A/N: This story doesn't properly have "Parts" per se, but if it did, this very much feels like the beginning of Part II.

The conclusion of so many exciting events at once with the end of September meant that October began with a sort of vacuum of enthusiasm.

There had been the beginning of the school year, where Harry had been absorbed in attempting to find his place amongst new peers, and then the whole terrible business with Snowdrop's poisoning. Severus had, in short order, found new employment that once again changed the dynamic of the little house on Spinner's End, and Harry had been forced to adjust once again by spending two nights a week in the company of the very girl who had made his first day at school an embarrassing nightmare.

Of course, Snowdrop was bad enough on her own, but her brother wasn't all that much better, even if Harry did think he probably preferred Nicky all things considered. It had been Nicky, after all, who had unwittingly orchestrated the events which led to his first rock concert.

That likely should have been the point at which he finally felt the return to normalcy, but, in conspiring together against the yew tree, Severus and Gammy Hill had neatly ensured that the children under their care had a renewed subject to fret over for at least two more weeks, until its final removal in the second week of October.

Then—only then—did the strange glut of activity seem to suck out of their lives, and Severus and Harry were left with the utter banality of a well-oiled routine.

It was nice...

For about a week.

Severus went to work five days a week. Harry attended school and saw to his homework. On Sundays, they worked together on preparing ingredients, or else they would lounge around the house, attending to separate concerns while Severus' tape deck played cassette after cassette. After a day so well spent, Snape usually took them off into Backbarrow so that they could come home with their arms laden with Filipino food and their ears ringing with reprimands from Mrs. Padiernos over why they'd not showed their mugs at Mass.

Snape had given up on sending Harry in his stead, as the woman now anticipated his calls ahead and would read him the riot act over the phone while he tried to voice his order. It seemed that it was easier to go in and face his Lola's wrath head on—even if that meant that the dark wizard was reduced to pulling dreadful faces the whole time.

A mere two weeks of this sort of routine was enough to have Harry feeling frantic.

He was used to constant, variable demands from all quarters of authority. He was used to ducking and dodging his obese cousin's frequent physical violence. He was used to the fact that nothing ever seemed to settle down into what one might call 'normality.' Harry had never once been viewed as normal, mundane, or acceptable by his relatives, and that had shown in their treatment of him in addition to the way that his life was unerringly complicated by novelty in their methods of cruelty.

It was difficult to admit to himself that he even missed the hostility he'd shared with Snowdrop. She had grown bored of him. Worse, she grudgingly accepted him as her saviour.

Not from the poisoning, of course—that she still blamed him for—but because he was sparing her the chores she didn't care to do.

Nicky seemed to think it funny whenever he was at the house. He called his not-friend 'Farmer Harry' and prodded at the boy with varied animal noises whenever he was within earshot.

It wasn't clear whether Nicky was usually at the Hill residence so often or if this was a new development. Either way, he was often to be found there on Fridays, with his father swinging by to collect him only perhaps an hour or two before Severus appeared after midnight.

He always seemed rather happy to see his father—and Mr. Henderson, in turn, seemed happy to see his son—but the explanations for the man's absences from his child's life struck Harry as odd.

Of course, he couldn't claim to be any manner of expert on families... was it normal for a man to leave his youngest son (and only his youngest son) in order to take his wife and two older boys for dinner? Or on trips? Was it normal that when Nicky was home he was left enough to his own devices that he managed to go to the theatre for nearly every new release coming out of Hollywood? For films that, when Harry had asked Severus, he'd been expressly forbidden from seeing?

Perhaps that was some variation on normal. The young wizard couldn't be sure.

For that matter... were he and Severus normal?

Could it be normal to stand next to a Potions Master, elbows deep in bile and blood, as they de-pulped rat spleens, or chopped bowtruckles, or tore the spores from dangerous varieties of mushrooms, both magical and muggle?

Was it normal to listen for hours to rock music that Harry knew would have made his aunt faint dead away after a direct blow to her sense of propriety, or to know that one's guardian still kept a neat stack of photographs of one's deceased mother stashed away in his desk?

Or was the normal part the fact that Severus always made sure that Harry ate, in the morning and at night, and that he'd never failed to keep, at the very least, a loaf of bread and something to spread upon it handy for Harry to snack on after school?

Harry was well aware that Snape didn't have a taste for milk, but since Harry had joined him at the house, Severus had resumed his subscription to the local milk delivery service—something which he'd only canceled after Harry had begun bringing home large jars of his own from Babs.

It was impossible to say who was most normal, of the three children (Harry included) who spent afternoons at Gammy Hill's house.

Snowdrop had been with her grandmother since she'd been born, near enough. She was always scrupulously groomed (until she got around to sabotaging her grandmother's careful efforts), and cared for with the utmost diligence and consistency by the old woman.

Nicky was raised by his own father, and he had both a mum and dad. He even had two brothers.

