No letters.

He caught himself staring at the window so many times he felt like an idiot. No letters, not one. Harry tried to tell himself it was alright—Snape was busy, he was off simpering and kissing up to Voldemort, which presumably took up all his time, not to mention a great deal of his mental faculty. Voldemort had been gone for thirteen years, and now he was back; there was a great deal to catch up on. As Harry's professor, Snape was in a position to give generously.

He tried not to think about what he might be giving. Nothing much, surely? What would Voldemort be interested in that Snape could actually say? How strong he was in magic? He had no idea what Snape really thought about his magical ability, but he was certain he didn't measure up to a dark lord at all.

What else was there? Perhaps a more filtered version of the things he kept throwing at Harry for the benefit of the Slytherins—rule breaking, arrogant, idiot Gryffindor, mediocre, idiot…

In some corner of his mind, he thought it was unfair.

Every year, something happened to the two of them something that stood between, to make them less close. For all of the other issues that flooded their time together when he lived at Snape's house, it was just them and their problems and nothing else. No Voldemort. No—he was grateful, really, truly, for Sirius, but when it came to Snape and him, Sirius was a roadblock. No Sirius, then. Just him, and Snape, and he missed it.

No letters.

Harry told himself, again, that Snape was very busy.

But he had just been captured by Voldemort, surely that warranted a letter? How are you, are you faring well, any nightmares?

Because there were nightmares, jumbled ones, of Cedric and his parents and Snape had told him he'd tell him all about his mother, and Harry had so many questions that he'd shoved to the back of his mind all last year because he hadn't thought there was ever any going back to the way things were with Snape, and now Snape had promised to tell Harry about his mother and there were still no letters.

He thought of writing one, except that he wasn't sure if Snape would appreciate the intrusion. At least, he didn't want to risk it.

He got mail regularly from Ron and Hermione and Sirius, and one from Remus, too—Remus had left, someone else had taken over the guarding job, a Squib again. Harry didn't understand why at first, why a thin, straight-backed woman had opened the door when he'd knocked instead of the familiar scarred face of Remus Lupin, but she'd told him there were always wizards about the place, guarding him; her main task was to be present and ready to call for backup in case it was needed.

He hadn't asked for her name. She invited him in, but he didn't step past the door. He fought to overcome the huge lump in his throat, the sudden limpness of his tongue, the tremble that threatened to break out over his body as he stared at her and tried not to think of Mrs. Figg, tried not to think of her frozen and dead, trying to help him escape.

He'd nodded at every alternate sentence, dumb and jerky bobs of his head, and then he'd fled. He hadn't gone back after that. He wanted information, but he didn't dare step out of his house and walk along the road to 6 Privet Drive. He sat at the television, in an almost obsessive habit, listening to everything on the news—the Dursleys looked at him strangely, and he looked back at them coolly, and they didn't stop him—but there was nothing out of the ordinary.

When the Dementor came, Harry was almost grateful it was something he could face, and not an army of Death Eaters—or Voldemort—or Snape as a Death Eater. He dragged Dudley across the street, as the woman stalked beside him, quietly telling him about Mundungus Fletcher. When the wizard finally arrived, she threw her bag at him.

"I hope Dumbledore kills him," she said in a flat voice.

He tried to escape to his room after depositing Dudley in the living room. No chance.

When Petunia Dursley wavered, yet again, between Vernon's dire threats and pronouncements and Harry's presence, Harry took off his glasses, carefully wiped them on his shirt and brought them back to his nose. If a reminder of his mother was necessary, he was willing to provide it.

It worked like a charm, and Harry told himself he didn't have to feel guilty about it. The Howler hadn't been him, anyway, it had been Dumbledore; Harry merely added the icing to the cake.

The thought of the trial sent him to his bed, from which he didn't bother to get up—he watched the window, again, for letters, but there was nothing, not even a one from Snape.

When the wizards showed up at his door, he found he could recognize every single one of them as having been in 6 Privet Drive at some point in the past during the full moon days when Remus was out of action. His eyes passed over the crowd, and his heart sank just a little at the absence of the black cloak and black curtain of hair. He went down, and it was on the tip of his tongue multiple times to ask where Snape was, but he stopped himself; he wasn't sure why, exactly, except that Snape wasn't the kind of person who would reveal anything about their friendship, and he didn't know if Snape would be okay with it.

