Authors Note:
Thank you all for the wonderful reviews again! I am happy to say that I am feeling a lot better in the past few days, but I feel a little bit of a cold coming on. By the way, the reason Tino does not like cheese is because rats and mice, get this, are lactose intolerant. (Tino is actually modelled after a pet mouse I have, she even has the same name and colouring so please be respectful if you do not like rats or mice.)
Anyways, on with the adventure.
-badeezer
Chapter 4 - Snow Falls
Harry treaded lightly over the snow, clutching his sweater to his body as a vain effort to shield himself from the oncoming storm that had brought with it a deadly cold. He hoped that Uncle Vernon wouldn't lock him outside again this winter, last year was bad enough.
He shivered lightly as the snow seeped into his old runners, sighing lightly when he felt his socks squish against the thin sole of his shoes. In fact, every part of him seemed to be a little bit thin, from his threadbare sweater to his holey shirt and trousers, but he couldn't wear his work clothes or else they would be ruined. They were the only nice thing he owned, in fact.
The only thing he liked about his appearance was a thin scar on his forehead shaped like a bolt of lightning, but had often kept it hidden beneath his fringe of hair because of how Dudley's friends had started to call him names after noticing it, although they weren't very original when the only thing they could come up with was either 'Scar Head' or 'Zeus,' but he rather liked that last one. Who wouldn't want to be compared to a god, after all.
His hair, which stuck every which way on his head like a mop, was black and unruly and made Aunt Petunia angry a lot. When he was younger, she would hack it all off, leaving it a disaster. He was so embarrassed that the other students in his elementary school would make horrible fun of him, because of Dudley, but somehow when he woke up the next morning, it seemed to have all grown back exactly the way it was before. If Aunt Petunia hadn't freaked out the next morning, and Harry hadn't been punished by Uncle Vernon for his 'freakishness,' then he would have thought it was all a dream.
Warm air embraced his cold frame, and he smiled lightly. The grocer, Martin, caught sight of him and beamed happily.
"Hello Harry, fancy doing some shopping on this blustery day? There seems to be a storm brewing." Martin's thick Irish accent was always nice to hear.
"Aunt Petunia sent me to pick up something nice for tonight dinner. We're expecting guests so I suppose some potatoes, steak, and carrots with peas would be suitable." Harry smiled back.
"I'll be right back with your steaks, Harry."
Martin disappeared behind the counter, and Harry was left to his own devices, picking out a couple pounds of potatoes, as they lived very far from the small grocery and it was hard to walk in this weather, and two bags of large carrots, with three cans of already baked peas. As he made his way to the cashier counter, he paused near the cooler of soda. The Coca Cola cans had small pictures of Santa on them, and he wondered what Dudley would be getting for Christmas this year. He made the mistake a couple of years back to move Dudley's present when he was vacuuming the carpet on Christmas day. Dudley had thrown a huge tantrum, screaming and crying even though a ten year old shouldn't be having such a large reaction (quite like Dudley, he supposed), and Uncle Vernon had taken pleasure from punishing him. He had called it Harrys "Christmas present." He made sure never to touch another Christmas present ever again after that. His line of thought was disrupted as Martin emerged from the back room.
"Here you are Harry. That will be 30 pounds please." Martin said cheerfully.
Harry pulled the required money out of his pocket, making sure that all of the money Aunt Petunia had given him was there in his pocket, as one of his pockets had a very large hole running through it, and exited the shop with a happy wave to Martin.
The second he turned around, he accidentally rammed into something tall, steady, and black. Groceries bounced away into the snow, and his arms flailed wildly, trying to catch his balance but failing as his jeans met the slick pavement. He groaned slightly, as his glasses had fallen somewhere into a nearby snowbank, rubbing his lower back. He looked up, squinting, and realized the thing he had walked into was not, in fact, a pole, but a person. He scrambled to his feet, despite his protesting leg and cuts on his back.
"I-I'm terribly sorry sir, I wasn't looking where I was going." Harry stammered awkwardly, startling as a deep oaken baritone melted through the air.
"That's quite all right, young man. It is not always that I happen to run into an excellent waiter and manage to knock him right off of his feet."
His spectacles appeared on his face all of a sudden, and he recognized the man to be Mr. Snape, a customer from Pacemakers, which he had found to be quite polite and, dare he say, a bit charming. Harry blushed a bit at this inner thought and the compliment, and looked around for the dropped groceries, but found that he could not find a single one. He looked back to , and saw that was holding out the groceries to him. How had he collected them all so fast? He had sworn that they had gone and rolled everywhere...
