It seemed to Harry that he had never in his life been so very busy. Nearly every day of the week looked different, and it was all complicated by the fact that all three residents of Spinner's End kept very different schedules, each with hours that refused to permit easy substitutions or trade-offs.

On Mondays, the week generally started off on a bad foot, as Mr. Fowler was particularly demanding after his class had enjoyed a weekend off, and he claimed that he preferred to start the race at a canter instead of a trot. Harry wasn't entirely sure what that might have meant, besides the fact that his teacher always assigned the most homework on Mondays, and he was most apt to start new units at the beginning of the week, instead of near the middle or near the end.

That meant that on that first day of the week, he was made to wait for Severus to come home in order to check over his maths worksheets for errors, and Severus tended to be in a poor mood after returning from an evening at The Yow.

Given the Snape's predilection for perpetual sourness, that truly was saying something.

If Harry had thought that the addition of Tobias Snape to their household might have meant that he could look forward to going home on Tuesdays and Fridays rather than spending the evenings with the Hill family, he was sadly mistaken. Tobias seemingly had his own affairs to settle on those evenings, and the circumstances surrounding his comings and goings two nights a week seemed to be oddly shrouded in mystery, as far as Harry could figure.

On that first Tuesday, he'd asked Snape whether he could come home early, anticipating that such a change may well be in order, given that there would now be an adult home to mind him.

Severus had sent a sidelong glance at his father over his toast, and the older man had seemed to have returned it, albeit with a small sneer of derision.

Without speaking a word to one another, it seemed they'd agreed upon something, which indicated to Harry that the conversation must have happened when he wasn't there to overhear it.

He really wasn't quite prepared for the indignation he felt at having been excluded. Severus didn't usually bother to keep much from him.

Although he suffered throughout the day, waiting for the inevitable point at which he would be forced to ride home with Snowdrop, he was reminded once he reached the Hill's land, out in the country, that it hadn't been so very bad at all. After all the hubbub following Tobias' homecoming, Harry had quite forgotten how very much he actually enjoyed his work in the barn, and as soon as he got himself back into the swing of things, he once more found himself using the physical labour as a distraction from the complicated mess his life often seemed to be.

With the advent of the winter months, there was more work than ever that seemed necessary, and Gammy put him to work until late in the evening. Once the animal husbandry was taken care of, it seemed as though the work that remained in processing the late-harvested produce from her garden was endless.

Unfortunately, Snowdrop seemed to like to help out with these tasks, which saw him working elbow to elbow with her as they sliced vegetables and stuck them into jars of brine, but she was in a much sweeter mood when she was too overworked to look for reasons to be nasty to him. When they finished, she scarcely had more to say to him than "Pass the butter," as they tucked into their late-night snacks.

She'd been staying up on those evenings, even though apparently, she usually preferred to go off to bed far earlier, mostly out of necessity. Gammy now drove Harry home on Tuesdays and Fridays, and she refused to leave Snowdrop at home alone while she did so.

It was a pity that Severus couldn't pick him up—either by way of apparition or fixing the car—but Harry understood. Snape couldn't risk showing up so far out in the countryside with no recognisable means of taking his charge home with him. It was too far to walk, and too cold besides.

When he arrived home on those evenings, it was often to find that Tobias Snape was just getting in the door himself, looking harried, tired, and in a foul temper. He'd continued to sleep on the sofa since he'd arrived, and on these evenings, he seemed to fall into the cushions, face-first, without bothering to divest himself of his clothes.

Sometimes, Harry heard his snores begin before he even made it up the stairs after having taken care of his teeth in the kitchen sink.

Since that first night where Curry had been brought home, he'd not been made to go out to the privy to sleep again.

The next morning, Severus' glare in the dog's direction had spoken volumes, but he'd not said a word. He no longer kept his boots in an accessible location near the door, however.

The dog didn't often sleep near any of the humans in the house, but instead curled up near the front door, using the threadbare rug that stood before the threshold as a makeshift bed. Harry had tried to coax the lanky canine up to his bedroom before, and often the dog would come to keep him company while he did his homework or would sniff around Wheat's cage with an intent sort of curiosity, but inevitably, when the hour came where the house fell into slumber, he loped off, down the stairs, until he'd assumed his position before the door.

