Chapter 8

Harry sat on the bed staring blankly at the wall. He'd gone down to the kitchen when he couldn't sleep after waking up dreaming about his parents. It made him feel utterly empty every single time. But he'd take what he'd get. The dreams weren't so bad, they sometimes made him realise that there were people who'd loved him, at least in a far away past.

He missed them, the parents he never had a chance to get to know. There was a time when he would long for the warmth and love that Dudley always got. He had tried and tried to appease his aunt and uncle, thinking that they'd care if he proved himself worthy. But now he knew better than to expect good things from people like the Dursleys, but that didn't mean it didn't bother him. Especially on nights like these, waking up to whispers and wishing he had someone to comfort him.

Harry felt drained after talking about the Dursleys. Even though Snape hadn't particularly asked about them, why he had told the man anything was beyond him. He knew Snape wouldn't have pressed on if Harry didn't want to talk. At least he hadn't said anything Snape didn't already know.

Harry wasn't sure how he knew - was it because Snape hadn't said anything scathing about what he'd seen and heard? - that the man wouldn't use it against him.

Did he trust Snape? The two of them didn't exactly have a great record of getting along, and now Harry wondered how and why he trusted him. When exactly did that happen?

Even so Harry had been careful enough to keep Aunt Petunia's flying pans, Uncle Vernon's violent outbursts, and Dudley's Harry-hunting to himself. He hadn't wanted to breathe a word about the cupboard under the stairs either. He wasn't ready to share those with anyone.

He supposed it was a good thing that Snape had been around when Aunt Marge was visiting. The Dursleys seemed to temper their reaction when she was there. Just so she could berate him more about how ungrateful he was and how generous they were, letting him live in their home. Even Dudley didn't bother Harry with her around.

It still troubled him sometimes when he thought about how the little care and concern he used to get from the Dursleys had vanished entirely when he was four, because of something that he had no control over. That was when being shoved inside the cupboard had started, or so he thought. He didn't exactly remember where he'd been sleeping before that. Had he always slept in the cupboard?

He had fuzzy memories of Aunt Petunia spreading… Was it marmalade? on his toast. No matter that there wasn't much love lost between them, it still made him long for some kind of comfort.

But then he also had memories of being locked in that same cupboard while Dudley decorated the house for Christmas and opened presents, while he ended up with an envelope that had a paperclip or a used eraser.

When he had been old enough to understand the concept of birthdays he also understood the difference it made to the Dursleys. He still remembered pestering to know his birthday when he was seven, and how his aunt's face had turned sour as she spat the date at him before throwing him out to weed the lawn.

Remembering all this had left him raw.

The week so far with Snape had been peaceful. But he'd still have to go back to them the next summer.

Sighing, he fell back on the bed and laid awake for a while thinking about nothing and everything and fell asleep without realising it. He didn't hear the soft knock on his door before it slowly opened at dawn, nor did he notice the man come in to take off his glasses.

--

"You didn't know how to get onto the platform?" Snape asked, shocked. The man had quite an expressive face when he wasn't trying to put on a stoic mask like he did at school.

They were in the sitting room where Harry was perusing the bookshelves for something to read while Snape sat in the armchair with that look that meant he wanted to know something about Harry. When Harry had given him a pointed look, he started asking questions about his Hogwarts letter.

Le Arti Oscure: Incantesimi Difensivi; Moste Potente Potions; Charms of Defense and Deterrence; The Dark Arts Outsmarted; Numerology and Gramatica; Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions;

"No sir, Hagrid forgot to mention that little detail," Harry said, he didn't really mind it.

The Sacred Twenty-Eight; Periculo Potiones; Battle First Aid; Fundamental Laws of Magic; Teoria Magica; Self-Defensive Spellwork; Important Modern Magical Discoveries;

Harry hadn't found an arrangement pattern in the shelves. They seemed so random - Hermione would lose her mind! - like they were stuffed wherever and forgotten.

A Compendium of Common Curses and Their Counter-Actions; The Philosophy of the Mundane: Why Muggles Prefer Not to Know; Dreadful Denizens of the Deep; Curses and Countercurses; Magical Water Plants of the Highland Lochs; Hogwarts: A History; Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy;

"You don't have to address me as sir all the time, at least not until we get back to school," Snape raised an eyebrow when Harry turned around.

This, Harry decided, coming from someone who insisted on his students tacking on a 'sir' or 'professor' at the end of each sentence while talking to him, was shocking!

"I'll work on that," he said, trying not to gape, which finally seemed to satisfy the man as he continued.

"Tuney knew, seeing as she came to see her sister off sometimes. She didn't tell you how?" Of course Aunt Petunia would know. Why would she tell Harry anything? Wait, did Snape just say Tuney?

