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The moon listened to the dull tapping of a worn down heel and shadowed a lone frame traversing through the ghost-town that could be called the town centre past dusk.
Harry's town wasn't particularly known for its buzzing night life, the majority of the population consisting of hard-headed business men and pliant housewives, whose dreams entirely consisted of quiet and orderly nuclear families.
Keeping this in mind, the night inevitably attracted the so-called 'rejects' of the tight-knit suburban community, stumbling through Tesco car parks and hollering at the local prostitutes on the side-road at the bottom of a poor excuse of a high-street across from the local Catholic church.
Harry, for the first time since he was 11 years old, suddenly felt grateful for his lineage, which granted him a life off of these very streets.
His shadow limped along behind him, stretching and warping as it hid from the luminescent lights escaping from the family-owned Kurdish convenience store Petunia never let them shop at for some reason. A man on a plastic chair sitting outside of a sewing-machine shop gazed at him as he walked by, flicking his cigarette and whispering nonsense to himself.
Now, normally Harry wouldn't step foot in this shaded section of his town if his life depended on it. After having witnessed a man high off of what he now knew to be various narcotics leaning in poor 6-year-old Harry's direction and grabbing at his arm, he tended to steer away from the cursed place whenever he was let out alone on the occasional grocery top-up for good behaviour.
However, at that moment Harry wasn't in the most coherent state he could be in.
Sparkling clouds of orange light flickered above him, and Harry stared at them dumbly, stopping abruptly every two minutes or so to blink up at them in awe. Streetlights, of course. But his lack of glasses paired with the concussion he was sporting made them as good as glowing orbs of gold.
Getting out of Number 4 Privet Drive had been easier than he'd imagined.
Uncle Vernon usually had a routine of collecting all of the wallets and keys before turning the downstairs lights off and heading upstairs for the night, a habit stemming from deep-rooted paranoia. However, that night he'd had a few too many glasses of cider, and passed by the mantelpiece without so much as a second glance towards it.
After getting himself together and standing from where he'd been left crumpled on the living room floor, Harry snatched the keys up and quietly escaped through the front door before he could even think about thinking of a plan.
And so, there he was, waddling through his town's high-street and sidestepping similarly disoriented night dwellers warily.
It hadn't even been his fault this time.
Vernon had been complaining about the neighbourhood kids screaming, playing outside in the sweltering heat, all day. After he'd sent Dudley out there to scare them off—he'd never been a welcoming sight to the kids in Little Whinging—he got a call from his work requesting extra hours on Wednesday, which had added to his worsening mood as he had planned a 'romantic lunch-date' with Petunia for that day.
Then, of course, the boiler had gone out while he was in the shower that evening, drowning him in icy cold water and causing quite the shock.
All in all, Vernon hadn't been having a good day.
And Aunt Petunia had come home from the shops with a new pack of cider a few hours earlier, providing the perfect coping mechanism and distraction for the man. For the past week, he had insisted that he was on a strictly no-alcohol regime after one of his health-freak phases had reemerged, but oh, he'd already had such an awful day, could he not indulge for one night? Just to take the edge off?
Hours later, Harry sat on the living room rug with a bloody nose, throbbing ribs, twisted ankle, and a raging head-ache.
He'd 'gotten in the way', of course.
The moon sighed in pity, a light breeze rustling his blood-crusted hair.
Harry loved the moon—how she lit up the Earth even when only those undeserving of her light walked its very paths. Harry hated the moon equally so, sometimes. He was sure it was mutual.
He'd reached a stretch of 5 broken streetlights, one dimly flickering on and the others having fallen dark entirely. In the dark, his blurry vision left him good as blind, unable to make out any silhouettes or smudges of colour.
Which is how he missed the dark figure reaching a hand out and twirling him into a narrow alley to the side of some derelict shop. His head made contact with a brick wall and he gasped, bright stars invading his vision.
Harry loved stars, too.
Astronomy lessons used to be his favourite in his second year, only behind Defence Against the Dark Arts. He'd squint at constellations, at the proof of life beyond the limits of a deteriorating planet. He'd indulge in the idea that stars were late loved ones, and would imagine looking back at his mother, or maybe his father, and would wonder what they'd think of who he'd grown up to be.
