CHAPTER 2

Meeting the Triplets...and the Dursleys

The thirty-first of July arrived and the fire in Arabella Figgs's fireplace turned green and spat out three people in sequence at seven in the morning.

Arabella had been expecting company but it wasn't Severus's, for he wasn't the visiting type and it wasn't Filius's either for he wasn't even known to her. Therefore, both wizards cast a disillusionment charm on themselves and left the house before Arabella entered the living room and got suspicious, while Minerva settled down for a second breakfast, on the pretext of visiting the triplets after she finished.

Severus headed for the Number Four while Filius disapperated to one of the banks in which the Dursley had an account. There was going to be a lot of Charms work in store for the cheery little wizard.

Pulling his cloak around him, Severus briskly walked down the road. The uniformity among the houses slightly unnerved him. Severus had always hated stereotypes.

In five minutes, he found himself in front of the Dursley house and knocked on the door. At the same time he made himself visible and transfigured his robes and cloak, under which he wore a shirt and a pair of trousers, into a coat. Bracing himself for the confrontation of Lily's children after almost ten years, Severus waited for someone to open the door.

A huge blonde boy opened the door and, on seeing Severus, put on a fake polite smile and said in a noticeably feigned welcoming voice, "May I help you, sir?"

Severus contented himself with a polite nod. He knowing what he was up against, he decided to proceed with caution...and a bit of flattery.

He said smoothly, "My name is Severus Snape. You must be Petunia's son. What is your name?"

Dudley's smile faltered.

"I can't tell you that sir, no offense, but you're a stranger.

Severus looked at him indulgently, "I'm sure your mother has told to you of me."

The boy's eyes widened and he said in that same fake voice, "I'm sorry, sir, but she hasn't told me about you."

Severus said, "I grew up in the same town as her called Cokeworth, and it's been a long time since I met the Evans'. I've just come for a short visit before I proceed on my way."

"Evans', Sir?"

So Tuney was playing it safe, eh? Severus put on a confused frown, "Evans, dear boy, your mother's maiden name."

"I don't know, Mr. Snape. She hasn't told me about it, but, please come in."

The boy led Severus inside and offered him a seat on the couch. Severus sat down and thanked him without any sincerity. The very fact that he was getting a perfect view of the padlocked cupboard in which the triplets lived, was on its own, very wrong. Now adding to this was the boy's behavior which gave a guest the impression that all was well and life couldn't get better for him. It gave Severus a sick sensation.

The obese jackanapes gave him another of his false smiles and went inside to fetch his mother. Then he came out and said, "Sir, my mother will be here in a minute. Please make yourself at home."

With that, he walked out to the front door, probably to meet a few of his fellow brats.

Petunia Dursley entered the room not a moment later, with a practiced smile on her horse-like face. But the moment she caught sight of Severus her smile morphed into an ugly albeit natural scowl.

"You!" she hissed scathingly. "What are you doing here?"

Severus, still sitting on the couch, coolly appraised her for a long moment, occluding every feeling he may have had against her and said, "I have come to deliver letters to three children who live under this roof."

Petunia maintained a haughty poise, "I must say you surprised me, because I never thought you were up to even becoming a postman, but fancy coming up with all those lies and calling yourself my friend and neighbour!"

Surprisingly, it was the second part of the comment that actually insulted Severus.

He said, "I don't recollect calling you my 'friend' or using the word 'neighbour'."

Petunia bristled visibly, "Are you calling my son a liar?"

"I merely call it a bit of a misunderstanding on your son's part."

She looked down on him with triumph, and said challengingly "So you're calling him a fool?"

"You called him that yourself, Mrs. Dursley." Severus spoke in a tone that prevented her from arguing. He stood up and continued, "I've wasted enough of my time on unnecessary preliminaries, and now, if you don't mind, I would like to meet the Potters."

"You won't find them here." Petunia said severely, but Severus could make out her hidden panic.

"They live here, Petunia, or my letters would have addressed themselves differently."

"They're faulty." Petunia stated. "If you want the Potters," she spat out the name, "you will have to look elsewhere, probably an orphanage for uncontrollable vermins or maybe on the streets that house vicious, unnatural little beasts."

