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He is trying to avoid Dudley when the knock on the door comes. Uneasiness rises in him. The sound is sharp, rapid, like Mrs. Holloway-Jones’ shoes clicking on the floor at school. A sound that says someone’s about to get in trouble.
Him, probably, especially as Dudley makes no move to lever himself off the couch and answer the door.
Best get it over with. Whatever it is. Maybe it’s one of the neighbours, come to complain about Aunt Petunia pressing her ear against the fence and listening to everything they say.
He opens the door. On the other side is blackness. No. Wait. A man. A tall, thin man dressed all in black, with long, greasy black hair framing a pale face, and black eyes staring down at him in a way that makes him uncomfortable. He freezes, not sure what to do.
‘Harry Potter?’ the man asks after a moment, voice tense and crackling, something brittle there that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He’s in trouble. He doesn’t know the sort of trouble he’s in, only that he’s in it.
‘Um,’ is his reply.
‘Harry Potter that lives in The cupboard under the stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey?’ by the end of the question the brittleness has sharpened all the way up into something strident and unpleasant, but he’s worry more about that if he wasn’t so worried about what the man actually said.
‘How do you know that?’ he demands. Well, tries to demand, except it comes out weak and wobbly instead.
‘Right!’ the man says, teeth clacking together audibly with the t. ‘Right!’ There is a funny crackling sound accompanying the word, confusing him for a moment, until he looks and sees the strange man is standing there with a piece of paper all crumpled up in his hand, the crackling sound the noise of it getting crumpled further as the man’s fist clenches.
The man’s shaking— he realises. Little quivers of what he knows are rage shaking the man’s every muscle. He knows that kind of rage. He’s seen it often enough on Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia, usually moments before they go to whack him but pull up at the last second, usually then going on about what he almost made them do, and how they’re good people. Then, of course, the cupboard.
He doesn’t know this man. Doesn’t know if he’s a “good person.” Doesn’t know if he’s about to get the whack that his Aunt and Uncle always pull back from. He feels a quiver run through him, a shiver of anxiety, before he pushes it down.
He will not be afraid. Fearing adults has never gotten him anywhere. He can’t win, no matter what he does, if he’s good or bad or somewhere in between, they’ve all already made their minds up about him so there’s no point cowering. It won’t get him anywhere.
‘Right!’ the man says for the third time, ‘Let’s see this cupboard then.’ With that the man pushes past him into the house, as if he doesn’t even exist.
‘Hey!’ is about all he manages, not sure what he’s supposed to do about this. Maybe he should run away— but Dudley’s in the house, and if something happens to Dudley because he ran away and let it then his aunt and uncle will never forgive him. At that thought he tries again, ‘Hey! You can’t just go barging in here!’
The man ignores him, heading straight for the stairs. Dudley looks up as the tall, thin figure stalks across the room in black trousers and a matching black wool jumper, equally black shoes perfectly laced and polished to a mirror shine. ‘Who the hell are you?!’ his cousin squawks, attempting to jump up from his seat but mainly tripping over himself. ‘Who is he? Why’d you let him in the house? We’re not supposed to let strangers in the house!’
‘I didn’t let him in the house,’ he squawks back, ‘He just sort of came in by himself.’
‘Well get him out again!’ Dudley demands, ‘Mum and dad are going to be so angry at you—’
Their mutual squawking is interrupted by the sound of the little door to the cupboard under the stairs banging open. The man, hunched down now to fit in the doorway, stands there for a long moment, then speaks, ‘This is where you sleep?’ the sound echoing into his little bedroom, but audible enough outside it.
Well, there’s no point lying, is there? ‘Yes.’
The skinny man backs out of the doorway and whirls to face him, ‘For how long? Is this some kind of punishment? Did you do something wrong?’
‘Well, I was born,’ he answers, knowing as he does that he’s answering in that tone adults don’t like. He’s talking back.
‘So, all your life— or at least all your life you’ve spent here?’ the man says, but it’s more a statement than a question. ‘Is this everything you own?’ a gesture into the dark recess of his cupboard, ‘No toys, no books?’
He shakes his head. ‘Yeah, it’s everything I own.’
The man stares at him for a moment, then, ‘I need a cup of tea— No, I need a bloody drink, but tea will have to do. Where’s the kitchen?’
‘I’m not sure I should tell you that,’ he says after a moment, ‘You have just barged in here.’
A snort. ‘It’s for the best I have. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. Through here then, I’d assume—’ the man says, gesturing to where the kitchen is.
