"Potter, I need to speak with you." Severus said as the pajama clad boys wandered off to their room.

Harry looked towards the living room, then back to Dudley. "Guess I'll come to bed in a minute." He said with a shrug as he made his way alone towards Snape. "Yes Sir?"

Severus folded the parchment he was working on then looked to Harry. "Take a seat, this will take more than a minute." He said as he interlaced his fingers on the work desk in front of him. When Harry sat, he continued. "I want to know why you never retaliated against your guardians. I want honesty."

The boy felt his throat clench and he pulled his legs up onto the couch. "Er, well, I don't... really know." He admitted as he glanced to the ground and furrowed his brows. "I guess... they're my family. You're supposed to love your family, no matter what. Right?"

Severus shook his head. "Family or not, nobody is allowed to attack you in that manner. What you've experienced is abuse, nothing short of it. Had you retaliated, with or without magic, it would have been justified. Potter, I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but your life was in danger. I wouldn't have stepped in otherwise. You're twelve years old. Your aunt was already pushing you into blades, you were locked in your room like a caged animal, and you had been kept for 11 years in a small room no larger than a half bathroom in a cheap flat. The time where their attacks began to enter fatal territory had happened already. Do you realize that the knife that woman pushed you on was in an artery? Had you tried to pull it out on your own, you'd have likely bled out given what disposition I saw of you there."

A squeak sounded out as Harry shifted on the couch uncomfortably. "Yeah I get it, they were buttholes."

Severus' nose flared and he clenched his hands together. "They were monsters! Merlin's sake boy, don't you get it? You're not a weak child, you have defeated the Dark Lord twice. Once when you were a baby! Do you not comprehend the power you hold? You are nobody's sounding board! Stand up for yourself!"

Snape stood from his chair and firmly placed his hands on the desk in front of him. Harry was quickly becoming visibly irritated by the man. He sat quietly and gave a small glare towards his professor as the man just continued on.

"Do not just sit there and allow people to shit all over you. That is not a mark of 'being nice' or whatever drivel they're teaching you children nowadays, that is the mark of weakness and a lack of self-respect. When someone attacks you, attack them back! When someone hurts you, hurt them back! When someone-"

"Depulso!" Harry called out with sweep of his wand. Severus was sent flying back into the wall with a loud crack, and it was then that Harry realized what he'd just done. "Oh my god..." He dropped his wand. "I'm so sor-"

Severus was laughing. Severus Snape, scariest man Harry ever knew, was laughing as he stood up from the crash which had put a hole in the wall. "Don't you dare say you're sorry, Potter." He told the boy with a small chortle as he cracked his pained back. There was a bit of an unsettling grin on the man's face. "We start self-defense training tomorrow. Go to bed."

Confused and a little perturbed, Harry made his way back to the bedroom that he and Dudley shared. As he closed the door behind him it let out a creak, and Harry made a b-line for his bed. "Snape's starting to scare me." He said as he tugged his blanket up to his chin.

Dudley peered at him from his own bed. "I can see why... you had to go to school under that guy for a whole year?"

Hedwig hooted softly from her perch and hopped down onto Harry's bed. She made her way to the boy and sat herself down near his head on his pillow. Harry reached out to pet her. "Yeah but that's the problem, this is why he's scaring me. First he's nice, which he was never nice in school, he always hated me. And yeah I get the whole 'there to ground you' crap, but that's definitely not it. I mean sometimes I can still see his hate for me, like a minute ago when he was telling me that I wasn't weak, he looked angry about it, so I know it's more than that, but then he laughed." Harry sat up in his bed, rustling his pillow and annoying his owl. "Snape never laughs. He's cruel, he's serious, and he's tough, that's his M.O.! I swear I think he just enjoys confusing me and seeing me suffer."

Dudley rolled over so he could face his cousin and he frowned. "What was that about anyway? Why'd he want to see you?"

Harry flopped back down and let out a sigh. "To goad me into 'standing up for myself'." He muttered.