Fingers curled around his throat.
Harry didn't want to die. Not really, anyway—he wasn't suicidal. But the idea that an entire society depended on him: on him to murder a Nazi-equivalent dictating monster who had the ability to come back to life and made it his life's mission to hunt Harry down; on him not to die before he could even get the chance to go through with said murder; on him not to make a grave error and cost a population its life in the process; the thought hung heavy on his shoulders.
Spittle covered his face.
'Pretty boy.'
Harry did not want to die. And, yet, he did not want to move his hand. He did not want to snatch his wand out of his pocket. He did not want to hex the man holding him to death. Maybe, in the back of his head, there was a small voice telling him he should want to defend himself. But Harry did not want to do many things anymore.
Fingers tugged at his hair.
Harry's head hurt. It had been hurting for a while, but finding one set time at which the ache began was difficult. Maybe it was the end of last year—when Cedric died. When he lost the trust of a population. When his nerves were set aflame and all he could do was squirm and endure it.
Maybe it started in third year, when he found the person who ruined his life and lost him just as fast. When he met one of the few people in his life who loved him for him. When he found out that that same person really only loved the idea of his parents, his father, within him.
Maybe it was actually second year, when the entire school chose to believe he was evil. When he thought one of his closest friends might die. When he saved Hogwarts at the age of twelve when every adult around him turned a blind eye to his worries.
Or, perhaps, it was even before Hogwarts. Before he found out he had a madman in his head. Before he found out he was so much more than just Harry. No, maybe it was back when he still thought he couldn't be anything more than a name messily drawn onto the inside of a rickety cupboard door.
Teeth sunk into the skin between his neck and his shoulder, slobber and blood meeting and racing each other down his collarbone. The hand around his neck squeezed tighter.
Harry shoved at the man in front of him.
'Fuckin' hard-to-get.'
Harry did not want to die. Particularly not to a perverted drunkard at approximately 01:37 in an alley smelling of urine and weed.
But before his brain could send the message to his hand to reach for his wand, he was yet again shoved into the wall, with a stronger impact this time.
Pop.
He was blinded by a flash of light. He thought he was dying. That was what happened when you were dying, no?
'Stupefy!'
Harry wasn't dying. He wouldn't let himself. McGonagall would maybe call it resilience. Snape would probably call it Gryffindor stubbornness.
'Foolish, insolent, stubborn Gryffindor.'
A hand was on his jaw, tilting his head from side to side, calloused and firm. Harry wouldn't die. He couldn't see anything but a dark blur, and yet he knew he wouldn't die.
'I don't want to die.'
Harry heard someone mutter something about melodrama.
…
'You won't.'
White, clinical light was all that he could focus on as he rolled over and groaned into his pillow, hand jumping to his side as he jostled his ribs.
Harry could feel that it was much later than he'd normally wake up, and he just knew that Vernon would kill him when Dudley inevitably snitched. Heaving a rattling sigh, Harry turned to lay on his back again and moved to sit up, when a hand pressed down on his chest and guided him back down.
Startled, Harry blinked open his eyes and squinted at the dark figure sitting at his bedside, arms crossed.
Snape.
Pardon?
Harry reached out a hand first to pinch himself, then to pat the small table, next to what he now realised was the infirmary bed, for his glasses, and they were slid into his reach by the very man sitting next to him. Faintly, he thought he had lost his glasses that night. Maybe Snape had found them? Harry had more important matters to focus on.
Sliding the glasses on, he stared awkwardly at the man, inspecting his oddly blank face.
How, and why, was he at Hogwarts?
Harry had spent many a nights dreaming of spending his Summer holidays in the castle—no frying pans to the head, no meaty fists to his face, no hands dragging him to his room and dropping him off onto the floor.
And, now, here he was, sitting in the Hogwarts hospital wing with no memory of how he got there.
"Potter." Snape drawled, the usual miserable edge to the man's voice surprisingly absent.