He doesn’t say anything, even though Dudley has managed to find his feet and is now squawking about getting the strange man out of the house and going on about being murdered. ‘Do you think I care if he kills you?’ he snaps at his cousin, ‘He should. You deserve it.’ With that he follows the black clad man, now ignoring the way Dudley is wailing about telling mummy and daddy and how he’ll be in so much trouble.
In the kitchen the man has located the kettle and gotten it on the stove top and is now staring at Dudley’s old clothes, still swimming around in murky grey water in the sink. ‘What is this?’ the man asks, ‘It smells like dye but doesn’t look like anything worth bothering dying.’
‘It’s my new school uniform,’ he answers, ‘They wouldn’t buy me a proper one so they’re dying some of my cousin’s old clothes.’
After a moment the man nods, the movement jerky, angry, then turns around, depositing himself with brittle grace in one of the kitchen chairs. Black eyes turn to him, then blink, ‘What are you wearing?’ and then, before he can answer, ‘No, don’t tell me. Your cousin’s hand-me-downs. Am I right? Do you have any clothes of your own?’
He shakes his head.
The man huffs out an angry grunt, ‘No clothes, no toys, no books, barely anything I’d call a bed, and look at you, you’re all bones—’ the last said with an elegant wave of long, skinny fingers that makes him look down at himself then glare up at the man, offended. Like he’s one to talk. This stranger must be one of the skinniest men he’s seen in his life, and the guy’s full grown. The man mutters something like, ‘I’ll fucking kill him,’ then asks, ‘Where’s your aunt?’
‘She’s out,’ he answers, before considering that maybe telling the strange man that’s barged into your home that there’s no adults around isn’t the smartest thing to do, ‘She’ll be back though, any minute.’
‘Good,’ the man hisses, ‘She and I are going to have words,’ a pause, and then, ‘Do they hit you? They’d better not hit you. If they hit you I swear I’ll crucio them until their brains are melting out their ears.’
He doesn’t know what crucio means, but the way the man says it— It suddenly occurs to him that this man might be angry for him not at him. ‘No,’ he answers after a moment. It’s not even a lie, he knows they want to, they really, really want to, but so far they’ve held themselves back.
The dark-haired man stares at them for a long moment, and it feels odd, a heavy pressure building in his brain under the man’s gaze, but then the man blinks, and the pressure disappears. ‘Good,’ the man says.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, trying to shake off the remnants of the odd feeling, ‘But who exactly are you? You just barged in here and—’
‘Snape,’ the man answers after a moment, ‘Severus Snape. I was a friend of your mother’s. I was—’ a tiny pause, then, ‘I— am your Godfather. I should have checked you were safe before now. It was careless of me not to.’
‘Why didn’t I know about you before now?’ he finds himself asking. If he had someone else, anyone else, why did they leave him with the Dursleys.
‘I was told you were safe,’ Snape says after a long moment, ‘I was told you were happy. Being looked after like Lily’s son was supposed to be looked after. Obviously I was told wrong.’
‘Oh,’ he says, not sure what to say to that. The kettle boiling distracts him. Snape starts to get up to make the tea but he gestures to the man to sit down, ‘I’ll do it, I know where everything is.’
In a fit of something like rebellion he gets down two of the better cups, the ones for guests, the one’s he’s only allowed to touch if he’s setting the table, getting down the better teapot too— not quite the Royal Albert, that’s kept in the sideboard for Uncle Vernon’s boss and Aunt Marge— but better than anything he’s ever allowed to drink out of. ‘Milk?’ he asks, then ‘Sugar?’
Snape shakes his head, ‘Black, and strong.’
He gets the tea ready, adding more leaves that the Dursleys would tolerate, the two of them liking their tea as pretty much off-white milk, and moves the cups and the pot to the table, adding a little milk in the bottom of his cup once he’s done so.
They wait in silence— broken only by Dudley grizzling from the other room, still going on about being murdered— all the questions bubbling up inside of him but there being so many of them he doesn’t know where to start. This man knew his mum. This man could tell him all about her— and his dad— and, just, about everything the Dursleys never did. What they were like, what they liked, who their friends were, where they lived. All of it.
When the tea’s done he pours for the both of them and pushes Snape’s across the table so the man can lift it to his lips with the hand not still clenched on whatever the paper is. He finds himself looking at the man’s wrist, at the way the bones stand stark against pale skin. Snape’s too skinny. He knows he’s a bit thinner than he should be, a bit thinner than most of the boys his age are, but he was right earlier, Snape’s far too thin.
The sound of Dudley wailing ‘Mummy! Harry let some strange man in and now he’s in the kitchen and he’s going to murder us all!’ distracts him from his contemplation.
