Chapter Text
Snape dumps Harry in his bathroom and demands he clean himself up.
It’s fair, honestly, because Harry’s three different definitions of filthy and he’s pretty sure there are colonies of disease growing in his hair.
“You are deplorable,” Snape had snapped before slamming the door shut.
As if the bathroom isn’t deplorable either. There’s real competition between Harry and this bathroom, actually, for the most disgusting thing to exist. The mirror is gunked with water stains and every inch of every surface seems to have a layer of sink scum and grime caked on from the ages of Arthur. The loo isn’t in any better condition; the lid has a crack running through it and the seat is chipped and it’s got copper-coloured muck growing from the bottom. Harry’s not usually one to judge so harshly, but really? The bathroom? Harry imagines that coming in here would have the opposite effect of what its intended purpose is.
But Harry doesn’t complain. Not out loud anyway. It’s leagues better than the scrabbly bushes Harry had been relieving himself in. Or the dirt he’d used to scrub at his itchy head and sticky feet.
However, there is a pressing concern that makes itself known early on into Harry’s exploration of Snape’s gritty bathroom.
He can’t fucking reach anything.
The countertop is at his head, which means all he can really reach is zilch. He can’t even see himself in the mirror! There’s no sight of a stepping stool anyway, which makes sense, because if Severus Snape is anything, it isn’t a father.
Harry has to kick himself up in a humiliating display just to sit himself on the toilet, grip the edges just to keep from falling in, and then hop down when he’s done. It takes five attempts for the flush to work, which is a little concerning. Then he realises that he can’t very well wash his hands if he can’t reach the sink, but then thinks that, well, he’s already all sorts of filthy and gross, so he wipes his hands on his pants.
Plus, if Snape wants Harry to “wash up” then he probably means a shower, right? Or a bath? Which sounds heavenly, no matter how faded and gummy the shower curtains are, or the... the literaly fucking mold growing from the drain. Eugh. Whatever. Whatever! He can probably just wash his hands in there instead. It sounds like a great plan, really. Auror worthy.
So he strips, and winces when his layers of clothing drop off of him in wet plops; how he’s managed to sweat this much is beyond him. It’s the cardigan that falls past his knees first, then the three t-shirts in various lengths against his thighs, and finally his more-yellow-than-white tank top that, surprise surprise, hangs off of him like a paper bag. He unties the double-looped shoelace around his shorts and steps out of those too, before finally freeing his feet of his mud-wreaked socks.
His toes are pasty and pruned when he finally sees them, days later, and feel cold and numb against the tiled floor. In fact, all of his skin feels off, hidden beneath literal layers of muck. He experimentally scrapes a fingernail over his arm and grimaces when dirt and damp dead skin and god-knows-what-else cakes beneath it.
Padding over to the shower, Harry carefully pulls back the curtains to survey the situation.
Survey assessment; not bloody ideal.
Everything is out of reach. Everything. The stand for the bottles of products are way past his head, and the nozzle too. Fucking hell, as if he were to even be able to move the ancient rusted thing in the first place. What the hell did Snape want him to do, die trying? For reference, he does end up trying. He climbs – literally climbs – into the tub and hops on his useless fucking legs to no avail. He can reach the temperature dial, but it’s either particularly stuck or Harry’s just shit as everything now, because it doesn’t move an inch.
Climbing back out, Harry tries to use the toilet to reach the dial. It sounds like a good plan up until he fucking falls into the damn thing. It’s disgusting and what’s worse is that it takes a good chunk of time, effort, and copious amounts of water sloshing everywhere for Harry to tumble out and back onto the dirty floor.
Frustrated and, more importantly, humiliated beyond comprehension, Harry does the only thing left to do.
“Snape?” He calls out, face burning. Somewhere far away, Lady Luck must be having a right laugh. “Professor?”
His voice rings around the room, but the door doesn’t budge. Harry feels toilet water trail rivulets through his toes and into the flattened mat beneath.
“Professor Snape!” Harry tries again, louder this time, despite the way it hurts his head. “Professor Snape! Professor!”
It occurs to him, then, that the man can very well be ignoring him right now.
No fucking way, Harry fumes. Oh, he’ll give him something to ignore, alright. Bloody fucking bastard. Honestly, he’s reliving the childhood he never got to have; he’d always been so jealous whenever Dudley got to scream at the top of his lungs.
“SNAPE!” He screeches as loud as his body allows, punctuating it by jumping and slamming his heels against the floor. “PROFESSOR SNAPE! SNAPE! SNAPE SNAPE SNAPE–!”
The door slams open so hard the doorknob cracks against the plaster of the wall. Not that it does much damage; the plaster is already peeling from years of abuse.
Snape appears at the entrance, furious once more. He’s scowling, lips pulled back to reveal crooked canines that jut out, almost like a vampire’s. His hand has the doorknob in a white-knuckled grip, shaking alongside the rest of him. His hair is in more disarray than before, if that was even possible. When Harry looks at his face, it’s to see an angry flush plastered unevenly along his cheeks and across his nose, stark against his pale skin.
