Chapter 5
Snape Visits Privet Drive

Severus Snape had an image to maintain. He knew that black wizard robes would be out of place in a Muggle area; instead, he was wearing a black, white-pinstripe suit with black shirt and black tie. To the amazement of the headmaster and Minerva, Snape had washed his hair this morning.

Now Snape stood on the doorstep for Number 4, Privet Drive. He pressed the button to ring the doorbell. About twenty seconds later, the door opened.

"You!"

Petunia Evans, still as nasty-hearted as ever, Snape thought sourly. If Muggles could cast a Killing Curse just from a look, Snape would be dead now, from the way the horse-faced blond woman was looking at him.

"Petunia," Snape said, in the voice that made Gryffindors quake with fear. Snape contemptuously continued, "Or do you prefer I call you 'Tuney'?"

A few feet away

Aunt Petunia and Professor Snape were on opposite sides of the front doorsill, exchanging hateful words. Harry, unseen by both adults, rolled his eyes.

The former "Golden Boy of Gryffindor" now put on a Slytherin smile of cunning. Harry thought, And the BAFTA Time-Travelled Seventeen-Year-Old Actor award goes to Harry Potter, for Professor Snape, I'm Only a Kid, and I Know Little about You and Little about the Wizarding World.

Harry then ran over to the front door, to stand where Snape could see Harry clearly.

A boy ran up and stood next to Petunia. From how small the boy was, Snape's first impression was that this was a younger son of Petunia's—

"Hello!" the boy said cheerfully. "Are you from Hogwarts? Which are you, Sirius, Remus, Peter or Severus?"

Snape stared in shock. The boy has Lily's eyes, and Potter's messy black hair. This tiny boy is Harry Potter? At least he doesn't wear glasses, like his father the tosser.

Distractedly, Snape replied to the boy's question with "I am Professor Severus Snape, Potions Master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

In his head meanwhile, Snape the former abused son was noting that the boy had scars on his hands, and he was dressed like a street urchin.

Still distracted, Snape asked, "Are you Harry Potter? Your father wore glasses—"

"Really? Nobody ever told me."

"—but I see that you do not."

"Not any more, no." The boy now was beaming at Snape. "I'm Harry Potter, yes, and I'm glad to meet you! Come"—then Potter looked at Petunia. "Are you going to let him stand there, where the neighbours can see, or are you going to invite him in?"

"If I must," Petunia said grudgingly. Then Petunia pasted on a fake smile and said, "Sev, please come in."

Petunia immediately stepped back; it was another second before the Potter boy did. In that one second, bright sunlight showed the Potter boy clearly.

The boy's trainers were in such wretched shape, they likely would crumble to dust if Snape breathed on them hard. The boy's clothes were way too big for him—in the legs, in the arms and in the width. Potter looks like a fourteen-year-old boy who was de-aged to nine years old, but nobody charmed his clothes.

Smiling Potter bowed, and his gesture bade Snape enter. Meanwhile, the boy was saying cheerfully, "Mum was right! In first year, she called you 'My friend, the grumpy Potions genius,' and now you're a Potions Master! Erm, are you still grumpy?"

"Sometimes," Snape said.

Then emotional pain seared Snape's mind, he felt intense sorrow, and it was all Snape could manage to not squeeze his eyes shut. The boy's guileless reminder of a time when "Sev" and Lily were friends, made Snape mourn anew the friendship that one moment of stupidity had cost him forever.

Snape stepped inside the house. A few feet from the front door was a staircase; now corridors passed to the left and right of this staircase. Harry led Snape along the right-hand corridor to the entrance to the sitting room. Petunia was standing there, tapping her chin with a fingertip.

"When Dudley gets home, he might want to watch the telly," Petunia said. "Let's go talk in the kitchen." She turned and hurried away.

Potter explained to Snape as they followed, "Heaven forbid that anyone try to sit in the sitting room for important talk if Dudley wants to use it for telly programmes."

As the three people walked from almost the sitting room to the kitchen, Snape noticed the triangle-shaped wall under the stairs. On that wall hung several (unmoving) photographs that showed Petunia, a fat and mustachioed man and a fat boy. None of the photos showed Potter.

