Back by popular demand... an interlude from Snape's perspective!
Tea with the Dursleys
From Chapter Thirteen, immediately after the argument about guardianship
**special thanks to Waitingondaisies for the suggestion to actually tell you where this is in the original story****
Severus listened to the boy retreating up the stairs, cursing himself for a fool. He should have forced the boy to stay—should have forced himself to retract the nonsense he'd just uttered.
Yes, shatter the ego of the boy who does not possess even enough self-confidence to demand clean clothes. Well done.
Perhaps there was a partial truth buried in those careless justifications, but the truth of the matter was that Harry had been bemoaning a very real and very frustrating lack of transparency regarding his immediate future. Perfectly understandable, perfectly normal. Severus could only imagine what choice words he'd let fly if he ever found himself in such a position, at the age of fourteen. Especially after the events the boy—Harry—had endured that summer.
He knew why he'd leapt to defend the Order and Albus Bloody Dumbledore. Severus felt raw—had been feeling raw for some time now—after realizing not only how misguided he'd been about Potter. And after realizing how much the boy had suffered as a result of machinations beyond his power, not to mention the Dark Lord's senseless vendetta. He felt complicit. Because he'd vowed to Lily, hadn't he, that he would protect her son? And while Harry was alive, he knew that his fulfillment of that vow thus far had been the absolute minimum demanded by his conscience.
At least Potter was strong. He'd ruminate, certainly, and grapple with what had been said. But he was iron-willed and defiant, so like Lily, and he'd reject those flimsy excuses for what they were. Severus would give him space and check back in with him this evening.
Yes, after everything—after that thrice-damned trial—Potter needed some time to himself. Time to process, time to rest. Merlin knew he'd not gotten a good night's sleep the night before. The Alert Spell had flagged all night, never quite noting a return to consciousness, but definitely he never managed to sink into a deep restorative sleep.
And besides, Severus had things to see to. Things, he decided, he would complete back at Hogwarts, where the temptation to check in on Potter would hopefully subside a bit. The boy needed space, he reminded himself. He was still angry with Severus, especially after that lunch.
Severus rubbed along the bridge of his nose with both hands, willing the throbbing in his temples to subside. It had been a necessary evil. No doubt Potter had thought it to be one more way to humiliate him. But Severus had needed to hear what an onlooker had seen.
Though he wished now that he hadn't. The sickness in his stomach from some of that woman's harrowing observations had still not subsided.
Well. He was about to assuage some of that rage. He sincerely hoped that this was an unnecessary contingency (and part of him knew that this was sheer vengeance at its finest). He'd found an appropriate recipe; he had a strand of Potter's hair, gleaned from the bathroom. He'd discreetly summoned a hair from the boy's fat, useless lump of a cousin when the idiot had been whining to his parents—a very subtle wandless spell that he doubted Harry had even noticed, engaged as he was with Mrs. Applewhite.
Yes, both would do very nicely for the antiquated recipe he'd pulled from a Prince family grimoire a few days ago. Stolen Love, it was called—a love potion, of sorts, but more insidious, and without a trace of the aphrodisiac that would have been found in a standard love potion. Which was just as well, because the mere thought of using a standard love potion here caused him to shudder and his stomach to roil.
No, this was perfect in that it only worked to influence affections. Purportedly, it had first been used in the Middle Ages by a jealous husband who'd noticed his wife's increasing interest in their stable boy, and growing resentment of him. The potion—two potions, actually—functioned as a sort of chiasmus, a reversal, a reassociation. In conjunction, the two brews would swap emotions, associations, prejudices—so that the object of affection would become the object of revilement, and vice versa. Thus the brewer's wife had found herself feeling warm and flirtatious toward her husband, while inexplicably detesting the stable boy.
Until the stable boy left to find new work, and her husband found himself without the necessary components to renew the effect.
The potion had never gained much traction in society, mostly due to the complexity of the process and the difficulty of administering the two doses in succession without arousing suspicions—as the potions, unfortunately, had a distinctive taste recognizable to most wizards.