“Oh!” Harry abruptly cuts off his next shout, suddenly immeasurably pleased. “I thought you were ignoring me.”
“I was,” Snape glowers.
“Well, that’s fucked,” Harry huffs, crossing his arms. It’s at that very moment that he realises that his chest is bare, probably as bare as the rest of him. Face flaming, Harry hastily snatches one of the many shirts on the ground and clutches it close. When he dares to look back up, Snape’s eyes glimmer with unsolicited gloating.
“I can’t reach anything!” Harry yells a decibel or two too loud, though it comes out as more of a squawk. Snape’s crooked grin widens. “Everything is too high – that stupid turny-thing is stuck too! This bathroom sucks!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Potter,” Snape drawls, leaning against the entrance and crossing his arms, “that the state of my accommodations do not meet your expectations.”
“Fuck that!” Harry brandishes a finger at the smug man. “This place is a biohazard!”
“I’m surprised you even know what that means.”
“I’m not four!” Harry fumes. If it weren’t for his sliver of dignity clutched in his hands, he’d have thrown his shirt right at Snape’s stupid smirk.
“What would you have me do then?” Snape raises a brow at him, condescension dripping from his tone.
“I–...” Harry pauses, frowning. He hadn’t actually thought that far. “I don’t know!”
“Very short-sighted of you, Potter.”
“Can’t you, y’know…” He waves an arm around in an imitation of waving a wand. “Clean me up like that?”
“I could,” Snape drawls, inspecting his own hand like there’s anything interesting on it. Then he turns to Harry, something decidedly very malicious swirling excitedly in his eyes. “It would hurt.”
Harry purses his lips instead of pouting and glares back.
“Can you fill the bath at least?” Harry spits through gritted teeth. “Please.”
Snape considers him for a long moment.
“You are the filthiest creature I have ever encountered, and that is taking into account newly moulded trolls and human-sized dung beetles.”
“Yeah yeah, I get it, I stink. Can you fill the tub or not?”
“When was the last time you bathed?” Snape continues as if Harry never spoke. “A week ago? Such carelessness. Such foolish behavior fit for a child of your standing, without the supervision of a superior.”
Harry clenches his jaw and grinds his teeth and refrains from kicking his stupid ass professor where the sun doesn't shine.
“This is unpragmatic,” he goes on without a hitch, nodding to himself. “Completely unsatisfactory.”
Your house is unsatisfactory, Harry doesn’t say by a very small margin.
“Can you fill the tub, sir?” Harry grits out. His ass has been bare for far longer than what is probably appropriate for a pre-shower degradation ritual.
“I shall return you to your caretakers,” Snape announces suddenly, drawing himself from the wall and straightening up. Harry has never really appreciated how tall the man is, looming in his layers of black drapes and a scowl that could have nightmares shaking in their boots. “Yes, that is the only appropriate measure for the situation. Highly acceptable.”
“Highly what?!” Harry shrieks. Snape’s fragile illusion of sanity shatters when Harry really does go through and kick the man. He’s too short for the groin, but his shins will do, even if it’s Harry’s sensitive toes that smart up. “Are you serious?”
“Immensely,” Snape sneers, side-stepping Harry’s next kick. “You have guardians. Go back and live with them. I have no idea what you had hoped to accomplish coming here.”
“I had hoped to accomplish literally anything else!” Harry snaps back. “Don’t you want to fix things? I want to fix things! Everything!”
“And you’ve been so successful so far.”
“Says you!” Harry snarls. Then, it’s as if a lightbulb goes off in his head, for his anger vanishes and is replaced by a surge of determination. “But that’s okay! Because I’m here now and we can start! If you think about it, we’re actually ahead of the game! I hadn’t even known about magic at four. Five? It doesn’t matter, though, because no one will see us coming!”
“Potter…” Snape says slowly, eyeing him up and down. “Did you fall in the toilet?”
Harry feels fire lick at his face, and he’s sure he’s redder than a tomatoe.
“Why would you… no, why would you even say that.”
Harry regrettably follows Snape’s line of sight to the water sloshed up all around the toilet, and small wet footprints seemingly stumblung around before leading right to where Harry’s standing, thoroughly soaked from the waist down.
“This is most unfortunate,” Snape laments, smiling eerily, like he’s won the lottery and is trying to boast about it without saying it aloud. “Clearly I am unsuited to look after–”
“Oh my god,” Harry gawks, pointing an accusing finger at the man and shouting, “you’re trying to get rid of me!”
Snape’s smile falls from his face so fast it almost gives Harry whiplash.
“Whatever gave me away,” he says, deadpan.
“You can’t!” Harry cries. “Did you not hear anything I just said? We need to start–”
“We need not do anything,” Snape interrupts, and finally moves from the entrance of the bathroom. Harry watches him as he vanishes the toilet water with a wave of his hand on the way to the tub. When he gets there, he assesses Harry’s stinking pile of clothes, the bathtub that’s two knocks away from crumbling to dust, and then to Harry himself, clutching his oversizes shirt to cover all his important bits.
