As much as Harry fought against the forward march of time, the end of the school day came as reliably as it always did on Tuesday. Even lingering by his desk as he packed up his belongings didn't stop the inevitable.
When he shouldered his bag and left the front most doors of the school, emerging into the bright light of the late summer afternoon, it was to see a white Ford Cortina Mark II pulled up to the kerb.
Snowdrop Hill sat in the passenger seat and was moodily staring out her window, her nose pressed to the glass, as an older woman beckoned Harry over with a friendly wave from where she stood leaning against the frame.
"You're Harry?"
"That's me," he agreed, approaching the car with a bit of trepidation. He tried to offer a bit of a smile, but thought it likely came off as a half-hearted grimace.
His reticence didn't seem to put Snowdrop's grandmother off in the least, for she offered a kind smile and nodded at him. "Good to meet you, Harry. Severus told me a bit about you over the phone. You'll be joining us on Tuesdays and Fridays until your Severus can get off work and bring you home in the evenings."
"I'm really sorry for the trouble," Harry frowned, looking down at the scuffed up parts of his trainers.
Hill's grandmother opened the back door for him and helped him to settle his bag in on the back bench.
Unlike the Morris Marina, the Ford Cortina was clear of any trash or detritus, the leather looking as though it had been freshly wiped down and conditioned, even though the car itself had to have been more than a decade old. It was clearly well-maintained.
"Don't be! Not even for one second! Granted, you may well be leaving well after Snow's bedtime, and it may be a bit of an adjustment, but there shouldn't be any shame in a man working to provide for his family, and neither is there any problem when he may have to ask for help to cover over his hours. Better that than leaving a l'al bairn like you at home alone."
She climbed behind the wheel after Harry was settled and started the car, pulling away from the kerb and beginning a steady stream of questions directed toward Snowdrop, who pointedly ignored each and every inquiry.
"How've you felt today, blossom? Are you settling in alright after last week?"
Snowdrop thumped her head once against the window and scowled out at the empty buildings they were passing.
"What was Mr. Fowler covering today?"
The girl in the front seat remained silent, though she did inflate both of her over-large cheeks with air and shake her head violently from one side to the other.
"Harry?"
The boy came to with a start. He'd been too preoccupied watching Hill's snit to think he ought to answer the question himself.
"He... er... we had a pop quiz for our vocabulary list. And then Mr. Fowler told us about the different kinds of clouds," Harry pointed a finger out at the fluffy white expanse hanging over the skyline. "Like, those are called cumulus."
"Oh, and it's rather pretty too—" the old woman commented, sounding rather sunny-side-up for a woman whose granddaughter was emitting faint growls under her breath. "What would you say are your favourites?"
"I like the cirrus kind, I guess." Harry answered with a shrug. It was sort of an odd question, but he didn't fault the woman for trying. It was at least far more pleasant than time he'd spent with either his relatives or Mrs. Figg, though perhaps less fun than sniping back and forth with Severus, who, more than anyone else, allowed Harry to be himself.
"Blossom? Which are your favourites?" The woman asked. Her tone gave away nothing, no sadness, nor judgement, and Harry marveled at the woman's patience.
If he'd had to deal with someone like Snowdrop on a daily basis, he'd have been driven spare, and he'd be meaner for it as well. That this woman seemed to absorb every lick the girl could dish out with a grin spoke to a deep wellspring of patience that seemed nearly too saint-like to be anything short of a true miracle.
Perhaps, at that, miracle was precisely the word to use for it, as the girl finally pulled herself out of her slump against the door and instead turned bored eyes to the front of the windscreen. "Cumulonimbus. Those're the thunderclouds."
The Ford Cortina pulled out onto a country lane which wound away from the industrial estate that Harry had grown so familiar with. To their left and right were enclosed farms and cottages which were far more picturesque than the terraced housing of Cokeworth.
After five minutes more, they approached a rusting metal gate, and Pamina Hill put the car in park. Snowdrop had unclipped herself from her seat and opened the car door, darting out and apparently using all of her strength to heft the gate up from out of the groove that kept it closed so that the woman could pull the car up to a farmhouse that had perhaps seen a better day a century or so earlier.
Through the rear window, Harry watched as Snowdrop pulled against the fence once more, swinging it closed right as a rather nosy goat had seemed to grow interested in a possible means of escape. She jumped and swung one leg over, rolling the rest of the way over the top bar and landing in a way that sent dirt clods flying about her feet.
It was nothing extravagant, and as Mrs. Hill explained to Harry as they left the car, it had belonged to her own father, who had bequeathed it to his only child upon his death.
Beside the door were two pair of muddy wellies, one large and one small, and a couple of hooded oil-cloth coats.