Severus's blood reached it's boiling point. He took out his wand and aimed it at her, barely resisting the urge to perform some creative transfiguration.

Before he could make a scathing remark, however, a large man with a bushy mustache and unsurprisingly no neck stomped into the room. The moment he took in the scene in front of him, his already red face became purple.

"Who are you?" he roared, striding forward, trying but failing to intimidate Severus. "How dare you threaten my wife!"

Severus changed tactics immediately. He pointed his wand at the couch and transfigured it into a horse, then a bull and then back into it's former self. Then aiming his wand at Petunia again, who seemed too frightened to make a sound, he said, "Bring me the Potter children, and I will avoid subjecting you to the painful sufferings your couch has just endured. And who knows, I may make the changes permanent."

Dursley's face turned pasty. He held out a shaking meaty finger in the direction of that abhorrent cupboard.

Severus made an exasperated sound. "Where. Are. The. Potters?...Quick!"

"I-I-In there." Dursley said pointed at the cupboard.

As if to emphasize Dursley's answer, the cupboard let out a muffled gasp and then a quiet 'shhh'.

Severus put on his ugliest, most terrifying scowl and said, "Just you wait, Dursley, before this evening, you will regret the moment you decided to ruin the lives of three young children...You too, Tuney."

With that, he magically shoved the hideous couple out of the room and aimed a painful stinging hex at their behinds. The shout and scream of pain that followed behind the now closed and locked door didn't in any way soothe the fury he felt.

Severus was well aware that the entire occurrence had been witnessed by three pairs of eyes from the gap between the roof of the cupboard and its door. He took off his coat and flung it on the couch, then turned and strode deliberately towards the cupboard imagining three pairs of eyes widening with fright as they and the rest of the bodies to which they gave sight scurried to the very back of the cupboard.

Contrary to the confidence he showed, Severus felt the very opposite and the anger he was so desperately trying to shove back behind his occluding walls wasn't helping either. He had prepared for this very day, gone through his speech over and over again in the last few days, but he wasn't sure exactly how much time would pass before he diverted from the original plan.

Steeling himself for the worst, he unlocked the padlock and opened the door to the cupboard.

Cupboards, especially the ones in which little children lived, were (according to Severus) meant to be dark, oppressive, dull, enclosed, damp, cramped, musty, dirty, narrow and to summarize it all in two words, uncomfortably claustrophobic. But the sight which met Severus's eyes threw away all his preparations.

What Severus saw and what his mind prepared him for were absolutely different. He knew that this was supposed to be a cupboard, but what he saw was the tiniest yet neatest and most well kept room he had ever seen.

The walls and roof were lined with paintings and sketches, most of them picturing two red-headed boys and a black haired girl. There was a shelf that ran the length of one of the narrower walls, to Severus's right, made of pieces of broken plastic toys all taped together. It was supported from under by three pairs of shoes, one pair under each end of the shelf and the third pair in the middle.

The self held the children's neatly folded clothes, while the gap between pairs of shoes under the shelf seemed to have made the perfect hiding place for books, chocolates and some other things that Severus couldn't see from where he was.

On the floor, next to the wall opposite the one with the shelf, was a very simple model of a table fan that could work by turning around a handle that seemed to have belonged to a Jack-in-the-box. Two of the blades, however, were made of the wings of a plastic aeroplane, and the third was made of a badly chipped wooden spatula.

On the floor was a big, but thin and ragged mattress that covered most of the cupboard floor. Three uncomfortable pillows and old blankets were neatly piled on the mattress next to the fan. But what astonished Severus the most was a ball of white light that floated on the roof of the cupboard, most definitely created by accidental magic.

Severus took this all in within seven seconds and then he let his gaze settle on the three children who were huddled together leaning on the wall furthest from the door. Each of them resembled Lily in one way or the other, it pained Severus to just look at them.

They stared at him with wide eyes. Blaire and Ethan were seated on either side of Harry who nursed his right arm close to his chest, a bruise developing on his left cheek and eye and some sort of muggle contraption over the trousers of his right leg that wrapped his leg right from his thigh to his ankle and took away the one's liberty of bending.

