A few days later, Snape heard Harry knock on his door after curfew. He had been expecting the boy, having sent him a note to come to him late that evening. Though, Snape realized that the fact that he knocked instead of just letting himself in as he normally would have done spoke to the fact that he knew how much trouble he was in.
"Enter," Snape intoned, not looking up from the essay he was grading.
The miscreant walked cautiously into his office, and Snape did not look up at him. He let Harry stand there for a few minutes as he finished grading the essay, even though he knew the boy was shifting uncomfortably. He wanted Harry to not ever want to risk doing such a thing again, and that meant a certain level of intimidation. And if there was one thing Severus Snape, Head of Slytherin, could do it was to intimidate children. Silence and being ignored would scare the boy more than Snape yelling.
When he had decided that Harry had shifted uncomfortably long enough, he stood. Then, still not looking up, he moved the essays aside and walked to the closet. He very slowly and deliberately took out the cane and also the slipper, and placed them both on the desk in front of him. He could feel Harry's anxiety peak, and only then did he look the boy in the face with a very stern glare.
"You may explain yourself now," he told the boy.
"Are you . . . are you going to cane me?" he asked, sounding to all the world like a young child.
"I have not decided yet," Snape answered. "I am unsure in this instance whether to punish you as your instructor or as your guardian. But as your instructor, you have certainly rated a caning."
"I guess I have," Harry admitted, feeling defeated. He wished he hadn't peeked like that.
"Surely you knew this was how it was going to end," Snape told him. "You have known me long enough to be acquainted with likely consequnces. Now explain why you did such an asinine thing."
Harry gulped, looking down in guilt. Snape felt very mollified to see that guilt, at least the boy understood what he had done. Part of him had feared that the boy would be angry and defiant, or even taunting about what he had seen. It calmed a great deal of his anger to see how much the boy was remorseful.
"I don't really have an explanation," Harry told him, still not looking up. "What I did was really wrong."
"Why did you do it?" Snape asked, his voice barely above a very dangerous whisper.
Harry shrugged, and Snape found himself having to use the firmest occlumency to not go and slap the boy across his face for his audacity. Shrugging! Well, the boy would know exactly what Snape thought of his recent behavior.
"I have endured a few days of your testing me," Snape told him with some semblance of calm once he was able to speak without spitting. "McGonagall has talked to me about your grades, though how she knew I was your guardian bears some investigation."
Squirming, Harry admitted, "Well, that was me. I didn't mean to do it, it just sort of slipped out."
"She is a safe person to tell," Snape acknowledged. "But I would like to know when you tell someone."
"Yes, sir," Harry replied.
"This meeting is about more than just last night," Snape told him firmly. "It seems you have been testing me in several ways this week. Would you like to confess or should I tell you about your rule breaking?"
Harry squirmed, saying, "I haven't been that bad."
"You threw spit-wads soaked in a reappearing ink solution at dinner," Snape told him. "And I ignored it, even when aimed at the Slytherins. Most didn't know they'd even been hit until spots appeared on their clothes an hour later."
Harry shifted, wishing he were invisible. "I didn't think you saw that," he admitted.
"I see everything," Snape assured him. "Like how you have refused to eat any vegetables for dinner this whole week, and how the house elves have told me that you are not in bed anywhere near a decent bedtime either. I was going to discuss these things with you last night after the occlumency lesson."
Harry turned red from shame, squirming where he stood. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.
"Have I missed anything?" Snape asked acerbically.
"No, sir," Harry answered, sounding contrite.
"You have not believed me when I have set up rules for your guardianship," Snape told him succinctly. "And I would have reprimanded you yesterday evening for it, perhaps with some lines or an essay. I had put thought into what would be a constructive consequence for you for your misbehaviors. But then you violated my trust more thoroughly than I could ever have imagined you doing."
Nodding sadly, Harry was surprised to find himself close to tears. "I guess you don't want to be my guardian anymore," he quietly said. "I don't blame you."
"You, Mr. Potter, do not get out of this that easily," Snape told him fiercely. "No ward of mine would be so spineless to give up like that. No, you will stay in this guardianship and face the consequences of your atrocious actions."
"Will you cane me?" he asked, a slight tremble in his voice.
"I ought to," Snape told him. "As your professor that should be the consequence for your actions. Can you honestly say that what you did last night was any less egregious than when attacked me last year?"
"I think it was probably worse," Harry admitted, still fighting tears. "I know I feel worse about it."
"Last year I took pity on you and you did not feel the consequences of your actions," Snape told him. "Though I believe my mercy was a bit of a surprise to you."
"It was," Harry admitted. "I was so scared, I didn't know what was going to happen. And then, when the cane fell, it didn't hurt."
"I felt your emotions had some justification that time," Snape explained. "You were distraught. I did not feel you had earned a caning, though I was obliged given the situation. But this situation is far different. This time you were not acting out of thinking Dumbledore was near death, this time you chose to act in a way intentionally to hurt me. I am quite angry with you."