"Snow, show Harry to the daily provisions, I mean to go milk Babs."
Snowdrop was toeing off her shoes and peeling off her socks. She looked up long enough to roll her eyes at her grandmother before she shouldered her school bag once more. "Kay, Gammy."
Hill's grandmother smiled brightly at the two of them before she fetched a clean tin pail off of a hook near the coats. Donning the larger pair of the boots, she was out the door without another word to them, and before Harry could think of anything to say, he felt a sharp pain in his arm where Snowdrop's tiny fingers had grabbed him by the bicep and had begun to tow him through the whitewashed, plaster interior of the house into a tiny, but serviceable, kitchen.
Making conversation with the likes of Snowdrop Hill was trying at the best of times, and given that this was her home, it couldn't have been less of an even playing field. The wizard felt decidedly off his game; thus, the best thing he could come up with to say was bereft of tact. "Isn't it sorta mean to call her that?"
From where the girl stood with her back to him—she'd drug a kitchen chair over to a cabinet and was standing upon it in order to reach a high shelf—Harry heard her scoff, the sound of it loud enough that it rang through the silent space. "Why do you care what I call her?"
"Well, it's just..." Harry scratched at a phantom itch under a cowlick at the crown of his head, "she doesn't have a limp or anything, does she? Why call her 'gammy?' Why's she let you?"
She didn't turn to face him from her place on the chair, but the girl did look back over her shoulder at him as she gathered up a couple of jars from where she stood.
"I've always called her that. When I was two, I couldn't say my R's right."
Harry's mouth opened in a silent 'O,' and he nodded his understanding. Well, in that case—
"Not that I care what a prick like you would think anyway—it's not any of your business what I call Gammy, and it's not any of your business being here, and it wasn't any of your business to take off of my tree, or to sit in my spot!"
Finding his own seat at the kitchen table, Harry began to pull things from his bag, intent on finishing his homework before Severus came to fetch him so that he could give the man a bit of good news. "Well, it's no one's spot now—"
"That's all your fault!" Hill accused. While Harry had been occupied, she'd come up to the table and slammed down a couple of plates, along with the jars she'd collected from the shelf. They appeared to contain a bright red jam and an assortment of pickled cucumbers and baby onions, swimming in a briny solution along with whole peppercorns and garlic cloves.
She turned once more to gather up a large, serrated knife—which Harry winced upon seeing—and a dark-brown loaf of bread. There was apparently nothing to fear, however, for she only used it to saw off two generous slices.
Harry sighed deeply and attempted to reason with her in the most even, diplomatic tone he could manage. "No one made you eat the berries, Hill. If you'd not done that then we both could of stayed sitting there for break."
"No! I could of stayed there! Me! You had to come in and take my spot, and then you ruined it! Now I can't go nowhere, and it's all your fault!" Her voice had continued to rise until she was yelling, even as she bustled around the kitchen as efficiently as before, now finding a glass jar of questionable contents in the fridge and unscrewing the cap. Inside was something that looked to be the consistency of spoilt milk.
A spoon ladled it over her portion of bread and spread it to the far edges as her other hand shoved—and nearly knocked over—the jar until it was in front of the boy she hated so very much.
Even as his nose wrinkled, he thought it bad form—and possibly dangerous—to spit on the girl's resentful hospitality. He lifted the spoon from the jar and sniffed at it a bit, finding that the odour didn't offend nearly as badly as he'd feared. It smelled rather like a neutral cheese. He spooned a bit on the bread, knowing that if it had been Severus offering it to him, he'd have gobbled it down without question.
"It's your fault that I can't sit there, and it's your fault that I had to go to hospital! They made me throw up till it was nothing but yellow! They made me eat charcoal!" She cried. And even though she was describing something as thoroughly unappetising as vomiting up her guts, she busied herself adding the preserves on top of the farmer's cheese.
Harry thought that didn't look half bad. He took the jar from her when she offered it and followed suit.
"And my bell's broke and gone, and it's all 'coz you wouldn't go play footy with Nicky instead—why did you gotta bother me?" Her voice had broken at the mention of the bell, and although she sat with the hefty after-school snack in her hands, fat tears were now forming at the corners of her eyes and she was looking at the boy across from her as though he'd personally taken her heart from her chest and smashed it into the ground, then stomped on it for good measure.
Again, Harry's mouth moved in a comical 'O' as he began shaking his head sharply enough that his glasses threatened to dislodge from the bridge of his nose. "No, no it's not!"
"No one's suppose'ta sit under the trees, and no one would of known I was there if it wasn't for you—and I got in trouble on our first day! Gammy's never been that cross with me before—"
She kept on, heaping abuse on Harry's head while the boy ignored her for his bag, rifling through the pockets until he came upon the tiny terrycloth towel that Severus had loaned him.