"Where are you heading now, Harry?" Mr. Snape asked, the timbre of his voice seeming to push through his thoughts, and he snapped his eyes up towards 's face. In the lamplight, Harry noticed the pale skin framed by deep black hair that was pulled back into a loose ponytail at the nape of his neck, the unusual clothing that seemed to have copious amounts of buttons on them, and the deep black eyes just over a slightly large nose. His palms became suspiciously sweaty as he realized that he had been staring.
"I was just heading home to cook dinner, sir. My family is having guests over."
"Cook dinner? I would think that your mother or father would do that task, since you have had to go out on such a chilly evening to fetch the supplies for said dinner, nonetheless having guests over. " Mr. Snape raised one eyebrow.
Harry looked away nervously. Usually people didn't ask him questions.
"No sir, usually I cook the meals in the household. It would be very hard for my mum or dad to cook for me since they're... well..not really around anymore."
When Harry met Mr. Snape's eyes again, they seemed to express mild surprise, and a little bit of worry.
"Not around? Surely they are around enough to cook you a simple breakfast."
"N-not really sir, since they are...deceased." Harry ducked his head slightly, feeling a bit embarrassed that he had told this stranger something that would possibly make him uncomfortable, which was never good if it made him angry. Mr. Snape's eyes widened, and then he sighed slightly, pushing his hands through the front of his hair, dislodging a piece from its immaculate ponytail. What he said next shocked Harry, as he wasn't expecting such a response from a man who was definitely from a much higher class than him.
"I apologize for bringing up such a sensitive topic. I did not know. As a form of apology, would you like for me to accompany you back through this fog to your home? It is quite late, and I would not want any harm to befall you."
Harry blinked in shock, his mind going blank for a moment as he registered Mr. Snape's words, and then scrambled his brain to reply, going to refuse because Uncle Vernon would be furious if he saw a stranger walking with Harry, but instead said, "That would be very nice, thank you sir."
Mr. Snape seemed to almost smile, before offering his arm out to Harry. Trying not to blush, he hooked his arm into the other mans, and began to walk in the direction of his home. Strangely, the air around the man seemed almost warm, as if he was standing in the sun and not in a cold, windy alleyway. How odd.
Their walk was mostly silent, and snow began to fall again, cascading around them and settling into their hair. Harry dared a glance at Mr. Snape, and tried to ignore how pleasant it was to be interacting with someone normally. Dudley made sure that nobody at their high school would befriend him, unless of course if they wanted to become a victim to the so-called game of "Harry-Hunting," where Dudley and his friends would chase him around until they caught him, sometimes to cause him bodily harm. When he was younger, there was a time where Dudley and his friend were doing so, and he had somehow ended up on the roof. Despite his attempts to explain that he didn't know how he had gotten up there, he had been suspended from school and Uncle Vernon had been furious, locking him in his cupboard in their old house for almost a week.
Their new house wasn't much better, with four bedrooms that included Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's room, Dudley's room, Dudley's second room for all of his toys and games and whatever else he wanted in there, which mostly consisted of junk, and a guest room which overlooked the garden, that Harry worked on in the spring and summer.
Harry's room was a small crawlspace located under the stairs that was actually slightly larger than the cupboard which had served to be his room in their old house, that had a thin mattress, a lumpy pillow and sometimes even a bed sheet to put on it, and a shelf. In the farthest corner of Harry's room was a small hole in the concrete, where one of Harry's only friends lived. She was a small thing, a silver-ish grey with red eyes, so he supposed she had been a pet at one point, with long whiskers and a magnificent tail. Most people weren't fond of rats, but Harry loved them. Tino (short for Valentino), as he had named her, would come out when it was quiet and perch on Harry's knee, begging for food and would let him pet her and even pick her up. She would even stay to sleep with Harry sometimes. The Dursley's were not fond of pets, unless of course if they were dogs, and Aunt Petunia would have a fit if she knew Tino had been living in the house, so Harry kept her a treasured secret.
Most of his food, if he was given any, was offered to Tino and he found it amusing that she, in fact, did not like cheese.
Harry was pulled out of his thoughts quite abruptly as he realized that they had turned onto his street, a quiet and unassuming place with a front lawn for every house, everything pristine and perfect.
"This is my stop sir." Harry tried to say cheerfully, wincing as his voice cracked slightly. Mr. Snape nodded accordingly, and Harry withdrew his arm from where it resided, nestled warmly against Mr. Snape's side.
"Thank you for accompanying me to my house. I appreciate it very much."
"You are welcome, Harry. I shall see you at Pacemakers sometime?"
"Likewise, sir."
And with that, Mr. Snape began to walk away through the snow and the fog, leaving Harry to stand on the front lawn, wondering when he would see the man again.