"Er, professor?" Harry whispered, wrapping his arms around his mid-section. He felt awfully tense, being analysed by his professor's dark eyes, almost like a salamander being dissected.
"Why am I…at Hogwarts, sir?" he asked, glancing around the sterile room. Last year, after the Tournament, he thought he'd reached his record for how many hours he could spend in the hospital wing throughout one school year. However, having been admitted here before the year had even started, he worried that it was only an omen to how many times he would have to visit this wretched place the following year.
"You have no recollection of last night's events?" Snape watched Harry with a strange expression, as if the man had bitten into a lemon. He seemed like he was extremely reluctant to have this conversation.
"Not-not really, no, sir."
The only memory he really had of the previous evening was being caught in the cross-fire of one of Uncle Vernon's bad moods and paying the price for it, but nothing after being dumped on Aunt Petunia's precious white rug to bleed all over and be forced to clean the next day—or, well, today.
Snape stubbornly maintained a neutral expression, but there was a hint of anger behind it, too. For some reason, Harry felt like it wasn't directed at him. A miracle, truly.
"Very well, then. Last night, at roughly 00:00, you left the wards surrounding your home. Professor Dumbledore only received the notice over a half hour later due to being pre-occupied with matters that are not of your concern. Due to these matters, and due to me being unfortunately awake at the time, I was requested to hunt you down and send you back." Snape explained, clearly unhappy with the events and finally showing not a small amount of irritation towards Harry.
Memories, albeit vague and fuzzy, began resurfacing in Harry's mind. Though he didn't remember much, and what he did remember wasn't very reliable, he was beginning to see why the man might be so angry. To be completely honest, after having the senses beat out of him, he had forgotten about the wards entirely.
"Oh." Harry replied dumbly, wincing. He should have stayed home and dealt with it, he knew. But all he could think about at that moment, sat on that stupid white rug, was that he needed to get out. So, he did.
"Yes, oh. That isn't all. When I finally got a hold of your exact location after nearly an hour of searching, I apparated to you, ready to find you engaging in delinquency or whatever other dunderheaded activities you might get up to at half 1 in the morning. Instead, I found you being… assaulted, by an inebriated man, already injured, muttering about melodramatic nonsense before you lost consciousness."
Harry's head was reeling. He had been dramatic, hadn't he? God, all he could feel now was embarrassment and shame. Shame for being found in such a vulnerable state by Snape of all people, and shame for all of the things he'd been thinking. He hadn't let himself get that worked up emotionally and mentally in a while, so he hadn't expected himself to be walking around in the middle of the night in that state while injured.
He shrunk from Snape's gaze and brought his knees up to his chest, wanting to dig himself a hole and hide away from all this.
"Er. So, I'm gonna go back soon, right?" he asked with a quiet voice, looking outside the grand windows at the half-cast sky.
He didn't tune back into the conversation until he realised there was no conversation, and that Snape had been quiet for at least a couple of minutes. Turning back to look at the man, he startled slightly to see a much softer expression on him. In fact, it was the softest he'd ever looked. Maybe Harry had died, on second thought.
"When Madame Pomfrey performed a diagnostic charm on you, the injuries you harboured—excluding the obvious bite mark and bruising around your neck—were reported to have been inflicted much earlier. I already have consulted with the Headmaster the possible implications of this, but your word would help matters a lot, if you would, Potter." Snape said. He seemed pained, almost scolded, if that were possible.
Harry gawked at the professor shamelessly, mulling over the notion of Snape looking chastened in his head. That didn't last long, however, as he processed what had been said to him.
Over all of Harry's years at Hogwarts, he had never had an adult initiate any kind of intervention or interrogation regarding his homelife. It had always been him begging for some sort of solution, or acknowledgement at the very least, and having it shut down or brushed off.
And here sat one of the few people Harry openly hated, inquiring about his homelife.
Harry would have laughed, if not for the fiery lump in his throat. He felt hysterical.
Clearing his throat, Harry turned away and stared at the bed opposite to his, wondering where Madame Pomfrey could have disappeared to.