After the man had fixed the little bell with magic, he'd entrusted it to Harry and had told the boy to give it back to its owner. Harry had forgotten the day before—or, in truth, he'd avoided remembering—but here and now, with the girl in such a strop over the whole ordeal, he couldn't help but to remember.
With deft fingers he flipped the corners of the towel back to reveal the delicate little piece of china, in perfect, unblemished condition.
"What... that can't be mine!" She cried, diving across the table for it and gathering it up between her palms, cradled like a baby bird.
"That's it," Harry told her. "The one you brought in last Monday."
"It was smashed all over the ground," she argued, turning it over and inspecting the paint, which had become worn away in some places. As she turned it in her hands the clapper emitted a faint tinkling sound where it rolled against the mouth of the bell.
"Severus fixed it for you."
"There's no glue or anything," she disputed, "I don't see any of the cracks. There's no way he fixed it; it was dust!"
Harry shrugged. "Well? Is it the same bell? You'd know if it wasn't, right?"
"The paint on the ribbon is faded..." Her finger lightly grazed the spot where the paint had been rubbed off. "And the baby's hair is losing its glaze..."
She took it by the baby finial and gave it an experimental ring, the clear sound of it feeling as though it were washing away something heavy and fetid that Harry had only just realised he'd been suffering under.
The way Snowdrop's face morphed was fascinating enough to distract him from that line of thought, however. First, her eyes grew huge, and then her lower lip bowed out in a pout that was as ridiculous as it was exaggerated, before her whole mouth dropped open into a wail of anguish that might have given a newborn baby a run for its money.
Momentarily taken aback, Harry wasn't quite sure what to do when her head dropped onto her folded arms, only barely missing the plate of bread, and her sobs rang out through the kitchen.
"Hill? It's alright... we didn't mean nothing by it—"
"M-my m-mam g-gave me th-that!" She spoke into the flesh of her arms, though loudly enough that even muffled, her speech was discernable.
"Oh..." Harry winced. He, especially, knew how badly it could hurt to lose one's mother, and how special reminders of the departed could be. He often went back to look at the photographs that Severus had stuffed in the old desk in his room, and every night he wished the picture of himself with his parents goodnight, imagining that perhaps they could hear him. Somewhere.
"Hill, I'm sorry," he whispered, reaching out a hand to pat awkwardly at her arm. "How long ago did you lose your mum?"
Snowdrop looked up at this, but her expression wasn't distraught so much as it was confused. There were still lingering tears tracking down her face, but apparently, Harry had sufficiently distracted her from the source of her sadness by asking the question that she desisted from her weeping.
"Lose? She's not lost, Potter. She won't come home. She doesn't wanna live with us, cause Gammy makes her follow the rules and work." Hill's face creased with hatred and anger and one of her feet kicked out violently, making contact with the table leg and shaking their plates and Harry's notebook.
He grabbed out to steady them, glaring in protest, "Hey!"
"She likes partying better than she likes me," the girl frowned down at her bread and took an enormous bite, so big that even with her rodent-like cheeks, she had a hard time closer her lips around all of the food in her mouth. "Sh'ey lawks da dwugs be'uh th'n sh'ey lawks her fam'leh."
It took a full ten seconds for her to chew thoroughly enough to swallow.
"This is the bell that the hospital gave her when she had me," Snowdrop frowned and reached for it once more, although she handled it with a gentleness which belied her sentimentality. "She gave it to me when I was three... she was living with us for a bit, and it was before she left for a party and didn't want to come back after... Gammy says she thinks she was too ashamed after she messed up again."
"Was..." Harry hesitated. This was the first time Snowdrop had spoken to him in any way which approached civility. That it was around such a sensitive topic made him nervous to keep going. Unfortunately for him, his curiosity won out. "Was that the last time you saw her?"
"No. She comes around every so often... but it's been a whole year and a half since I saw her, last time. She's not like I remember... I wish she'd never come back, and then I could just think of her like she used to be.
"And..." she heaved a breath, her mouth quirking up in a strange sort of malicious glee that immediately set Harry on edge. "At least she does come for me; she didn't ever come around for Nicky after he was born."
"Nicky?" Harry asked, his eyes rounding behind his spectacles. "Nicky from class?"
Snowdrop didn't answer him, she was too subsumed with her obvious hatred and one-upmanship. "She wasn't allowed to—but that doesn't matter. I don't think she would'a anyway." She took another too-big bite of her bread, which brought to Harry's attention the fact that he'd not yet sampled his own. He followed suit and was pleasantly surprised at the flavours given off by the odd-couple pairing of toppings.
