Yet Another Snape Meets the Dursleys Story: by rabbit
Disclaimer: JKRowling owns the lot…
Chapter 11: The Letter
Summary: Even good deeds have consequences.
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"I'm sorry," Harry mumbled, scrubbing at his face with his sleeve, "I'm sorry, Professor." He couldn't stop crying and he had to. It was only making Snape angry again. He uncurled and started trying to pull himself upright against the wall, keeping his face averted. "I'm all right.. It's just… just… I don't know… maybe Hagrid will want me…"
"Hagrid? What would Hagrid want with you?" Snape said sharply, reaching out to take hold of Harry's arm. Harry jerked away from him, trying not to break into fresh sobs at the thought of even Hagrid rejecting him.
"You ought to be happy," Harry told Snape bitterly. "I mean, you've wanted me expelled ever since I got to Hogwarts." He knew that Snape would never miss an opportunity like this. Harry had used magic twice. No, three times, if you counted poisoning himself. He'd never see Hogwarts again. He'd heard the letter flap clank out in the hallway. Uncle Vernon may not have shown him the warning letter from when he'd did the poison thing, but there was no question of a Muggle postman coming this late of a Saturday. Cornelius Fudge wasn't going to save him from the consequences of cursing an aunt this time.
"We're not going to discuss it," Snape snapped. "Not in front of the Muggles." He ignored Harry's attempts to back further off and steered him abruptly into one of the chairs from the dining table's end. "Animatus," he cast on the chair, and Harry was startled to feel the wooden legs under him shift position. "Hold on," Snape went on, and Harry thought it was a command to him until the chairs of the arm pulled free of their supports and wrapped themselves gently, but immovably, around Harry's upper arms and chest.
"What…?" Harry gasped as the chair changed shape, tilting back like a recliner, so that he was stranded on his back, without leverage to fight free, even if he had the strength. Tears ran back, into his ears, and he closed his eyes, turning his face away from Snape. He hated crying in front of people who didn't like him.
"Take the boy upstairs to his bed," Snape commanded.
The chair began to walk then, awkwardly at first, and then more smoothly as its legs grew out like a Daddy-Long-Legs around Harry. Harry took a last look back to see if Snape was going to do something worse to the Dursleys, but Snape had gone to the windows to pull the curtains to. Doesn't want the neighbors to look in and see him kill them, I bet, Harry thought, too weak to do anything about it but cry. He listened, tensely, as the chair worked it's peculiar way up the staircase, extending and collapsing legs as it needed. But Snape followed the chair and Harry almost straight away, eating a roll with some pieces of chicken sticking out the sides. Harry blinked and stared, sniffing to try to clear his stuffed nose, as the chair kept taking him farther away from where Snape was bending to pick up the parchment envelope on the hall floor and looking at it while eating his sandwich for all the world like a normal person trying to catch a snack in the middle of a busy day. Then the chair reached the top of the stairs, and Harry couldn't see anything but the walls and the ceiling of the upstairs hall. And Hedwig and Pigwidgeon, who appeared in a flutter of feathers and settled on the wooden rails that were holding Harry into the chair.
"At least you still love me," Harry said to Hedwig, wishing he could get one arm free so he could pet her properly. She seemed to understand that he couldn't do more than raise his hands, and she walked down the chair to where she could butt her head up into his hand to get scratched.
Harry stroked Hedwig's feathers, and thought back to the horrible moment when his scar had given a twinge and he'd realized that Snape was about to do something truly dreadful to Aunt Petunia if Harry didn't stop him. He still didn't completely understand how he'd managed to Summon Snape's wand without his own, but the moment it had hit his hand he'd been hit with a horrible wave of weakness and the realization that he'd deliberately broken the laws about underage magic use. And then Snape had gone absolutely dead white with fury, and Harry's scar had hurt so much that all he could do was try to explain. He didn't have the strength to fight back with anything more than words. And he had had to fight back. If he could do magic without a wand, then Snape, who was a fully trained wizard, could too, if he had a chance to think about it. And talking had worked, eventually. Snape had started to pull himself back to his usual sarcastic self. At least until Aunt Petunia had started in.