And Harry... well. Granted, Harry figured he was less normal than the other two, but he also knew that he respected and looked up to Severus a great deal, and that the tightly wound wizard would have kittens before he allowed his charge to watch Terminator or Alien, which were two of Nicky's favourite films. For all that Snape endorsed him listening to the same raunchy music he himself enjoyed, he apparently didn't extend that same permissiveness towards violent or sex-saturated films.

The man could out-cluck any mother hen if he ever thought that Harry had done something so pea brained as to have mishandled a knife while preparing ingredients, or even if he saw that the boy had come home with a scraped knee, courtesy of the games of footy that Harry was now welcome to join. Naturally, in the latter case, he pretended that his concern was limited to the hole torn in the fabric of Harry's school trousers, but if that were the case he wouldn't be so quick with the antiseptic.

If that was normal... well. Harry found he could quite like it.

He could like it... but it didn't make it any easier to tolerate when he felt strongly that just around the corner there simply had to be some manner of disaster waiting.

Perhaps Severus felt it too. His mood seemed to sour after the yew died, even though it wasn't obvious to Harry why he ought to be upset.

The dark wizard had seemed to enjoy a brief period of triumph—suitably scored by the music of Queen's We Are the Champions on their drive home Wednesday, notable for the fact that Severus usually maintained that he absolutely hated Queen—after the hole had been filled in. By Sunday, however, he had descended into a sulk that even Mrs. Padiernos had seemed to notice, given her glower while handing over boxes of rice and meat.

"I've added suman this time," she told him, patting one of the boxes. "You're to save it until after you've eaten the vegetables."

Snape grumbled something unintelligible and snatched the bag away. He'd already paid as soon as they'd entered, not seeming as though he had any interest in stopping to chat.

"'Russs," Lola admonished him, her voice carrying in a hiss at the end. "Stay a moment, would you? You're always in and out so quickly—"

"We haven't any time."

That was a lie. It was a lie, and Harry resented Snape for it. Thus, behind his back, Harry shook his head in silent rebuttal so that Lola could see.

She glanced Harry's way, meeting his bottle-green eyes with her own cat-like yellow gaze which she then turned on her ersatz grandson. Her lips pursed with displeasure, and in a lightning quick movement, the rolled-up menu she'd kept grasped in one manicured hand whipped out to thwack the man on the upper arm.

It couldn't have hurt—it was only paper and she'd done it rather lightly—but the very fact of her having shown her anger was enough to see Severus juggle his bag of food, surprise evident on his drawn face.

"Oi!"

Huh. And to think that Harry had at times wondered whether the man was as northern as he claimed.

The stream of invectives that followed, delivered in a framework of incomprehensible Cumbrian, quickly put paid to that theory.

The litany of filth only earned him a few more well-delivered thwacks, the last one, amusingly, aimed at the Severus' scrawny backside.

"Palo!" She cried with each landing of the menu. "Palo, Palo, Palo!"

Snape had allowed the bag to fall back onto the counter that separated them as he held up his hands, looking outraged and confused.

"Lola!" He bellowed, swatting with his hands at the menu to try and intercept its swift descent.

"YOU. WILL. NOT. USE. THAT. LANGUAGE. IN. MY. RESTAURANT!"

"Ney!" A man's voice yelled from the back. "You alright?"

Mrs. Padiernos heaved a deep breath, her eyes remaining narrowed with irritation and affixed to Snape's form as he stood there with his arms slightly raised, as though he meant to fend off more swats. "Don't worry over it—it's 'Rus."

Her husband could be heard laughing at that, and he rattled off something in Tagalog that made Mrs. Padiernos grin, even though she somehow managed to still convey her irritation with Severus at the same time.

"Take your food and go, 'Rus. And next weekend—next weekend you will stay and talk. And that morning, I will see the two of you for Mass."

Snape's mouth had drawn into a sour line, and it looked as though he dearly wished to argue, but his good sense, in the end, prevailed.

They left with the food after Harry called a cheery goodbye to Lola and Mr. Padiernos, and received a wink and a smirk in reply.

Harry didn't dare say a word to the stewing young man as they made their way home, but by the time the food was being parceled out, Snape appeared to be in a bit more equable of a mood.

He always was when Lola's cooking was involved.

"Are we really going to Mass next Sunday?" Harry asked. He'd speared a wedge of braised potato with his fork and was examining it closely before he popped it into his mouth.

It was impossible to know what to call the flavour that burst forth—undoubtably there was garlic—but anything beyond that was a mystery.

A delicious mystery.

"Have you ever been to Mass?" Snape asked, his voice a low grumble. He didn't appear to want to talk, but he was probably only entertaining the conversation because he had a mountain of rice and green beans to enjoy. Harry wouldn't fool himself into thinking that he would have been anywhere near so receptive if he wasn't about to enjoy dinner and the pudding that Lola had arranged for them.