But Severus knew that would not be an issue here. Oh, his potions would be taken, he knew, and allowed himself a grim smile as he descended into the cellar. He gathered a few vials of ingredients, his rolled leather case of stirring rods.
And then he returned to the sitting room, items gathered in his arms, and, throwing down a pinch of Floo powder, shouted, "Severus Snape's quarters, Hogwarts!"
XXXXX
Severus did not knock. He certainly was not going to afford them that courtesy. And he hadn't dressed in Muggle clothes, either; no, he'd chosen his full teaching robes. He smiled a bit sadistically as he patted his robe pocket and felt the two vials there.
They were home; he'd verified that much. The station wagon was still parked in the drive. All that was left was to announce his presence.
Fortunately for him, when he arrived Petunia and the blathering walrus she'd married were upstairs in their bedroom having some kind of heated discussion while their son slowly succumbed to further brain damage (or so Severus assumed) as he sat plugged in before a Muggle contraption, a computer if he recalled correctly, headphones over his ears, oblivious to the world around him.
Severus had Apparated directly to their doorstep under a Disillusionment Charm and slipped in through the front door. After listening for a few minutes to the Dursleys' heated discussion about what they were to do about "the boy", Severus crept back downstairs and into the kitchen, where he helped himself to their cabinets and carefully prepared a tea service.
Then, satisfied with his work, he floated the tray into the sitting room and onto the coffee table before seating himself in the only recliner in the room. The two empty vials clinked a bit in his pocket as he settled in, and the sound brought a vicious smirk to his lips. He laid his wand over his lap and toyed with it absently, and waited.
It was not too long before the interspersed thuds and groans of wooden stairs alerted him to Vernon Dursley lumbering down the stairs.
"No, Pet," the burly man was saying, "I'll not hear it. I don't care what those crackpots think they can do to us. After the lies they told about Dudley, that boy had better not show his face round here again, or I'll—"
Vernon stopped dead as he turned back from addressing his wife to face the man ensconced in his armchair.
"You'll what?" Snape demanded, keeping his voice low and silky, and taking immense pleasure in the sight of all color draining from the man's face.
"Who in the blazes are you?" Vernon sputtered, and then his eyes narrowed. "Wait—you! You're the blasted… you looked different this morning! Suppose that's normal amongst your kind, eh? Don't have the decency to show your face, just—just waltz around cheating others—"
"Vernon," Petunia cautioned behind him, her eyes darting from Snape's lap and back to her husband. Clearly she understood the gravity of the situation. "Don't—"
"I'll say whatever I bloody well please!" Vernon wheezed, though the bravado was belied by the slight tremor that emerged in his voice. "His kind have no right invading our home like this, not to mention the hocus-pocus nonsense the likes of them pulled this morning—"
"Ah, I beg to differ," Snape cut in swiftly, eying the pair of them. "I am here on business. I came as a courtesy, in fact—"
"Courtesy!" Vernon growled. "Why, I—"
"Courtesy, yes. Normally our course of action would be contacting the Muggle—that is to say, your—authorities to have them handle a case of child abuse and neglect—"
"That's just bloody well ridiculous!" Vernon burst out. "We did no such thing. We were so good as to put a roof over that boy's head, and food in his mouth, and clothes on his back, and this is the thanks we get—"
"I am not here to argue the merits of such a case with you, Dursley. In fact, I know very little of the Muggle way of things. Perhaps they think it appropriate to keep a child in a cupboard for eleven years." Snape feigned an indifferent shrug, though uttering those words reignited the fierce rage that had begun to burn in him since Potter's Veritaserum-induced outbursts. "I thought merely to spare you from further legalities, since you must already be tied up in the system due to your son's crimes."
"Dudley wouldn't harm a fly—"
"You are either willfully blind or intolerably stupid, and I do not really care to determine which." Snape selected a cup of tea from the tray in front of him and reheated it with a simple tap of his wand. "Sit."