In Grimmauld, Harry watched at the top of the staircase, leaning over as he caught sight of Snape's familiar head in the middle of the group of quietly muttering wizards and witches. His heart had leaped when Fred mentioned Snape's name so casually. (He'd called him a git immediately afterwards, but Harry didn't mind particularly, not now; he wasn't all too pleased with Snape either, and anyway, the twins didn't know anything about Snape.)

"Wait—" Ron said. "Wait till they leave."

Wait? That was the last thing he wanted. He walked along the corridor and went down a step, registering Ron and Hermione's hissed warnings as noisy chatter in the back of his brain. He wasn't sure if Snape would like being called on in public, but he didn't care, he was determined to talk to the man, at least once—

He opened his mouth. "Professor Snape?" he said, loudly, boldly.

Sudden silence fell on the group. Snape turned around as the people around him turned to look up at Harry. Snape caught sight of him almost immediately, and his expression didn't change, but when Harry started down the stairs, he didn't look annoyed in the least —that was good, right?

He stepped forward, disentangling himself from the group of people who started moving slowly, to make way for him and angling toward the door. Some of them stared curiously at him. Others stared curiously at Harry.

Snape had reached him by now, and there was the tiniest of uplifts to his lips that Harry took courage in. "Some privacy, I think," he said, and then he led him down the corridor and opened the first door he could find.

Harry stepped in after Snape, into a small room decorated much the same way as the rest of the house, with the addition of a piano and some chairs scattered about the place. Snape turned around, and looked at him in silence for a moment, seeming to take him in.

"Good job on the dementor, Harry."

Harry's heart jumped into his throat at the compliment—of course Snape would know right away that he'd wanted to hear it all along, instead of the 'don't leave your house' warnings that they kept sending his way. "Thanks," he said, a bit hoarsely. Snape looked—fine. As fine as he had ever seen him, anyway, but this was Snape he was talking about and if anyone could hide being in terrible pain, it was him. "Are you—how are you?" he said instead, because okay was far too vague and the immediate answer would definitely be no.

Snape shrugged, a minute action of a shoulder. "As well as can be expected."

Was Harry supposed to know what to expect? He'd been Crucio'd at Voldemort's hand, but he was the Boy-Who-Lived, so was that unexpected or the usual? He opened his mouth—it was on the tip of his tongue to ask, "Are you being tortured and if yes how often," before he decided it was far too personal a question to ask, and if the answer was yes he didn't want to know anyway and Merlin how he hated Voldemort—

"I am well," Snape said drily. "As a general rule, the Dark Lord treats his followers a small fraction better than he treats his enemies, but currently most of his more devoted Death Eaters are behind bars in Azkaban, and so he must practice a little mercy." He exhaled, and his eyes closed briefly. "I am alive, and my cover is intact, and I am not treated any worse than any other Death Eater. It is the best I could hope for, considering the circumstances. I trust that is enough detail to satisfy your concern."

Harry nodded, feeling a little numb and more than a little—he wouldn't call it guilt, exactly; if anything, it was pity, though that wasn't a word he wanted to affix to Snape. Grief, he decided. He was sad.

Snape was watching him, and seemed content to keep right on doing so. The silence was slowly getting to him. With an awkward laugh, he said, "I wish I could do something to help."

"Ah. Staying out of trouble would have been a great start, but you've failed me already, so there is the end of that pipe dream," Snape said, lips quirking up again.

Harry laughed, a little less awkwardly. The allusion to the dementors was enough to bring the thought of the trial to his mind, and then the fact that Snape hadn't written to him in a month, but now he couldn't bring himself to be mad at the only spy in Voldemort's circle—which was what he'd suspected would happen anyway.

"What?" Snape said, a little sharply.

"Hm? Nothing."

"You've been staring at me, and I know you enough to know when you're itching to ask a question."

Yes? No? "The trial," Harry confessed instead. "I'm a little worried—"

"Trust me, Harry, the political climate surrounding you might be a little bad, but not so much as to expel the Boy-Who-Lived from Hogwarts. Considering that you did, in fact, see a Dementor and were fighting it off, your act is one of self-defense. Fudge can rail and fight all he wants; the Board is not going to vote against you."

"You're forgetting about Malfoy," he pointed out.

"I do not forget," he said, just a little sharply.

"Did Voldemort send that Dementor after me?"

Snape gave a sigh that felt more like an annoyed exhalation. "It might be in your best interest to refrain from saying the name."

"Why? Dumbledore says it."

