Summary of the last chapter:

Harry finally gets an answer from Gringotts: His parents left a will with the goblin bank. Since Harry is a minor, however, only his guardian can instigate the reading of it, which Petunia certainly won't do. Professor Snape explains that Petunia could name a wizarding guardian who deals with the wizarding side of things, and Harry asks if he would be willing to be that person. Snape is not happy about it – nobody must know he's closer to Harry than he should be – but finally agrees. Now all he has to do is convince Petunia to agree as well.

Petunia

Severus Snape looked over the neatly manicured lawns, the dull conformity of the single family houses and the freshly washed middle class cars parked in front of the driveways in disdain.

Not that his own neighbourhood was any better – quite the contrary. But it was brutally honest in what it was: ugly, poor, neglected and pretty much a dead end for whoever ended up there. Little Whinging screamed of hypocrisy. It seemed to consist of people who pretended they were something better, yet seemed deadly afraid to just put one step out of line and thus raise suspicion for being different.

It was no surprise to find Petunia living in such surroundings. Neat, orderly, correct and utterly boringly in their normalcy. It was a good thing the house numbers were clearly visible, as the houses themselves all looked the same. It was Saturday afternoon. Severus would have much preferred to show up when Petunia was at home alone, but it was impossible to leave Hogwarts on a school day. Unless her husband went to football games on weekends, it was likely he'd be at home, too. Unfortunately, there was a shiny, standard branded car in the driveway.

Severus was able to approach the door without issues. He had half expected to either be unable to find the house in the first place or to encounter wards preventing him from getting too near. He was a marked Death Eater, after all, and surely Albus would have placed wards on the house to keep anyone wearing the Dark Mark out?

Feeling uneasy about this being so simple, he rang the doorbell. It was Petunia who opened it just a moment later, prim and proper with neatly coiffed hair and wearing a starched apron around her waist. She looked at him in confusion for a moment. "You!" she then blurted accusingly, horrified on recognizing him, and promptly shut the door in his face.

Or at least, she tried to. Severus had expected this, and a wandless spell prevented the door from closing. He pushed it open again and smiled a humourless smile "Thank you so much for inviting me in, Petunia. You're as kind and welcoming as ever." With that, he stepped inside and moved straight to the living room, as the hallway was too small for two people to comfortably stand next to each other.

"Who is it, Petunia?" blurted a voice from a huge chair that sat at optimal distance and angle from the TV. Severus saw the head of a man sticking out from the top of it but he didn't turn around to see for himself.

"My name is Severus Snape and I'm a teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchraft and Wizardry. I'm here on behalf of your nephew."

There was movement from the chair and some time later – Severus had already turned back to Petunia who had followed him into the living room looking nervous – he understood why it took the man in the chair so long to react. He was huge. Like walrus huge. He even had the matching moustache. Compared to him, Petunia looked like a stick figure. Severus had the spontaneous and wholly unwelcome thought that he must crush her in bed – if such logistics worked at all with his body mass. The man wasn't able to even see his own feet, not to speak of ... no. Severus pulled up his Occlumency shields and forcibly pushed all ideas about Vernon Dursley naked or in bed out of his mind.

"What are you doing in my house?" Dursley bellowed. "Your kind is not welcome here!"

"My kind?" asked Severus, pretending not to know what he was talking about. "Teachers? Old acquaintances of your wife? Wizards?"

"Freaks!" shouted Dursley, spit flying. Severus immediately conjured an invisible shield around him. Severus awkwardly remembered that he had a tendency to do that too, when he got really agitated, and silently vowed to keep his temper in check at all times from now on. It was disgusting.

"We are obviously not using the same definition of the word," he replied, sneering. If they did, Vernon would be referring to himself. "I'll overlook the insult and your atrocious manners if you remove yourself from this room or at least keep your mouth shut so I can talk to your wife in quiet."

"I'll do no such thing!" hollered Dursley with a booming voice, turning all red in the face and starting to sweat from the exertion. He probably was a candidate for a stroke in his mid-forties. "Leave my house this instant, and don't ever come back here! We want nothing to do with your doohickeys, your hanky panky and your cheap parlour tricks. Freaks, the whole lot of you. We should never have taken that unnatural boy in! I told Petunia that no good would come out of it! My sister Marge has it right! She always says ... "

Severus had very little patience with his student, and much less with a repulsive walrus who was shouting profanities at his face. He pointed his wand at Dursley and put him in a full body bind, so that he fell right back onto his chair. A silencing spell to prevent him from learning what Dursley's sister 'alway says' helped Severus keep his temper.