"No!" Vernon spat. "You get the hell out of my home, do you hear? I'm not above calling the police, I tell you—"
"Oh, do try." Snape waved his wand languidly toward the wall phone in the kitchen. "I would deeply enjoy using you for target practice."
Vernon eyed the wand for a hair longer, struggling to keep himself puffed up. "I said get out. I'm not going to tell you again—"
"Is that a threat? My, I'm leaning toward 'intolerably stupid'. Perhaps I should return with a threat of my own?" Severus sipped his tea, enjoying the fact that neither Petunia nor Vernon dared to breathe as they awaited his pronouncement. "Are you still in contact with that surgeon, Tuney?" he inquired with mock-politeness. "The one who took care of your son's little issue after my colleague delivered Harry's letter, oh, four years ago?"
Petunia let out a little squeak.
"I would say I hope so, but to be honest, I doubt he would be of much use. See, I would not botch the spell as my colleague did, oh no. I would ensure a complete transformation." Snape set his cup down and pretended to tap a contemplative finger to his cheek. "Though I wonder if you would even notice the difference…."
Vernon deflated at that. "What do you want?" he croaked, stumbling a step backward. Petunia moved up to his side and clutched at his arm, her face a mass of creased worry-lines.
"For you to sit. As I have already said." Snape pointed to the couch, and then directed two teacups toward the shaking Muggles. "Let's keep this civil, shall we? Drink." And when the two of them still did not move to sip from the teacups clutched in their hands, Severus barked, "It was not a request. Drink."
To his surprise and satisfaction, the two obeyed, each of them taking a large gulp, just as if they were being ordered to do something at gunpoint. Well, Severus supposed they knew that sitting before an angry wizard with a wand was akin to being held at gunpoint.
"Good. Now, had I wanted to harm you or yours, believe me when I say that I would not waste time on this." Snape gestured loosely to the tea service. "I would have hexed you and been on my way out of this miserable little rat maze of a neighborhood, I quite assure you. As it stands, I merely wish to reach an… understanding, as it were, about a few things." He offered them an insincere little smile, the kind not at all designed to put them at ease.
"You want us to take him back," Petunia guessed softly, her voice strangely flat and empty.
Severus snorted. " 'Want' is too strong a term. You are clearly too small-minded to appreciate it, but your nephew's life has been in danger since he was born. Last summer was scarcely out of the ordinary for him. Par for the course, in fact, as you Muggles might say."
"Last summer?" Vernon demanded blankly.
Severus stared at him. And then decided that now was as good a time as any to do the digging he'd come here to do. He lifted his wand just a hair, snapping off a slight Confundus charm at Petunia before incanting Legilimens and diving straight into Vernon's mind.
He found himself wrenching himself back out some immeasurable time later, blood boiling, his knuckles white where they clenched the handle of his wand. Perhaps, he thought, it was more appropriate to simply transfigure the pair of them into slugs and start looking for alternatives….
No, damn it. Harry needed the blood wards, even if it was only as a last resort.
But the callous disregard, the conviction that Harry was less than human in that man's mind—and the memories of the boy positively cowed before his uncle, so careful with his phrasing and his polite, deferential responses… so quick to dodge back at the slightest hint of a raised hand. There was plenty stuffed into the man's skull to bolster Severus' conviction that drastic measures were needed with the Dursleys, things that he would certainly be repeating to Albus. Things that he would have to mention to Harry at some point, as they needed to be processed.
Though perhaps that would be best left to someone qualified. Mrs. Applewhite had suggested a child psychologist, though that would be of no use—not unless he wished to see Harry locked in a Muggle institution and treated for severe psychosis.
A Mind Healer would work, though. And with the wards in place in St. Mungo's… yes, privacy and safety should be no concern. Not even the Dark Lord was powerful enough to dismantle those ancient spells. And Severus doubted he would bother.