“Come along, you bothersome whelp,” Snape sighs, twirling around with a swish of his garbs and stalking out of the bathroom. Harry hastily pulls his shirt over his head (grimacing when the feel of hardened sweat and caked street gunk scrape against his skin) before scrambling after the man.
They move through the living room toward the entrance, where the stairs Harry had tried to explore sit hidden at an obscure angle. Snape ascends them and doesn’t bother feeling sorry for the fact that Harry has to climb them one foot at a time because his balance is shit and he’s also four fucking years old.
The hallway upstairs is just how Snape, and by proxy Harry, remembers it; a short corridor that ends in a door leading to the main bedroom. It used to belong to Tobias. Harry wonders if Snape sleeps in there.
To the right are two doors, once of which is another bedroom, though it resembles a storage cupboard more than anything. Snape stops at the second door, which leads to–
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking with me,” Harry groans.
It’s a better bathroom. Cleaner for one, though the main thing that stands out is the fact that nothing’s broken or in a state of disrepair. Sure, the mirror is a little foggy with water stains, but the floor is clean and the carpet isn’t competing for the top spot as the most contaminated rug this side of Europe. It even smells kind of pleasant, like faded vanilla and generic cleaning supplies.
“You’re a right git, y’know that?” Harry grumbles. Uncharacteristically, Snape’s mouth quirks into a grin. Honestly, it’s like tormenting people is the highlight of his career.
“Do you or do you not want to utilise a facility with consistent water plumbing?”
“Wait, are you for real?” Harry frowns up at the man. “What the hell was I supposed to do downstairs then?”
In full seriousness, Snape responds, “get discouraged and go away.”
Everything is still out of reach, but maybe Snape’s hoping that by acting amenable, Harry will follow suit and let the man send him away. Tough shit for him. Harry’s not going anywhere. He’s here to stay. But he doesn’t say any of this out loud. Let Snape play the fool and fill the bathtub with… warm water? Oh… that’s… that’s nice.
Snape fills the tub, pours in some kind of liquid, though Harry can’t figure out the blurry writing from so far away. He hopes it’s not some skin-eating potion that will turn him into sludge. Then Snape summons a towel with another wave of his hand, settles it on the toilet lid that also closes upon his silent command, and then finally turns to Harry.
He watches him for a long moment, and Harry lets him. Honestly, he can’t seem to get enough of looking at the professor either. There’s just something so surreal about this whole thing. And Harry can’t help but drink it up at every opportunity. Snape’s hair has flattened somewhat since their argument, and now sits in polite tufts that end just past his ear, at most. It looks strange, but suits him, Harry thinks, in a foreign way. Maybe Harry’s just been put off by long hair because he’s seen how it cascades in sweat-clumped locks on the floor, where Harry can’t tell where the blood is because everything is so dark.
Eventually, Snape seems to come back to himself. He gestures for Harry to get in the tub.
“You aren’t watching, are you?” Harry calls over his shoulder, but doesn’t hesitate to strip off his nasty shirt and climb past the lip of the tub and into the heavenly warm water. It feels so bloody nice, and he dunks his head in and watches the brown residue from his disgusting hair disappear before it can contaminate the rest of the bath.
“I would rather die.”
Harry fully expects Snape to leave at this point. Harry’s not sure how well he’ll be able to wash himself, because his hands seem to be running through honey everytime he tries to do something, like his motorskills are also shot to shit, which would suck if that’s the case. But he’s pretty sure he can make some decent progress. Hopefully.
Or, as it quickly becomes apparent, he won’t have to hope at all.
Because instead of leaving Harry to his demise – the demise in question being a comfortably warm bath full of something that’s making him very sleepy, so unfair – Snape starts shedding his own robes.
Robes is a generous word for the drapes he’s wearing. They’re long and flow off of his body like… well, like drapes without a distinguishable shape. They make him look bigger than he is, as Harry comes to realise, because when Snape slips them off and hangs them at the back of the door he looks…
Not smaller. The man is anything but small. But… more approachable. More human.
Harry can see the appeal in wearing the drapes.
Snape goes through the motion of disrobing, and then he’s rolling up his sleeves and– and–...
The Dark Mark sits like a brand on Snape's forearm. Darker than any ink, it seems to exist inside the man’s skin, like a living parasite. There’s dark dark magic there, digging into flesh and bone and melding with Snape’s very core. It’s so… evil. So fucking evil. And it sits there, unmoving, faded by time and loss of connection, but it sits there, present and accountable. Harry can’t stop staring. And Snape… Snape lets him.
A skull with a serpent for a tongue. How eerie. How strange. Harry offhandedly wonders where Voldemort had gotten the inspiration from. Death Eater, except it’s Death that’s eating, and spitting out snakes. Liars. Deceivers. Followers of a madman. Had Voldemort wanted to be feared like he had? Had that been the goal? What had been the point? What is the point? Harry has never seen the appeal in dying, despite the irony. It’s terrible and is only good for hurting. And Harry hates hurting. He hates Voldemort.
Harry hates the Dark Mark.