Harry was in two minds about the curse he'd gone and put on Aunt Petunia to stop her from tormenting Snape. Part of him loved it, and thought it perfect. He couldn't get any more expelled anyway, so he might as well go out with a bang. And part of him was terrified, because he was sure that the Dursleys would never let him stay after a direct attack like that, and because even if the Ministry wasn't noticing magic he'd done without a wand, they were certain to notice magic he did with one. He wasn't sure if Snape's Memory Charm had blocked the Dursleys from remembering the way Aunt Petunia had temporarily lost her mouth, and he wasn't sure why Snape had cast it. Maybe the professor had done it so that Harry wouldn't be thrown into the streets, but Harry wasn't sure three more years of being locked into his room was an improvement.
The chair had maneuvered its way through Harry's door and taken up a position by the bed as he ruminated. Now it waited patiently for further instructions, and Harry was forced to wait too, as Snape came scowling into the room and sat at the desk, laying the opened letter on the top and then rummaging through the drawers. Harry held very still and tried not to breathe too loudly. That was hard, since his nose was still blocked, and he kept having to breathe through his mouth.
"Haven't you got a quill, Potter?" Snape asked, slamming shut the bottom drawer.
"In my trunk," Harry said. There wasn't anything to write with in the desk. He'd had to take a bit of broken pencil lead from a crack in the wood of one of the drawers and put it under a fingernail to write his note to Snape.
"Try again," Snape said, impatiently.
"Dudley's got pens in his room," Harry offered, wondering what Snape wanted one for.
Snape got up and strode off, and Harry couldn't help but notice that he was moving right for the first time since he'd arrived. Right for Snape anyway, quickly between places, and deliberately when he was studying something. There must have been something potent in that vial Snape had drank from, and Harry wished he could have some of it so he'd feel better too. He'd gotten to the point where he desperately needed to blow his nose and wash his face, but he'd settle for being able to curl up in bed on one side.
"Where does he keep his inkwell?" Snape roared from the other room.
"The ink's inside the pens," Harry called back, cheered up a little by the thought of a confused Snape investigating the jumble of pens and pencils in the box on Dudley's desk. Dudley fancied himself an artist, off and on, and destroyed a block of paper every so often tracing repetitious recreations of his favorite videogame characters, or coloring pictures he'd printed from the internet. As a result, he had gotten gifts of all sorts of colored markers, pencils and crayons over time, and given Dudley's reluctance to get rid of anything he considered his own, the collection was considerable. "Most of the pens, anyway," Harry added, remembering that he was in no position to bait Snape. "You had better check."
"Blasted Muggles," Snape said, coming back into Harry's room with an assortment of pens and some paper. He sat at the desk again, trying pen after pen. "How can you get a decent script out of …" he muttered, discarding one after the other. He finally settled on a felt tip that had been rejected before he got to the end of the handful and took out a pocketknife to trim the end into the shape he wanted.
"Couldn't you use a pencil?" Harry suggested, when the felt tip died spectacularly, bleeding purple ink all over Snape's hand.
"Not for this," Snape said, and then glanced over at Harry, scowled all the harder, and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. "Blow your nose, boy," he ordered, tossing the square of cloth neatly into Harry's hand before turning back to the problem of the pens.
"I can't reach," Harry muttered as he tried to do as he was told. The chair arms unwound, but as soon as Harry had his arms out of the way, snaked back across to imprison him around the chest. Harry blew his nose and wiped his face, and then tried asking the chair if he could sit up a little straighter. Much to his relief, the chair seemed to listen, and raised itself so that Harry had a better view.