Harry tried not to take it personally, although he couldn't help but to feel a bit put out. In most of the stories he'd been told about boys with their dogs, the dog was always the loyal sort of hound that never wished to stray from the boy's side. He'd imagined just such a camaraderie developing once he managed to gain Curry's friendship...

Then again, perhaps it was Tobias to whom the dog was most attached. Perhaps he was the boy with the dog, in this instance.

It was no matter, Harry consoled himself. Wheat was his. Wheat slept in his room, and allowed Harry to hold him, and enjoyed sitting in Harry's hair. It was a pity he couldn't be taught to fetch a stick, but there was no sense in bemoaning that his spider was a spider. Besides, he fetched crickets just fine, and that was entertaining to watch.

Severus still spent much of the day away from the house on Wednesdays, although he never forced Harry to go with the Hills for an additional day. He would often return back from the castle looking irritable and dirty—perhaps oilier than he was generally predisposed to—and when Harry dared to ask over supper how the experiments were going, he was usually treated to a series of ineloquent grunts.

Thursdays were tolerable if only because he got to go to music class—which, even when they spent much of the time rehearsing fusty Christmas carols, at least provided a much-appreciated break in the day—and for the fact that he was allowed to go home straight after.

It was bordering on criminal, in Harry's estimation, that it should be Fridays where he was once more obliged to spend his evening at Snowdrop's side rather than at home, but then, when these thoughts began to creep in, he did his best to quash them down, the same way he smothered the most recent layer of the compost pile with chicken droppings he'd gathered. Hard work had always inured him to the Dursleys' many shortcomings, and it seemed as though it was coming to his rescue again, in that it went the furthest to assuage his feelings of indignation over being shunted into the company of the most loathsome and argumentative little girl he'd ever had the misfortune to meet.

Saturdays he often spent by himself, as Severus usually had to work. Although it was growing much colder, and he often was made to wear a coat over two second-hand jumpers he'd been given by Severus, he sometimes took Snape up on the man's offer to explore the town on his own. This usually meant that his feet led him to the rusty play-set that Snape had brought him to late in the summer, and usually that felt rather lonesome, but more recently he'd convinced Tobias to allow him to take Cur Dog for a walk with him, and after a bit of whinging, Harry had managed to wheedle Snape into conjuring him a dog lead and collar.

It was a far better way of spending the day than cooped up in his room, or otherwise vegetating on the sofa attempting to make sense of the questionable sights and sounds coming from the prehistoric television set that Tobias had seemingly commandeered. Harry wasn't entirely sure why the old man bothered watching, as he usually went on long, meandering rants where the subjects on the news were concerned, or else lamented the lack of clear signal endlessly. It made the already unsatisfying activity all the more unenjoyable.

Harry wouldn't have said he missed anything about staying with the Dursleys, but part of him did miss that he could sometimes catch an episode of a show, or the tail-end of a popular film. There were four televisions in the Dursley household: that meant that at any time, Dudley would leave two going at once while he forgot and left the room for a snack, often forgetting his first television in favour of the one in the kitchen or sitting room.

Harry had passed hours surreptitiously watching the TV in Dudley's second bedroom whenever the larger boy had forgotten it in a moment of distraction.

The last time Harry had gotten to watch anything remotely entertaining had been while he was laid up in hospital, and he certainly didn't want a repeat of that experience.

All the same, it would be suicide to suggest to Severus that they get a new one. For one thing, Harry already knew very well that Severus was doing all he could to keep their rag-tag family afloat, and that there was precious little left over after he spent what he earned on food and additional potions ingredients—forever chasing that elusive invention that might liberate them from stultifying penury. For another... well. Tobias had already asked.

Or rather, he'd loudly complained to his son that they ought to get a new television immediately, to which Snape had about blown his gasket, lambasting his father over his occupation as chief couch-sitter, and inviting the aging pater familias to get on his merry way to the Jobcentre, where he might find satisfying engagement as just about anything under the sun that didn't include being a perpetual pain in Severus' rear end.

That had put paid to any lingering desire Harry might have felt to ask after a better television set. It had certainly shut Tobias up; at least about the telly. Otherwise, it had started him on a long, far-ranging discourse about how it was degrading for a skilled tool-and-die technician to accept anything less than a job utilising his unique skill-set. Or at least Harry assumed that that's what he'd been on about, from the isolated one or two words he'd understood of the tirade.

Snape didn't look as though he took too kindly to his father's obstinance, but to his credit, he'd seemed to have buttoned his lip.