But Harry doesn’t hate…
Snape eventually moves. He reaches for one of the bottles with one hand while running his other through the opaque bath water. Harry watches the tattoo, the Dark Mark, as it moves like living flesh, so unlike any other tattoo. So sinister and binding. So evil.
Snape squeezes a generous dollop of shampoo into his wet palm, lathers it, and then reaches for Harry. He moves slowly, keeping the Mark in sight, and Harry has to wonder why. The man can’t be stupid. He knows what it represents. In their first life, Harry had never even seen it.
Until death, Snape had kept it concealed behind layers of long sleeves that cuffed past his wrists. He’d always worn layers. A high-neck. It’s strange now, seeing the long, unmarred expanse of Snape’s forearms, the flesh pale and skin wrapped around feathering muscles, the chords of veins beneath the soft skin of his wrist. It’s the most Harry’s seen of Snape. That, and then the Mark.
Now he keeps his shirt folded at his pointy elbows, hands slathered with soapy shampoo, and he’s reaching for Harry’s head, and somewhere in the back of Harry’s mind he wonders if this is all a dream. An illusion. If he really died out there in the Forbidden Forest and never woke up.
If that’s the case, he doesn’t want to wake up.
Snape’s fingers are long and coarse where they rub at Harry’s hair. His two hands can practically encompass his whole head, and they make efficient work of rubbing away at a week (two weeks?) worth of build-up. Harry can see trickles of browning soap trail down his shoulders when Snape rinses it with a wave of his wand, and then in the next moment, his hands return with the sensation of cool shampoo in his hair. Rubbing at his scalp. Pushing his locks to and fro, methodological, almost surgical.
Exceedling gentle.
Harry doesn’t even realise he’s floating away until his eyes close. Until the fuzzy edges of his vision become black and all he can feel are fingers in his hair, a warmth encompassing him on all sides, way better than a stuffy cupboard or nasty overturned bin. He’s so far away, so high up in his head, where nothing can reach him, where reality doesn’t exist beyond his hair being washed and shoulders being smoothed over by soapy hands and water sinking into his skin.
“What you put in this?” He slurs, head lolling forward. A large palm cradles it this time, and Harry doesn’t drown. “Unfair.”
“Life is unfair,” Snape says. He sounds ragged. He sounds so distant. So far away. Everything is far away. The palm on his head doesn’t move. Harry’s sure his hair must be clean by now.
Harry drifts, content, and he doesn’t watch as Snape ducks his head, forehead resting on the porcelain of the tub, hands encirling Harry’s head to keep him afloat.
Harry stares at the clothes.
The clothes (he assumes) stare back.
It’s extremely obvious that these are some of Snape’s clothes simply shrunken to his proportions, but seriously, did the man not own any colour? The entire attire is black and grey, and it’s entirely depressing because Harry rather likes dressing in colours. Reds and yellows, preferably, but that can’t be helped. He’s rather fond of blue, too, if it helps his case.
But it’s all black. And grey, if Harry’s being generous to the threadbarren sweatpants folded neatly beside the equally tiny black t-shirt. The only indication of personality being the faded print of swooping letters at the back, perhaps a cool print at one point.
And the clothes themselves… god, they’re so small. Harry’s not that small. He can’t imagine himself ever being small enough to fit into something like this. He hadn’t been the burliest chap, but for Salazaar’s sake, this is just humiliating. Harry almost prefers Dudley’s old clothes because at least they give Harry a larger-than-life appearance. Right?
…oh god, Dudley’s clothes. His pockets… his possessions! His pictures! How could he be so stupid!
The colour of his clothes are the least of his concern as he shoves them over his head. He doesn’t ponder over how it feels kind of nice having clothes that fit like. He doesn’t remark on the fact that the sweatpants are a bit too long, or the shirt’s neck pinches in a way he doesn’t like. He’s racing out of the room and down the stairs where Snape disappeared after wordlessly offering said clothes. He almost trips on the rickety fourth step. He nearly pancakes himself at the bend when he slips over his own feet. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because–
Harry crashes headlong into Snape’s absurdly long and solid leg with a loud oomph!
Pinwheeling his arms, Harry falls back hard on his bum and rubs at his smarting forhead. He cranes his head up to meet Snape’s unimpressed stare. Behind the man, Harry’s old clothes float in a ball of biohazardous fabric.
“Wait!” Harry pleads, scrambling to his feet (after two failed attempts, but no one’s counting). “Wait!”
“A please wouldn’t be remiss,” Snape sneers. His eyes flick over Harry, and linger on the pant legs that drag along past his heels. With a flick of his wrist, they shrink further until Harry no longer has to hold them up.
“Please,” Harry drawls, lowering his voice to an absurd octave. Snape’s eyes narrow.
“You are the furthest thing from entertaining. Or accurate.”
Harry snickers, then remembers why he’d nearly flattened his newly-scrubbed skull for in the first place, and goes back to his begging.
“Snape, sir, wait! I have stuff in my pockets.” He points to the ball of clothes that look ten times more wretched now that Harry sees them from afar. He wore that shit? Eugh…
“Stuff,” Snape repeats slowly, like Harry’s stupid.