"She told me once that he was her Christmas present—from Father Christmas himself—and that Davey and Cynthia took him away from her—and if she couldn't have him all the time, that it was better off not having him just a little bit."
Harry kept chewing his mouthful to cover for his confusion, but at least one part of what Snowdrop was saying seemed to spark his memory: her mention of Father Christmas.
For hadn't Nicky Henderson mentioned Saint Nicholas when Harry had been taking the mick to him over his name?
Harry still didn't feel sorry in the least—Nicky had started it by giving Severus grief when the man wasn't even there to defend himself. Add to that the fact that the boy had been ready to kick Snowdrop's skull in, Harry still wasn't entirely sure that he liked Henderson any...
Not that he was that much better disposed toward Snowdrop herself, who was continuing on with her spiteful gossip as she smacked her mouth on the home-baked bread that Harry imagined her Gammy must have made.
Harry watched from under furrowed brows and took a few cautious bites as he listened in, too nosy to interrupt.
"So she comes to see me, but if she sees that Nicky's here, she won't come in the house!" Hill grinned, her teeth smeared with preserves, the red causing her to look positively demented. "I dunno why he'd wanna see her anyway—he gets to have a da'—and what's he want with another mam? 'Specially one that's like she is, anyway."
"Sorry," Harry interjected, needing clarification, "another mum?"
Snowdrop snorted without a trace of grace. "Yeah, cause his da' got our mam up the duff when he had a wife and kids at home already. Was lucky that our mam wasn't 'fit,' and that the county let his da' take him."
Harry couldn't quite fathom the situation. He'd never come across anyone's circumstances that quite mirrored Hill's mother's and the idea that she'd go on to have another child after the first had been wrested from her arms was difficult to wrap his mind around.
"Why'd she have you if they took her first child?" He asked. Even all those years where he'd been operating under the misapprehension that his parents had been drink driving the night of their deaths, he'd never been informed that they were so singularly indifferent to him.
Had it been him that had died their stead, would they have rushed so quickly to replace him?
He had to remind himself that, under the circumstances, it likely couldn't have worked out that way. Sometimes it was hard to remember the truth that he'd only learnt so recently, when the false narrative of his parents' demise had been repeated with such regularity his entire childhood.
Tearing her companion from his reverie, Snowdrop snorted loudly and rolled her blue eyes to the wooden rafters. "I wasn't planned, Potter. It's not like a mamma goes out and says 'well, I'd quite like a baby, thank you very much' and then someone hands a baby to her."
"Oh..." Harry frowned. In truth, he'd never given it much thought before...
"Do you want to know how babies are made, Potter?" Snowdrop leered at him, snickering at a joke that Harry wasn't privy to.
"I—"
"Blossom!"
Gammy's voice cut through the awkward exchange and Harry let out a heavy sigh. In truth, he'd prefer not to know. At least, he decided, if that information was being imparted by Snowdrop, who'd gotten an unholy gleam in her eye when she'd gotten it into her mind that she ought to be the one to tell him.
He'd ask Severus later.
"I need you to help bring the second pail in."
"It's too heavy for me, Gammy," Snowdrop argued, even as she hopped off her seat.
The woman's head poked in and she looked between the two of them, seeming to size Harry up. "I guess I'd not call you the picture of brawn, but do you think you could help Blossom, Harry?"
"I guess so," Harry agreed, eager to dispense with the uncomfortable conversation he'd been engaged in with the woman's granddaughter.
"It's out front," Gammy told them, hefting her own full pail up onto the butcher block. "This'll need to be strained and then skimmed, Snowy—"
"Hold on, I want some first!" The girl said with a whinge. "Gammy can you pour me a glass with the cream?"
"Harry, would you like some as well?" Gammy asked, with an exasperated look at her granddaughter.
"Erm... well, I like milk," Harry admitted. He wasn't quite sure on the mechanics of having it fresh from the cow, however.
As he learned after he'd brought in the milk, fresh milk was thick, creamy, slightly sweet, and warm. He almost spat it out when he first raised the glass to his mouth, not from a lack of appreciation for the flavour, but out of a sense of surprise.
He'd only ever gotten it from the bottle brought by the milkman or from the dairy aisle at the store. It had always been blessedly cold and refreshing. To drink it warm didn't quite seem wrong, but it was certainly a different kettle of fish, and a beverage suited for a different set of circumstances.
Namely, where cold milk could be called refreshing, warm milk was comforting.
Snowdrop seemed to think the same, for she pressed her nose into her mug so that her face disappeared behind it and came away with a white mustache that curled half-way across her cheeks, looking like the sort of facial hair that some cartoon villain might have twirled while cataloguing his dastardly plans.