As soon as Snape and Potter walked into the kitchen, Petunia's voice snapped, "Boy, make tea for our—"

"Tuney," Snape's voice growled, "you have two good legs and two good arms. You can make your own tea. And thank you for your kind offer, Mr Potter and I would like some."

Petunia huffed, but said nothing more. She filled the teakettle with water.

Potter stood there frozen for several seconds, then said, "I'll run upstairs now, and grab my mum's diary and the Hogwarts letter."

Soon Potter was back in the kitchen, holding a pink-cover book. Casually the boy laid the pink book on the table in front of Snape, then casually opened the book to reveal the Hogwarts letter, which the boy was using as a bookmark. Potter laid the Hogwarts letter on the table, near the diary, with the letter turned so that the address could be read. But Snape glanced at the address only long enough to read the first line: "Mr H Potter."

Snape's attention was much, much more focussed on the open pink book, which showed a girl's handwriting—

—a girl's handwriting that Snape had not seen in sixteen years. "Lily," he breathed.

Then Snape came back to himself, and noticed that Potter was standing way too close on his right side, instead of sitting down. "Mr Potter," Snape said, with more patience than Snape ever showed to any child who was not a Slytherin, "I see three empty chairs at this table. Please sit in one of them."

Potter murmured lowly, "The Dursleys don't like me sitting at the table when anyone else is in the kitchen." But then he sat down in the chair at the end of the table, to Snape's right.

Now the boy's voice was cheerful again: "In first year, you saved my mum from getting a zero in a Potions class. I thought you'd like to read what Lily wrote about that. This was when Lily called you 'My friend, the grumpy Potions genius.' "

Petunia, meanwhile, had been leaning against the cooker, waiting for the teakettle to boil. Now she walked over to the table. "Lily kept a diary about Hogwarts?" Petunia bent down, and her hands reached for the book—

"No!" Potter yelled, and the pink diary flew off the table and into Potter's hands. "This is mine, Aunt Petunia! No way will I let you bin it, or toss it in the fireplace and burn it! You don't touch anything of Mum's, you hear me?"

Snape was shocked. This ridiculously dressed, undersized almost-eleven-year-old now looked dangerous.

"I just wanted to see her handwriting again," Petunia said lowly.

"I just wanted a family who would love me," Potter snapped. "We don't always get what we want, do we?"

Petunia glared at Potter, and Snape was sure that Tuney was about to do something nasty.

"Accidental-magic Summoning," Snape said, trying to calm the other two people down. "You are definitely a wizard, Mr Potter, and you deserve your letter." Snape tapped a finger on the boy's Hogwarts letter—

—then he noticed the words that his finger was partially covering. "Your address, Mr Potter, is 'the Cupboard under the Stairs'?"

At the moment, Petunia was pouring water into the china teapot, but now she spun round and said angrily, "Boy, don't you answer that!"

The boy defiantly told Snape, "The cupboard under the stairs has been my bedroom from November 1981 till a few hours ago, when that Hogwarts letter came. I'd love to show you the cupboard, but..."

Petunia said triumphantly, "It's locked, unfortunately."

Potter smiled then—a smile that would fit perfectly on the face of Snape's godson Draco. As Potter tapped the diary, he said, "Aloha-mora is a first-year unlocking spell, right?"

"AloHOmora," Snape corrected, then he stood up from the table. Whilst Snape's eyes bored into Petunia's, Snape said, "Mr Potter, please show me the cupboard."

Petunia's face, Snape was pleased to note, was chalk-white.

On the kitchen-side of the stairs, under the stairs was another triangular wall. This triangular wall included a cupboard door and more (unmoving) family photographs. Again, none of the photographs showed Potter. The cupboard door had two locks on the outside.

Snape pointed his wand. "Alohomora."

Click-click.

Snape was a tall man, and so he had some difficulty in crawling into the cupboard under the stairs. When Snape had backed out and had stood up, he began magically cleaning himself. As he did, he said, "Mr Potter, please explain why your clothes do not fit and your shoes are long past needing replacement."

Snape added, whilst glaring at Petunia, "When Petunia, Lily and I were children, Petunia used to sneer at my clothes. Yet this same Petunia, Mr Potter, has you looking worse than ever I was dressed."