Speaking around the mouthful of potato, Harry's word emerged garbled. "Noo-uhh."

"Christ, Potter—chew your food and don't speak with your mouth full."

When he'd swallowed, Harry spoke again. "No, I've never been. Not to any church, but I don't think Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon went to 'Mass' anyways..."

The word conjured images from science segments of silly experiments where they were made to find out about objects' density and volume. He was relatively certain that the Mass that Lola spoke of bore no resemblance to their science lessons, however.

"Certainly they wouldn't have. Tuney would likely have thought that to have been caught going to Mass would have been far more scandalous than having had a wizard for a nephew."

Harry wasn't sure that he could believe that to be the case, and his skepticism must have shown on his face, for Snape addressed that concern directly.

"Make no mistake: magic is bad enough, but at least you had the distinct misfortune of having been born that way. Even Petunia's not such an idiot as to think that you have any control over your talents from birth. Catholicism on the other hand...? Better to be a hapless freak of nature than an avowed papist."

Harry chewed and made sure to swallow this time before he pressed further. "What's that?"

"One who follows—in a manner of speaking—the Pope. Catholics follow the Pope, Potter."

"And er... what is that? What's a pope?"

Earlier in their acquaintance Snape might have made a big production over having to explain such simple precepts to his charge, but by now he bore it with far more patience, even if he always did look a bit put upon whenever he was made to explain himself.

"The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, and the supreme pontiff. He is the head of the Catholic Church. "

Harry had heard of bishops before, but this was the first time it occurred to him to ask about what precisely a bishop was. "A bishop is like a priest, right? So, what's a pontiff?"

This was where Snape's patience broke and he refused to answer further. He merely said, "I haven't several hours and a suitable encyclopeadia of early church history which could do the question justice."

Harry deflated a bit. Perhaps half of him truly enjoyed listening to Severus waffle on about various subjects, and the other half simply enjoyed annoying the older wizard by asking increasingly broad questions about very nuanced topics in order to get up the man's huge nose. Snape's refusal to answer disappointed him on both scores.

He'd earmark that for later, he decided.

"So are we going to Mass?" The boy circled back to that first question, as he made deft work of the twine tied around the suman and squeezing the rice cake out of the pocket like an ice lolly. He took a bite as Snape grimaced and made a show of using his utensils to peel back the leaf from his own pudding.

"If it keeps me from being palo again, I suppose we'll be in the front pew." Snape growled, ducking his head.

The edge of Harry's mouth quirked up as he saw the way Severus was attempting to hide behind his hair. He liked to do that when he was embarrassed.

"Yeah, what was that about?"

"Never you mind."

"She kept hitting you with that menu—"

"It is categorically none of your concern."

"What's 'palo' mean?"

Snape stormed away then and refused to answer Harry's question. Either of them.

Therefore, when the next Sunday came, it was with some surprise that Harry found himself packed away into the back of the Morris Marina, wearing an fraying, threadbare jacket and trousers that must have belonged to Severus himself once upon a time—they were far too long in the arm and leg, but fit comfortably well around Harry's torso.

It felt rather odd to be attired so well and to still have his trainer-clad foot kicking around Coke and used potions bottles on the floor of the car.

That week, Snape's mood hadn't improved one single bit, and after the abortive discussion over Catholicism and mysterious Tagalog words, he'd barely deigned to acknowledge Harry at all, outside of checking over his homework—and that was an exercise in pain for the boy. Snape in a good mood was vicious with his red pen, and Snape in a bad mood may as well have dumped a bucket of crimson paint over the paper, for it was more red than white after he got done with it.

Harry was often made to start anew on a separate sheet.

Likely he deserved it on some level, for at various times during the week, Harry had felt comfortable enough to renew his needling.

"Does it mean 'stop?'"

"What about, 'quiet?'"

"It's 'no,' isn't it? It means 'no!'"

Each and every time Harry had asked, Snape had turned a mottled puce colour, his ears going maroon, before he would take flight in a similar fashion, and the sound of his door slamming on the floor above echoed through the small house.

It was a mystery what he did up there when he was in such a strop, but Harry knew what he liked to do with the Snape-free time.

Sometimes, if he twisted the antennae just right there was a rather rude show on at that hour, and he could catch the whole programme while snacking on a slice of bread slathered with the crumbly, soft cheese that Gammy had taught him how to make with the milk he earned.

At least that Snape had heartily approved of. Both the work that Harry had undertaken for himself, and the spoils of it; but also, he seemed to be as fascinated by the cheesemaking process as Harry himself. It was the muggle equivalent of potioneering, after a fashion.

In any case, Snape had offered his assistance in processing the four litres that Harry had most recently brought home on Tuesday, and it was the only time that week where the man had been civil.

Harry dearly wished he was enjoying such a treat now.