"Oh..." Dudley said. "Well to be fair you are kinda an easy target." He shrunk back at the glare from his cousin. "I'm sorry but it's true. How many times have you let me beat you up and not even tried to stop me?"

"That's not the same and you know it!" Harry snapped. "If I would have retaliated against you, then Petunia and Vernon would have beat me senseless. Your beatings were a lot less painful than theirs..."

All was quiet for a moment as Dudley shifted his gaze down to the ground. For a brief second it seemed as though he'd fallen asleep, then he spoke once more. "I know it was wrong... I didn't really put it together until maybe third or fourth grade. By then though, I just figured you deserved it, cause they weren't like that to me, so I thought they were seeing a part of you I wasn't. I didn't really get that you didn't deserve it though until maybe last year. They were still complaining about you and what you weren't doing while you were at school. Sometimes they'd talk about what they'd do to you when you came back because of all the work you were missing. That was when it really clicked. But... I still miss them. They were still my parents, ya'know?"

Harry stared at the ceiling above him. "Of course you still miss them. You loved them. You got whatever you wanted from them and I had to scratch and pry and fight to even survive." The boy quickly sat up and clenched the edge of his bed. "You got to go to school at the right age. You got to eat real food, good food at meal times. You were never locked in your room for days on end, hell you had a room! So yeah, you miss them... good for you. Just imagine how much more horrible they'd have been to you if you would have gone to Hogwarts... they'd have treated you like me."

The boy huffed and pushed himself back into his bed. Hedwig nuzzled his face. "You probably did accidental magic that I got blamed for too..." He muttered quietly. Silence filled the room.

After breakfast the following morning, Snape had called both of them outside into his little square of fenced in backyard for their first round of self-defense training. "The reason I am teaching both of you, is I seem to have found the time to. I haven't yet found a trustworthy home for the both of you, I've found plenty that would adore to take Potter but only Potter, however I fear they'd use you for your fame. I've found some that would be okay taking Dursley, however those only seem to want one child as well. I still stress that this is a temporary situation, however due to the current restrictions, it appears as though your week with me will be a month..."

The man let this information sink in to the boys, then he drew his wand and looked towards them. "On to the lesson- self defense. You will not be needing your wands, and I require that you do not rely on them. Please remove them and place your wands on the back stoop, you may reclaim them afterward." He tucked his own wand back into its holster.

Dudley frowned and crossed his arms. "If we have to put ours up why do you get to keep yours?"

"Because, Dursley, if one of you should break a bone or injure yourselves in any way, I will need immediate access to summon any number of potions from my lab." He glanced up to the attic window. "That is why the window was left open, many health and mending related potions are laid out up there on the table, and thus are out of the way, yet easily obtainable." The dark wizard crossed his arms and stared at the two, waiting for their cooperation.

The boys relented and put their wands on the stoop of the back door. When they returned, Severus positioned them some ten feet apart. "I understand that Dursley has expressed an aptitude for offense in the past, thus contributing to Potter's aptitude for preservation, rather than defense. The goal of this lesson is NOT preservation. It is defense through offense. Dursley, since you have the most practice in this area, I want you to try to punch me."

The silence that surrounded the air was deafening. Both boys stared at Snape as though the man had lost his mind. Severus re-positioned himself and sighed. "Come on now, Dursley! You know how to throw a punch, don't you?"

Dudley looked to Harry, shrugged, then ran after Snape with a yell. As he raised his fist to punch the man, he found his wrist had been grabbed. All of a sudden the hand that had grabbed his wrist yanked hard to the right, and Dudley felt his arm pull backward as Snape stepped to the side, allowing Dudley to fall somewhat, but still holding his wrist.