What had happened to the poor child?

Severus drew in a deep breath and spoke slowly with as calm a voice as he could manage.

"My name is Severus Snape. I am a professor at Hogwarts...I mean no harm..."

Severus was now grasping for words. His second declaration would definitely not have made any sense to the triplets for he was almost certain they weren't even aware of their magical abilities. But what else could he say to three untrusting eleven years olds? Come out and I will explain my presence at your home? Or I'm a wizard and so are you, these letters I carry with me are your acceptance letters to Hogwarts school? No. It just wouldn't do.

Severus concluded that throwing the blame on the relatives was the best approach for the moment since they were already in bad terms with the children.

He said in the same slow, calm voice, "I believe your aunt has informed you about our Wizarding World on your tenth birthday?"

Severus expectantly waited for contradiction and he wasn't disappointed. Slowly three little stunned heads shook in denial.

Severus made a show of looking at the door through which he threw the Dursleys with undisguised annoyance and disgust. He shook his head and made a few tsking sounds before turning to the three kids.

"No matter, I shall shall do the honors -"

He broke off as the front door bursts open and Vernon Dursley barged into the room in all his purple pomp, a heavy iron poker in his hand and Petunia and the fat son at his heels. The poker seemed to have given him his courage back.

He bellowed, "You. Will. Not. Tell. Them. Anything... I forbid you!"

Severus discretely set up silencing wards around the house.

"And who are you to decide?" he spoke in a low, dangerous voice, drawing himself to his full height and casually moving away from the cupboard so that the children could get a good view of what was happening.

"I'm their guardian!"

"I don't believe you." Severus said scornfully. "If you are their guardian, why are they locked up? In a cupboard at that! Lily and James Potter are probably rolling in their graves at the moment."

The imbecile had the audacity to say, "They were left under our care, weren't they? Your lot dumped them on us."

"That doesn't mean you treat them like animals!" Severus roared at him.

Dursley said, "They've called it upon themselves. Had they not done all the odd nonsensical things they do then maybe we would have gone a little easier on them!"

Severus roared back at him, "They can't control it you meaty buffoon! They're too young!"

He turned on Petunia, "You know that yourself! They are Lily's children! How could you Petunia?"

Petunia pursed her lips, "You heard my husband, they are nothing but a burden! Always causing trouble! Do you have any idea how expensive it is to raise four children?"

Severus's blood boiled for the second time in less than an hour. "You're deplorable! Both of you! Absolutely pathetic!"

Dursley bristled, "How dare you!"

He raised the poker menancingly. Lazily, Severus flicked his wand and turned the poker into a harmless garden snake. Dursley dropped it to the floor and backed away with a horrified expression on his face. The boy yelled in fright and climbed onto the couch. His screaming mother joined him a moment later.

Severus transfigured the reptile into a long python, and magically pushed Dursley on the couch, but not before levitating his coat onto his arm. He got Petunia and the boy to sit and willed the snake to slither around the couch in circles, effectively keeping them in their place.

With a yell, Dursley, Petunia and fat boy pulled their legs up on the seat of the couch. Severus couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for them.

Dursley still seemed to have some fight in him, however, being squashed up the way he was, his movements were restricted. That, though, didn't stop him from yelling angrily. "Don't you dare tell them anything! We've spent ten years keeping that away from them, trying to squash it out of them. You'll ruin everything!"

"Go and fly a kite, Dursley and take your wife and son along! You were given enough of money to raise them every month! What have you done with it?"

Severus pulled out a piece of parchment from his pocket with the sum of all the money that the Dursleys had received until the month of July nineteen ninety one.

He showed it to all the members of the house.

"This," he declared, "is the amount given to you till date. What have you done with the money?"

Petunia nervously turned to look out of the window, but luckily for her, Severus's silencing wards had effectively kept every outsider's nose away... Or rather their ears.

Severus commanded the snake to snap at the fat boy's ankles as it passed by. The boy gave a shriek worthy of a four year old and scrambled further into the couch. By now the triplets had crawled to the door of the cupboard. His ruse had worked. Dursley was unintentionally making them believe he wasn't dangerous, at least to them.