His stomach rumbled along with the motor of the car as they dipped and swooped along the perilous single-lane roads that led to Penrith.

No—perhaps he had been hasty in his assessment that he longed for food. Likely, if he'd been fool enough to eat anything for breakfast, it would have come up on all over the backseat.

He closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the passenger seat, trying to focus on the lyrics of the song that was playing.

Snape was humming along—a sustained, groaning 'mmm' sound—in accordance with the lead vocalist as the rhythm guitar set up a punishing, driving cadence, nearly percussive, and rivaling the drums for dominance.

"Holy Diver—you've been down too long in the Midnight Sea. Oh, what's becoming of me? Ride the tiger—you can see his stripes but you know he's clean—oh, don't you see what I mean?"

Harry frowned.

Snape listened to plenty of music where the meaning wasn't easily appreciable at first blush, but this was incomprehensible nonsense even by Snape's normal standards.

When in doubt, Harry usually assumed that the music was talking about a girl—and when seen that way, he could then make sense of at least half of the lyrics, even if the rest still were beyond his ability to appreciate.

When applied to girls these lyrics made no sense, and Harry was left scratching his head—which was quite literal, for he'd raised a finger to itch at a wonky tuft of hair—as he attempted to puzzle out the meaning.

"Got shiny diamonds, like the eyes of a cat in the black and blue. Something is coming for you—look out! Race for the morning. You can hide in the sun 'til you see the light. Oh, we will pray it's alright..."

"Severus, what's any of this mean, anyway?"

Snape was still humming, his two index fingers tapping against the wheel and the shifter, approximately with the beat, though he might have been slightly off. "Hmm?"

"The song." Harry answered, managing to lean forward enough that he could poke his head between the passenger and driver seat. His hands gripped at the leather of the headrests in front of him, and from this angle he could better see the older wizard's face.

It was an odd thing to see the man look flummoxed.

He didn't answer immediately, apparently considering the song as the vocalist sang another verse.

"Between the velvet lies, there's a truth that's hard as steel—yeah! The vision never dies. Life's a never-ending wheel!"

"Holy Diver! You're the star of the masquerade, no need to look so afraid. Jump, jump—jump on the tiger! You can feel his heart, but you know he's mean! Some light can never be seen—yeah!"

Snape swallowed and, if the deepening lines that bracketed his mouth were any indication, he was uncomfortable. Either that, or he was growing irritated.

Harry had the unshakable impression it was the first.

When angry, Snape's eyes always narrowed into mere slits, and now they were staring out at the road before him and were very nearly glassy with distraction.

"I don't know," he answered, finally. "Probably... who knows."

Harry blinked, nonplussed.

"Could be anything, couldn't it. Perhaps he's talking about drugs," the older wizard finally managed to say. It was anything but convincing.

"Drugs?" Harry couldn't claim to know any more about drugs than he knew about girls, but he got the distinct impression that Snape was being untruthful. "Where's he talk about drugs?"

"The tiger—likely it's referring to addiction, Potter."

"Oh. How's that?"

The car jerked a bit as they flew around a curve and Snape veered—nearly smacking the side of the car into a hedgerow—as he hugged the turn to avoid a car passing in the opposite direction.

The near miss apparently soured Snape's mood. "Do you ever stop asking insipid questions?"

Harry thought better than to ask in that moment what 'insipid' might mean. He shoved his hands under his thighs and went back to his studious avoidance of anything that passed outside of his field of vision.

To have done anything else would have invited the possibility that he'd vomit all over the back of Snape's head.

What felt like hours later—but was probably only a scant fifteen minutes—they finally pulled into an antiquated-looking town. It was as green as Backbarrow but had far less of the skeletal, industrial blight that scarred the scenery of their home.

And where it was a spot prettier than Backbarrow, it was gorgeous compared to Snape's little community of Cokeworth, which had seemed to have been drained of any colour whatsoever beyond grey, and brown, and rust-red.

"The Padiernoses come all the way here for church?" Harry piped up as he gazed out the window, his nose nearly smudging the glass. "Isn't that a bit far?"

"It's not as far as you might think," Snape answered, whipping the wheel a full one hundred and eighty degrees to the right. Harry's face nearly slammed against the window. "This was the closest Catholic parish for a long while, and there may be closer ones now, but this is where they made their home, so to speak."

"And your mum," Harry added.

"And Mam. Yes."

Before Harry could drum up anything more to ask, Snape began a perilous back-and-forth see-sawing motion with the car, where he was obliged to shift it into reverse, and then into first gear, over and over, until he'd weaseled his way into a spot that must have been too short for them.

It was a wonder he'd managed to avoid hitting the cars at the fore and aft of their own vehicle, and Harry was reaffirmed in this amazement when they piled out of the Marina and he saw the way in which their front and rear bumpers nearly kissed the cars that came before and after their own.