Snape had pulled out his wand to reconfigure one of the pens into an inkwell, and gone over to retrieve a lost feather from where Hedwig's cage had been. Now he was making a proper quill tip with his penknife. Harry watched and scratched Hedwig's chest feathers and the top of Pig's head, wondering what Snape was writing.
Much to his surprise, when Snape was finished, he brought the piece of paper over for Harry to read. Harry gaped at him, and it wasn't until Pigwidgeon fluttered up to rest on Snape's hand and merp quizzically at the paper that Harry realized that he'd better take it and read it before Snape got more annoyed.
It read:
Dear Madam Hopkirk,
Were you to properly investigate the use of magic at 4 Privet Drive rather than issuing warning letters indiscriminately, you would find that the spells cast here involved no wand other than my own. Presumably, the Ministry has failed to notify you that I have been assigned to correct the deficiencies in Mr. Potter's schoolwork, caused by the incessant interruptions to his schedule over the past year. Please refer any questions you may have to Arthur Weasley.
As I shall be here for some time, and the Muggles of this house are less than pleased by the necessity, I would ask that you not interfere again. Mr. Potter has a great deal of work to do if he is to successfully complete his O.W.L.s.
Severus Snape
Head of Slytherin House
Hogwarts
Harry read the letter three times, trying to make sense of it. Snape always confused him, and today he'd been more confusing than ever. He'd saved Hedwig, and Harry, then gotten angry enough to kill Aunt Petunia and Harry, and now this.
"But I used magic," Harry protested, finally meeting Snape's gaze. "Twice. Three times, really, if you count the poison. I never meant to poison myself. But tonight, I meant it. I deliberately took your wand away."
"Knowing it meant expulsion?" Snape asked, surprised. "I wouldn't have killed her, Potter."
Harry shrugged and bit his lip, "I couldn't just sit there and watch." He ducked his head, looking at Snape's left arm. "And I couldn't take the chance… I mean… someone would have noticed if you'd done anything drastic."
Snape covered the place where the Mark was with his other hand, protectively. "I doubt Lord Voldemort would have disapproved of a Imperius spell," he said carefully.
"An Imperius spell?" Harry echoed. He'd thought Snape was going to use a Cruciatus at the very least. "But that doesn't hurt."
"It does when it's removed and you remember what you did while you were under the curse," Snape pointed out in a tone somewhere between bitter remembrance and satisfaction.
"Still, I wouldn't want to take a chance on Voldemort coming to find out who you'd cast it on," Harry said, rubbing at his forehead thoughtfully. "And if it wasn't him, it would have been the Aurors, and that would have been bad too." He sighed and slumped against the back of the chair, wishing that he didn't feel so rotten. "I'm sorry. I'm not explaining very well. Have you got any more of that potion you took?"
"No, and even if I had, you couldn't afford to lose the weight," Snape said, stepping forward to gently push Harry's hand aside and check his forehead and cheek again with one long white hand. "I should think you would have been glad to see some Aurors. Someone you could trust."
Harry hadn't realized how much pain there was in Snape's eyes before. He licked his lips, discovering the words as he said them. "I didn't want them to put you in Azkaban. I still don't."
Snape's lips twitched at the edges into an almost smile of resignation. "I might find that restful. No visitors. No responsibilities." For a moment he almost looked friendly.
"But the Dementors," Harry said, shuddering at the memory of how drained and miserable the cloaked guards of Azkaban always made him feel. There'd be no rest for anyone at Azkaban with the Dementors there.
Snape's face closed away again. "I've nothing left for them to take," he said, leaving Harry to go and stare out the window.
It wasn't true, no matter how much Snape might think it. Harry had seen too much to believe that Snape didn't care or feel pity or joy, even if it was only for his Slytherins. "I don't believe that," he said.
Snape didn't answer for a long time. Then he sighed, and quietly said, "Believe what you like," before turning back to look at Harry. "Is there anything in this room that you don't want destroyed?"