Note: This is the sequel to "Trying Snape", which can be found here: http://www. fanfiction .net/s/3575788/1/ (just get rid of those spaces at the beginning and end of fanfiction), or in my profile. I strongly recommend that it is read first. Aside from that, the usual disclaimer about not owning a thing.
Note II: There will be SOME slash in later chapters (HPSS), BUT it will be mild and mostly in a single chapter that can be skipped over if it's not your piece of cake.
Chapter 1 – Going Home
It wasn't until they were both back in Harry's house that it really hit him. Snape had been sentenced to live here until he confessed. As Harry didn't expect a confession out of him any more than, say, he'd expect a confession out of his breakfast, he had the feeling it was going to be a long time. That didn't make him happy at all. Living with Snape didn't seem like it was going to be very fun, especially considering the fact that last time, it meant he was deprived of his alcohol. And that, in itself, was a very important thing. Far more important than doing his part for the Wizarding World.
Things were going to be a little different this time. Snape had been fitted with a collar that prevented him from using magic and would not allow him to wander more than twenty feet or so outside of Harry's house. It seemed like a good compromise, in that Harry would be able to leave the house and not have to worry about Snape running off. It meant that he wouldn't be confined. They stressed over and over again that this was not meant to punish him. Somehow, he wasn't quite able to believe them. The look on Felix's face made him almost certain that this had been prearranged. And that just pissed him off. He had committed no crime other than saving the world, and he was to be, effectively, the jailkeeper of the most dangerous Death Eater. Being unemployed, though, probably made him a more ideal candidate than most. They even promised him a monthly salary, though he didn't need it.
Ron and Hermione were nothing but supportive. They said to him, many times over the first few days, that this was his chance to get involved with the world again. Hermione had confessed that she had been worried about him, and the fact that he seemed to be withdrawing from the world at large. She tried to convince him to take several potions that she said would help his mood, but he denied that he had a problem. After all, he didn't have a problem. Ron had taken him out drinking – with Hermione's strictest disapproval – and had tried to have a heart-to-heart. That didn't work very well, and Harry had just gone to a different bar to get plastered. It didn't really matter the state he was in when he got home; Snape would still be lying in bed, staring at the wall like a ragdoll. Occasionally, if Harry got at the right angle, it would appear that Snape was staring at him, but it was pretty evident that Snape was actually staring at nothing at all. It was extremely disconcerting, and aside from leaving food in the bedroom a couple of times a day, he couldn't see that there was much more to be done, and so he avoided the man entirely. If Snape was going to feel like confessing, it wasn't going to be because he was being watched every minute of the day.
It was at the end of the first week that Ron showed up at his door with a suitcase. Harry tried to figure out what was going on; not very easy when he was severely hungover. Ron cheerfully announced that Hermione had sent him to stay with Harry for a while to make sure he was okay, and that he was going to take the couch so neither Snape nor Harry had to be kicked out of their respective bedrooms. He said all of this as he was wandering through the house, giving Harry no opportunity whatsoever to turn him out or even get a word in.
"What about my privacy?" Harry finally managed to ask, once Ron had put his toothbrush in the bathroom and stolen a drawer in which to put his clothes. "Now I feel like I'm under arrest myself." It was hard to get his thoughts into order considering his hangover, but this was wrong. Ron should not be moving in here. That much he was sure about.
"It's a bloody house, mate. I'm going to be at work for most of the day, so no need to worry about me then." Ron had smiled, and then promptly not talked about it for the rest of the day, only speaking up again to ask if Harry was going to make dinner or if he was going to have to do it himself. Harry let him cook.
He should have seen what happened next as fairly inevitable. Ron and Hermione were married after all. That meant that Hermione showed up, and Harry was forced to go out and buy a mattress because he was completely out of sleeping space. The worst part was not just them, though. They were at least adults. No, what was worse were the two children that came along with. Brian was 5 and so could be counted on to be nearly normal most of the time. But Mary was only a few months old and was howling at all hours. That Harry did not appreciate at all, and thought that it was a more than valid reason for him to never have children of his own. Hermione and Ron apologized endlessly, but Harry's nerves wore through very quickly. He couldn't see why they were here, except to make his life miserable.
Even his evenings no longer appeared to be his own. If it had just been Ron, he was sure that he could have managed, somehow. And he could probably even put up with both Ron and Hermione. But it was the kids that were going to drive him round the twist and he had the awful feeling that it wouldn't be too long before he was in the same state as Snape, something he repeatedly told Ron when Hermione and the children weren't around. Ron sympathized, but still didn't show any sign of being ready to move out.