He barely managed to avoid stomping his foot or wringing the tails of the button-down he was wearing between his hands with worry. "How are we going to get out!?"

Already having begun walking away and up to the steps of the modestly sized church, Snape called to him over his shoulder. "That's a problem for an hour from now."

Harry didn't follow for several moments. He instead squatted down near the fender and peered at the scant few centimetres that separated the Morris Marina from the Vauxhall Astra behind them.

Snape's car bore all of the evidence of having been very ill-done-by for many years, and the Astra was comparatively unblemished.

He felt a spike of pity for the owner in that moment. There was no way they'd extract themselves without hitting one or both of the other cars.

Finally, he tailed the man into the church, feeling very cross with him, indeed. Yet, when Harry passed over the threshold into the narthex, the cloying scent of incense just about bowled him over, and it was as though by simply passing from the outer world into the somber hall, he'd quite forgotten anything that came to pass outside of those thick, stone walls.

"Woah..." He breathed, peering up at the ceiling which seemed to recede up to the lattice-like vaulting. It was incomprehensibly tall. The billowing plumes of incense smoke appeared to create clouds in the clerestory, inspiring an impression that the heavens existed underneath the very roof of the cathedral itself.

Although the chamber would seem as though it ought to have echoed, his voice seemed to travel no further than simply passing out of his lips and then evaporating into thin air. Even the distant chatter of the laity sitting in the pews up in the nave didn't penetrate the bubble of serenity that had enveloped him as soon as he'd followed his guardian into the building.

Speaking of...

Harry's eyes darted around. Snape wasn't obviously visible, even searching, as he was, for the odd sight that was the wizard attired in an aging, worn jacket—which was in such bad repair that the elbows had been patched with complimentary fabric by necessity—and a pair of dated, pleated trousers (a look which Harry didn't think suited Severus very well, in all honesty).

Of course, he still was in all black, which made it difficult, but eventually Harry located him by his greasy fall of oily, black hair, which made the sliver of his profile all the more stark for its preternatural paleness.

He was away in a side-aisle, peering down at an iron rack that was fitted with nearly a hundred red glass receptacles, perhaps one quarter of them containing candles.

Harry watched as he took a weary look around the expansive space. When Snape seemed satisfied that no one besides Harry was watching, he withdrew a bit of lint from his pocket and transfigured it—zhipp'd it, rather—into a small tea-light candle which he dropped into one of the red glass cups.

Before he stashed his wand away, he touched the curling tip to the wick and the candle flickered to life.

Snape didn't move from his place before the candles for several moments. It was a wonder that his long hair, trailing like the vines of a pothos plant, didn't catch fire as it dangled over the open flames. When he stepped back and turned around, his face gave away nothing, and it was all the more forbidding cast in shadows from the piers that separated the aisle from the nave.

"Where are we meant to sit?" Harry whispered askance as Severus came up beside him.

Snape didn't answer directly but beckoned with a sharp motion of his hand that Harry ought to follow him.

They found seats in the pew furthest to the back, and sat through a beautiful—but, to Harry, incomprehensible—Mass without rising once to stand, nor kneeling when they watched others stooping to kneel. When the congregation rose to queue down the aisle, accepting wafers and wine from a few attendants near the front, Snape remained stiff-backed against the rigid wood. His face may as well have been chiseled from granite, for it neither shifted nor twitched during the entire service.

"Are you meant to go up there?" Harry asked, jostling him with an elbow to the ribs.

Defiant to the last, Snape crossed his arms over his chest, scowling up at the queue. "I will the day that you do."

Watching as each person down the line took first a cracker and then a sip from the chalice, before crossing him or herself, Harry couldn't help but to feel a small spike of challenge rising in him.

"Okay. Can I go up now?"

"No, you shan't," his elder snarled at him, grabbing ahold of Harry's arm in a vice grip even though the boy had made no move to actually get up and go. "You haven't even been baptised a Catholic. You're not entitled."

"That's all?" Harry asked, probably too loudly, as a couple of elderly women turned to look at him from a few pews in front of them, having already returned from the queue. "I just go get baptised, then I can do it?"

Snape's answer came in a low hiss, possibly in an attempt to mitigate the attention they were drawing to themselves. "No. Also, you don't even know what it is to be baptised—"

"I do!" Harry chirped back, his voice tart. "It's that thing with the water—"

"There's far more to it than merely allowing a priest to douse your brow, Potter! No, you can't go receive communion: not today. Possibly not ever."

The boy reared back from him as though he'd been slapped. To his credit, Snape did look mildly regretful at the oath, but the cant of his jaw spoke to the fact that he was resolute in what he'd said.

Looking mildly apologetic, Snape spoke again in a low tone, though his eyes were darting around the chamber, looking to see if anyone was paying them any undue attention. "We'll speak about this later, if indeed that was a genuine request and not merely your way of being obstinate."

