When Harry awoke, only half an hour had passed, and he did feel a bit stronger. He stood on slightly trembling legs and went into the bathroom for a drink of water.

He turned the spigot and waited for the water to come. Nothing but a hollow gurgle from the faucet. No water! Not a single blasted drop! With a frantic thought he looked to the claw footed bath tub. Surely Snape had left him that. He turned both the hot and cold spigots, but received nothing save for the empty sucking noise that the faucet had given to him moments before. Harry felt his insides squirm coldly. Now what little control he’d been clinging to had been cut off like the valves to his tub and sink.

The toilet still had water running to it. Harry flushed it for the toilet for the third time with a little laugh of disbelief, and watched as the water slowly filled itself once again. He certainly wasn’t going to drink from the toilet, no matter how thirsty he became.

He felt slightly more fatigued now, as if the shift of control had drained what little reserve of strength he had been storing away by sleeping. Harry wandered back to his comfortable bed and settled down to stare at the ceiling for the next few hours.

Harry didn’t bother sitting up when the door to his bedroom opened quietly. He could feel the massive weight of Snape’s critical gaze on him, and he attempted to pretend that he hadn’t noticed it. Without a single word Snape demanded the boy’s full attention, and with a soft groan Harry sat up and leaned up against the wall to listen to whatever the man had to say. He knew that he’d been beaten in more ways than one.

“Feeling better now, Potter? That was quite a fit you threw earlier.”

Harry felt better in a small way, but for the most part he felt altogether lousy. He didn’t acknowledge Snape’s question with an answer.

“I trust that by now, Potter, you’ve realized that defiance will get you nowhere with me.” Snape paused as an evil glint suddenly showed itself in his black eyes. “Is that the reason that the muggle had you locked up in that cupboard, Potter?”

Harry let Snape’s sharp words drift by without acknowledgment. He wasn’t going to let Snape get to him.

“Perhaps it was silly of the Headmaster to worry enough about you to send me to look in on you,” Snape said with a sneer. Snape smiled as Harry’s green eyes sharpened into a fierce glare that Snape knew well. “Could it be, Potter, that you really did deserve to be stuffed into that cage of a room?”

No, I know that I made mistakes, but I never deserved that.

Snape chuckled at the all too obvious anger that was displayed clearly on the boy’s face. “The black eye, the malnourishment. Is that part of the act as well?”

Harry reflexively clenched his fists, but he managed to hold his tongue in check.

Snape pushed even harder now. “Potter, shall I go to the Headmaster and explain that this has all been a terrible misunderstanding? That you are in fact the very cause of your own misery. That the muggles who were kind enough to take you in have been cast in a dark light because of your own actions.”

His body was trembling now, both with equal parts of violent anger and cold fear. Harry was quite sure that he knew what Snape was going to say next.

“Now then, Potter. How shall we go about correcting this rather large misunderstanding? Perhaps a letter of apology to both the Headmaster and your muggle relatives; that would be a more than proper start. Although I don’t know if the muggles will have you back after what you’ve done to them, Potter. Blood ties can only go so far.”

What I’ve done to them! Oh good Lord! Is he bloody serious?!

“I’m not writing any bloody letters of apologies to anyone,” Harry growled softly.

“Would you care to explain why, Potter?” Snape asked.

“I’m not going to apologize for what’s happened to me.”

“Now, Potter,” Snape began in a strange, almost patient tone of voice, “there is no shame in admitting that you did something that was wrong. I know for a fact that those bruises on your body and your weight loss didn’t come about by doing nothing. Someone caused this to happen to you, and if you are indeed innocent as you claim to be then upon whom shall we place the blame?”

Harry opened and then shut his mouth as if he’d intended to say something and then decided he’d better not say anything. Snape clicked his tongue and shook his head as if he were disappointed in a very young child.

“I have given you more than ample time to tell me the truth, and yet you’ve still kept silent. To me, Potter, your silence means only one thing. It means that my assumptions about you are correct and that you are indeed to blame for your own suffering.”

No, I didn’t do any of this to myself! I never wanted to be treated this way!

“If you were doing this to gain more attention then you’ll certainly get it now. Come, Potter, we need to speak to the Headmaster,” Snape said coldly.