Potter answered, "These are my cousin's clothes. He's taller than me, and he's fat. My uncle and aunt have never bought new clothes for me, not once."

Petunia said, "That's not true! We regularly had to buy clothes for you until you were five years old. But after that? Freaks"—now Petunia was glaring at Snape—"don't deserve new things."

Snape asked lowly, "I suppose Lily was a 'freak' too?"

"Yes, she was."

"And yet, when Lily received her Hogwarts letter, Tuney, you wrote the headmaster and asked whether you also could attend Hogwarts. I gather that being surrounded by several hundred 'freaks' did not bother you when you were thirteen. We magicals only started to bother your fine Muggle sensibilities when the headmaster turned you down."

"Your tea is getting cold," Petunia replied.

No sooner had Petunia, Potter and Snape returned to the kitchen table but Snape heard the slam of the front door, followed by two boys' voices.

"Bloody hell," Potter muttered, "Dudley's home. And he's brought Piers Polkiss with him."

Two boys walked into the kitchen then, each about Potter's age. One boy was scrawny, and had a face like a rat; Snape was reminded of Pettigrew as a first-year. The other boy was shaped like a poorly-rolled marijuana cigarette; no boy this young should be this fat, Snape decided.

The rat-faced boy said, "Oi, Dudley, is your cousin allowed to sit down at the table with normal people?"

The obese boy, who was—no surprise—walking towards the refrigerator, looked at Potter and yelled, "Freak! Get out of the kitchen unless you're working! You know the rules."

No way would Snape allow Muggles to disrespect a wizard—even if the wizard was James Potter's son. Snape immediately sent a Stupefy at the rat-faced boy, to knock him out. Then Snape turned his wand on the freezer door—

The freezer door, all by itself, opened with enough force to knock a bludger into the opposite wall of the kitchen.

Except that the freezer door did not hit a bludger. The freezer door—

WHAM!

—hit the fat boy's nose and face, and knocked him to the floor. The boy screamed in pain.

"Ma! My nose hurts! And it's bleeding!"

Petunia shot out of her chair, clearly intending to comfort the fat lump—but Snape was faster. Within two seconds, Snape stood astride the boy; scowling Snape's wand was pointed at the fearful, fat face.

Most people, no matter whether magical or Muggle, were sensible enough to keep quiet when they were helpless and when an angry wizard was pointing a wand at them. But how did Petunia's spawn react? "You hurt me! You bullied me!"

Snape replied, "The downside of picking on people who are smaller than you, is that you have no right to complain when someone bigger than you turns the tables. Apologise to Harry, and I will heal your broken nose."

"You'd better, 'cause it was you who broke it in the first place!"

"I do not hear an apology. I hear whingeing and entitlement from a piggy boy. Perhaps I should give you a pig's tail as well as a broken nose, piggy boy."

Dudley looked at Petunia and asked, "Can he do that, Ma? Can he make that happen?"

Petunia bit her lip. "Your Aunt Lily gave someone donkey ears, her last two years in school, so I suppose he could."

Dudley's lower face and shirt were covered with blood when he stood and faced Harry. "I'm sorry I called you a freak, Harry."

Harry replied, "I'm sorry I laughed when the freezer door knocked you down. Even though it was funny."

Snape chided, "Mr Potter, you are not helping here."

In the end, the rat-faced boy was Rennervated, then immediately was hit with a Confundus Charm. Snape told the rat-faced boy to wait for Dudley outside the house, and the dazed boy obeyed. Petunia watched in horror.

Dudley the fat boy was not Imperiused, Confundused, or otherwise mind-controlled. But after his nose was instantly healed and all of the blood was cleaned from his face and clothing, he agreed to Petunia's suggestion that he immediately leave the house and not return for two hours.

When the Dursley house again had only three people in it, Potter looked at Snape admiringly. "That was brilliant."

Black-dressed Snape shrugged. "I found his lack of respect disturbing."

Snape looked over at Petunia and said, "Magical school will not make Mr Potter become magical when he is nonmagical. No, magical school will keep Mr Potter from accidentally killing you when you anger him, and he has good reason to be angry with you."