In truth, Harry couldn't be sure what it was that had made him want to join the throng of people who were lined up before the altar. A definite part of him had been driven by antagonism, sure. Another part by curiosity, and the sense that he was missing out on something that seemed quite grand and serious, in the way most great adult mysteries were grand and serious.

Yet another part entirely felt as though it were being led about as might have a sheep being herded by a particularly persistent collie. He wasn't sure where the instinct to go forward came from, but, in a word, he was moved.

So, when Severus peered down at him, a slightly challenging look in his black eyes, Harry looked back without a hint of guile and nodded without another word to interrupt the rest of service.

It was when they were leaving that Mrs. Padiernos caught up to them. Harry had quite forgotten to look for the woman and her husband amongst the other members of the church, and therefore was completely surprised when she bounded up to them—quite a feat for a woman who must have been nearing sixty—and grasped each of them by a shoulder.

Harry had never seen Lola except for standing behind the counter of Rice Bowl, where she must have stood on a step above them. She was nearly as short as he himself was and stood a head and a half beneath Severus' own height. This didn't deter her in the least from manhandling the wizard into a hug that had his pallid face flushing and his eyes popping in indignation.

"Lol—Mrs. Padier—"

"Shush!" She demanded, using one open palm to very lightly swat at his back while she maintained her hold on him. "Shush! You're finally here, and you won't ruin it by trying to explain how it means nothing!"

Snape didn't say a word more, but the colour of his skin—a deepening flush that brought out the slightly soured-milk hue of his normal complexion—spoke volumes.

Behind Lola came Mr. Padiernos.

Harry had never gotten much of a good look at him, as he never left his spot from in front of the cooker, but he was a jolly-looking, older man. Perhaps only a few centimeters taller than his wife, and with a balding head of wispy, salt and pepper hair that he'd attempted to comb over to cover the front and top of his shiny, tan dome. He smiled upon the three, standing as tall as he could manage—and slightly bent backwards, so that his spine appeared to be bent at an unnatural, backwards angle—with his hands shoved into the pockets of his old-fashioned trousers as he sniggered over his wife's affections for the sour-puss man she'd ensnared in her arms.

"'Rus. Good to see you." He spoke, his words emerging like a series of croaks from the throat of some cheerful frog. "Good to see you here."

Severus stiffened even more and gently removed himself from Mrs. Padiernos' grasp. His change in affectation was difficult to read, but Harry thought it might have reminded him of a recalcitrant, but grudgingly respectful, school child.

"Good to see you, Lolo."

The old man merely nodded, his greying eyebrows lifted slightly as he surveyed the scene. Though he nodded at Harry, and quirked a small, perhaps mischievous, grin in his direction, he said not a word more, but allowed Lola to turn Snape about by the shoulders as she inspected every inch of him in the sunlight.

It was very odd seeing them outside of the dim lighting that Rice Bowl provided, particularly at night.

Here, illuminated by natural sunlight, and without anything standing between them, it was quite obvious how much of the dynamic had been hidden by the illusion of a customer-proprietor relationship.

Lola exclaimed over every rip and loose thread on Snape's ill-fitting jacket, and despaired over the length of his trousers, ("Too long! If you give them to me tonight, I'll have them hemmed for you so they don't drag on the ground next Sunday—").

"Has this even seen the light of day for ten years? It's covered in dust! Let me pulpug you—"

"Oi!" Snape exclaimed again, like he had in Rice Bowl. Here he finally raised his arms to fend off the assault against his clothing and person, as Lola attempted to lift at the back of his jacket and to beat the ancient wool until small puffs of grey dust burst forth out into the air.

"These are so old—" She chattered as she continued to beat dust out of the material. "These can't be yours!"

"They were Da's," Snape snarled. As the woman worked around him in a circle, he'd raised his arms up as might have a criminal who was caught by the police and was turning in a slower circle of his own, such that the fabric was twisting around him at the waist. The odd dance created a spectacle that reminded Harry of what it looked like when a dog ran laps around its master's feet and tangled his owner's legs up in the leash.

By the time she was finished and had stepped away, she looked eminently satisfied with herself even as Snape looked furious and embarrassed, smoothing his shirt and jacket back into place.

"So you'll bring them by tonight, 'Rus? We're making pork sinigang."

Snape huffed with bad grace. "So?" He demanded. It looked as though he were only just restraining himself from stomping one foot.

"So, it's your favourite when it's cold," she reminded him, rolling her eyes to Harry and sharing with the boy a commiserative, long-suffering smirk. "And the temperatures are finally taking a good dip, tonight."

"Will I like it, Lola?" Harry asked, finally having found his voice.

"What's not to like! It's hot soup for cold times!" She cried, laughing. "You'll probably ask for a second bowl. And because you came all the way out here—finally—I think I could spare an extra helping."

Snape snorted at that, but Harry noticed that for all his bluster, he didn't argue. Clearly, supper for the evening was settled.