Now was not the time to contemplate that, though. Dursley was clutching at his forehead, doubtless trying to stifle the headache blooming after having his mind torn apart. Severus sneered at the man before cancelling the Confundus Charm on Petunia with a sharp little flick of his wand.
Petunia blinked slowly and appeared to emerge from a trance as Vernon continued to curse under his breath.
"You were unaware that your nephew was effectively kidnapped and almost killed last summer," Severus summarized blandly, willing his own temper to subside. "You did not even know that he saw a classmate die in front of him."
"H-he… what?" Petunia stammered. "No one told us!"
As much as Severus would have liked to call her a liar, her confusion seemed genuine, recent curses aside. "And you would care," Severus rejoined sardonically. "After all, what's one more small trauma heaped on that boy's life?"
"What do you want from us?" she cried, her voice nearly breaking. "Just—just tell us! We'll do whatever, just leave us alone!"
Severus directed the teapot to refill their cups, watching in grim amusement as the pair of them flinched back from the porcelain as though it were some dark artefact. "Come now, another cup of tea. I promised we would keep this civil, did I not?"
Petunia sat up straighter and primly sipped from her cup. "You want us to take him back," she repeated, her tone resigned.
"Drink, Dursley," Snape commanded, shooting Vernon a dark glare.
The man's moustache quivered a moment, and then he was gulping at the tea again. Perhaps he hoped that compliance would keep Severus from inflicting any more pain on him.
"You know about the blood wards from Albus, and Lily's protection. You are dimwitted, but I can only hope you understand the gravity of your nephew's situation. He needs a haven, especially if the Dark Lord should ever decide to hunt after him personally, and in earnest."
"I thought you said Lord What's-his-thingy already got him—"
"Three times now, yes," Severus agreed calmly. "When he was not even trying. Last summer, even, he was more interested in returning to life; it is my understanding that killing Harry was more of a bonus in the whole venture. Had he truly wanted the boy dead, any one of his agents could have easily offed him." Snape grimaced, thinking of Crouch. "But the Dark Lord wishes to do that deed himself, and for now he is content to bide his time." Severus met the Dursleys' gazes each in turn. "I do not expect that attitude to last indefinitely. And so we wish to secure Harry a safehouse."
"Here," Petunia affirmed weakly.
"Yes. He will need to stay here for two weeks each summer, by Albus' calculation, to renew the wards. And for those two weeks you will graciously welcome him as if you truly did want him here. You will see to it that he is comfortable and provided for, and you will not utter one single word against his deceased family, or magic, or any other subject that would cause him pain. Because if you do not…." Severus grinned nastily and turned his attention toward the stairs. "You will need to install a slop troth and sty for your son."
Albus did not think that this would work. He believed that the wards needed Potter's conviction that the residence was home in order to take root. Severus, for his part, was inclined to keep an open mind, though he would not rely on this working. It was just one more contingency plan.
"Fine," Petunia rasped. "He can come back. We'll treat him well. Are we done?"
"Nearly." Severus offered the pair of them a thin smile. Now… now to see the results of his handiwork. "Call your son down here. I would have words with him as well."
Petunia looked as though she were about to refuse, and Vernon went chalk white.
"Or shall I fetch him?" Snape mused, pitching his voice low and dark. He glanced down to examine his wand, as if to evaluate his options. "Perhaps as a preview of coming attractions…."
"I'll go," Petunia shrieked, jumping up from the sofa. "I'll bring him. Vernon… Vernon, just stay here, and—and don't say anything—"
"Yes. Best not to offend me, I should think," Severus drawled. "Finish your tea, Dursley. You're looking a bit peaky."
Moments later Dursley the Younger was waddling down the stairs, looking as clueless as Longbottom peering into a cauldron. Petunia was behind him, shepherding the boy toward the living room, her face drawn in horror, as though she knew she were leading her son to his execution.
Severus snorted to himself. Such melodrama.