“Yes,” Harry sniffs, crossing his arms and trying to seem taller than three fucking feet. “I’d like them back. Sir.”
“Just as well,” Snape sighs, like he’s doing some back-breaking charity work by returning Harry his own things. He turns to assess the pile of decrepit clothes before physically sorting through them, long fingers rummaging through the many pockets and pulling out Harry’s various trinkets. “Since you will be returning to your relatives shortly.”
“Ha ha,” Harry says, “very fucking funny.”
“I’d chide you for your filthy mouth, but I shall leave that to your minders.”
“Sucks that I’m not with my minders. Or going to them.” Harry steamrolls ahead. “Or staying with them. I’ll come back. I’ll keep coming back over and over.”
“With your whopping twenty-seven pounds?” Snape asks, voice lilting as he holds up Harry’s remaining crumpled bills. “How economical.”
“I’ll walk.”
“You will perish.”
“Perish,” Harry mocks. He dodges the pen thrown his way.
“Insolent brat.” Some more rummaging. Honestly, Harry had kind of forgotten how many of his pockets he’d spaced out his stuff in. He hadn’t wanted to risk putting it all in one place, afterall. Snape’s fingers withdrew with a wad of polaroids, the edges faded yellow with time. He glances at them, and then does a double-take. Suddenly, he seems to forget Harry even exists. The bundle of clothes falls to the floor, and time itself seems to hold her breath.
Harry doesn’t say a word.
It’s a novel experience, watching Snape go through these precious few memories. The ones Harry had salvaged were mostly the ones with Snape in them, holding hands with his mother without much care in the world. He’d liked those ones the best anyway. And apparently, so does Snape.
It might’ve been strange, in another life, letting Snape have this moment. He’d fancied his mother, after all, years after her marriage and Harry’s own birth. Perhaps, in another life, Harry might have been disgusted. Or alarmed. Or weirded out. In another life where the world doesn’t end and his life isn’t hooked to a fishing line and thrown to sea, with Snape clutching at the rails and making sure he doesn’t get eaten alive.
In this life, Harry is tired, and doesn’t care.
Snape doesn’t even get through half the photos before silently handing them back to Harry.
(It seems this new life has done much the same to him too.)
“I would advise you keep those out of sight,” Snape says. The pile of clothes floats back up and compresses into a ball once more. He turns away and begins walking to the strange door beside the kitchen. “Petunia is a jealous woman.”
“She burned these in my last life,” Harry notes, ignoring everything else.
He doesn’t look at the pictures before stuffing them in his new sweatpant pockets, deep enough that his whole wrist disappears too. “Hey, where’s the paper with the address?”
“I’m disposing of it.”
“Whatever,” Harry sneers. “I’ve got your address memorised. You git. I’ll come back.”
Snape glares at Harry over his shoulder, and it’s of a vicious quality, dark and raging, and Harry has half a mind to watch out for flying books again. This does nothing to dissuade him from following behind the man.
“You will not.”
“I will,” Harry insists, squeezing through the door before Snape can close it in his face. Before them is a short wooden staircase that looks to be as old as Hogwarts herself, and a single orange lightbulb that casts long eerie shadows into the depths below. “I’ll keep coming back until you get it in your head that I’m staying.”
Snape doesn’t bother saying anything as he glides down the precarious steps. Harry follows at a much slower, much safer pace. The last step ends at stone flooring that reminds Harry of the dungeons at Hogwarts. The walls are a mix of wooden beams and solid stone bricks stacked upon each other like a medival castle. Overhead, lanterns illuminate the room in a dull glow similar to the Potions classroom, except without the aid of the natural sun to ease the stuffiness.
Lined against the far wall is a massive shelf with countless bottles of ingredients lined to near perfection, as if Snape has never even touched them. To the side is a long table with huge burners sitting beneath, and over a dozen cauldrons of different shapes and sizes sit in various states of use. There are two being actively brewed in, sitting at the centre table with bellowing flames, one blue and one red, warming them. One hosts a lavender potion with bubbles like it’s hardly thicker than water; the other is thick like sludge with an alarming dark green yellow-green that reminds Harry of the unfortunate flobber-worm-egg incident.
There are two other doors opposite to each other, one of which Snape vanishes behind before Harry can follow him. They might be storage rooms. Who knew a small thumbnail house like this could have a basement this size? It’s not grand by any means, but it can really count as a whole floor and not just a dusty cellar like Harry’d been expecting.
Snape returns from the mysterious room a moment later.
“What’s in there?” Harry quips.
“The furnace,” Snape answers curtly. Apparently he’s still mad at him for whatever reason. “Do not fret. You shall be well acquainted soon enough.”
“We have things to do!” Harry exclaims, following Snape back up the stairs as the man sidesteps him. He wouldn’t put it past the man to lock Harry in this hot-ass basement as penance. Or maybe he wouldn’t? There are a lot of valuable potions stuff in here, surely, and Harry sucks at Potions. Not the best combo to incite.