"I thought last night you were going to kill me," Harry told him. "I've never seen you look like that, not even the time with the flying car."
"I was upset," Snape acknowledged. "The jar of cockroaches was actually accidental magic, I did not intend to have it explode near your head. I also knew enough last night that I could not be rational in your punishment, so I sent you away. If I had punished you last night, well, let's say that neither of us would have been happy about the outcome."
"I was really bad," Harry told him, seeming young. "You probably should have just belted me last night, I deserved it."
"It does not mater what you do," Snape told him calmly. "I am not going to abuse you. You deserve to be punished, yes, but you do not deserve abuse. Last night I was tempted to abuse you, and that is my fault, not yours. I sent you away because you deserve to be dealt with with me being rational, not with me that angry."
"I didn't sleep," Harry told Snape quietly. "I went back to my room and I was in such a state. I was worried that you were going to kill me, and then I was worried about if you didn't. Or if you were going to not want to be my guardian, or what the cost would be if you were still going to do it."
"I didn't sleep either," Snape told him, but did not expound on it. "If you have trouble sleeping again you may send an elf to me to fetch a sleeping potion."
"Don't do that," Harry said, his voice sounding tearful.
"Do what?" Snape asked.
"Be kind like that," Harry told him. "You shouldn't offer to help me when I've just . . . invaded your memories. You should hate me."
"My care for you as a guardian is not dependent on your behavior."
"I'm sorry," Harry told him, suddenly looking up. "Really and truly sorry. You've been so great – I mean it, you have. Great enough to make me worry that you might be hiding something bad from me. After so many years of being so hard on me, it was hard to believe you really meant the difference."
"That is something I can understand," Snape nodded. "I'm a Slytherin, please remember. It actually makes more sense to me than the blind trust your fellow Gryffindors show."
"The hat wanted to put me in Slytherin at first," Harry told him. "So I guess that makes sense."
"Why Gryffindor then?" Snape asked, the intrigue he felt overruling his sternness for a moment. It seemed unthinkable that the ultimate Gryffindor was almost one of his Slytherins. How would their relationship had been different if that had been the case?
"I had met Malfoy," Harry explained. "You know, before we were all sorted. I didn't like him and how he treated Ron, who had been so nice on the train. So I asked the Sorting Hat to put me anywhere but Slytherin, even though it insisted that Slytherin would make me great."
Snape nodded, and in truth that was probably the best for the boy. A true Slytherin would have chosen greatness over loyalty to an acquaintance of a few hours. That question in itself was probably a form of test – a true Gryffindor would choose loyalty with friends rather than the promises of greatness. And though the hat sometimes had interesting conversations as it sorted, it never actually made an error; even if it was adulthood before the student recognized the rightness of the placement.
"Well, I was thinking about whether it was real, I mean whether there was something in the pensieve that was incriminating. But what I found . . . I'm sorry professor. More than you realize."
"Then you realize the . . . personal nature of what you saw," Snape said, finding it harder to address what was in the pensieve than it had when he'd thought about what he wanted to say.
"I'm . . . yes, I realize it," Harry acknowledged. "I saw my dad being . . . well, being a total prat to you. And then my mum . . ."
"There is no reason for you to narrate it for me," Snape told him sharply. "Living through it was bad enough."
"It was," Harry answered honestly. "And I'm sorry that it was. I've been bullied too, it's awful."
This answer flustered Snape, Harry's answer of plain honesty made Snape feel an unexpected wrench of having the boy sympathize with him. The wall he had constructed around his heart and around these memories shook just a little. He was taken aback by the boy and found himself without words. He had expected this meeting with his ward would contain a stern lecture followed by a painful punishment, the punishment depending on how remorseful the boy proved to be. But this . . . sympathy . . .
"I'm not going to cane you unless you choose it," Snape told him, finding his voice again, and trying to make it seem stern and uncompromising. "This is a domestic issue, between guardian and ward, and therefore would rate a domestic punishment. I will use the slipper with you on my lap, unless you'd rather the cane."
It was Harry's turn to squirm now, and Snape knew that it would. He allowed the boy to squirm, not rushing his reaction.
"Trousers?" Harry asked, and Snape flinched a bit at that question. Harry pressed on, seemingly nervous and unsure. "Ron says that the slipper . . . well, it's usually . . . applied to bare skin."
"Trousers on," Snape told him. "The slipper has a charm on it to have the same impact as if your trousers weren't there."
"I would be an idiot to choose the cane," Harry told him.
"You would be," Snape agreed. "But you have made foolish choices before. You will choose whether you want me to handle this as your professor or as your guardian."
"You know why I don't want to be on your lap," Harry told him. "But I certainly don't want the cane either."
"You will have to choose," Snape told him.
AN: I realize that this is a bit of a cliffhanger, but this chapter was just getting way too big. It's also a nice parallel to the beginning chapters. :)
