Disclaimer :

According to my court-appointed therapist, I am not J.K. Rowling, and I therefore neither created nor own any aspect of the Potterverse. The voices in my head and I are still debating this, but we thought we'd just humour her for a while. Stupid Muggle.

A/N:

Thanks to all my reviewers, you guys are awesome! Glad you liked the chapter. I also want to say a big, "I'M SORRY!!!" for the awkwardness of the transitions between flash-backs and points of view. For some reason, my formatting gets all messed up when I upload, so the nice little breaks all get lost. I'll try to fix that this chapter. Speaking of which...this chappie does a lot of work in the way of establishing my Sev's personality...which I hope nobody will want to lynch me for. For my views on how I think Sev should be, see my profile. Again...no hatred please, people...please?

Ch.3

Harry's first thought as he shot into existence out of thin air was,

"That's un-expected!"

Then, all thinking was temporarily suspended as his face slammed into something very, very hard.

"Owwwwwwww...."

Harry sat up, rubbing his smarting nose. 'Ah,' he thought, looking down, 'Hello, floor." The surface he had just crashed into appeared to be a flag-stone floor, peppered with dozens of shards of some sort of glittering material.

Curious, Harry reached out a hand to touch one of the reflective fragments, only to have his hand rudely slapped away by Borrible.

The disapproving and unpleasantly nasal voice of Harry's diminutive kidnapper immediately snapped,

"Does Young Master have any common sense whatsoever, or does he simply choose to ignore it completely and rely solely on his base animal instincts?" Borrible glared down his formidable nose at Harry, who sat, mouth agape, timidly rubbing his slapped hand like a naughty child.

"Wha, what?" stammered Harry, not at all comfortable under the eye of this tiny yet intimidating creature. "What did I do?"

The elf made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat and pursed his lips together, an expression which made him look eerily like Petunia Dursley. Harry felt a shiver go down his spine.

"What Young Master did," said Borrible in that same, 'I'm talking to a simpleton' tone that he'd used earlier, "was to attempt to pick up pretty, razor-sharp shards of glass which would have given Young Master an Owie Boo-Boo."

Harry flushed in embarrassment and anger.

"Well, what idiot left broken glass lying all over the place?" he fumed, exactly one and a half seconds before he realized that his glasses were no longer on his face. "Oh," he said quietly, avoiding eye-contact with the scowling elf.

"'Oh' indeed," said Borrible. With one last sneer at Harry, he flicked his wrist and repaired the glasses. When they were once again whole, and Harry, feeling more and more like an idiotic child, made no immediate move to pick them up, Borrible remarked,

"Will Young Master be able to return his glasses to his face, or does Borrible need to help him find his nose?"

Flushing as red as the hair of all nine Weasleys combined, Harry snatched the glasses from the floor and fumbled them on to his face, nearly putting his left eye out in the process. Once he'd succeeded, he tried to glare defiantly at the elf, but failed miserably due to his wincing, watering eye.

In the end it didn't matter anyways, as Borrible had dismissed Harry from his thoughts and was now brushing non-existent dust from his pristine tea-cloth toga. Pretending he hadn't seen Harry's glare, Borrible returned his attention to the glowering boy and said,

"If the Young master is quite ready, Borrible will show him to Master's study."

Harry opened his mouth to object, but firmly closed it again when Borrible wiggled his fingers menacingly in his direction. Thinking that he didn't want to greet Snape from the floor, glasses dangling from his ears, Harry ground out a reluctant,

"Fine. I'll go see him."

The elf made a deep bow and said,

"As Young Master wishes. If it pleases Young Master to follow?"

A slight twitch at the corner of an eye was the only evidence of the mocking that lay behind his actions.

Teeth gritted and fists clenched, Harry followed a few steps behind Borrible, thinking of all the wonderfully terrible things he'd like to do to him. Was the Cruciatis Curse only illegal when used on a human? He made a mental note to look it up the first chance he got.

A twisted smile was beginning to creep its way onto his face when he jerked to a stop, nearly treading on his odious little guide's heels. Harry looked around, suddenly aware of his surroundings; he was at least a floor higher than where he'd "landed", at the end of a stone corridor. The door he stood in front of looked like it might be the entrance to a tower.

Borrible opened the door, indicating that Harry should enter. Harry looked warily through the opening, and saw that it was indeed a tower; stone steps twisted out of sight, disappearing into the un-lit space above.

As he hesitantly set his foot on the first step, Harry turned to look at Borrible. Strangely, he didn't like the idea of continuing without the uppity little toad.

"Young Master will find the study at the top of the stairs. It is the only door. Master is waiting."