"No answer?" Severus asked. "Never mind. But you are going to reimburse every penny."

"I won't do that." Dursley sneered.

Severus returned the sneer with one of his best.

"Unfortunately, a colleague of mine is already working on it."

"You won't get me to sign." Dursley said smugly.

Severus said, equally smug, "You won't have too."

The snake snapped at Dursley's feet this time, cutting off any retort he would have.

Severus turned his back on the three idiots and turned his attention to the three children who were now outside their cupboard. Here in the open, they seemed too small for their age.

"Messrs. Potter and Miss Potter, I will not beat around the bush. You belong to the Wizarding World, therefore making you wizards and witch. It's a world hidden away from non-magical people because some of them, like your obese uncle and your twiglike aunt, don't appreciate the beauty of anything they cannot account for.

"Albus Dumbledore, the wizard who left you here in their care -" Severus threw an ugly sneer at the Dursley's, "- for your own protection, had left a letter instructing them -" he shot an uglier sneer at the three lumps of the couch, ' - to tell you about our world when you attained ten years of age.

"But unfortunately, he was mistaken. He may be the greatest wizard in the world, but he was blinded by the assumed fact that family is love. He seemed confident that you would be well cared for. I apologize for him and I apologize for believing that you were safe and not coming to see for myself.

"I was a friend of your mother's. Lily and I went to Hogwarts together and in a way it was my responsibility to check on you. I wasn't aware that you had been placed here. The only information I was given was that you were placed in a safe, loving home and you would be well cared for.

"Believe me when I say that there is nothing wrong with you. Your relatives are the defected ones. I must admit, however, that Albus Dumbledore is right in some aspects of that fact. Any normal, respectful family would have shown a child, any child, love, they would have given the child something as basic as a room. The imbeciles you call you call your relatives are anything but a decent family."

Seeing the tiny amused smiles on their faces, Severus had to resist the urge to tell them how exactly they were his responsibility. The repurcussions, unfortunately, would force him bring up the topic of Lupin, the cowardly werewolf and Black the traitor.

Suitable titles.

Severus cleared his throat.

"As I said, I teach at Hogwarts, a school for young wizards and witches, where they learn to do... magic."

Severus emphasized the word magic by pointing his wand at the coffee table and setting it on fire. The flames simply licked the table without causing it any damage. He silenced the Dursleys before they could make a sound.

He then leviated the three acceptance letters and handed them to the three.

Severus had a few minutes of silence, before the questioning began.

"What do they mean by, 'we await your owl', Sir?" Harry spoke first.

"Owl post is the preferred method used by wizards to send mail. You simply tie your letter to a post owl's leg and tell the owl the name of the person you want your letter to be delivered too. In your case, however, it has been taken care of."

"From where will we get all these things, Sir? And how will we buy them? We don't have any money!" said Blaire.

"Purchases can be bought from a place called Diagon Alley in London, Miss Potter. I will be taking you there today. Your parents have left you with a lot of money which has been kept in a wizard bank called Gringotts, also located in Diagon Alley, which is run by goblins."

The Potters' eyes opened wide.

After a moment, Ethan said, "Sir, how do you know that we're magical? I don't think -"

"-that you can be wizards and a witch?" Severus interrupted him.

Reluctantly the three nodded. Severus didn't have time to wonder how they shared the same thought at the same time or why they asked the questions in such an orderly manner, but he had to admit he hadn't been very specific.

"Has anything strange happened around you when you felt scared or angry? Have you seen that ball of light in your, ah, place of accommodation? Is there any logical explanation for it?"

The triplets shook their head, eyeing their relatives warily.

Severus ignored the gesture.

"Every untrained Witch and Wizard perform something called as 'Accidental Magic'. You have no control over it until you are taught how to do so and it by no means should be suppressed. What your relatives," Severus shot the Dursleys another filthy look, "did to you was unacceptable."

He pointed towards their cupboard.

"Who created that ball?"

"Me," Harry said.

It was now that Severus remembered the boy was injured. He frowned said to him, "Come here. I want to see to your injuries."