"The freak wouldn't dare hurt us," declared Petunia. "He knows what would happen to him if he did!"

"Do not be a dunderhead, Tuney. If you do not send Mr Potter to Hogwarts, it is obvious that all three of you Dursleys will be dead soon."

Petunia's face turned white.

Potter, who had been silent for the last two minutes, now spoke up: "I'll go to magical school, you bet; I want gone from the Dursleys. Manchester Magical Academy? We'll see. But Hogwarts? No bloody way."

Snape told Potter, "The headmaster informs me that your parents paid for your entire Hogwarts education before your first birthday."

Potter shrugged. "I hope I can ask for the money back. If not, that's how the mop flops."

Snape tried a new argument: "Hogwarts School is the best magical school in the world."

Potter gave Snape a long look. "Don't be a dunderhead. Though it's nice that you're showing your loyalty—Whatzername Hufflepuff would be pleased."

Snape started to speak, but Potter overrode him. "Even if Hogwarts were the best, I refuse to go there whilst Dumbledore runs the school. Aunt Petunia, would you please find the letter that Dumbledore left in my basket, so that Professor Snape can read the letter?"

Petunia stood up from the kitchen table. "I'll need to run upstairs then. I'll be back soon." She hurried out of the kitchen.

As soon as Petunia's feet were making sounds on the stairs, Potter growled, "The Dursleys have worked me like a Caribbean sugar-plantation slave since I was four—food prep, cooking at the hot cooker, washing dishes, hoovering, and gardening in the summer sun. I'm given five minutes to shower. They starve me. Dudley hits me; my uncle hits me hard enough to break bones. I never get new clothes. Meanwhile, the great Dumbledore has never come here and checked up on me, not once. You hear me? In ten years, not once. Nobody in the Surrey government or the MOM government has checked on me either. I think Dumbledore paid them off, or magicked them, or something."

By now, Petunia was standing in the kitchen doorway, with a parchment-envelope letter in her hand. Harry, noticing where Snape's eyes were looking, turned in his chair and saw his silent aunt.

Potter said, "Professor Snape, you say you're so worried about me killing my relatives—not my family, my relatives—with magic I can't control? It's at least just as likely that one of them will kill me. Really, I've been lucky up till now. And I'm to believe that wise Dumbledore decided that none of my father's relatives would make a good guardian for me? Didn't my parents have wills?"

Seconds later

All three people again were sitting at the kitchen table. Petunia had placed on the table the parchment envelope, whose entire address was "Mrs Petunia Dursley née Evans." The envelope had no other address, and no stamp.

Snape removed from the envelope, and unfolded, a two-foot-length parchment.

The parchment-letter read—

.

2nd November, 1981

Dear Mrs Dursley,

I am saddened to inform you that your sister, Lily Potter, and her husband, James Potter, both were killed by the evil wizard Voldemort.

Somehow Harry Potter survived Voldemort's attempt to kill the child, and somehow Voldemort's body disappeared just after his attempt to kill Harry. Whatever happened between the evil wizard and the toddler wizard gave Harry the lightning-bolt scar you see on his forehead.

For defeating Voldemort, your fifteen-month-old nephew is a hero in the Wizarding World like no other.

I am concerned that if Harry were raised in the Wizarding World, being hailed as a hero from toddlerhood would make the boy conceited and shallow. This is why I am placing Harry with you, Petunia, rather than with any of his magical relatives: In the nonmagical world, nobody has heard of either Lord Voldemort or Harry Potter.

Your sister's remains were found next to Harry's crib, and it is clear that she sacrificed her life to save his. Besides giving you a reason to take pride in Lily, her sacrifice has magical effects.

To protect Harry from Voldemort's evil followers, and to protect you and your family, I have erected wards (magical walls) round your house. Because Lily sacrificed her life for her son, blood-wards that protect Lily's son have extra magical power. The blood-wards protect your house only so long as Harry lives with you and he is younger than seventeen. Voldemort's followers are vicious, and they will torture you, then kill you, if they can get inside your house, so it would be wise not to negate the blood-wards.