Once the pair had seated themselves on the couch, Dudley wedged between his two parents, Severus at last deigned to address the family. "Dudley, is it? Have they set a court date for you yet?"
The boy's pudgy face wrinkled with anger as his dark, glinting eyes narrowed. "How d'you know about that?"
Severus rolled his eyes. "Even more dimwitted than your father. A true achievement."
"Hey! Dad's not stupid! And neither am I! Mum, who is this?" the boy whined, turning to Petunia with a pout more suited to a six-year-old than a sixteen-year-old.
"Dudley dear, just listen to him—"
"Why should I have to? He looks like one of those weirdos who plays games in his basement." The boy crossed his arms over his chest. "What's he even want?"
"Dudley," Vernon barked, and Severus could not suppress the tight smile that formed on his lips. "Stop this nonsense at once! Your mother told you to listen, boy, and by God you'd better!" Vernon turned back to Severus, uncertainty shining in his eyes. "He's just intimidated," he explained beseechingly. "He won't give you any more trouble."
"D-dad?" the cousin stammered.
Severus stifled the urge to laugh in the boy's face. Oh, this would be brilliant. To any overly-curious neighbors, they would see the scales finally falling from Vernon and Petunia's eyes in regards to their monstrous son. They would believe the harshness, the chores, all the changes that would ensue, would be a part of desperate, last-ditch efforts to set their son back on the straight-and-narrow.
Just as they would see any newfound affection for Harry as an effort to make up for past injustices—perhaps with the excuse that their son, a pathological liar, had successfully led them astray, but no longer, they would do better.
"Mouth shut," Vernon hissed, "and for once in your life, listen."
Apparently too thunderstruck to do anything but obey, Dudley fell mute.
Severus took the opportunity to rehash in detail all that he'd gone over with the Dursleys in regards to their future treatment of Harry. Bullying would not be tolerated. Taunting, blaming, even bothering Harry would not be tolerated. And if, Severus warned the boy, Harry reported any maltreatment, any, it would be repaid to Dudley threefold.
"Do you understand?" Severus inquired softly when he'd finished his lecture.
After a moment's silence, Petunia demanded shrilly, "Well, answer him!"
"Y-yes," Dudley stammered, his gaze still fixated on Severus' dark wand, both eyes wide with fear.
"Excellent. Then my business is concluded, I believe." A slash of his wand banished the tea service to the kitchen sink. "I'll take my leave. I should check on Harry, after all." He threw those words out like bait, hoping to ascertain that the second potion was also doing its work.
Petunia sat up straighter, her lower lip trembling just the slightest, as Vernon's hands found his kneecaps and squeezed so hard that the blood left his knuckles.
"He—is he alright?" Petunia breathed. "I—I didn't think about it before, but after that awful trial—"
"Mum!" Dudley protested. "The trial was awful for me, remember? Harry got off scot-free! I'm the one the judge was rude to—"
"You robbed a poor old woman," Petunia shrieked, pushing herself violently to her feet and rounding on her son. "Do you have any idea how we looked, sitting there and trying to tell them it was Harry who did it when Mathilda heard you in her home?"
Oh, this was better than he'd anticipated. Their feelings were well and truly muddled now, and likely the potions were doing their work to unlock emotions and sentiments that the Dursleys had deliberately repressed to fuel the shifted attitudes created by the brew, like a fire seeking anything flammable.
Vernon shot to his feet too, seemingly forgetting about Severus for a moment. "And that's not to mention the fines! You think we're bloody made of money, do you? I think it's high time we taught you a lesson about the value of hard work! You can foot your own bills, how about that?"
"I'll see myself out—"
Petunia whipped back to Severus, the concern reemerging in her features. "Harry. You didn't say—how is he? Heavens, we didn't even say anything to him, did we? That poor boy. I can't even imagine how we were so blind…."
"This one," Vernon grunted, jabbing a sausage-like finger at Dudley, whose eyes flickered comically between his parents like a beast of prey trying to determine the biggest source of threat, "this one had us all twisted up, didn't he? Had us thinking Harry was an awful boy from the start. Wily little brat…."