Instead of allowing Dudley to hit the ground, Severus used his grip on the boy to hoist him back up into a standing position. He looked over the dazed boy for injury, then, when satisfied that there was none, continued his lesson. "You drew your arm back far too early, long before you were ready to actually throw the punch. This gave me ample time to see that you're right handed and to see where you were going to aim based on the position your fist and elbow had come to rest in. All I did was grab your wrist as it came towards me and jerked, using your own momentum to throw you off balance and propel you towards the ground. Had you actually hit the ground at full speed, you would have had the wind knocked out of you, thus becoming stunned for the moment allowing me to move in and take further action. Now we're going to do it again, slower this time with a step-by-step walkthrough. You will take turns practicing this defense on one another. Potter, you'll be the first to deliver the punch, both of you remember... go slow. We can speed this up once I'm satisfied that you've learned how to do this."

The group practiced this maneuver repeatedly, each time going just a little faster than before. As the hours wound down and the day grew cooler with the approaching night, they had done this move at least 100 times each, if not more. There had been many instances where both boys had fallen to the ground, some knee scuffing, and at one point Harry's arm had become mildly dislocated. Needless to say, Harry wasn't happy with relocation of it.

Creatures of the night sang their midnight song as everyone slept. The moon was high overhead, a crescent, similar to the Cheshire cat's grin. As everyone dreamed, their minds sorting and processing the day's events, Harry began to sweat. The boy was asleep, but his mind was not calm. Images of his fight with Quirrel and the parasitic Voldemort from the year before kept creeping into his dream. That invisible fire, that fear... that death.

Time after time, the boy relived that day, those final moments. He watched over and over as his enemy burned to dust. Finally the cycle broke as his dream replayed the event in which the large waft of black smoke pushed through the child, knocking him to the ground. Then he heard it... Harry heard laughter, cruel laughter that seemed to be all around him and seemed to fill him.

"Murder... murder." The whispers began. Black smoke swirled around Harry's entire field of vision. "Murderer..." Suddenly it was dispersed and Harry was back outside, learning the defensive tactic with Snape. The professor's words began to play in his mind. "When someone attacks you, attack them back! When someone hurts you, hurt them back!"

Out of nowhere, Harry saw the parasitic Voldemort's face. "I'm coming for you..." It said, then burst into laughter and flame which engulfed Harry as well.

Harry jolted up with a yell. He panted heavily as he looked around the room to gather his bearings. He'd woken his sleeping cousin, and from the hall, Harry could hear footsteps approaching. The boy lay back down and closed his eyes as his breathing began to regulate once more.

Severus opened the door, wand drawn and turned on the light. "What happened?" He asked, taking in the boy's labored breathing.

Harry groaned as Dudley covered his head with a pillow to block the light. "Just a bad dream." Harry muttered as he put his hand on his head. It was absolutely throbbing. "Do you have anything for a headache?"

"Come along Potter." Severus said as he tucked his wand into the arm holster beneath the sleeve of his long nightshirt. "What happened in your dream?" He asked.

"I dunno..." Harry shrugged as he glanced down towards his hands. "Just memories I guess... hey Snape?" He looked up to the man.

Severus opened his medicine cabinet and pulled out a small vial with a dull grey liquid inside. "Hmm?"

"Do you know anything about invisible fire?" The boy asked as he studied the man's face. "Like the kind that skips over blisters and removing skin and stuff and just goes right to burning people into dust?"

Snape stopped for a moment and he looked to Harry. "Potion, spell, or other?" He asked as he handed his headache remedy to the boy.

"Either a wordless wandless spell, or other." Harry said as he took the potion and drank it.

"Not really." Snape told him. "I know some things about a potion that causes an invisible fire, but nothing else... why do you ask?"

Harry groaned and made a face at the taste of the potion. He brought his fingers to his forehead and sighed in relief as his headache dissipated. "I was looking it up and couldn't find anything on it in the library at Hogwarts." He saw by Snape's expression that this answer was not good enough. "I umm... when I touched Quirrel last year... he burned up. Like into a dust. That's how I killed him."

"Oh." Severus said as his brows raised. "Mr. Potter, that wasn't invisible fire... that was something else completely."