"Potter." Snape said, firmer this time. "This is a serious matter and, though I understand it may be… difficult, to talk about, it is a necessary conversation we must have."
He sounded like he had to squeeze the words out, and it would have been funny to see Snape so uncomfortable if not for the cause of his discomfort. Harry was very much in the same boat.
"Er… Well, you know how I am. I got- well, I picked a fight and faced the consequences." he could only hope that Snape would take the bait and use his previous misjudgements of Harry's character to yell at him about arrogance and delinquency. That certainly would be easier to handle than whatever Snape apparently wanted Harry to about so badly.
"Although I appreciate the sentiment, do not think me a fool. You and I both know that is a lie, and, though I am sometimes doubtful, I know you are not oblivious enough not to know what I am asking you to admit." Snape's tone grew tense as he leaned back in his seat, arms crossed. He glared intently at Harry, though it lacked the sharpness it usually would inhabit.
Harry liked to think that he wasn't the dullest tool in the shed, and that sometimes he really did have a better judgement of how to proceed in certain situations. However, at that moment, Harry felt utterly lost on what to say.
If he said the truth, Snape would very likely either not believe him or use it against him. If he lied, the potions master would definitely find out and it would be a much longer process for both of them.
Not for the first time, he was stumped.
"Look, I'm not being abused or whatever, I really did just get in a scuffle with someone after leaving." Harry said, hoping the explanation would be enough but knowing it was weak at best.
Glancing at Snape, the man arched a brow and Harry tacked on a 'Sir,' on the end, but it only made his glower deepen.
"Abuse was never mentioned, Potter, so it is interesting why you would immediately jump to that conclusion."
Sometimes, Harry hated Snape because Snape was often right about things that Harry really did not want Snape to be right about.
Because abuse hadn't been mentioned. But, in primary school, he'd been taken aside to little stuffy offices by condescendingly sweet women a few too many times, and he practically worked on muscle memory when anyone dared to broach the subject.
'It's not abuse.'
Harry wasn't thick. He knew the flaws in that short statement. He knew that it certainly wasn't normal, and he knew that it very well would be classed as abuse.
But, well, what person would be able to admit they were being abused?
"It's- they're-" Harry was at a loss for words. There was no way he could back out of this one, especially considering who he was talking to.
Chancing a glance at those stubborn, committed eyes only confirmed that.
"Look, why do you even care? It's-it's not like it's that bad, and you certainly don't seem like one to be against corporal punishment." he could feel his temper faltering, as it often did when he felt out of control. He didn't like being questioned about anything. He didn't like being interrogated like he'd committed a crime. Better yet, he didn't like being pitied.
"Despite popular belief, I am not in favour of beating children, and, frankly, I am offended you might think so. Now, could we have a civil conversation in which you admit to what we both know is true, or will we continue to beat around the bush?" the man scowled, although, compared to the usual unfounded hatred in his expression, he simply seemed irritated and pained.
Heat crawled up the ridges of Harry's spine, coiling around his ribs and licking his heart as the familiar lump in his throat grew. Harry didn't like Snape. No, he hated the man. Because he always found some way to get Harry talking, for the better or for the worst. And he hated himself even more for the fact that he wanted to talk.
Harry wanted to let loose and ramble about each and every night he'd spent hungry and sleepless; about every broken bone; every burn; every tear.
But, simultaneously, all he wanted to do was take a needle and thread and sew his mouth shut, keeping every detail of his fucked up family shut away from the world.
He dug his nails into his forearms and scoffed.
"Can-… I don't know how to start." Harry slowly bit out, feeling every word scratch at his throat and tug at his teeth and it hurt—it hurt so much to say anything at all, but he could feel that fire in his chest recede ever so slightly.
Snape himself seemed to soften. Not noticeably, but Harry could feel the man's presence and aura shift slightly.
"Well. We can start with who caused your injuries, for one." he suggested, though the tone he used made it clear that it was more of an order than a request. Weirdly, though, that comforted Harry—if Snape had started to coddle him he likely would have jumped out of one of the windows.
