AN: Okay, this was a hard chapter to write. I'm trying to keep Snape gray but still have some understanding growing, let me know what you think.
The next morning Harry sat himself at the table where his breakfast appeared, sending a glare at the Potions master as he squirmed a bit upon sitting.
Snape, patently ignoring the teenager, sipped his tea as he focused on the parchments laid out before him.
"I would bet the Slytherins are partying with your absence," Harry snarled at him. "If this is how you discipline them, I might become a hero of Slytherin for giving them a break from you."
"Don't be dramatic," Snape chided. "It wasn't that bad, I get less whinging from first years. And my prefects are well-trained to keep my students in line in my absence."
"I don't see how the cane could have been that much worse."
"Well, since my permission to discipline you extends to the entire two weeks of quarantine, you could always push me a bit and find out," Snape suggested, arching an eyebrow.
Grumbling, Harry shifted a bit in his seat and looked at his eggs. In truth, it didn't hurt that bad, it just made him feel embarrassed. When he woke that morning and the memory hit him – as well as the slight sting when he sat up – he felt his face flush with embarrassment. How had he allowed this to happen? Ron was never going to let him hear the end of it when he found out. And the cause of that sting had been sitting at the table, calmly sipping his tea like nothing had happened.
"Remember to take your temperature before you eat your breakfast," Snape told him without looking up. "It's more accurate that way."
"I don't feel sick," Harry grumbled, picking up the large glass thermometer and putting it in his mouth.
"The temperature often comes before symptoms," Snape told him. "Which you would know had you paid attention in class. Now, stay quiet and make sure you return that to the disinfectant jar when you're finished with it."
With a smothered grumble from Harry, Snape arched one eyebrow. "Of course, there's more than one way to take a temperature if you're unable to comply with simple instructions. I could call Madame Pomphrey down, and with enough protection spells for her . . ."
With Harry's horrified look, he knew he would have no further protestations.
"Ah, three minutes of blessed silence."
"Normal," Harry replied, reading the thermometer after the prescribed three minutes. "See? I'm fine. This quarantine is pointless."
"It is too bad you woke up in such a foul mood," Snape continued. "I had thought you interested in the latest plans. But I see you are merely a petulant child, and shall treat you as such."
"Wait, there's plans!" Harry protested. "Tell me!"
"I most certainly will not," Snape told him firmly. "With that kind of disrespect?"
"Please?" Harry asked. "Please, sir?"
"Let's get one thing straight right now," Snape told him, meeting his eyes with deadly seriousness. "Respect and courtesy towards me are not for when I have a ruler in my hand or when I have information you want. You may not treat me as you do Draco Malfoy the rest of the time except when you want something, am I clear?"
"But I don't . . ."
"Shall we compare how you talk to me and how you talk to the headmaster then, or perhaps how you speak with McGonagall?" Snape snarled. "Do you notice a difference?"
"But they actually like me!" Harry replied hotly. "They deserve my respect!"
"And I don't," Snape pounced. "You are foolish beyond belief, Potter. Words cost very little, and convention dictates how you speak to a professor at this school. Yet you flout this at every turn – with uncommon disrespect shown towards me, and then expect me to roll over and tell you whatever you want just because you sprinkle in a 'sir'?"
"Maybe if you were less of a git all the time I could manage a sir every once in a while!" Harry yelled, fully abandoning any sense of propriety.
Looking back, Snape knew he knew better. In any other situation, he would have said something snarky and walked away, perhaps plotting revenge or a suitable punishment for the miscreant. It's not as if he hadn't been yelled at by a few sons of purebloods in his time – or daughters for that matter – he knew how to put arrogant young upstarts in their places within the limits of approved disciplinary methods. It rarely took him more than an arched eyebrow and a few cutting sentences. He could even have ordered said miscreant over the desk for a few swats and it would have been infinitely better. But there was something about this situation – being trapped here because of this student's choices, having this student yell at him in such a disrespectful way, and having that student look so strongly like his father – well, Snape snapped. And he snapped in a wholly inappropriate way. His hand flew out, ready to make sharp contact with said student's face. The face, however, ducked.
"You were going to slap me!" Harry exclaimed with incredulity, backing away.
"Yes," Snape said simply, staring at his hand and hardly believing it himself. At that moment he felt intense gratitude for the boy's quick reflexes – he would not have wanted to face Dumbledore if had slapped potter across the face.
"Is that allowed too?" Harry asked, shocked, putting a chair between him and his attacker. "You're allowed to slap me in the face?"
"Not strictly speaking," Snape admitted, feeling a bit flustered. "I found myself . . . angry."
They both paused, realizing the moment that had passed. Neither of them felt the murderous rage they had felt the moment before, but instead the weight of what had almost happened. "Are you going to slap me again?" Harry asked. "Some new form of discipline?"