With that, the elf swung the heavy door shut with a forbidding 'thud', and Harry was left in the pitch-blackness of the tower. Fighting the urge to throw himself bodily against the door and scream to be let out, Harry steeled himself, and reached for his wand.

"Oh, right," he muttered, when he was unable to find it, "Borrible has it. So no lumos, then. Right-o."

Careful to keep one hand on the wall, Harry slowly made his way up the twisting staircase. He noticed as he progressed that there were several un-lit torches set into the walls.

"Greasy git probably didn't light them on purpose," he grumbled, cursing under his breath as he nearly stumbled on an un-even step. After what inevitably seemed like hours, Harry felt his probing hand come into contact with wood. He raised his hand to knock, and felt himself hesitating.

"Damn, crap, shit, bugger, fuck!!!" he hissed under his breath, "Come on, Harry, don't be such a fucking nonce. This isn't Hogwarts, he can't do anything to you, he's not your professor right now, he's your...Shit." Cursing reality for the 300th time since "Doom's Day", as he liked to call that day at Howgarts two weeks before, Harry vented his frustration by soundly flipping off the closed door.

Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, which was becoming a nasty habit, Harry knocked his fist three times against the door, and added a fourth, slightly louder knock with his forehead as he thumped it dejectedly against the wood.

Harry was caught off guard as the door swung inward instantly to reveal a rather annoyed looking Severus Snape. The tall man looked down on him with the same malicious look on that Harry had seen so often in his Potions class. Harry tried his level best to match his professor's stony glare, but the best he could manage was a somewhat less-than-terrified stare.

"Tell me, boy," said Snape, slowly crossing his arms, "is it considered normal in the circles you travel in to make one's presence know by muttering profanities, gesturing rudely and ramming one's head into the door? I would think that one such as yourself would want to keep safe whatever limited cranial facilities one had, not go about testing wood density with them."

Harry felt all of the colour drain from his face.

"I...you...what...how...?" He swallowed noisily, and edged nervously away from the figure towering above him.

Snape's upper lip curled.

"Door transparency, boy. Very basic wizarding security measure. Standard Book of Spells, Grade Three, Chapter 8, I believe. How are your notes in Charms, by the way?"

Harry looked down and shuffled his feet, suddenly very conscious of the fact that he was still barefoot, clad in Dudley's too-big pajamas. Inside he was fuming, but there was outwardly very little he felt he could do. He was aware that he was at an incredible disadvantage. One, he was in Snape's house; two, Snape was bigger than him; three, he had no wand; and four, he was wearing pajamas decorated with cricket-playing teddy bears. These factors did not instill much confidence in Harry.

"Well, don't just stand there boy, come in!" snapped Snape, gesturing curtly with one arm while leaning the other against the doorframe.

Harry jumped and moved forward. Snape did not move to let him pass, so Harry was forced to duck under his arm and slide against the stone wall, Snape all the while keeping his un-blinking gaze upon him.

After he'd entered the room, Harry felt his nervousness increase ten-fold. He could sense the man behind him, and felt a slight breeze on his bare neck as the door swung to. His flesh goose-pimpled, and Harry involuntarily brought his arms up, rubbing his shoulders.

A hand clamped firmly onto his neck, and Harry gasped, hitching his shoulders up and whirling around. Snape let go his grip, but regarded the wide-eyed boy with a delighted smirk.

"Rather jumpy aren't we, boy?" he said, taking a step towards Harry, who stumbled backwards before he could stop himself, found himself backed into a wall.

Snape, however, pleased with this new, vulnerable Harry, continued forward until he was mere centimeters away from the trembling boy, forcing him to crane his neck to look at him. Smiling thinly, Snape leaned forward.

"Welcome home."

Harry blinked. His brain, already taxed by the morning's events, was having trouble processing the statement. 'Welcome... home'? Welcome: to receive, to greet, to grant access to. Home: house, residence, dwelling, abode, habitat, quarters, domicile, address... Aw, hell no!

As it finally clicked, Harry's eyes widened in pure, unadulterated terror.

"What?"

He dodged around Snape, tripping on his yards of black robes, and stumbled his way to the door. He yanked in-effectually on the handle, kicked it a few times, then slammed his head against the door with a bellowed,

"Fuck!"

"There you are with that strange custom of yours again," came the cruelly amused voice from behind him. "Does that make you feel any better?"

Harry whipped around and glared at the speaker.

"What in hell are you playing at, Snape? This isn't my home! It will never be my home! You said yourself you wouldn't acknowledge me! Doesn't anyone keep their bloody promises anymore?" he paused, and angrily sputtered for a moment. "Why in hell are you doing this? I was perfectly fine without you, believe me!"