"Dumbledore is one of the greatest wizards of this century—oh, never mind. The Dark Lord, as far as I know, did not order a Dementor to attack you. Which doesn't in any way mean that he didn't do it, mind you, just that he is more cynical than ever at present, and might just have decided to try an attack on you without telling any of us."

"He doesn't trust you?" Harry said, feeling dread snake up his body.

"He doesn't trust anyone, including me. The fact that I arrived late was balanced by the information and excuse I had to offer; he has accepted my loyalty, for now. We shall see. Stop chewing on your lip before you bite it off entirely." Another sigh, shorter this time. "The only reason I'm telling you this is because you're going to work your head off worrying about this if I don't. You are not to share it with anyone."

Harry nodded numbly. He didn't think he could say what he'd just heard, that Snape's safety was a fine line he was barely balancing on, and he doubted anyone would take it with the same amount of feeling that he was. They wouldn't go to bed with their insides all knotted up, that was for sure—

A hand landed slowly on his shoulder, and he threw himself forward at the touch.

"Oh, Harry." The voice was barely a whisper, ruffling his hair, but he heard it all the same, and held on that much tighter.

"You didn't write to me," he said, after pulling away and staring down at his feet and awkward enough to blurt it out. He tried not to make it sound like an accusation.

Snape's hand was still on his shoulder. "I apologize. I couldn't risk it."

"You said you'd tell me about my mother," he said, softer still.

There was silence. Harry lifted his head; Snape had an odd, closed-off look on his face. "I did, didn't I."

Dread overtook Harry. "You changed your mind."

He shook his head absently, and the hand slipped off. "No. I didn't—I didn't have time to think on it."

Harry didn't understand what there was to think about. If someone asked him to talk about one of his friends, he could rattle on for hours. "What's Vol—he up to?" Appeasing Snape, he reflected, would at least get him wanted.

"Gathering followers and making sure the Ministry does not confirm his return," he said promptly, and though Harry was grateful for the answer, it also was a very vague one.

"O-okay," he said. It struck him now, with brute force, that he was standing with someone who had daily contact with Voldemort, who talked to him, sat with him, listened to him…

"What have you been up to?" Snape asked, a bit brusquely. "Your relatives have treated you well, I believe?"

"Yeah," he said. "For the Dursleys. Remus left," he added. "She—she's a Squib too."

Snape nodded, his eyes fixed on Harry. "Magical people are needed more urgently elsewhere. We needed someone to keep an eye on you and the area with some sort of permanence. And if that idiot Fletcher hadn't gone and left before his shift ended," he said, with so much venom Harry felt instantly sorry for the man—if only mildly, because it was him that the man had decided to leave, "we might have a much less of a mess to deal with."

Harry wasn't inclined to stick up for a wizard he barely knew. "Right. You don't think I shouldn't have used the Patronus, do you?"

Snape looked surprised, in a mildly mocking sort of way. "And have your soul eaten? No, Harry, I don't think."

"You never know, it might have gone for Dudley instead," he murmured.

"Ah, well, then, I change my mind. You made entirely the wrong choice."

He stood there, grinning, a bit dumbly, at Snape, who smirked back.

Then the door opened, and a voice spoke from behind him, a most familiar voice.

"Harry, what are you—oh."

Harry caught the emergence of a proper Snape-sneer just as he turned to face his godfather. "Sirius!" he said, with genuine delight.

Sirius barely registered Harry's exclamation. "Thought you'd left by now," he said, in a voice too flat to be called cold, but certainly devoid of anything resembling warmth.

"Trust me, Black, I have no desire to spend a minute longer than necessary in this godforsaken mansion of yours."

"Well, you know where the door is, don't you?"

Snape parted his lips, but, "Excuse me," Harry said. "Why don't you continue without me?"

And he walked by Sirius, and stepped out into the hall, where Remus was watching him with something like a smile on his face.

"You can imagine the Order meetings," he said.

Harry could very well imagine. Dumbledore would be a calming influence, but he was certain they could both get in a fair share of well-aimed barbs even so. "I thought to tell them to be nice to other, but I think it'll just be a waste of my breath."

"If you handle Severus, I'll take care of Sirius."

Harry pondered the word handle. "Yeah, no."

Remus chuckled, but then the door behind him opened—rather with more force than necessary, and Snape came marching out, a cold expression on his face that only marginally thawed on catching sight of Harry. Harry thought it might have gone less cold if Remus hadn't been behind him. Merlin. sometimes he forgot what Snape was like around other people.