"He could certainly use some discipline," Petunia agreed, though there was the slightest note of hesitation in her voice.
Good, Severus thought grimly. The pair held reservations about these new feelings, even in face of the potion. That meant, hopefully, that they would not quite descend to exorcising all of the vitriol previously reserved for Harry on their son. Not that the boy didn't deserve a bit of cruelty—a taste of his cousin's life—but Severus did not want to actually be responsible for facilitating further child abuse.
Vernon and Petunia would be hard on the boy, but they would not, he felt, go nearly as far with him as they had with Harry. Somewhere beneath the potion's muddling remained the core of their affection for their natural-born son, loathsome as the child was.
Severus sighed. Well, he would not hold out hope, but perhaps some of the effects of this little experiment would live on past the last dose he administered, whenever that would be.
"I suggest chores. It's as you've said, Mr. Dursley, there's value in teaching children about hard work, is there not?" Severus straightened his robes. "I really must go now."
"Will Harry be coming by soon?" Petunia inquired, hesitant but hopeful.
"No."
"Oh." Disappointment, then. "He's welcome anytime. We've said he can come back, haven't we? We'll just keep his room for him." Petunia blinked a few times, as if trying to make sense of her undoubtedly tangled thoughts. "You said he only needs to stay… two weeks? But he can come for longer, of course. Right, Vernon?"
Vernon actually nodded vigorously. "Of course. Don't think I've ever taken the boy out for a round of golf before—I go with clients." The man cleared his throat a bit, then began tentatively, "Maybe you bring him by for a weekend? I can take him out Saturday or Sunday, he can go do some shopping with Pet…."
"I don't foresee that happening," Severus announced coolly, relishing the way the two winced. Ah, yes, this had been a splendid idea. They would be pining for the nephew they'd despised and mistreated all summer as fiercely as they'd pine for their own boy. "We'll be in touch if anything further is needed."
And with that Severus Apparated himself to the gates of Hogwarts, his momentarily satisfaction draining away in the very instant that his form left the Dursley's living room.
As the nauseating squeeze of Disapparition faded from his body, as he opened his eyes to the wrought-iron gates leading up to the school, Severus found his thoughts turning back to far less pleasant matters.
Guardianship, for one. The Dursleys might be boggled into wanting their nephew now, but keeping them befuddled was not a long-term solution. Besides, Severus was firmly convinced that the pair was utterly unqualified to raise children. They'd already been far too hard on the boy; now, with the affection for their son misplaced to their nephew, they were likely to be too soft on him. Which was a far cry from what Harry needed.
He needed a say. He needed Albus to stop playing puppet master and to do him the courtesy of laying out the facts of the situation, as well as Harry's limited options moving forward. Yes, he needed more control in his life, and Severus would do whatever he could to give it to the boy.
His wand. At the very least, Potter should have that back.
But control was not all he needed. He needed to stop raising himself. He needed an adult to take in and assume some of the responsibilities he'd taken on over the years. His clothes and school supplies, for example. Severus should have made arrangements to see to that much sooner than he had.
Of course, that would have required him to see and understand Harry, the real Harry, not the fictional reincarnation of Severus' childhood antagonist that Severus had projected onto the boy over the years.
Still, it had been long enough since he'd discovered essential facts about his ward—that his home life was abysmal, that his wardrobe consisted of second-hand tatters, that the boy had no concept of depending on adults and therefore would make no effort to make his needs known. Severus should have taken him to shop for court clothes, in fact, to ensure that Potter had something suitable for the hearing.
Well, he vowed to himself, pushing the gates open. He would do better in the future. Starting here, with Albus. He would make the bloody old fool see reason if it was the last thing he did.
A/N: Not another chapter (hey, I'm not that impressive), but hopefully you enjoyed this rough little bitty bit here. Peace, love, and cheers! ~ Mel
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