Snape was looking no longer amused, but dangerously angry.

"Believe me, Mr. Snape," he said, watching as Harry flinched, "My actions in this matter are completely selfishly motivated, and have nothing whatsoever to do with either your happiness or well-being. I couldn't care less what you want, where you want to live, or who you want to live with."

With each word, Snape Sr. took another menacing step forward.

"The fact of the matter is that you are my son. Mine. And I will no longer allow my progeny, however illegitimate it may be, to masquerade as the spawn of James Bloody Potter. Word is going to get out, if it hasn't already, and I would rather it be on my terms. Soon it will be known that James Potter stole the heir to an important wizarding family because he was unable to provide one of his own-he sent his whore of a wife out to find a man who could do properly the job he couldn't..."

"Shut ­up!!" screamed Harry, eyes blazing, "Shut up! That wasn't what happened! She was just...she just made a mistake. You took advantage...That's not how it happened, you liar!"

Snape snarled and grabbed his son by the gaping neck of his pajama top, jerking him fiercely toward him, until Harry was up on his toes, struggling to maintain his balance.

"Listen, you insolent little brat!" he hissed, his face inches from Harry's, "I have news for you. You are my son. Do you understand what that means? It means that the Potters were raising a stolen heir. Perhaps it wouldn't matter if Evans had gone out and spread her legs for some trash like Arthur Weasley, but in our world, the children belong to the father. If this had come out while Potter still lived, both he and your mother would have been thrown into Azkaban to be cell makes with their precious Black. Even Dumbledore would be put to trial, had the circumstances not warranted his actions.

"You. Belong. To. Me. As you said earlier, in your little pre-knocking pep-talk, I am no longer your professor, I am your father. That means, contrary to your earlier statement, that I can do something to you. And trust me, son, talk to me in that tone again, or even think of calling me anything other than father or sir, and I'll be giving you much more than a detention."

He released his grip and let the tight-lipped boy back on his feet. Harry pushed away and stood huddled against the locked door. Faced with the stark picture Snape's words had painted, Harry felt suddenly very weak. He drew a shaking breath and looked up warily at the grim figure before him.

The satisfied sneer on his father's face chilled Harry, but also pushed him to make one last shot at bravado.

"Mr. Weasley isn't trash," he rasped. His throat was tight.

"What was that?" Snape whispered, his voice deadly calm.

Again, Harry found his voice restricted. All of the moisture from his throat seemed to have gone to his forehead, which was suddenly beaded with sweat.

"I said," he growled, rage building up steadily inside him, "that Mr. Weasley isn't trash. Neither is Sirius, nor my mother, nor James, my real father!"

Harry could hear his voice getting louder and louder as his father's face became angrier and angrier. Somewhere outside himself, Harry was watching the scene with a sort of perverse fascination. He knew he should look away, perhaps even run away, but his eyes refused to move from the train-wreck unfolding before them.

Ignoring all of his survival instincts, Harry continued to speak to his father in "that tone", knowing on some presently dormant level that this was not going to end well.

"At least James got married! He could find someone who could stand to spend more than one drunken night with him! Look at you! You live here alone with no company but your creepy little elf, though I bet you two get along just swimmingly, you're so alike! What have you been doing these past fourteen years? Staying at home, having weird narcissistic cross-species..."

That did it.

Snape said nothing, didn't even lift his wand, yet Harry found himself in a full body-bind, being slammed into the wall behind him, where he stood absolutely rigid, eyes fixed on those of his father.

The black eyes bore into him, pinning him in place as effectively as the body-bind. He closed the gap between himself and his petrified son in one stride and leaned menacingly over him, placing a hand on either side of Harry's head.

"I am going to attribute that little outburst to the fact that you are tired and stupid. You will not receive such a courtesy again. I will not tolerate insolence, not from my students and definitely not from my son. The next time anything even remotely close to that happens, you will become intimately acquainted with the disciplinary methods of traditional wizarding society. Is that clear?"

He flicked his wand, which he now held loosely in his hand, and freed Harry's head from the bind. He tried to look away, but the deep black pits held him. He was officially cowed.

"Yes," was his whispered answer.

The eyes didn't blink, but one single eyebrow was raised almost in-perceptively.

"Yes, sir," Harry amended, in an even softer whisper.

This seemed to satisfy Snape, as he finally turned his gaze away from his son. Harry closed his eyes and let his head drop to the side with a gasp. He fought to calm his breathing, conscious of the lump rising in his throat. He had never felt so absolutely helpless. Even facing Voldemort, he'd been able to defend himself, and there had been the chance of someone coming to rescue him.