"Er. Well, you already know who- uh, bit me? But, well…" Harry just needed to spit it out already, he knew that, but it was just so hard, considering it'd be the first time he'd ever talked about it all to someone who could do something about it. "The rest of the stuff was, er, my uncle, Vernon."
He stared at the thin blanket covering him, pulling at a loose thread, grimacing at the prolonged silence in the room.
Snape cleared his throat, likely having taken that silence to compose himself.
"And I assume this isn't the first time he has injured you?" he asked, clearly attempting an air of apathy, but Harry could hear the discomfort in his voice, as well as something else that he quickly pushed out of his head.
"Er, no, sir." Harry muttered with a dark look, heart pounding and rattling in his head. "It's why I left the house. I- I'm sorry about that, by the way. I didn't- I wasn't-" he glared at the darkening sky outside, tightening his hands into fists to hide the way they trembled.
"I don't think you should apologise for removing yourself from a dangerous situation, especially when in a state of mind as frazzled as yours probably was." Snape interrupted and leaned forward. "Considering the types of people they are, I doubt it would've done much good to stay."
Harry shrugged halfheartedly, not used to the man insisting on his lack of fault for something.
"I could've gotten myself killed by exposing myself to Death Eaters so freely." Harry paused and cleared his throat sheepishly. "Well, I almost did, just- by a muggle…" he grumbled, still refusing to look at Snape.
"Yes, you could have. And, yes, you almost did. However, if you hadn't, would you have ended up here—away from that house? It is not, ah, what does Minerva call it—sheer dumb luck—that landed you here. It was the choices you made and the actions you took."
Harry finally turned his head to stare at the professor, mouth agape. He almost sounded like Dumbledore, and Harry never would've imagined that he'd ever make that comparison in his life.
"Do try not to attract flies, Potter. And don't look at me like that, we have gotten off topic." Snape said and clasped his hands in his lap.
Harry shut his mouth and shifted, immensely uncomfortable. He really, really didn't want to talk about what happened, let alone the rest of the stuff he dealt with at the Dursley's home.
"Look, Professor, with all due respect, I am really tired. And, frankly, I didn't like the topic in the first place. Could we talk about this tomorrow, or something?" he pleaded, having little hope that the man would allow the compromise but trying nonetheless.
Snape looked at him, assessing, working his jaw. Harry had to glance away, not wanting to have to face that dark stare.
"Very well, then." Snape said at last, surprising Harry. "Before you rest, you shall take these." he added on and waved his wand, summoning a tray with three potions which should probably be familiar to Harry, but he had absolutely no clue what they could be for.
Snape seemed to realise this, because he sighed and shook his head.
"The yellow one is an anti-bacterial potion, to prevent infection from the bite. The red one is a common healing potion, which uses your magical core to make the regeneration of cells more efficient. And, lastly, the violet one is a dreamless sleep potion, which I am sure you are well-acquainted with." he explained, pointing to each potion. "You will take them in that order."
Harry shuddered, already anticipating the horrid tastes of the first two mentioned potions. Healing potions and draughts were always less than pleasant, unfortunately.
Shoulders drooping, he reached out and knocked back the yellow potion first, immediately following with the red one and finally taking the violet one, this time slower to wash down the horrible tastes of the first two with the gentle lavender of the latter.
Snape nodded approvingly and placed the tray on the bedside table.
"I will be monitoring the bite intermittently throughout your stay. Human bites are extremely infection prone, and so require a lot of care, especially considering yours was a…severe one." he explained and leaned back in his chair, before softening slightly. "Get some rest, Potter. You have a hell of a week ahead of you."
Harry huffed and slid down until he was fully laying down again, staring up at the ceiling with lidded eyes. Something within him sparked, and he felt an intense swell of gratitude, something he'd never had before regarding Snape.
"Thank you, sir." he whispered, speech slurring as he felt the dreamless sleep pulling him under.
There was silence for a few long moments, and Harry was sure Snape wouldn't respond. However, in that last stretch in which he started losing consciousness, he felt his glasses being gently slipped off of his face, and a firm and calloused hand being placed on his forehead.
"Rest, Harry."
And he smiled, as he finally fell asleep.