To Petunia, who had been watching the scene unfold with horror, he said: "Now with that rather large obstacle out of the way, we can talk. Shall we sit down?" Severus nodded to the dining table.

Petunia proved to be as stubborn as her husband. "Say what you have to say, since I can't prevent you from doing so anyway," she spat. "But I won't sit down with you as if you didn't just come into my house, threatening and attacking my husband."

"That's entirely his own fault for lacking common decency and manners. How you could have married that man eludes me, but maybe you two deserve each other. What were you thinking – telling your nephew all those lies about his mother?"

"What was I supposed to tell him? That he was a wizard and his mother was killed by a dark one? That he might come back for him one day and probably take the rest of our family down with him? I tried to keep all that madness from him, raise the boy to be normal. He should learn to work with his own two hands, like normal people do, and not waves sticks around and turn teacups into mice and all that nonsense! I tried to direct that unnatural energy of his into the right channels, to avoid outbursts of violence like those that Lily had whenever she threw a tantrum."

"To prevent accidental magic, you mean? Were you successful with that, Petunia?"

"Yes! We never had any broken windows or dishes flying through our living room at inopportune moments. The only open freakishness the boy showed was that uncanny staring into nothingness for minutes at a time, or the fact that he frequently talked to himself. Except for that one time when he somehow jumped onto the school roof when he was eight; do you have any idea how difficult it was to explain that to the teachers?"

Yes, Severus could imagine. He wondered why no Obliviators had been sent to cast memory charms if it happened in front of Muggle witnesses at school. "Were there any witnesses?"

"Of course there were – he did it right in front of my Dudders and his three friends! They all swore he jumped on the roof, but the teacher of course didn't believe them, even though she and many others saw him there!"

That must have been the reason, Severus mused. Kids were not considered much of a security risk if they witnessed magic, as adults rarely believed them.

"And then there was the day at the zoo, where he somehow made a huge python escape from behind the glass, only to put my Dudley in its place!"

"How was that explained?"

"Why, my poor boy was blamed! They assumed that he opened the door in the back and allowed the snake to escape, only to go inside with the intent to freak everyone out. Only they couldn't really explain why the door was locked from the outside while he was inside, or why the python made its way out of the snake house right through the crowds in the visitor centre. Of course, it didn't help when we told them that it was our deranged nephew who had locked him in there. We still had to pay a mighty sum for the escaped snake to prevent the zoo from filing charges for trespassing and endangerment, though the only one who had been in danger was my boy – locked inside the snake cage!"

"There's no way to prevent accidental magic, Petunia."

"There was nothing accidental about it – the boy knew exactly what he was doing! He was laughing at Dudley!"

Severus knew she was wrong about that – making a solid glass wall vanish, levitating a person and conjuring a new glass wall out of thin air was something adult wizards struggled with. Accidental magic was often shockingly powerful and worked in inexplicable ways, melting spells together that couldn't be performed simultaneously in any other circumstances, and making things happen literally on a wish. But it usually ended up in something rather chaotic and with some amount of destruction. If these two incidences of accidental magic were truly the only instances that occurred – and he had no reason to believe Petunia was lying - it was astonishing. Even more so for a child like Harry Potter, who, as Severus had come to notice, had a quite strong magical aura. But he seemed very much in control of himself. The question was what had made him so proficient in showing such restraint so young. He feared that the answer had much to do with Vernon Dursley.

"I thought we had him under control until ... well, I supposed until that letter arrived! I had expected it, knowing that Harry would turn eleven soon, but the boy never let anything on. Until he was gone one day. Sneaked out of his room somehow. We had no idea where he was, until you contacted us and informed us that the boy had somehow managed to travel to that school of yours."

"That was almost two days later. And yet you didn't even report him missing!"

"Why – you have him now, we're glad he's gone as we never wanted him in the first place! He was nothing but a burden to our family."

"Then why did you take him?"

"Well, we didn't have much of a chance to object, did we, given that the child was put in a basket and placed at our front door in the middle of the night! In November, no less, so it's not like you can claim you were all that concerned about him yourselves. There was a letter from your headmaster explaining that we had to take him, due to some blood hocus-pocus that would offer protection, and that if we didn't comply, the child and our whole family would be in danger from a murdering madman! I'd just had a baby of my own – what was I to do? Of course I wanted to protect my family!"

Severus was stunned. Albus had simply pushed the child on Petunia – without even having the decency to do so in person? Without telling her what exactly was at stake, and why? The more he learned about the life of Harry Potter, the more doubts Severus had regarding the motives – or the sanity – of his employer. The one who also held his own strings.