Thankfully Snape doesn’t bother closing the door as he briskly makes his way into the house again. Instead, he grabs a long cloak from the hanging wrack by the front door, and fucking hell, Harry can’t let him do that.
“Stop it!” He complains, grabbing fistfulls of Snape’s cloak and throwing his body backward. Unprepared for the full force of Harry’s dead weight, Snape stumbles back. “Did you not hear me? I said we have–”
“We have nothing to do!” Snape barks back, grabbing Harry by the back of the neck and dragging him away. Harry snatches at his wrist before he can take it back. “You are nothing but a decrepit burden and waste of my time! You will do nothing but hinder me! Go rot away in your home like a mindless animal, for all I care.”
“No!” Harry clutches at Snape’s arm harder. “Stop. Being. An. Ass! I’m here to help you!”
“You are certainly NOT HELPING!”
Snape shakes his arm some more, but Harry is embracing his inner barnacle, and refuses to let go even if his brain is rattling inside his skull like a maraca.
“I’ll come back,” Harry yells. He grabs more of the fabric around Snape’s arm and pulls and pulls and pulls. “I’ll keep coming back. I’ll walk if I have to. I’ll just keep running away and finding you, and if I die then you fail again and maybe we restart. But then you’d have to kill yourself. And that’s just sad.”
He’s babbling, he knows. But he can’t leave. Not now. Not when they’re both here and they can start saving the world before anything bad ever happens. Privet Drive will never go up in flames. Hogwarts won’t fall into the lake like a broken lego castle. His friends will live to see nineteen. He’ll never have to see anyone die in a shack ever again.
Snape finally stops trying to pull Harry off, and instead switches their little tug-of-war. Large hands clasp Harry’s head, and his fingers meet at the back because Harry’s four years old and small enough to do so, which is so fucked. He holds Harry’s head tightly, and Harry, in some convoluted sense, kind of likes it. Being pressed in. Being held firmly while Snape sinks to sit on his haunches.
He looks haunted. He looks angry. He looks like he can’t decide between the two and it’s making both worse.
“You idiot boy,” he hisses, shaking Harry’s head like he’s trying to shake some sense into him. “You cannot do anything. You are four. You. Are. Useless.” Snape punctuates each word with a shake of Harry’s head. This close, Harry can make out the blue veins at his tempes, and the way Snape’s shorter hair means it sticks out in odd angles at the back. His eyes are wide and dark and so very much alive.
“I was,” Harry whispers. Any louder and he’s sure he’ll vanish on the spot. “I was so useless. Do you know what happened?”
“Of course I know,” Snape grits his teeth, and his canines flash, and he really does look like a vampire. “You let everyone down.”
“I did,” Harry admits. He’s glad they’re on the same page now. “And I can’t do it again. I need you to help me, sir.”
“You are the problem, Potter,” Snape’s gaze is imploring, tearing him apart and seeing the ugly festering rot beneath. The root of where everything went wrong. The crux of it all. “You had to die.”
“I know,” Harry swallows thickly. Snape’s fingers are dug firmly in his hair, braced against his skull like brackets. Trapping his brain inside and refusing to let it float away. “I–...”
“Shut up,” Snape hisses, shaking his head again. Gentler, this time, or maybe without as much force. He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept in days. If his reawakening had been anything like Harry’s, he probably didn’t. “Just shut up, you stupid boy. Shut up.”
“I remember it,” Harry decidedly does not shut up. “I remember all of it. You’re the–”
“Do not,” Snape rasps. “Don’t you dare.”
“You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known.”
The hands around his face leave so abruptly it has Harry reeling. He watches Snape stand up in a flurry, something wild and angry in his eyes as he runs those long fingers through his own hair, gripping it hard enough that it looks like it hurts.
“Shut up!” Snape practically screeches. His eyes dart around Harry, as if it hurts to look at him, but he can’t look away, compelled to return every single time. “You’re a naive fool, Potter. A stupid blind fool who survived. I never wanted you to survive.” Snape’s eyes widen, and he pins Harry with an imploring look. “I never wanted to save you. I never cared for you.”
“I know.”
“I owed a debt.”
“I know.”
“If I could, I would kill you. In a heartbeat,” Snape looms over him, eyes wild, hands twitching at his sides. “Without hesitation.”
Harry sighs.
“But you can’t.”
“But,” Snape spits through gritted teeth. “I. Can’t.”
Harry glances down at his toes. They’re flushed pink from sitting in the bath tub for so long; the water hadn’t cooled by a fraction. Now his toes are a healthy pink instead of pasty white, and his sweatpants cuff around his ankles and don’t drag against the floor, which is a novelty, because who even knew this was a thing? His t-shirt hugs him the way a fitted shirt is supposed to, sized right with sleeves that end at his elbow. Outside the summer heat blazes, but Harry feels warm for entirely different reasons.
Harry is warm because Snape, above all else, is a sorry fucking liar, and so honest it hurts.
Oh, Harry believes him alright. He believes that given the opportunity, Snape would snap Harry’s neck with his bare hands. Because that’s what he does. He stuffs his hands in the dirty work and lets everyone else take the credit. He’d kill Harry to kill Voldemort, if it weren’t for his vow, and he’d do it despite everything else. Despite losing the last piece of Lily, the only person he’d ever cared for, even after death. Because he’s like that.