"No," Snape told him. "I have control over myself once again; and that is not a disciplinary method you should fear from me. Those are good reflexes you have."
"They work well for Quidditch."
"Hmm," Snape said without comment, pieces fitting into place. Nobody had that good of reflexes for someone slapping them without a reason.
Harry tried to control his breathing, but he felt it growing faster and faster. The inane banter hadn't helped. His heart began to pound, and he felt his legs begin to buckle and shake. Oh no, he thought. Not in front of Snape, please, not in front of Snape . . .
"What's wrong?" Snape asked, his sharp eyes taking in Harry's signs of distress.
"I'm fine," Harry breathed out. "Fine. Will go. Lay down."
"Do you have asthma?" he asked incredulously.
"No," Harry answered shortly. But his body refused his directives, and his heart began pounding even harder, as if it would go out of his chest. His chest hurt, and he closed his eyes to try and stop the short, panting breathing. He could feel his skin grow clammy as his whole body shook.
"Sit down," he heard Snape direct him, though the words felt like they were coming from the end of a long tunnel. "Put your head between your knees before you faint. I will get you a potion."
Harry knew very little until he felt his body gently lifted up to a sitting position with firm hands, a bottle being pressed to his lips, and then the foul taste of rotten fish and peppermint as a potion was being poured into his mouth. He had the wherewithal to swallow, choking, still panting. His body was gently lowered again by those same firm hands.
"The potion will take a few moments, Potter," he heard the Snape voice say again. "Focus on trying to slow down your breathing. Slow and steady, deep breaths."
For once the voice of the Potions Master didn't sound mean or snarky, but rather reassuring, and Harry focused on the voice as he tried desperately to slow his breathing down. Eventually, his breathing slowed, his heart slowed, and he was able to begin to take some deep gulps of air.
"Easy, now," Snape told him. "Too many deep breaths right now will make you dizzy too. Just try to concentrate on breathing slow and steady."
"Yes, sir," Harry answered softly.
After a few minutes of calm breathing, Snape asked, "How long have you been having panic attacks, Mr. Potter?"
"I don't know," Harry answered truthfully. "Is that what these are? It's happened to me a few times before but not often."
"I believe that was a textbook panic attack," Snape told him. "Did you not go see Madame Pomphrey when they happened before?"
"They never happened at school before," Harry admitted.
"Hmm," Snape answered. "Are you feeling better now?"
"Much better," Harry answered, tentatively sitting up. "Are panic attacks serious?"
"Not by themselves, no," Snape answered. "But they are very unpleasant."
"Yeah," Harry answered. "The first time I had one I thought I was going to die. But then when I didn't, I figured out they didn't kill you, you just had to survive them."
"When did you first have one?"
"Before I came to Hogwarts," Harry told him. "The year before."
"What caused it?"
Harry shrugged, avoiding Snape's eyes. "I don't know, not important I guess."
Snape didn't become the head of Slytherin by taking a teenager's words for things, but he also knew tact and knew when things were left unsaid for a reason. He let it go; they had a long time together. And it's not like he cared really, it was more like figuring out more about an enemy – the more he knew the better.
"But now that we are both calmer we do have to discuss how we are going to get along for two weeks," Snape told him. "I simply cannot tolerate your level of disrespect for two weeks, as we've already observed."
"I'll bet you've never had to show respect to a person that hated you!" Harry grumbled.
A bitter laugh nearly choked Snape at that – and so many names came unbidden to his mind. His own father, Tobias Snape. Lucius Malfoy. Horace Slughorn. Lord Voldemort. And then an instinct overcame Snape – he had the feeling that Harry wasn't just yelling at him before, but that he was playing substitute for someone else. That someone else shouldn't be too hard to guess. "Didn't your uncle insist on you showing respect, Potter?" Snape asked, pitching his voice soft but stern. "What did he do when you didn't?"
Snape had mostly been guessing based on instinct, but his instinct was rarely wrong. And it didn't take a Legilimens to see that his last comment had cut Harry to the quick. His face turned pale, and his lips pressed together in consternation. That confirmed what Snape had begun to fear – there was some level of abuse going on with the uncle.
"How did you know about that?" Harry asked, his voice stilted.
"I know more than you think I do," Snape told him with confidence, though he was mostly guessing. "The signs of abuse are clear to those that know what to look for. For people who are obsessed with rainbows, lollipops and saving the world like your fellow Gryffindors they might not be so clear."
"It wasn't that bad," Harry said, looking away. He felt shaky and uncertain – and like Snape was getting into his head. And being in this close of proximity with a man that had physically disciplined him and then nearly slapped him, well, he was beginning to feel . . . strange. He hated Snape and Snape hated him, right? So why did it feel like he could actually tell him these things? He seemed to already know. "You might even approve of his methods. Mostly I was just locked in my cupboard, and there was only a few times I went for more than a few days without food. He used, well, he used the belt mostly, but not like you did with the ruler all official and counted and everything. It was more, well, sort of just angry and it just happened. I mean, there was the time that I broke my arm, but that healed really quickly, and I don't think he really meant that to happen . . ."