He hears her drop whatever she was carrying, the sound of running footsteps, and a moment later she’s bursting into the room. As she does Snape raises elegantly from his seat and flings the cup he was drinking from across the room until it shatters on the wall just by her head, splattering tea down her perfectly clean paint. ‘How dare you treat her son like this?!’ the man roars as she’s shrieking and skittering backwards.
She crouches there, wide eyed and frightened, hand clenched on her chest, before muttering out, ‘You’re the Snape boy,’ then, stridently, ‘What are you doing in my house?’
‘You expect me to stay away when I found out about this?’ Snape roars, slapping his hand on the table, the hand that has been to this point clenched on that piece of paper, but as the man moves back he sees it isn’t just a piece of paper but a letter, a letter addressed to him. Mr H. Potter, The cupboard under the stairs, 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surry—pretty much what Snape had said when he opened the door.
Aunt Petunia goes white, then she goes red. ‘What else where we supposed to do with him?’ she snarls. ‘We didn’t ask for him to be dropped on our doorstep by your lot, but he was, and when he was we decided that was going to be the end of it. We were going to stamp it out of him. How could we do that if we went around spoiling the brat like my parents did Lil—’
Snape pulls a stick, of all things, out of his pocket pointing it at his aunt in the most threatening way he’s ever seen anyone point a stick before. Strangely enough it makes Aunt Petunia go white again, makes her huddle back against the wall, eyes wide and wary. ‘Keep her name out of your mouth,’ the man hisses, ‘After how you’ve treated her son you’ve lost the right to ever speak of her again.’
‘As if I want to be talking about her!’ his Aunt snaps, ‘You have no idea how much of a relief it was to hear she’d died!’ Before the hurt of that can even register a pale light erupts from the stick and bursts against wall by Aunt Petunia’s head, bursting into a shower of sparks.
‘I’m warning you Tuney,’ Snape snarls as she shrieks.
‘You’re a little monster! You always were! There’s always been something wrong with you! I never understood what Lily could see in rubbish like you!’
‘Well you always have been ignorant and blind,’ Snape hisses, but the worst of his anger seems to be cooling, he stands up straight, out of that hunched, threatening pose he was in before, ‘Just look at the mess you’ve made of your own son. Child abuse, that’s what I’d call it. Are you trying to feed him until he has a heart attack at twenty? What should I have expected? If you can’t even look after your own child, then how could you be trusted with hers?’
‘Ch-‘ Aunt Petunia manages, spluttering, ‘Ch-ch-ch— Child abuse?’
The man pockets the strange, magical stick with a decisive movement. ‘Well, I’m not letting you keep your claws in Harry any longer, you bloody harridan.’ Black eyes turn to him, ‘You’re coming with me, boy.’
‘Am I?’ he manages, weakly, not sure what he thinks about all of this.
A nod, then a frown, ‘Unless you’d rather stay with muggle scum like these?’
‘Muggle?’ what’s a—
‘Muggle,’ the man echoes, ‘As in not a witch or a wizard.’
‘A what?’ he squawks.
A pause, then, ‘They didn’t tell you, did they?’ and then, before he can ask what it was they didn’t tell him, Snape tells him for them. ‘You’re a wizard. I’m a wizard. Your mum was a witch, your dad a wizard. You have an entire inheritance that has been kept from you while these muggles kept you in a cupboard and didn’t feed you properly.’
‘You know he won’t let you,’ a voice, Aunt Petunia’s voice, comes from where she’s huddling against the wall. ‘He wouldn’t let us send the boy to an orphanage. He said the boy has to stay here, with us.’
‘Do you think I give a rat’s arse what Albus Dumbledore thinks right this moment?’ Snape snaps, whirling on her. ‘After what he’s done— Oh no. He can bring the boy back here through my dead body— and I don’t mean that lightly. Lily’s son deserves better than this. Any child would, even my worst students, the ones I cringe to see in my classroom— call me a monster all you like, Petunia, I know what I am— but one day you should take a good, long look at yourself. I don’t think you’ll like what you see.’
His aunt doesn’t seem to have an answer to that, just stares at the man with wide, resentful, eyes.
‘Come on boy,’ Snape says imperiously, then, tone softening a little, ‘Harry. Fetch anything you want to take with you so we can go. There’s nothing for you here, there never was.’
Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe he should ask more questions. Maybe trusting a man he’s never met before is a stupid thing to do— but Snape is right, there is nothing for him here, and the way the man spoke of his mum, the tone, affection and outrage at the way her son was being treated, it makes him want to trust the man, so he does. He goes to his cupboard, fetches his few belongings— silently passing a wide eyed and nervous Dudley as he does— and returns to Snape’s side by the front door. ‘Where are we going?’ he asks as the man leads him outside.
‘To my house,’ is the answer. ‘It’s the only place safe I can take you.’