Then he registered what he'd just thought: the implication that he wasn't other people, that he was in a category all by himself, where Snape actually cared—? —about him, and not in a soldier-caring-for-commander kind of way, like with Dumbledore (who was probably all alone in a category by himself too), and now the fuzzy feeling was growing in his chest and stomach, and he grinned up at Snape. "Leaving?"

Snape nodded, lifting an eyebrow at Harry, perhaps at the dorky smile. "I will be seeing you again. Most likely. Try not to worry."

"And don't get into trouble." He registered Sirius' presence in the corridor, standing in the doorway and leaning on the lintel, hair falling into his eyes, a dark look on his face. "Got it."

"If you manage to get into trouble from here, you will have set a new low," Snape responded, and then nodded by way of goodbye and strode off.

It was only after the door clicked shut that Sirius moved away from the door and came forward. "I don't know what you see in him."

Harry didn't think Sirius would ever see what Harry 'saw in him', or anyone, ever—Snape didn't try too hard to be nice, after all. And he wasn't going to lose Sirius over Snape, anymore than he was going to lose Snape over Sirius.

Snape's words from their last conversation in his office echoed in his mind: people-pleasing. He didn't think Snape was quite right about that. He didn't take people for granted, and he didn't think there was any good in trying to change Sirius' mind about Sn—

Remus was looking at him, he noticed, almost like he expected Harry to respond.

Okay, maybe he was a little people-pleasing.

"He saved my life," he said calmly, feeling as though this was the long and short of the entire argument—Snape saved his life. What about all the rest of it? Snape was nice to him, helped him, was gentle and kind and—

Sirius waved a hand. "So he's worming his way into Dumbledore's good favours."

Mrs Weasley appeared in the corridor then, calling them for dinner. Sirius started off up the hall, and Harry followed. "If he is, he's doing an incredible job of it."

Sirius gave a dry laugh and Harry almost regretted opening his mouth. He didn't say anything, although Harry was fairly certain his shoulders were stiffer than before.

Then Tonks stumbled and the hall erupted into a cacophony of muttered apologies and whispery replies and over it all, the loud screech of Mrs Walburga Black, and it was distraction enough.

Harry sat next to Sirius at the table, vaguely aware that he was a bit tense, although that might have to do with the general grimness that had settled over Sirius' face from the moment he'd seen the man. "Had a good summer so far?"

"No, it's been lousy."

That got the mildest grin out of him. "Can't see what you've to complain about, myself. Personally, I'd have welcomed a dementor attack. A fight for my very soul would have broken up the monotony nicely." If Snape was here, Harry thought distantly, he'd have raised his eyebrow all the way to the skies at that statement. "I've been stuck inside for a month. My big disguise is useless; Dumbledore feels there's not much I can do for the Order."

Harry could certainly sympathize with him there. He'd been stuck in his home too. "At least you've known what's been going on," he said bracingly.

"Oh yeah," said Sirius sarcastically. "Listening to Snape's reports, having to take all his snide hints that he's out there risking his life while I'm sat on my backside here having a nice comfortable time . . . asking me how the cleaning's going —"

Harry's heart went just a little cold, for a moment, before it heated up in anger. He would, he decided, have words with the man. This was ridiculous. If Snape would try, just a little, to be civil to Sirius…

"Yeah, real nice chap, our Snape," Sirius said lightly, and Harry bit down on his tongue.

AN: I do not need any reviews complaining about Snape's lack of letters to Harry. :) I know there is a myriad of online content about how inefficient Voldemort is (and, by extension, how utterly unthreatening the Death Eaters are) but, at least for the sake of this fic, I consider them as very viable threats. The work that went into simply transferring Harry from Privet Drive to Grimmauld at the start of OotP is an indication of how seriously the Order takes them. Multiple guards, flashing light thingies, charms and whatnot. Snape decided to focus on his duty and not give in to Feelings, and I decided to let him be. (He also perhaps thinks that Sirius will supply emotional comfort. Perhaps he also feels a bit superfluous.)

First chapters are sometimes to write, but not OotP-Sirius and Snape flatly told me they will not get along. I believe the words 'at least not yet' were subtext. I shrugged and went along with it.

This series will have 21 - yes, twenty-one - chapters.

I'd stated at the start of the series that I would endeavour to remain as close to canon as possible. I've decided to make OotP an exception. I won't veer off completely, of course, but I will be freer in my 'reinterpretation of events' than before.

We've also crossed the 200k word mark with the last update- celebratory cake for everyone!

I'm excited!

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