Hesitantly, the boy limped forward. His right leg, Severus noticed, didn't aid in his movement at all. The support seemed to hold it up keeping him standing but that was that.

His siblings, determined not to leave his side, walked up to him slowly.

Severus watched their unity with mild envy and pulled out a small tin of Bruise Heal-Away paste. He always carried it wherever he went.

He bent down and took a good look at the boy's bruise. A bluish-black meaty handprint gave Severus a very limited list of culprits. He was too busy trying to hide his rage to pay attention to what he was doing...Usually, he would have offered the tin and asked the student to apply the paste on the bruise...It was only after he finally pushed his feelings behind his occluding barrier that he noticed it was he who was applying the paste on Harry's face.

Severus groaned internally, hoping they didn't think he was soft man with a hard outer-coating... he just couldn't be, he'd get them all into trouble.

"How old were you when you created that ball? What were you feeling then?" Severus said softly, rubbing the paste in as gently as he could.

"Eight, Mr. Snape. I was angry at that moment, because I couldn't do my homework in the dark."

"Professor Snape," Severus murmured with an absent-minded air. "And you, Mr. Potter, what magic have you performed?" he asked Ethan.

"I-I think, I made the fan and light invisible to, er, our aunt and uncle and Dudley. I was scared about Harry getting into trouble and then when our Uncle opened the door, he couldn't see anything. And everytime Dudley and his gang came to beat Harry and me, I would make an invisible bee sort of sting their, er, behinds."

Severus couldn't suppress the snort. Serves those brats right.

"But Sir," Ethan said, "how did you see it?"

Severus chose his words carefully, "I believe your magic hid it from whoever it considered to be a threat to you. I acknowledge magic, hence it was visible to me. Your relatives on the other hand consider magical occurrences to be a bane."

Severus took his hand away from Harry's face. Ethan and Blaire gasped as the bruise disappeared and Harry's face showed slight relief. Severus conjured a mirror and handed it to the boy. He took the mirror in his right hand and as he moved it to his face, Severus got a glimpse of a blistering burn that blemished his arm.

"I want to see that burn, Mr. Potter."

Harry transferred the mirror to his left arm and held out the right for Severus to see. The Potions Master rummaged through his pockets for some burn paste, knowing fully well that he hadn't carried any. But to his and Harry's luck, his fingers closed on a phial whose contents served the dual purpose of an antiseptic and a nerve soother. This would cause the boy relief if nothing else and would suffice until Severus was able to get the paste for the burn.

"How did you get it?"

"On the pan, while making breakfast, Sir."

So the boy probably received the slap after he got burned and the three were thrown into the cupboard. Severus sent Vernon Dursley a death glare and he shuddered in return as the python snapped at his ankle just then.

He poured the translucent potion drop by drop on the boy's arm.

"What about you, Miss Potter? What are the strange occurrences that have happened around you?"

"My hair grows back to its normal length everytime it's cut, Sir."

Severus looked up from pouring the potion on Harry's arm to see her long, neatly braided hair tied behind with a piece of string.

With no doubt left as to who maintained the order in their cupboard, Severus turned his head back to Harry's arm and said, "Why do you go for the haircut in the first place?"

Blaire fell into an uncomfortable silence.

Severus stopped pouring the potion as the redness on Harry's arm decreased slightly and the boy now wore a big smile.

"Thanks, Sir."

Severus nodded, "This won't heal your injury. I do not have the paste for burns at the moment."

He put the phial and tin back into his pocket and looked up again to see Blaire shooting a nervous glance at the Dursleys.

"Ah." he said with deliberate understanding.

"Are either of you hurt?" he asked Ethan and Blaire a moment later.

They shook their heads. Nevertheless, Severus cast a diagnostic charm on each of them.

Satisfied that they were fine except for slight undernourishment which would be sorted out after regular good meals, he put out the fire that he had set on the coffee table and conjured four comfortable chairs and Severus, Blaire and Ethan settled down comfortably. Harry, however, sat at the edge of the chair and held his right leg out at a slant.

Severus conjured a wooden stool and placed it in front of Harry and looked at him expectantly. The boy smiled happily, went further into the chair and rested his leg on the stool.

Today was going to be a long day.

tbc...