It had taken Harry several hours after the dust up to consider why it was that such a thing should bother Severus so much, aside from the fact that he now shouldered even more responsibility for their success, but then it came to him that Severus had done exactly that—exactly what his father refused to do—in working as a barman at The Jiggered Yow.

He'd been a teacher—a well-respected one, if the fact that he'd been chosen to be the Head of House meant anything—and he'd knuckled down when things had become unbearably tight.

Severus hadn't put up a fight at all about getting a real job. He'd waited a bit, sure, but when push came to shove, he'd gone straight away and signed an employment contract doing work that was far below his skill level, and in an ordinary, non-magical establishment at that.

As Harry had sat, allowing his tarantula to waltz along the back of his knuckles, he'd felt himself glowing with pride over that.

Sure, Severus wasn't his dad, and he wasn't truly his older brother. Not by blood, in any case, and the older wizard had certainly never copped to it even when Harry whipped out the endearment he'd learnt from Lola. Nevertheless, Harry was proud of Severus for doing what needed to be done, even when, to be perfectly honest, it stunk to do it.

He made far less than Vernon Dursley ever had, but he never once begrudged Harry fresh fruit for breakfast, or pudding after dinner—so long as Harry hadn't done anything to preclude himself from the privilege. Feeding and clothing the boy he'd taken under his wing had never been an imposition that he'd spent any time complaining about, and if ever Harry offered to go without, Severus acted downright offended.

Thinking on such a thing was enough to suffuse Harry with warmth, even in the draughty upper level of the house.

Of course, every day with Severus—even those days when he barely got to see him—paled in comparison to Sundays, where Severus continued to apparate them into Penrith while the Marina was up on blocks, and took them to attend Mass at St. Catherines, even though he so clearly hated to be there.

It meant a great deal to Lola and Mr. Padiernos, who now sat alongside them, and it meant a great deal to Harry, who had taken to asking for his own candles to light for the parents he'd finally caught a glimpse of in Godric's Hollow.

Snape always helped him light the first candle. The one for Harry's mother. Of course, Harry had never specified that the first was hers, but... it couldn't have been any other way.

Afterwards, they would part ways from the grinning Padiernoses, making excuses about where they'd been forced to park, and would return to Rice Bowl hours later, enjoying the single indulgence that they had come to embrace each week. It was tradition, and that made it all the more special.

Although, certainly, there had been a bit of a kerfuffle when Severus had increased his order to include enough food for his father as well.

Lola needled him mercilessly over if he were entertaining a date, and it had taken Severus finally boiling over with irritation to stop the woman's good-natured prodding.

"Your da' is back?" She had asked, her eyes wide with surprise after Severus had finally admitted who their extra dinner companion was.

"Unfortunately."

Lola drew herself up to her rather uninspiring height, aided only by the slight step that elevated her where she stood behind the counter. "'Rus—"

"Don't lecture me," Snape spat back, crossing his arms over his chest. "The man's a menace. He's always been a menace, and he'll always be a menace."

"Which of the Saints, I wonder, were the worst menaces in their day? Hm." She concluded rhetorically, with a pointed look at the sulking wizard across the counter from herself. She had raised both of her eyebrows in a clear indication that she expected the young man to think hard on her words as she handed their order over. "Two boxes of rice, a pork giniling entrée, a double entrée of chicken tocino, and a container of buko pandan. Twenty seventy-six, please."

Severus paid her as quickly as he could manage and left without a word, towing Harry behind him, and younger wizard had been made to wave a pathetic goodbye to Lola as he mouthed a silent 'sorry' in apology for Severus' rudeness.

The parting look of warm fondness on her face told him that she hadn't taken Severus' actions to heart.

This set the tone for a few weeks which Harry would remember later as a blissful period in which very little happened that was new or unexpected. How such a busy, complicated state of affairs could be called 'normal' was beyond him, and yet it became their normal.

At least that was the case until a Wednesday in early December when Severus returned home from Hogwarts cleaner than he had in recent memory, and in far better spirits than he had been in for weeks.

"You're back really early," Harry commented from his place at the kitchen table. He had his feet tucked up underneath him on the seat so he was sitting on his heels, and he was bouncing up and down excitedly on them. He'd always had a bit of trouble in sitting too still for too long.

