. There was nothing even remotely Gothic about this room. No sinister ancestral portraits glared their disapproval from weighty frames peopled with macabre carved tableaux from the Inferno. There were no pictures or photographs on display at all. No fraying medieval tapestries depicting grotesque scenes of mayhem and torture swayed suspiciously against blood-spattered panelling. The walls were rough-plastered and, like the hallway, simply whitewashed. There was not even a drooling Deerhound sprawled on the hearth.

The room contrived to be both austere and comfortable at the same time. It had a distinctly well-ordered, masculine feel about it: no clutter, no nick-knacks or personal ornaments - unless you count the wizard chess board - no decorative frills. It had a disciplined air of timeless quality and quiet taste. Was this what Snape meant by ‘anonymity’?

It was the very absence of personal possessions that gave the room its identity: it was a clean canvas for its owner. The strength of Snape’s personality was such that he needed no props to fill the space. Every object had a function; there was no gratuitous sentimentality here. It was stark, but saved from sterility by something intangible. Harry sensed it, but for a time it defied identification. Then he realised what it was: the room felt safe.

First impressions of an almost monastic restraint about furnishings and décor were also deceptive. The old oak floorboards were bare, certainly, but polished smooth and waxed to a deep, warm sheen, and overlaid, Harry guessed, with a Quiet Charm to soften the echoing click of boot heels on wood. Near the window there was a basic table and four chairs, also in aged oak, their Shaker simplicity concealing supreme craftsmanship in the impeccable dovetail jointing and symmetry of the grain.

Bookshelves covered the entire end wall. Harry would have liked to scan the titles - he felt a thrill of anticipation at the thought that most, if not all, of those volumes would probably have been classified in the ‘restricted’ section at Hogwarts. Well, Snape was hardly likely to have a collection of Mills & Boon, was he? But Harry was not yet confident about making himself at home - browsing would have to wait.

Dark curtains the colour of the night sky stood out in stark contrast to the pale walls. The fabric was, at first sight, unpatterned and untextured, but out of the corner of his eye (he wasn’t especially looking, fabric not being his scene) Harry detected a movement. Was it just a ripple in the heavy drape, stirred by an unfelt draught, or shadows waltzing in the firelight, or - and now Harry began to look more closely - were there images deep within the material itself, planets, stars, creatures, leaves, their fleeting outlines defined in a second’s altered emphasis of texture amidst the soft folds; they appeared and disappeared in an infinitely random rotation, soundlessly surfacing and sinking like curious fish from the depths of the ocean.

Harry watched, completely mesmerised, until a cough from Snape pulled his attention back to the present. He moved over to the fire and sat down in the other armchair, which immediately moulded itself to support his body, opposite the Professor. The double Firewhisky had both revived and mellowed him.

“If there is anything you require, Potter, you can try to find Quig - but if he’s not around you may be obliged to fend for yourself.”

“Quick?”

“Quig - with a ‘g’. A house elf, of sorts. Woefully inefficient and almost invariably unavailable when you want him.” Snape gave a fairly damning character reference. “He acts as caretaker for this place and also the Manor - pretty much a sinecure as I am rarely in residence. An enthusiastic polisher …” he gestured towards the fanatically shined brass fender, “but his culinary skills are execrable. I hope you can cook?”

The question took Harry by surprise, but he answered with assurance,

“Oh yes, Sir. I’ve had loads of practice.”

“Indeed? With your Muggle family, I presume?”

Harry was unwilling to change the subject to the Dursleys. He was too intrigued at hearing Snape talking for once about something unconnected with Potions or Harry’s own scholastic underachievement. He was also, he had to confess, still pole-axed by the sheer incongruity of the situation: ensconced in Snape’s own home, engaging the Potions master in polite small-talk - it was absurd! He guessed that Snape too was having to work hard at the conversation. Harry tried to manoeuvre the topic back to the unfortunate elf. It seemed odd that Snape would employ anyone with less than outstanding credentials.

“So is Quig your family house elf?” He hoped it was a leading question.

“Indeed. He has been with the Snape family for years. His full name is, I believe, Quigley, but no one ever called him that - except my mother. She acquired him while travelling in the Antipodes, and he has been with us ever since.”

Snape had a mother?

“Quig’s primary interest is in managing the herb garden - he cultivates a number of rare varieties that I require as Potions’ ingredients. He is less competent about his domestic duties.”

Harry nodded, assuming that the topic of the elf was now exhausted, but Snape continued obliquely,

“You may experience some difficulty in locating or summoning him, if he is anywhere other than inside the house. When we were young, we would leave written messages for him. It reached the point where we had a small blackboard in each room for writing up his instructions. It saved us the asinine rigmarole of attempting to communicate orally.”

“I don’t understand, Sir.”

“Quig is deaf. Stone deaf.”

Harry eyed Snape to check that he wasn’t kidding, but he seemed serious enough. This was bizarre. Harry was fascinated to hear more about the story, but he didn’t want to pry. It was extraordinary to hear Snape mentioning his family. Was it just the Firewhisky talking, or had he made a deliberate decision to be more forthcoming? Or was it just that, now he was on his home territory, he could afford to loosen up a little?

“Blackboards don’t sound very magical, Sir.”

“They were not. And intentionally so.” The window of confidence was about to slam shut if Harry pushed too far. It seemed he was not allowed to look through that one.

“But how…?” Harry came at it from a different angle.

“…do you summon Quig now?” Snape completed the sentence for him. “Hand me that container, will you?”

Harry fetched a small onyx urn from the mantelpiece and passed it to the Professor. Removing the lid he took out a pinch of black sand which he flicked expertly into the fire.

“That Floo-flare will cause an eruption of sparks and a not inconsiderable amount of smoke to be produced in whichever room the elf happens to be. It is usually sufficient to attract his attention.”

Snape dusted off his hands fastidiously and returned the urn to Harry.

“Sir, why don’t you just sack him or free him, and get an elf that isn’t so handicapped?”

Incredulity, amusement, disgust and resignation all flickered across Snape’s face.

“And have the inquisitors from the Department of Elf Employment hounding me? You should suggest that to Miss Granger - I’m sure she can cite numerous ministerial decrees to prevent just such a course of action. No, Quig was once of great service to my family. I keep him on in recognition of that.”

A brisk rapping noise sounded behind them. An unimaginably ancient elf was silhouetted in the doorway - he had knocked to announce his presence rather than to request admission.

“He doesn’t speak much either,” Snape added dryly.

The elf nodded a couple of times as though listening to instructions on a frequency beyond Harry’s auditory range. Then he shuffled away, closing the door after him. Harry’s eyes scoured the room for an invisible blackboard. Or had Snape used some form of telepathic communication?

“I sign,” Snape explained simply. “He understands that. And his lip-reading is improving, though you do have to enunciate as though you are in a Curse Casting Competition. He will bring you tea and some food. It may be edible.”

“Aren’t you eating…?” To his surprise, Harry found that he did not want the conversation to end. As long as they avoided controversial subjects they had managed to remain on speaking terms.

“I have things to do. Good night, Potter.”

Snape rose, a little stiffly, and left the room. Harry found it quite endearing that the Professor had not been able to admit that he was tired and was going to bed.

Curling his legs up under him in the armchair which, like everything else in the room, was far more comfortable than it looked, Harry reflected that this week at Snape Cottage promised to be rather interesting.