It is natural to resent being forced to spend both time and money to raise a child that is not yours by birth. Perhaps you still resent the Wizarding World itself, which beautiful Lily could join but you could not. But I ask you to put aside your resentments and to raise Harry as though he were your own child. Harry needs you, Petunia, and wizards and witches throughout Britain need Harry, though I regret that I may not explain why to you.

Yours truly, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

.

Potter commented, "Want to know what leapt out at me when I read this letter the first time? Dumbledore wrote what seems to say 'Don't resent this boy who I'm leaving on your doorstep.' But then he turns about and reminds Aunt Petunia of all the reasons that she'd want to resent me. I've been treated worse, for the past ten years, than if Dumbledore had written only 'Your sister and her husband are dead. This is their son. Now he's yours. Good luck.' "

Snape nodded in agreement. The letter was typical manipulative Dumbledore: kind and grandfatherly on the surface, but worded to ensure that Petunia mistreated Harry, whilst Petunia was convinced that mistreating Harry was her own idea.

Then Snape felt a magical tingle. He pulled out his wand and ran diagnostics over the letter. Then he magically zapped the letter.

Petunia and Potter were looking at Snape curiously. Snape explained to them, "The headmaster put Compulsion Charms on the letter. Anyone named Dursley who touched the letter would react hatefully to anyone named Potter. I have now cancelled those compulsions."

Potter snarled, "And you want me to spend the next seven years in a school that's run by this man?"

Then he said to Snape, "The letter said that in November of 1981, I was a big hero. Am I still a big hero to wizards in 1991? Hopefully not."

Great, Snape thought. The boy is, to my shock, not arrogant, but I might be the person to make him so.

Snape stared into the boy's eyes. "Potter, you're known as 'the Boy Who Lived' in the magical world."

" 'The Boy Who Lived'? What does this mean?"

"You're a marvel because somehow you survived the Killing Curse, which nobody else has ever done; and you're a hero because you killed the Dark Lord who everyone feared was unstoppable. Your scar and your glasses are famous."

The boy smirked then, but did not explain why.

"The boy is still considered a hero?" Petunia asked, her voice sceptical.

Potter said, "Well, well. Manchester Magical Academy sure didn't mention any 'Boy Who Lived' nonsense."

Then Potter looked at Snape and asked, "This evil wizard, he killed lots of magical people? So he's killed some of my magical relatives, besides my parents?"

"He indeed killed many magical people. I am sure some of them were related to you."

"But if I magically ended this magical war as a baby, then some of my magical relatives must have lived through the end of the war, right? Magical aunts and uncles of mine, magical cousins. Again I ask: When my parents were killed, why wasn't I put with some of them? Why am I stuck here in Dursleyton?"

Snape mentally cursed Dumbledore—Potter's placement with the Dursleys was beginning to smell more and more like one of the headmaster's secretive plots. Aloud, Snape said, "I cannot answer your questions, nor can I guess."

Then Snape frowned. "Unless..."

Potter frowned too. "Unless what?"

"When Muggle-born students go to Hogwarts, their Muggle parents are considered incompetent to make decisions about their child in the magical world. So each Muggle-born student is assigned a magical guardian—normally, the child's Head of House. Wizard-raised students don't need this. You are Muggle-raised, Mr Potter, so need to have a magical guardian appointed for you when you begin magical school; but you also are the Boy Who Lived, famous hero of Wizarding Britain. It would not surprise me if the headmaster pulled strings to be named your magical guardian back in 1981."

Potter scowled. "Can I get this changed? Can I protest this? Can I tell a judge, 'I want Aunt Almira to be my magical guardian'? Or you, Professor Snape?"

Petunia choked. "You'd want him?"

Snape was stunned (and flattered) that Potter would want him as his magical guardian. Aloud, Snape replied, "Alas, I suspect it would be politically impossible. Albus Dumbledore is himself a hero, as the wizard who defeated Gellert Grindelwald, who is another evil wizard. I suspect that if you asked to drop Dumbledore for cause as your magical guardian, the response would be like if you claimed Winston Churchill kicked your puppy—even if you had proof, nobody would want to see it."

Potter scowled again. "I still don't see it. If I'm the Boy Who Lived, this famous magic child, why aren't my magical relatives trying to shove Dumbledore aside and grab me themselves? Even my twenty-third cousin Bertha?"