They departed for Backbarrow soon after and didn't spend much more time jaw-jawing with the Padiernoses on the kerb by the street. They had food to prepare for the evening crowd, they'd claimed, and beat a hasty retreat back to Rice Bowl themselves, assuring Snape and Harry that they would see them later that evening, and that a large thermos of soup would await them.

As it happened, pork sinigang was such an invigorating thing that when it touched Harry's taste buds, his eyes flew open with surprise, and he did indeed ask for the remainder of the soup in the thermos.

Snape himself seemed disinclined to partake of the soup—although whether that was out of spite or whether it was because he genuinely didn't care for it was open to interpretation—and he gamely shared what was left with Harry while he commandeered the last portion of garlic fried rice for himself, hunching over it like a greedy dragon protecting his hoard.

"Don't you like city-gang?" Harry asked between loud slurps.

The man sitting opposite him winced, his expressive lip curling into a sneer. He tossed a paper serviette at Harry, and it nearly landed in his bowl. "Sinigang."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, dipping his spoon again. "Lola said it was your favourite. Isn't it?"

Snape's fingers were resting against the tabletop, and he didn't answer immediately but drummed out a frantic little tune that spoke to his level of agitation.

"It is a favourite of mine," he admitted, the words seeming as though they were being dragged from him quite against his will.

Harry balked at his bowl, which contained what was left of the portion Lola had sent home to them. "Well, have some!"

A bit of broth spilled over the rim as he pushed it across the tilted, formica table. The older wizard eyed it wearily but eventually shook his head.

"Finish it yourself, Harry. I've plenty of my own food."

The boy felt slightly frantic, thinking that he must have taken too much, and his brow creased with worry. "I'm really really sorry. I shouldn't of taken more. If you're sore about it—"

"I'm not sore about anything, Potter!" Snape barked back, his fist coming down to pound on the table.

More broth splashed about to the surface of the kitchen table, and grains of Snape's rice joined it, sent flying by the violence of the movement.

"Have your soup, or be finished. It makes no difference to me. I'd not planned on eating any, myself." He shook his head and repeated again: "It makes no difference."

"Doesn't it?" Harry asked, his voice faintly pleading. He'd ducked when Snape had brought his fist down to the table, and he was now half hovering over his seat, ready to bolt if necessary.

Snape's gaze took on a far-away quality and he allowed his head to loll onto his palm, his fingers pressing into the meat of his cheek so that it distorted his expression and features. "Lola's sinigang isn't my favourite."

"It isn't?"

"No." He answered simply, allowing his eyes to glance out the window and up the dreary street.

Harry thought about this for several moments as he spooned a few pieces of veg into his mouth, his chewing like that of a cow with a wad of cud.

Then it came to him and he felt the fool.

"Your mum's cooking."

Snape took a deep breath in, both of his hands were now clasped together in front of his nose and mouth. He let the air out in a long, heavy sigh.

"Yes. Yes, Mam's was better. Mam's was always better."

Harry didn't quite know what to say to Snape in this pensive, morose mood, so he bit down on his tongue to keep from replying with a litany of cheap apologies and commiserative noises he'd felt tempted to make.

In the end, that paid dividends.

"I don't know how she made it that was so different. She didn't even learn to cook from her own mother, she'd learnt from Lola herself. But she was better at it. Maybe more creative. She was gifted with potions. Perhaps that was why," he mused aloud, speaking into his clasped hands as his eyes followed a junker of a car that was making its way down the street outside the window.

"Lola said that your Lola didn't wanna see her anymore." Harry admitted. He picked up a tiny slice of cassava cake out of its take-away box and nibbled at it.

There came another deep sigh and Harry watched as Snape's eyes closed tight, as though he were in pain.

"I can only guess at the reasons. I never met the woman. According to Mam she hated my Da'. Probably she never met him either," he sneered, his voice dripping with irony, "but at least on that score I can sympathise. There wasn't much to like about Da'."

"I guess it's lucky that they moved here," Harry shrugged, hoping to offer something positive. "It's lucky that the Padiernoses were here. She didn't have to be as alone."

"Luck!" Snape barked out a mirthless laugh. Harry hated it. "Yes, luck.

"Make no mistake, Harry. Even with Lola here to take her under her wing, my mother was very, very alone."

Harry nodded. There had never been a moment where he'd not felt alone.

With the Dursleys, he'd never been in good company.

At school, both in Surrey and at Rowky Syke, he was on his own. He could call neither Snowdrop nor Nicky a true friend.

And while Severus was the best company he'd ever known, and often he felt close to having something that filled that terrible ache he'd felt since he could remember, when Snape wasn't there—which, between school and the man's work hours, was often—Harry knew himself to be alone.

"Lola said she was only half?"