From what Snape had told him, and what little he already knew of wizarding law, custody of children was fairly cut and dried. Blood above all else; Wizarding blood above Muggle, and paternal over maternal. Nobody was going to be coming to save him from his father.

And as for defending himself, even if he had his wand, and even if he was allowed to use it during the summer, Snape was still a more experienced, more powerful wizard than he was. In short, Harry Snape was screwed.

Severus Snape stood before the motionless boy, arms crossed, tapping his wand against his left bicep.

"Now," he said, "are you ready to behave in a civilized manner? If not, I can always leave you standing there with your thoughts for a while longer. Well? Can you behave?"

Harry nodded mutely, then, realizing more was expected, answered,

"Yes sir."

He had braced himself, but he still almost fell to the floor when the bind was lifted. He stood for a moment on shaking legs before his father curtly ordered him to sit. Harry took a quick, nervous look around before he hesitantly took a seat in one of the chairs in front of the desk, behind which Snape had just taken a seat.

Harry found that the chair was almost exactly the wrong dimensions for it to be comfortable. The seat was too deep for him to rest against the back-rest, which was set at an odd forwards angle that dug into his neck, the arm-rests were too low to be of any use without slouching, and the legs were long enough that only his toes touched the floor. He squirmed.

He looked up to find his father looking at him with some amusement. 'Of course,' he thought, 'it must be charmed to be like this for whoever sits in it. He knows how un-comfortable it is.'

Harry's eyes narrowed slightly, and he felt the anger beginning to boil up inside him again. 'That sick bastard..." He stopped himself from going any further, calling to mind the threat of "traditional disciplinary methods." He didn't like the sound of that, or the glint that had entered Snape's eyes as he saw the colour rise in Harry's face. So he sat up straight, gripped the too-low armrests, and stared straight ahead, mouth firmly shut.

Snape smirked, as usual, and sat back in his own leather wing-back, playing casually with his wand. Harry was reminded strongly of Voldemort playing with the Ghol knife. He shook his head slightly to clear the image. Snape appeared not to have noticed and started talking.

"Well, then, we have business to discuss. All of what I am about to tell you has already been taken care of, so any contestations on your part will serve as nothing but annoyances to me. I suggest you annoy me no further today. Strongly."

He eyes Harry for a moment, to make sure his point had been made, then continued,

"First is the matter of your inheritance of the Potter estate. Since you are not, in fact, a blood relative of James Potter, and his naming of you in his will was made under the assumption that you were, in fact, his son, all of his assets are to be re-distributed to the last members of his family in France. This includes all remaining monies, properties and...invisibility cloaks."

Harry's lip curled and his grip on the arm-rests tightened, but he remained silent.

"Next is the matter of your God Father. I believe it goes without saying that Black is no longer appropriate and has been relieved of his position...not that he was at all keen to continue in the role anyways, in light of recent discoveries. He has been replaced by my brother Atticus, whom you shall soon meet."

Harry's lip had now curled inside his mouth, where he was biting it in an effort to keep quiet. His breath was coming quicker, and he was beginning to see red.

"The last point I wish to address at this time is the matter of your name."

Harry's eyes widened in shock as his teeth bit straight through his bottom lip.

"Aaauugh!" he sprang out of his seat, hands clutching his bleeding mouth.

Snape stood up as well, eyes blazing.

"What did I tell you about your behavior!?" he growled, gripping his wand angrily.

"Mmmmm hm hmmmm..." was all that Harry could get out, but he gestured wildly to his lip, showing his father the blood on his hands. He had knocked the seat over as he got up, and now quickly backed away from the seething man.

"I will not tolerate your excuses! This is always your behavior at school as well. Somehow you manage to convince everyone that circumstances make your case extra-ordinary, when in reality all you had to do was follow instructions. Well, we are no longer at Hogwarts, and I am going to put a stop to this behavior right now."

Harry recognized the look in his father's eyes. It was the same as when Snape had cornered Sirius in Harry's third year. The look promised pain, pain which Snape had been waiting a long time to deliver.

He continued to back away, frantically shaking his head, as the incensed potions master raised his wand. Harry didn't hear the spell that was spoken, but its results were made painfully clear as he found himself drawn forward by an irresistible force and thrown face-down over the desk in front of his enraged father. In the time that followed, Harry wasn't sure whether he was actually being physically struck or if it was a product of a spell, but either way he felt as if he were being strapped with a belt.