A minute later

Snape had lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, as he stared at Lily's pink diary. At last he asked Potter, "How much time does that cover, Lily's diary?"

Harry answered, "Just one year, but I found seven of them. But this one, Mum's first year, is the only one I've read so far."

"So you have Lily's diary for her fifth year, but you haven't read it yet."

Potter asked, "Is there some reason I should read it?"

Snape squirmed. "Mr Potter, one day in fifth year, your father and his friends were pranking me. I was ashamed and embarrassed, because I was helpless to stop it. Lily yelled at the pranksters, demanding that they stop. I was embarrassed, but this is no excuse. I said something enormously stupid to Lily, something I regret to this day. But in ten seconds, I threw away the friendship of my first friend. Forever."

"Blimey," Potter murmured.

"Then four years later, I did something even more gormless, the result of which was that your parents died, one and a half years after that. When you wrote your letter to Professor McGonagall, you referred to me as your mother's friend, but I have proven myself to be no friend of hers at all. Now I apologise to you, Lily's son. I am bitterly sorry and regretful for the harm I have caused your mother."

Potter went silent then, and stayed silent awhile. Amazingly, Petunia stayed silent too.

Then Potter asked, "Why did Mum yell at Dad and his friends?"

"She felt they were bullying me."

"Was she right? Were those boys bullying you? Or were they paying you back for you bullying one of them?"

"I was not a bully then," Snape replied.

"But are you a bully now? Now that you're a professor?"

Snape cursed himself for his slip. Grudgingly he admitted, "Many students at Hogwarts feel I bully them."

"What would Mum say? If Mum from fifth year could watch you teach class, would she say you were a great teacher? Or would she say you were a bully, just like Dad and his friends were bullies?"

Snape spoke lowly: "Lily would say I was a bully."

"And I don't like bullies," Potter said. He broke his stare-down with Snape to look at the ceiling, threw himself back in his chair and sighed.

Snape felt shame. How many times during the past ten years had Minerva said to him, "My Lions tell me you're bullying them in Potions class. Stop it"? Yet every time, Snape had stood there, scowling and unmoved, and with excuses in hand.

But the mental picture of Snape snarling at a frightened student in Potions class, "Ten points from Gryffindor for breathing too hard," only to look up into the angry malachite eyes of sixteen-year-old Lily Evans—Snape had no excuses to make.

"I promise I will stop bullying students in my classes," Snape now said to Potter and to Petunia. He meant it.

Both Potter and Petunia stared at Snape.

Potter then said, "Professor Snape, if you'll make a promise to stop bullying students so that the promise means something, it's not just words like a New Year's resolution, and if you'll be my ally against Dumbledore, then I'll go to Hogwarts. Otherwise I'll find a different magical school."

Snape pointed his wand at the ceiling; he swore on his magic that from now on, he would stop bullying students. Then Snape made another vow on his magic that Harry Potter could count on the help of Severus Tobias Snape during any conflict with Albus Dumbledore, even when Dumbledore threatened to sack Snape.

Petunia looked surprised as Snape gave his two vows. But oddly, the reaction of Potter was stronger: Potter was openmouthed and staring.

That night, in Harry's bed

Harry smiled to himself. He was sure that he had convinced Severus Snape that Harry Potter was merely a diary-informed ten-year-old who was quite cheesed off about his life at the moment, not a time-travelled seventeen-year-old who had lived through the Second Voldemort War. Harry believed that neither Snape nor Aunt Petunia suspected that Harry had been playing a part today.

But not all of today had followed a script. Once today, Harry had been truly surprised: Snape repenting of his cruel and bullying teaching-methods had shocked the time-travelled boy.

But even with this surprise, today Harry had achieved what he had wanted to achieve—and more. Now Snape was sure that Harry, only quite reluctantly, had agreed to attend Hogwarts, and Snape was sure that Harry had agreed only after Snape had vowed to make a major change in his life and had allied himself with Harry against Dumbledore. Little did Snape know that because Hermione Granger was about to attend Hogwarts, Harry learning magic at Hogwarts actually was a sure thing.

Tomorrow Harry, chaperoned by Snape, would make his second "first trip to Diagon Alley." Harry hoped he would not be bored.