Because Harry knows. He knows. He remembers. The worst day of his life is up for grabs by countless memories, but a shiner pops in every now and then, reminding Harry that it could have always been worse. Hermione had trumped Luna. Ron trumped Hermione. Neville had trumped them both, as off as it sounds.
Snape had occupied his brain like a leech until the end of his days.
And he’s here now. Not Hermione. Not Ron. It’s Severus Snape that’s tearing at his hair and gnashing his teeth and painting himself in vivid shades of cruelty, as if he’s the worst human being on earth. As if Harry doesn’t know that without him, he wouldn’t be alive. He wouldn’t even be here. The Boy Who Lived. How do you tell a man that he gave Harry’s life meaning? A purpose?
But he doesn’t say all that. Snape might shove whole flobber worms down his throat.
Instead, he asks:
“Can I stay?”
And Snape looks at Harry like he’s the ball at the end of his chained ankle.
Snape leaves the house anyway. He accomplishes this by hitting Harry with a sticking charm and hooking him against the wall like one of his cloaks. It’s undignifying, and worse, Harry can do nothing but dangle like some velcro-strapped baby while Snape looks over him and does a very poor job of covering up his self-satisfaction.
Asshole.
“I will return shortly, Potter,” he says with a casual air, as if Harry isn’t stuck to his wall like some bug trapped in duct tape. “Try not to wander.”
“Asshole!” Harry yells for real. His squirming is as futile as it had been for the past two minutes. “Let me down!”
“So you may wreak havoc in my home–”
“More like a stinkin’ junkyard.”
“–if so then you are sorely mistaken,” Snape glares at Harry, now high enough on the wall that all he has to do is tilt his head the tiniest bit. “You will remain… appropriately restrained as such.”
“No!”
“I think you severely misjudge who is in control of the situation, you brat.”
“This has got to be illegal,” Harry wriggles around again to no avail. It’s not like it’s his clothes that are stuck to the wall; it feels like all of him, his entire back and shirt and everything in between are all attached to the wall with gorilla glue. He can’t move an inch.
“You are illegal,” Snape sniffs, pulling his coat on.
“Are you serious?” Harry points an accusing finger at the man. “You’re not a four year old!”
“Most fortunate,” Snape mumbles, buttoning up his wrist clasps despite the withering summer heat. “I do think I would do a remarkably better job than whatever you’ve accomplished so far.”
“That’s so unfair,” Harry does not whine. “You can’t take me back.”
“I can do whatever I so desire.”
“You can’t.”
“I regret that I cannot cast you into the furnace, yes.”
Harry kicks out his leg rather pitifully, because he’s currently full of self-pity.
“Can I get down now?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“I promise not to cause trouble,” Harry does his best impression of an innocent little kid, but he’s thirteen years out of practice and he probably looks constipated, judging by Snape’s disgusted expression. “Actually,” he brightens considerably, “can I come with you?”
Snape’s disgust, if possible, curdles further.
“Absolutey not.”
“Come on,” Harry kicks his legs again. “There’s nothing to do in this house!”
“May I remind you,” Snape seethes, “that you refuse to leave me alone.”
Harry grins at that, because yes, this is very much true.
“So I can come?”
Snape looks him up and down, his features smoothing to cool indifference, and says, “no.”
And then he’s gone.
Fortunately, the moment the front door slams shut (this man seriously needs to chill out; his door hinges are probably crying) Harry feels the effects of the sticking spell dissipate. He plops on the ground in an undignified heap, and curses Snape’s treacherous conniving backside.
“Stupid git,” Harry mutters, brushing off the dust from his sweatpants. It takes a few swipes, actually, because there’s just so much damn dust everywhere. Seriously, how does Snape live like this? Harry’s cupboard back in Little Whinging is better sanitised than this.
He could make himself useful. He knows where most of the cleaning supplies are. But when Harry’s brain isn’t fuzzy, cleaning kind of sucks ass. And he’s done plenty of floating for today.
So like any reasonable and responsible almost-adult gone back in time, he starts snooping.
And like any smart and mature and respectful-of-people’s-personal-space individual, he immediately makes a beeline for Snape’s room.
To be fair, it’s not like there’s much Snape can hide from him. Harry’s got the man’s most crucial (and some non-instrumental) memories running around in his brain. He doubts anything will top off Snape’s guilt over handing over the prophecy. Or calling his mother a slur. Or, well, a great number of other things. Like Tobias. Like Harry himself.
So, really, it’s probably well within Harry’s rights, or something. A legal loophole in which Harry can claim that, technically, he knows Snape better than anyone else, probably better than himself, and because of that he is practically Severus Snape. And so his room is fair game.
Put him in the Investiagtive Auror Department already.
Snape’s room is the one at the end of the short hallway, with the door pressed firmly shut. And, upon turning the knob, unwarded too. Ha, what kind of right moron doesn’t ward their own room? Snape’s practically begging for Harry to wander inside.