Snape nodded. "Her mother was from somewhere near Baguio, I believe. Terribly ironic, that she defied her own parents to marry my grandfather and then repudiated her own daughter for doing the same with a muggle Englishman."

Harry thought hard about this, not wanting to do as he so often did and to merely ask outright. "Why was it any different?"

"In so many ways, it wasn't." Snape frowned out the window, and one of his interlaced index fingers liberated itself from the tangle of digits to trace his thin lips as he pondered. "I suspect, had anyone asked her, that she'd tell you that mygrandfather was rich, a diplomat, and most important of all—a wizard."

Harry remembered that talk from a few months earlier when Snape had told him the way in which magical people could get uppity about the strange thing that was 'blood purity.'

"Do Filipinos have purebloods?"

"I..." Snape trailed off as he drew in a deep breath. "I suppose most places do in one way or another. I'm not sure that the separation between the worlds is quite so stark, but I never had the opportunity to actually ask. I never met my own Lola."

Harry moved another bite of cassava cake to his mouth and chewed while he thought. He wasn't sure why he was drawing this out quite so much, except that he had the feeling that Snape could come-to and upend the conversation at the smallest provocation. This was the most the man had ever volunteered about his own origins, and Harry was loathe to waste the opportunity to learn as much as he reasonably could.

"Was your Lola a pureblood then?"

"I am given to understand that she was something approximating that. She was from a rather wealthy family—owners of a plantation thatproduced unique potions ingredients. I believe they traced back their magical ancestry for many generations and held specialty status in neighbouring villages.

"In any case, I believe she met my grandfather, Erasmus Prince, at some government function. So the story goes, he had been sent as some manner of diplomatic attaché from the Ministry to represent our interests in trade, and he came back with a wife: the daughter of one of the men he was meant to negotiate with. It didn't help his reputation with our Ministry any," Snape sneered, "for he thoroughly destroyed his working relationship with the trade union by eloping without her father's permission."

Harry's lips made slight smacking sounds as he chewed, and his legs swung a bit in his seat as he played out the scenario in his head, imagining a dashing wizard with a curling moustache—apropos to those times—sweeping a blushing, ebullient maiden off her feet. Perhaps he'd presented her a red rose, while sweeping back his cape.

"It sounds romantic," he mused.

When he looked up it was to see that Snape was now staring at him, not blinking. His black gaze bored into Harry's for a long, silent moment before the man gave a huge snort, breaking contact only to roll his eyes to the ceiling.

"You're imagining something like Don Juan. This was nothing like that."

Harry's face fell. "Oh," he muttered, trying not to sound too disappointed.

How had Snape known what he was thinking, anyway?

"It was ill-fated from the start. When he brought her back to England, it took no time at all for her to miss her home, and for him to begin ignoring her. When he was sent away for other diplomatic assignments, there were other women, and apparently, my grandmother didn't begrudge him this, for at least then he didn't bother her. From what Mam told me, it was a cold, joyless life in Aethlingworth."

"Aethlingworth?"

"The family home. My mother couldn't get away fast enough. She was so desperate to strike it out on her own that she didn't see herself falling into the exact same trap her own mother had." Snape shook his head, looking rather irritated at the long-departed woman.

"Was your dad that bad?"

The wizard opposite him shrugged, looking somewhat indifferent. "He was and he wasn't. He had his moments, certainly. Liked to drink, and was mean as a... well. The saying goes 'as mean as a snake,' but I don't much like that. He was nasty when he was into the gin, that's all that bears mentioning. Then, he'd wake up the next morning and do his best to make it up to us. Back when the work was good at Reckitt, things weren't so bad. When the work dried up? Well. Da' only doused himself with drink to compensate.

"He never abandoned Mam for greener pastures and other women like my grandfather did," Snape admitted, his eyes distant with memory. "I like to think that they might have even loved each other. Maybe before I was born, but... maybe after too. There was no question that when she died it took him by surprise more than anyone."

"What did he do?"

"Oh, he ranted. He raved. He broke near enough everything in the bloody house," Snape said with a sneer. "Then he took one look at me—one very long look—and he took his bottle and left."

"He... he just left?" Harry gasped. "Didn't he come back?"

"That can't be too difficult of a concept for you to grasp, Potter," Snape said, rather unkindly. All the same, his eyes were too wistful to hold any true malice, and his words didn't hurt as badly as they might have. "He left, and it's just as well. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that he'd wound up face down in a ditch somewhere."

It certainly didn't sound as though Snape thought it was 'just as well,' but Harry was wise enough not to comment any further.

A/N: The song they listen to on the way to mass is "Holy Diver" by Dio. It is not about drugs, but is instead about a Christ-like figure on another world who saves and redeems the population of that world, but then those he saves demands that he stays when he indicates that he's going to go off-planet somewhere else to do the same thing. (It's fairly strange and difficult to explain, so if you're interested you may want to look up Dio's interview with Sam Dunn to get his own words on it).