"Am I?" Snape asked, his attention seemingly elsewhere. He had passed into the kitchen from the sitting room, not having bothered to greet his father on the couch, but instead going straight for the refrigerator, from which he withdrew a block of cheese. He slapped it down on a cutting board and sliced off a generous portion for himself.

Harry watched in mute fascination as young man tore through the pantry as though he were starving, unearthing a sleeve of cream crackers and a tin of tiny cocktail sausages which he began eating with his fingers, directly from the source. A surprising breech of decorum coming from Severus Snape.

They didn't speak again until Severus began concocting some sort of strange sandwich stack out of his ingredients, showing no signs of stopping his quest for a full stomach.

"So…" Harry began again, observing Snape's odd bout of hunger with a dubious eye, "why are you back so early?"

Snape drew a hand up to cover his mouth, as he'd almost gone ahead and begun speaking even though he wasn't through with chewing his most recent bite. He dipped his head low to cover for his bad manners and attempted to swallow, apparently having found the mouthful too dry for his throat to handle.

Harry's mouth thinned with impatience as he watched him now go for a drink of water, filling a glass from the faucet before he quaffed it in one long draught.

By then, the schtick was growing a bit old, and Harry realised too late that Snape himself was aware of what he was doing when he caught the tail end of an amused smirk. The older wizard affected to rub the tattletale expression away with the pretense of swiping at a dribble of water from his chin with the back of his sleeve.

"Oh, come on!" Harry cried, twisting fully in his seat and now unable to suppress the frustration creeping into his tone. "You never wipe your face with your shirt—!"

"I've been known to do so," Severus returned with an utterly fatuous expression, accompanied by a gallic shrug. It didn't suit him whatsoever and it annoyed Harry to no end.

"Have not," the boy retorted, having to bite down on his tongue to avoid sticking it out at the older wizard. No matter how glib a mood Severus was in, that would end as soon as Harry directly disrespected the man, and he was only too aware of what the consequences might be.

Even with the fact that Severus had never given him a reason to fear the sort of punishments he'd endured for years at Number 4, Privet Drive.

"I have been—" Snape paused for dramatic effect, seemingly unable to wipe the smirk that was spreading to the edges of his cheeks; a parody of a rather demented-looking grin. He drew in a deep, self-important breath, "—successful."

"Successful." Harry repeated after the man, his brow creasing.

"That was what I said, wasn't it? I have met with some mild success today." Snape nodded, although the widening smile he kept trying to pin down beneath his hand—which was pulling at his scruffy cheeks as though he were deep in thought—betrayed him for a liar. Or, at the very least, a grand prevaricator.

Harry's head was beginning to ache from the impossible process it would have required to follow Snape's peculiar antics. Thus, he gave in and allowed the man his self-indulgent game of cat and mouse. If Snape wanted to play coy about a development in the process, well then: let him.

With that decision made, Harry's expression turned bland, and he responded to Severus' obvious baiting with an unimpressed, "Huh."

Then he turned his back to the fuming wizard and got back to work on his art project for school, using a sad-looking grey crayon to add extra wispy-ness to Father Christmas' beard.

He selected another colour—a brick-toned red—from the tiny selection he'd been allowed to borrow from the school, using it to sketch in a rotund belly underneath Saint Nick's whiskers.

"'Huh,' Harry?" Snape had crept up to lurk over his shoulder, sneering down at his rendition of the spritely old man. "You don't care to know how your ingredients fared? Our potion?"

"I care to know," Harry argued, attempting to colour in the circle he'd made for Father Christmas' stomach without the wax creating streaky, variegated lines throughout. He was failing, and that frustrated him enough that he wished he could throw the dumb crayon down.

Art frustrated him.

Severus, too, was frustrating him.

"I just think that if you have something to tell me, you should just tell me, 'cause if you don't, I don't know what to ask."

"Ask what manner of success I secured—" Severus suggested.

"No." Harry returned with a patience he didn't feel. "Why don't you just tell me the good news instead of making me ask a bunch of questions."

Grumbling now, Severus slid into the chair at the head of the tiny table, which had its back to the refrigerator and faced the door out to the back garden. He'd brought along his plate of victuals and was now poking at them with far less enthusiasm than he'd shown upon first entering the kitchen.

"We'll see what mood you're in when you succeed in your first experiment," he forced out between bites. "Fine. Fine.