Struggling had no results, as he was held down as forcefully as with a body-bind. His mouth, however, was completely un-hindered, and try as he might to stay quiet, he couldn't. In his mind, Harry was berating himself for being so weak; he'd been bitten by a basilisk, had his arm broken by a bludger, had the bones in the same arm re-grown, survived the Cruciatis Curse on more than one occasion, and been through more danger than most wizards twice his age, yet he couldn't keep quiet during a spanking from his daddy?

A little voice inside him was telling him that this wasn't exactly what you'd call a spanking, but it was drowned out by his real voices' howls. Finally, Harry became aware that the blows had stopped, though the assaulted area was still sending out seismic waves of pain. He struggled to quiet down, and eventually managed to let out only the occasional hic-coughing sob.

He stared down at the desk-top in front of his face, which was smeared with his tears and the blood from his lip. His glasses were spotted, and he could feel his nose running. He reached his arm forward to wipe it, and in doing so discovered that he could again move his limbs. Coughing, and trying not to shake too much, Harry slowly straightened up and slid away from his father, who was red in the face and panting with exertion.

Harry glanced furtively at his hand, and saw that it still held the wand. Snape caught his glance and immediately pocketed his wand, suddenly looking less satisfied than Harry had expected. He looked away from Harry for a moment while he composed himself, arranging his robes in a way that on anyone else would be called fidgeting. After several moments, when Harry's breathing was less audibly strained and he had managed to wipe most of the mess off of his face, Snape turned back towards him.

"Sit down," he said, indicating a chair that was still upright.

Harry hesitated, but obeyed. As he lowered himself carefully into the chair, he noticed that this one, while not exactly an easy-chair, was at least not specifically engineered to cause discomfort. Once he was seated, in fact, he noticed that the pain seemed to be receding. He considered questioning this, but thought better of it.

His father, however, seemed to have read his mind.

"The pain will diminish quicker than that caused in the...Muggle way," he said, looking carefully at a fixed point in the distance instead of in his son's eyes. Harry studied the man's face. While not exactly apologetic, he thought he could detect a small amount of regret. He at least didn't look angry anymore.

When he finally turned his eyes on his son, Severus cleared his throat and looked sternly at Harry.

"Ahem. As I was saying. Your name. I will not, as you no doubt feared, be changing your given name. It will remain as it always was: Heroditus."

Harry's head snapped up, and he forgot for the moment about being terrified.

"Heroditus? What do you mean? That's not my name..." He trailed off as he met his father's eyes ,then looked away.

Something flashed across Severus' face; a fleeting look of...something, before the hardness returned to his eyes and the sternness to his voice.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, it is your name, as it was given to you when you were born. You didn't think 'Harry' was a short form of 'Harold' or such Muggle nonsense, did you?" He snorted. "No Wizarding family worth anything will give their children names without a respectable Greek or Latin origin. Sometimes they will, if the middle name is a proper name, but not usually. James Potter, for example, had the middle name Hephaestus, I believe," he said with a smirk.

"So...sniff...my name is Heroditus James Snape then?" Harry timidly asked.

Severus snarled slightly, which made Harry jump in his seat again.

"No," he said, eyes narrowed, "You are Heroditus Severus Snape. The middle name always comes from the parent."

"Ah," said Harry, or was it Herry now, "I see."

Severus eyed Harry for a moment, then stood up. Harry immediately followed suit.

"That is all for now. I feel we to an understanding. Borrible will show you to your room, where you will stay until you are sent for. I expect you to be ready for brunch at eleven o'clock, and that you will be wearing something a little more...appropriate."

Harry looked down at his pajamas, now a rumpled mess and gave a dry, humourless laugh.

"Yes, sir."

"Very good then. You will find Borrible where you left him." This was evidently a dismissal, as he sat back down at his desk and picked up some papers.

Harry said nothing, just walked gingerly to the door, which was no longer locked, and slipped through, closing it silently behind him. After he left, Severus looked up from his papers and watched through the door charm as his son descended the tower stairs. His hand rose and massaged his temple for a moment, a mannerism few people had ever witnessed. He let his hand drop, and then reached for his ink bottle. A moment later, he was again absorbed in his work.

Just as he had been told, Harry found Borrible waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. He had taken a few moments before he emerged to erase any sign of what had transpired above. The last thing he wanted was for the nasty little creature to know about...that.

"Young Master wishes to be shown to his room now?" the elf asked respectfully.

"Erm, yes," Harry answered, relieved, as he began to follow the elf back down the corridor.

"Borrible thinks Young Master will be quite happy here," he said casually, without looking behind him, "Borrible loves it here. Such wonderful acoustics."

Okay...so that's that. Please don't hate me!

Tell me what you think...eeek!