"No, but Tuney? You know Aunt Petunia?" Harry tried hard not to make that sound like he was straining not to laugh. He couldn't believe anyone called her Tuney, least of all Snape.

"Knew," Snape made a face. "I haven't spoken to her in years."

"And you still call her 'Tuney'," he observed idly going back to the bookshelves.

Practical Defensive Magic and its Use Against the Dark Arts; Muggle Medicine in Mages: Life-saving or Deadly?; The Healer's Helpmate; Asiatic Anti-Venoms; Confronting the Faceless;

'Spells: Construction and Formulation' Harry plucked that off the shelf, intrigued.

"Perhaps I shouldn't address her as such. Old habits," said Snape - more to himself it seemed - shaking his head.

Why did his Potions Professor from his Magical School know Petunia Dursley? And well enough to call her Tuney out of habit?

"Hmm, maybe. Tuney makes her sound innocent and sweet."

"Whatever Petunia Evans was, she wasn't sweet," Snape sighed. Harry felt like there was a story there, and probably bad blood. He just didn't feel like digging into it right now. Harry's mind was in chaos, making him feel disarmed. Good, because he would be blaming his disorganised thoughts for what he said next.

"She never really told me anything about mum either. I stopped asking questions when I realised it made her uncomfortable." And angry, he thought. It came out as a disappointed whine. Harry had never admitted to anyone how miserable he felt every single time he was denied answers or lied to.

"That means, she hasn't changed much in the eighteen years since I last saw her."

Eighteen years?

"Wait. Did you know my mum too?" he asked, forgetting about Petunia for a moment. "Of course you did, you were in school with dad and you call Aunt Petunia 'Tuney'." Harry hadn't meant to make it sound so accusing.

"Yes," Snape said hesitating a bit, "Lily and I were good friends."

"Friends…" Harry sat down on the sofa, flipping through the book in his hands. Good friends? Snape was friends with his mum?

He didn't understand why Snape not telling him about his friendship with his mother felt so much like a betrayal. It wasn't like they'd seen eye to eye on anything in all the time he'd known the man.

"Wasn't she a muggleborn? And you'r-" he stopped. Wasn't that a bit beside the point?

"I'm not a pureblood, if that is what you assume. My father was a muggle," Snape answered his incomplete question.

Oh. That was news to Harry. Although it shouldn't have been surprising seeing that Snape lived in a muggle town.

Snape was looking out the window with something in his expression that seemed uncertain, before his whole face smoothed into the blank mask that Harry was used to seeing on his professor's face at school.

Years of living with the Dursleys had taught Harry how to read people. Their eyes spoke more than their words, he'd seen the silent pleas of Petunia telling him not to get on her husband's bad side every weekend, or the warning before she sent him out to the yard when Harry was in a particularly foul mood with Vernon around, even if her words were as sour as ever.

"But how did you become friends with a Gryffindor?" Harry finally asked, curiosity overtaking him. Didn't the man hate Gryffindor house with intent?

Snape gave a dry chuckle at that, still staring out the window. "You make it sound like that's a bad thing."

"Um…"

"I didn't meet Lily in school, the Evans sisters grew up in Cokeworth." So that's how he knows - knew - Petunia.

"Mum grew up here?" He put the book down, wanting to know more but didn't know how to ask or if Snape would even answer.

"I believe that's exactly what I said," Snape raised an eyebrow as he turned to face Harry. "Petunia never told you about her sister?"

"Why would she tell me anything?" Harry asked back.

"Why indeed, Petunia?" Snape muttered with steel in his eyes that made Harry shudder. He was relieved that for once it wasn't directed at him.

"So, how did you become friends with mum?" Harry asked, trying to sound nonchalant when on the inside he was screaming to know more about his mum.

"I -" as Snape sat there wondering, Harry went back to the book, giving the man some space - he hadn't snapped at Harry for asking, Harry would gladly wait if it meant he would be told about his mother - slowly turning the pages without actually reading anything. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding when Snape finally started talking.

"I met her at the park," Snape cleared his throat and started, "we were nine. I was the one who first revealed to her that she was magical, although I ought to have amended how I did that. We became good friends soon after," he paused, the wariness in his eyes more pronounced even with his face a blank mask, "she used to launch herself from the highest point on the swing and fly down like a trapeze artist," he chuckled lightly. "Mrs. Evans grounded her for a week and a half following that."

Harry didn't know what he was expecting when he asked Snape about his mother, but this wasn't it. But it was also exactly what he wanted to know, little snippets of trivial things, not how Voldemort murdered her. Snape didn't make her sound like the martyr everyone made her out to be, somehow this made her sound real.

"Mrs. Evans…" he trailed off, Harry was doing that a lot today. He hadn't given a lot of thought about the grandparents that he'd seen behind his parents in the Mirror of the Erised. He wondered if he would've been dumped at the Dursleys had they been alive? Were they nice people? Would he have grown up listening to stories about his parents? How different would his life have been then?

Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face, because Snape was watching Harry now, trying to figure him out again, for once he didn't mind that. "What was mum like?" Harry settled for asking.

Snape thought about that for a minute, "Lily… was extremely temperamental," he said, almost tenderly, "She had a very contagious laugh, a way of making people forget all their worries and laugh along with her. She was feisty and fiercely protective of the people around her. But she also had quite the temper, woe betide anyone who got on her bad side," he finished turning to stare out the window again.

A small smile crept up Harry's face. "What was her favourite subject?" he asked eagerly. It was such an ordinary thing to ask, but Harry wanted to know everything there was about his mother, trivial or otherwise.

"Charms definitely, Lily had a knack for charms that would infuriate the whole class," Snape replied, sounding far away, "she did enjoy Potions too - one of the professor's favourites."

Of course she was. Listening to all this made Harry wonder how different the two sisters were, and if his mum were alive would he have even met the Dursleys at all? Even briefly?

"I bet she hated History of Magic!"

"Who doesn't?" Snape asked, chuckling lightly.

There was so much more Harry wanted to ask but the wary look in Snape's eyes that was present ever since the conversation drifted to his mum gave him a pause. At least Snape didn't yell at Harry like Aunt Petunia did. He had willingly answered questions, and Harry didn't want to risk the man getting annoyed.

As much as he wanted to listen to stories about his mum, Harry didn't push anymore. He'd be content with what he got for now. There was finally someone who told him something substantial about one of his parents and he didn't want to let that go.

"Can you tell me more about her sometime?"

Snape nodded absently and went back to the book he'd been holding without reading for the past hour or so.

Harry stared at his hands, his mind jumbled.

"Sir?" He broke the silence after a while, Snape appeared lost in thought and didn't seem to hear him. Harry called out twice before he switched to "Severus?" which finally got the man's attention, it sounded so odd to say that.

When Snape finally looked up at him, Harry caught the lost and haunted look in his eyes - grief, he realised - before it was quickly replaced by wariness again. Harry thought back to their conversation, realising now that Lily Potter had been very important to Snape.

Harry wondered if he should be able to read someone like Snape that effortlessly, who purposely made his expressions seem blank and emotionless. But Harry had picked that up being used to Petunia, whose eyes seemed to say something entirely different while her face contorted in fury or distaste. Was Snape even aware that his eyes held that much emotion?

"Yes, Harry?"

Harry blinked, forgetting what he wanted to say. Something about Ron, right. "Ron says he'll be back a few days before school, he asked if I'd be able to meet him in Diagon alley," he stopped unsure of what more to say now that he'd started.

"Ah, yes," breathed Snape, "we will be going down to Diagon Alley on the 31st, I have a few errands of my own to run."

--

After dinner that night, as Harry sat on the bed thinking about everything Snape told him, he couldn't help but smile. It still prickled that the man hadn't breathed so much as a word about his friendship with Harry's mum, but he pushed those thoughts away.

It did make Harry wonder though, if Snape and his mum were such good friends, why had the man been so hostile towards him from the very beginning. It wasn't really that warranted, even if Snape and his dad never got along. He sighed, thinking that he'd never be able to understand the man.

Harry reached over the bedside table where he always kept the album Hagrid had painstakingly put together for Harry in his first year and picked it up; he'd added more pictures to it last year, courtesy of Colin. There were photos of him and Ron playing wizard's chess in the common room while Hermione shook her head at them looking up from her homework, the three of them laughing in the Great Hall over breakfast, even the one with Ron puking slugs onto the ground - he didn't know why he kept that, Ron and Harry doing homework - or trying to copy off Hermione's - looking scandalised, Fred talking to him while they were both in the air on their brooms during a quidditch practice session, the rest of the Gryffindor house quidditch team laughing in the locker rooms with a highly amused McGonagall smiling exasperatedly at Oliver Wood who was bubbling with excitement over their win against Slytherin, and one where Harry was looking for the snitch with Malfoy trailing close.

Harry flipped through them all, stopping at the picture of his mum and dad waving at the photographer in front of the Black Lake; he could see the giant squid photobombing the picture from behind them. They must have been around sixteen or seventeen in it and looked so happy with wide grins.

He slowly wiped away the tear that had managed to escape, sliding down his cheek. He rarely cried at all, this whole day had been emotionally exhausting for him.

A/N: Finally! I lost count of the number of times I've written and rewritten this chapter, this was as close as it got to satisfactory for me. Also the bit about the photographs kinda got away from me at some point...hehe

I loved reading what you think of my work!

I'm kinda new to the app (always opted for the website, seemed easier to navigate) and I'm still trying to get a hang of it all..

Hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much I did writing it!