Oh dear, Snape thought to himself. Why is Potter telling this to me of all people? But Snape had also interviewed many children who had been abused by their parents, and he was starting to believe with certainty that that was the situation here. But he also knew that reasonable questions and firm sympathy, what he normally offered first year Slytherins when this became apparent, wasn't going to work for this young Gryffindor with whom he had so much history.
"I see," Snape answered without emotion. "So it was fine, they were just strict with you then."
"Strict would have been okay," Harry told him, looking down and actually feeling sad. "I mean, I knew other kids with strict parents that were always doing chores for misbehaving or they were only allowed an hour of television a week or something. Strict would have been fine. I just, well, it was that they hated me too."
"What made you draw that conclusion?" he asked quietly. "Many children fight with their caregivers."
"Look, I'm not an idiot, alright?" Harry yelled, his eyes growing dangerously moist. "They did everything they could to tell me that they hated me. They locked me away in the cupboard as much as they could, they made me do all the chores when I was too small to even push the lawnmower, I barely got enough food to eat, and I never got a present that was better than a broken toy of Dudley's or a used sock. So yeah, they hated me. They lavished all their love on their spoiled little brat of a son and couldn't spare a bit for me."
"Drama, drama, drama," Snape drawled. "Just because you weren't treated as the boy who lived at home didn't mean that you are going to receive sympathy from me."
"I don't expect sympathy from you!" he declared hotly. "You seem incapable of it! But you can sure as hell at least believe I'm trying to escape to go and find them!"
"Language, Potter," Snape chided. "Unless you would like to become acquainted with my handy mouth-soaping spell."
"Sorry, sir," Harry stopped himself, suddenly realizing he was yelling. Why was he yelling at Snape? And why was he telling Snape things? Then, with mounting outrage, he demanded, "What did you dose me with?"
"It was a calming draught," he replied calmly.
"Why am I telling you things then?" he said. "I wouldn't tell you these things normally."
"One of the properties of the calming draught is relaxation," Snape explained. "Apparently you were relying on anxiety and fear to sustain some of your secrets. A natural side effect of the calming draught is relaxing some of those things. Don't worry, I didn't give you Veritaserum, you are still in control of yourself."
"I need to be on guard around you," Harry told him with hooded eyes.
"You're a little late for that," Snape told him briskly. "Shall we conclude your interview?"
"Interview?"
"Yes, I was interviewing you about your uncle's abuse," Snape told him. "Is there anything you'd like to add about your aunt?"
"But you probably bloody agree with my uncle!"
"What makes you believe that, Mr. Potter?" Snape asked directly. "In what way have I made you think I would condone the abuse of a child?"
"My bum is still sore," Harry groused.
"That's different and you know it," Snape told him. "Even if I had used the cane on you, it would have been for a set number, you would have known what was coming, and I would have followed established guidelines. And other than that, have you ever known me to starve a child, lock them in a cupboard, try to ruin their holidays, or otherwise make them miserable?"
"No, sir," Harry admitted. "Though you are the rudest teacher I've ever had."
"I also teach a highly dangerous subject that I want my pupils to take seriously," Snape answered with a growl. "I'd rather be hated by the student body and still have the student body intact."
"You did try to slap me!"
"And that was not well done of me," Snape admitted. "I am grateful you were fast enough to dodge until I could come to my senses."
At that, Harry's mind boggled. Snape was grateful he had dodged? He was still half expecting to receive a punishment for dodging – his uncle always did. And yet, here was an adult who really did seem to want to know. He'd never had that before.
"My aunt was the same, mostly," Harry replied before he knew what he was saying. "Though the only time she hit me was a few times with the frying pan. I got really good at ducking."
"That explains the reflexes," Snape nodded.
"Yeah, if I ducked with my uncle there was hell to pay," Harry agreed.
"Language, Mr. Potter," Snape reminded him. "Although I don't wonder if that's a side effect of your guard being down a little."
"It got the worst when I started doing accidental magic," Harry admitted. "I didn't know what it was at the time. They called it 'freaky' things, and I always caught it the worst for that. It was really confusing because I didn't know what was going on, and it wasn't something I could control, and still I got beaten for it."
"They were the worst sort of muggles," Snape nodded. "When a child born of muggles begins to show magical abilities, they are visited by someone from the ministry to explain what is happening and they are monitored closely. Because Petunia already had a magical sister, they assumed that she would handle it appropriately and didn't check to make sure she was telling you about your magical heritage. What fools the ministry is."
"They thought they could beat the freakiness out of me," Harry told him sadly.
"Thank you for cooperating with this interview," Snape told him, walking over to the gold cord. "I believe it is time to involve the Headmaster."