"You do realise that this is still Harry's home, and that he will return for the summer?"

"No, he won't! He's in your world now and as far as we are concerned, he can remain there!"

"Nothing about the situation Dumbledore described in that letter has changed. The danger is still there, and the people who were after Lily have no love for Muggles. The blood protection Harry was given and which was extended to your family by the headmaster's own magic will only remain in place as long as Harry calls this place his home. If you deny him, the protection will be naught. I realize that to you, this must seem like a form of blackmail, but it doesn't change the facts."

Petunia, who had petulantly remained standing throughout their discussion now sank onto the next chair, visibly upset and stunned.

"But we don't want him! There's always the fear that it might happen still, that he will do something freakish, that he will hurt Dudley or one of us or that the neighbours will notice ..."

"That's the worst case scenario, isn't it, Petunia?" Severus sneered. "That the neighbours might notice your totally mediocre, middle class family is not so normal after all. You need not fear. Hogwarts exists to teach magic to young wizard and witches, so that accidental magic will not happen. The boy has shown remarkable control. Incidents of accidental magic are getting less likely with Harry learning to use his powers consciously."

"How is that supposed to help, if his intentional magic gets stronger and stronger at the same time?"

"He won't perform magic while out of school. He's not allowed to. He might be expelled from Hogwarts if he disobeys these rules."

"Really?"

"Really. But Petunia – this rule is not applicable in a case of self-defence. Any wizard – underage or not – is allowed to defend himself from coming to harm. Accidental magic also happens if a child is scared, desperate or extremely agitated for some reason. It's in your own best interest not to scare or extremely upset the boy. And keep in mind that one day, Harry will not be a child anymore, but an adult. And performing magic in front of Muggles who know of it already is not forbidden."

"More threats," said Petunia bitterly. "You just keep them coming."

"I'm just telling you that there are consequences for your actions towards Harry. Leave him alone and he will leave you alone as well. It's that simple. And it's only for the summer. Maybe even only for part of the summer, as Harry might want to visit friends for the holidays and stay with them for a while. We're talking about approximately three weeks in the year. Surely, you can find in your heart to put up with your sister's son for such a limited amount of time to keep him and your family protected? Doubtlessly, Lily would have treated your son like her own, had the roles been reversed!"

Petunia was silent for the longest time yet, then she nodded.

"Good. And make sure that this oaf of a husband understands this as well. Otherwise it might not only be dark wizards who come for him."

Petunia stared at him darkly but said nothing more.

"One more thing before I go: I need you to sign this document. It's naming me as your proxy in the wizarding world to represent Harry if need be. I suppose you'd rather not have do deal with goblins, centaurs, werewolves, the school governors, the Wizengamot or the Ministry?"

Bringing in centaurs and werewolves was total rubbish, of course, as no one dealt with them in any form of representation, but he threw them in just in case goblins and or wizarding institutions were not scary enough to shock Petunia into signing the document.

Which she promptly did, no further questions asked. Well, that had gone a lot easier than he had expected.

"Thank you. That settles our business. If everything goes well, we won't have to see each other ever again."

Severus cast a wordless 'Finite' on the walrus and was out of the door before Dursley had regained his senses.

*'*'*'*'*

"You really got her to sign it?" Harry stared at the document in his hands with awe. "Truly, I hadn't thought that she would. How did you manage it? Is there a charm that can make people do what you want them to do?"

"There is, Mr. Potter. It's called the 'Imperius'. It's one of the so-called Unforgivable curses which earns a life-time sentence in Azkaban. I don't recommend it. Fortunately, it wasn't necessary. Your aunt, surprisingly, was capable of listening to reason, and I had good arguments. She also agreed to see to your needs more responsibly in the future, as long as you don't give her any trouble. Don't give her trouble, Mr. Potter, and she will leave you alone as well."

"I've been here for five months and only now do I see true magic at work," said Harry, deeply impressed with his professor.

Tom was equally awed. "I think I'm in love," he said jestingly.

The truly magical wizard who was sat behind the enormous desk snorted. "Don't be ridiculous, Potter! Just tell me if you want me to write to Gringotts and demand the reading of the will."

"Yes, please do. But what do we do if they want us to make an appointment? You said I'd have to ask permission to leave the school grounds."

"Did I say that?" His professor raised an eyebrow. "Of course, we could also simply make an appointment on a Saturday and I, as your Head of House and guardian by proxy, take you with me so you can conduct your legal business."

"Will we travel by Portkey or by Knight bus?"

"Neither."

"Oh, good!" Harry was relieved. "Then I'm all in!"