The house soon became a wreck. Brian might be able to sleep through the night and occasionally understand the concept of not screaming 24/7, but that didn't mean that he wasn't going to make a huge mess wherever he went. Whether it was food that he threw instead of eating it, or just random objects that he decided to relocate, he made the house into a disaster zone. The only place that he didn't go was Snape's room, and that was because it was locked. Harry didn't want to be responsible when Snape lashed out and killed one of the kids. He couldn't see Ron and Hermione taking that too well, even if it was at least partly their fault.
With every day, he became increasingly glad that he'd never settled down. It didn't take long for what he suspected were long-time marital squabbles to start taking place again. They were over stupid little things, and Ron seemed to start most of them, but they sometimes escalated into hour-long screaming matches. During those, Harry just went out and had some drinks. Or a lot of drinks. Hermione didn't like him drinking a lot when he was in the house – despite the fact that it was his house – and so he just came staggering in drunk. While he couldn't see that there was much difference in that, Hermione assured him that there was, at the same time telling him that he shouldn't be drinking that much anyway. He had always been pretty good at ignoring Hermione, though, so it wasn't nearly as much of a problem as it could have been.
Fortunately, he had the weekdays to himself. Ron and Hermione went to work, and both of their spawn went to a playschool, for which Harry was incredibly grateful. It gave him a few hours to pick up the pieces of his life, only to have them thoroughly shattered when they all came home in the evening. Weekends were pure hell; and Harry more than once damned his best friends just for existing.
One of the interesting side effects of them coming to stay with him, though, was the fact that he started spending more time with Snape. It was no less noisy in Snape's room, but at least the door was locked and the room was not abysmally destroyed. Snape, to Harry's surprise, didn't make half-bad company, considering his other options. He didn't often talk to Snape – he felt that that would make him seem a bit of an idiot – but he did occasionally, and he even started to feel that Snape sympathized with him. He knew it was all in his mind and that he was slowly going crazy, but he consoled himself with the fact that if he did actually go crazy, he wouldn't have to put up with all of this havoc that the Weasleys were creating in his house, and the way that they were disrupting his heretofore perfectly happy life. And he had thought Snape was bad.
Hermione seemed surprisingly out of it concerning Harry's feelings. Considering how perceptive she normally was, that didn't stop her from trying to force him to enjoy holding Mary, who seemed to know it was him and made a routine of throwing up on him as soon as he'd taken her in his arms. She somehow couldn't understand why this made him leery of doing it again and assured him that babies did it all the time. The fact that he'd not see Mary throw up on Hermione once was, she said, completely beside the point. She tried to encourage him to play with Brian, but Brian's favorite game seemed to be hit Harry over the head with whatever was nearest, and that didn't much appeal to him, either.
One evening, Harry cornered Ron and demanded to know exactly why they had intruded on his life. After a bit of bluffing, Ron confessed that they were here to make sure that he didn't go crazy and didn't drink himself to death. They had apparently been asked by the Minister of Magic himself, and had been assured that it was the only way. Harry pointed out that he had started drinking even more since they had shown up and that the kids were going to drive him insane within another week, and surely that was not what the Minister of Magic wanted. Ron agreed to this and said that he'd talk to Hermione about it.
Harry didn't expect anything to come of it, so he was extremely surprised when, one evening, Hermione said, "We're not here to make your life miserable, you know." Ron sat down beside her on the couch, and she continued. "Really, we're here to help you and I'm really sorry if we've made things worse."
Harry suspected that, as nice as this appeared to be starting out, it wasn't going to actually result in them leaving. But he could play nice. For a little while, anyway. "I was just used to my life as it was. You've made it completely different, and it's just taking time to get used to it. Remember, I'm used to being a bachelor."
"And now a prison warden," said Ron with a grin.
"That, too. Not that Snape does much that needs me keeping an eye on." He thought of Snape, sitting upstairs, and found himself wondering whether Snape felt the same way he did. It was a disconcerting thought. "You know I love both of you, and Brian and Mary, too. Just like…a culture shock or something. Takes some getting used to."
"Me too, mate," said Ron, shaking his head. "I still don't think I'm used to it."
"Really, Harry," said Hermione. "It's not that much different."
"You're just too used to it, that's all." Before this could go in a bad direction, Harry decided it was best to just walk out. Walking out would make sure things could never go sour. It had always been a principle of his.