"If you can't be bothered to engage in a proper conversation—like someone civilised—I suppose I could be prevailed upon to simply tell you." Snape drew in a deep, bracing breath, but in the end it wasn't enough to maintain the pretense of irritation. A grin broke out, exposing his ragtag mouth of chaotic teeth, and he was made, once more, to bring up a hand to hide his smile behind his left palm. When he next spoke, it was slightly muffled by his cupped fingers.

"—worked. T'all worked."

For a moment, Harry forgot his resolution not to ask questions. "What worked?"

Snape's hand slipped away, and he reached for a cracker, which he topped off with one of his sausages. "All of it. There wasn't much in the way of experimentation to be done. I spent today replicating the process we took on Halloween to the letter—and it produced an explosion, as expected. It was the explosion itself which accounted for the unique properties we observed—"

"Unique properties...?"

"The potion cleaned the fine particulate from the oil sump. It vanished all of the buildup—and I daresay it's a superior lubricant to the regular engine oil."

Harry nodded slowly. It certainly had been slippery.

"But, when I wiped the dipstick off, it only barely got on it—from my clothes, Severus. That's not enough oil for an engine to function. It's not like I poured a litre of the stuff in there—I didn't add it on purpose at all—!"

"I know," Snape gentled him with a raised hand, repressing further protestations. "Potions don't work like non-magical substances do. You ought to have gleaned that much from all we've done here in the kitchen. A full bottle of engine oil may well be necessary if it's the ordinary sort, but evidently, the tiniest addition of Potion Mu—"

"Potion Mu?"

Snape paused and affected a deep sigh of impatience. "Mu is the Greek letter 'M,' Potter, and is the first letter in the word 'mysterion', or 'mystery.' It is a working name only. Might I continue?" He asked in a snide tone, turning his nose up at the boy sitting down the table from him.

Harry gestured that he ought to go ahead, as his hand reached for the black crayon, meaning to start on Father Christmas' belt.

"Anyway, it appears to be the case that only a drop's worth of Potion Mu is necessary to enhance the properties of the normal engine oil, and it seems to me that it makes its way through the substrate—that's the base substance, Harry—very efficiently. After all, you didn't have to stir it in. In fact, it only entered the engine through the oil sump, which means it circulated through the system from the there."

"You think it's safe?" Harry asked, making small hatch marks with his crayon along Jolly Saint Nick's stomach. It certainly wasn't a very pretty drawing of Father Christmas, but it was, at the least, recognisable. He'd seen Snowdrop's the day before, and hers had resembled some sort of red elephant with a bulbous cloud on its face for a beard. While their assignment didn't entail any competition, Harry couldn't help but to feel as though his own rendition was superior.

"Well," Snape began, drawing in a deep breath, "we drove the Marina for several days after it was contaminated with the new potion, which likely is what allowed the tainted oil to circulate. I've been observing the oil-lines over the past few weeks, and I haven't seen any signs of deterioration. It's looking to me as though we managed to dodge a rather nasty hex—"

Harry's mouth only had to open for Snape to head him off, preventing the boy from interrupting with a question over his phraseology.

"—if you take my meaning?" He drawled, a glint of sardonic amusement coming into his eyes. "What I meant to say, was that we—oh...what's the common saying—we dodged a bullet, yes? The point being that I wasn't intending for you to take that literally."

Harry allowed his crayon to drop to the tabletop where it rolled until it came up against a granite mortar that was occupying the furthest part of the table, near the wall. He twisted in his seat so that he could look up into Severus' face, which was uncharacteristically placid. It couldn't be said that the potions master was radiating happiness, but with the complete absence of the stress lines and the relaxing of his normally tight jaw, Snape appeared, for once, to actually be his real age.

Harry couldn't help but to smile up at him. It was nice to see Severus not looking so worried for once.

"Does this mean we can put the wheels back on?"

Nodding now, as though he were thinking this over, Snape rubbed at his lips with his fingertips. "On a provisional basis, I don't see why not. How she runs will be the next step in our experiment. I'll have to keep removing the sump every few days to check and see how she's doing. Of course, I can't put any additional oil in her for the time being, but once the month's up, we'll see where this leaves us."

"Did you look at the oil in the engine now?" Harry asked, thinking that it would have been a very cool opportunity to make use of one of those microscopes he'd seen in the short film they'd watched in class.