Before Harry had realized what was happening Snape had grabbed him firmly by the arm and was roughly dragging the weak boy to his feet.

“Sir, please! I don’t want to speak to Dumbledore!”

Snape abruptly stopped pulling Harry by the arm and carefully steadied the boy by holding his shoulder.

“Potter, unless you tell me the truth we shall speak to the Headmaster, and I will tell him exactly what I think of you.”

Harry nodded; he couldn’t believe that he was going to comply. “My relatives, sometimes they punish me when I upset them,” Harry said in a whisper so soft that Snape had to lean closer to the boy to be certain he heard everything.

“What did you do to upset them, Potter?” Snape urged.

Oh the usual things. Not putting the garden hose in it’s place, doing Hogwarts homework, letting Hedwig hunt for mice outdoors, being born a wizard.

“More than I’d care to recall at the present time, Sir,” Harry answered flatly.

“As punishment they’d lock you in that cupboard and deprive you of food?”

“Yes, but they were upset at me,” Harry murmured, almost wishing he hadn’t said anything.

“The black eye?”

Harry looked away for a moment.

“Is that a normal punishment, Potter?”

Harry shook his head. “No Sir, Uncle Vernon never used to hit me before.”

“Yes, well he should never have started to hit you, Potter.”

“Well, I do have a tendency to make him very angry.”

“Potter, are you actually defending the muggle who’s starved and mistreated you?”

“Professor, they are the only family I’ve ever known, and I know I won’t get another.”

Snape cocked an eyebrow at the boy’s response, but in a way he did understand exactly how the boy felt.

Snape let the boy drop to the floor, like a dirty sock. Harry lay on the floor, and watched in silence as Snape left. He considered getting up to move to his soft bed, but decided against it. For now the floor was soft enough.

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

Harry woke feeling disoriented. He slipped on his glasses and attempted to gain his bearings. His heart plummeted to his toes when he realized where he was. Snape had taken him back home! Back to the Dursley’s!

Harry’s heart gave a jolt as he recognized Vernon’s heavy footfall on the creaking stairs just over his head. The boy was sure that he could hear Vernon’s angry huffs for breath as the big man descended the stairs. He could hear Vernon cursing viciously as he fumbled with the cupboard’s lock.

As Vernon reached into the cupboard Harry let out a strangled yelp and lurched backward into shelves full of rotten peach and apricot preserves that nobody had bothered with while they were still edible. Vernon yanked Harry from the cupboard by his shirt causing the boy to knock several of the mason jars to the floor and they shattered in a sticky mess of old fruit and glass.

The boy began to sputter apologies in a near sob as Vernon held him by the shirt and screamed unintelligible curses at the young man. Harry couldn’t believe that Snape had brought him back here after what Harry had revealed to him.

Harry looked up into his uncle’s unpleasantly red colored face in confusion. His uncle had been screaming at him, that he knew, but he thought that he’d heard someone call his name calmly and clearly. Vernon shook him hard in what felt like an attempt to jar loose what sense Harry felt he had left to him.

He felt his head jerk sharply to the side as Vernon slapped him across the face. There wasn’t really any pain, just the sharp crack of a huge hand impacting against a soft cheek. He’d barely registered what had happened before Vernon gave another forceful blow.

Harry heard the voice as it called his name again. His uncle seemed to be growing angrier with each successive blow he landed and Harry watched with wide, helpless eyes as the man closed his beefy hand to make a fist.

The boy could taste the metallic flavor of blood in his mouth. It seemed that there was too much to spit it all out and Harry choked as Vernon began to laugh.

“Potter! Breathe, blast you boy! Potter, do you hear me!” Harry obeyed the familiar and irritated sounding voice as he gasped for breath.

Harry opened his eyes and felt Snape raising his left arm and hitting him firmly on the back. There was an odd taste in his mouth. Harry could feel his eyes were watering as if he’d been crying, and he was coated with sweat.

He’d been having a nightmare! A bloody nightmare! But he felt all right, even mellow now that he thought about it. That must’ve been what the odd taste in his mouth was from. Snape had been trying to wake him so that he could feed him a calming potion. When Harry hadn’t come to and Snape had force fed him the potion Harry had choked on part of it

“Potter, are you all right?” Snape asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Good, there is still much to discuss between you and I.”