It’s… surprisingly plain in here. A simple bed with faded navy sheets, all neatly folded. Two sunken pillows that are probably as useful as placebo. Curtains that match those of the living room – moth-bitten and yellow with age – are drawn heavily over the single window beside the bed. There’s a dresser in here, and a small side-table, and a slim door that’s probably a step-in closet, and pretty much nothing personal.
What a snooze-fest.
Harry goes digging into the dresser anyway. He finds muggle clothing – guess the colour scheme and win ten galleons – and he finds… more muggle clothing. He also finds socks, which for some reason has his brain stuttering to a halt. Which is stupid, because realistically he knows Snape wears socks. He wears shoes. Of course the man wears socks. Harry just can’t seem to wrap his brain around it though.
He tucks a rolled up pair into his pocket, ignoring the obvious bulge it creates, because he can.
The side-table is marginably more intersting. There are three journals and a few books stacked on there, all Potions related, though the third journal is written in such a heavily angled scrawl that Harry can’t read a word of it. He skims through it anyway, noticing the dates written in the margins. Maybe this is Snape’s way of recalling the past? Writing all the important incidents down? Harry will have to ask later, because he’s got his own anecdotes to add, if that’s the case.
Something intersting finally pops up when Harry opens the small drawer beneath the sidetable-top. It takes a few budges, because it’s crooked and stuck somewhere, but eventually Harry pries it open. He goes on his tiptoes to peer inside.
What he finds are letters.
Unsigned, all of them, and stacked as if thrown in here without a thought. There’s probably two dozen or so in here, all written on various different pieces of parchment, some even on muggle paper, and folded tightly and then hidden away.
Unable to help himself, Harry reaches for them.
Headmaster, the first one he opens begins. The writing is neat and orderly. It’s not dated. I request an urgent–
And then it stops there. The rest of the sheet is blank.
He folds it back up, and opens another one. It’s not addressed to anyone. The writing is messier.
I have detailed the situation to the best of my ability, but there is still much that remains a mystery. It won’t bode well to address these happenings with anything but utmost caution.
However, I find myself at a loss. I have scoured every resource at my disposal but nothing has proven useful. None of the texts speak of resurrection of this magnitude. My own memory of the events prior to resuscitation are corrupted and thus inadmissible. It should be noted that, as of right now, I alone experience this unfounded phenomenon.
It would surely benefit to have your–
And then there are splatters of ink, as if Snape had held his quill over this parchment for a moment, thinking, before folding it away.
Dear– The next one starts. The word has been crossed out with a single, bold line. Knowing that higher powers have put me in this position, I curse them for not pushing me back even further. I would have been glad of the opportunity to escape your shackles. Was one lifetime of servitude not enough for you? Is this your doing? Were you not satisfied with my hand in what had transpired?
I return, but not soon enough to make any difference. I do not understand what it is you want. You were the fool that went and died. You are unfathomably selfish. I miss you.
The last three words are crossed out.
The next letter is a detailed description of Snape’s death. Harry can’t bring himself to read it.
Eventually, Harry reaches for a small piece of parchment that’s unevenly torn from the bottom. The writing is hasty, messy, and so unlike the professor he’s familiar with. The way it’s folded, too, shows hurry. Sharp angles that don’t match up, crumpled at the edges and stuffed at the very back of the drawer.
Harry carefully unfolds it.
He remembers. It reads.
I can’t believe it. He remembers. I have been waiting for an opportunity like this for a month and it just happens to be him. I should be surprised. I continually question why that boy always has to be the centre of every cosmic event.
I should remain impersonal. Take advantage of the situation. He no doubt has information that can fill in the gaps of my memory. This can prove tremendously beneficial.
But he is undoubtedly altered from whatever transpired after my demise. His logic is untraceable and delirious at best. I ponder over the potential possibility of brain damage.
Harry snorts.
But Legilimency proved he is telling the truth. I gained a sliver of enlightenment regarding the future that has yet come to pass. He remembers my death with surprising clarity. I seldom entertain the self-pity of wishing to go back in time.
I regret–
Those two words are crossed out.
The boy must die. That much was certain. Dumbledore had been insistent that that was the only possible outcome to ensure victory in the war. But clearly, that theory proved futile. There is no guarantee that the Dark Lord was vanquished after Potter’s death. I am grateful it occurred after my own mortem. I had foolishly hoped–
Crossed out.
I wish he had–
Crossed out.
Should he have heeded my–
The warning I had–
He had not–
Everything after that is crossed out. As if Snape couldn’t bring himself to write it down. Whatever it had been.
At the very bottom of the page, in squished writing fitted beneath the abandoned sentences, Harry reads; Dumbledore is a fool, and I am bound with the knowledge that I have obtained. I am now certain that I am cursed, but there is little to be done. I was the fool to have fallen to such bounding…
Unintelligible script with waning ink that doesn’t change no matter how close he squints at it. Harry’s eyes skip over it, to the end of the page, where tucked beneath it all, barely large enough to make out, Snape wrote in fresh ink:
The boy will live.