"I'm not following," Snape shook his head with a frown. "You saw me open up the sump with your own eyes, Harry. You know I looked at the oil—"

"No! Like, really look. You know—" Harry made circles with his index fingers and thumbs and held them before his eyes, right in front of his spectacles, and he then made a motion as though he were zooming them in and out in front of his face, to suggest magnification, "close up."

"Ah," Snape tapped a finger to his lips as he observed Harry's miming. "No, I hadn't done. Not a bad idea, at that. I'll be sure to take a sample before I reattach the wheels and bring her off the blocks."

"Waas that Aa hear-d? Blab of me car brang off t' blocks? Marciful Lordt." Harry and Severus glanced up as one to see that Tobias was leaning against the doorway, looking rather smug and self-satisfied.

"It's not been yours in years." Snape's mouth twisted in a tell-tale sign of his irritation. "The Morris is mine, and if I let you drive it again, you'll count yourself as lucky—"

"Thine!" Tobias all but roared, suddenly looking quite intimidating. Harry's fist clenched on the tabletop, inadvertently wrinkling his art project. "Thou'st done nowt but clash that sary car! Thine! Pah! Aa cannut mind Aa ivver signt it ower to ye!"

"No, you wouldn't remember, would you?" Severus asked, his voice having gone dangerously soft. "Do you, perchance, remember abandoning the disputed property? Rather in the same way that you abandoned the house and abandoned your son?"

Tobias was silent, but a muscle twitched in his stubble-covered, meaty jowl.

"Shall I take it that you don't remember? Ought I refresh you on that score, Da'?" Severus stood then from his seat and squared off from across the narrow room against his father, drawing himself up, even though the other man was larger in both height and width.

"It was April. The Easter hols—do you remember?" Snape needled, taking a step forward until he was standing behind Harry's chair.

Harry may as well have not been in the room. It seemed that the two Snapes took no notice of him at this point, and that they were far away; settling a score that must have seemed to Severus quite ancient and entrenched by that point.

"Fifth year for me. That would have made it 1976—"

"AA KEN WHAT BLEUDDY YEAR SHE DEED!" the elder Snape cried, raising a fist to his side and pounding it against the wall so that the entire house shook.

Harry ducked, and he was certain that a bit of plaster had fallen from the ceiling into his hair.

"This isn't about her dying," Severus growled between his clenched teeth. "This is about you leaving!"

"Eets aboot me bleuddy car!" Tobias' fist came down again against the wall, but in spite of his obvious rage, he had a wild-eyed look of fear on his face, as though terrified at what Severus might decide to say.

"I won't let you make it about the damned car! Selfish prick—you wish it were about the car! It'll never ever be about the car, or about the house, or about the goddamned telly—"

"Ye mind yer jaw, laddo! In our house—"

"THIS ISN'T YOUR HOME!" Snape finally screamed, his voice so loud that it was cracking.

Harry couldn't hide his terror as he stared up at Severus with a gaping mouth. Snape had never before lost his control to the point where his voice went shrill and broke into a screech. He looked and sounded deranged in that moment, and Harry couldn't help but to shrink back.

"THIS IS MY HOME!" Snape seethed, spittle flying from between his clenched teeth. "THIS WAS OUR HOME: WITH MAM, AN' ME, AN' ONCE UPON A TIME, YOU!"

He stumbled and caught himself against the back of Harry's chair, and even in Harry's terror, the child felt a stab of sympathy for Severus, who had never before looked so perilously lost. He reached out a hand and gripped the wrist of the arm that Snape was bracing against the chair back, giving it a squeeze for support.

That seemed to bring him back to himself enough to look down and see that Harry was watching the two adults with wide, apprehensive eyes. Snape gave a minute wince, clearly apologetic, and brought up his other hand to pat at the back of Harry's knuckles as though to calm a spooked thoroughbred.

"This is my home," he said again, albeit with more restraint. His voice had grown hoarse. "Harry has more a right to be here than you at this juncture. I owe him a roof over his head by virtue of the responsibility I took on when I agreed to care for him. I owe you nothing!"

Snape swallowed and his hand tightened on the back of the chair until his knuckles were the shade of clabbered cream. "So, you can decide now whether the accommodations are to your liking. And if you consider them lacking? Well. No one is keeping you here, Da'. You left once already. I won't be surprised in the least to see you walk away again."

Tobias' grey eyes were hard, yet somehow brittle all at once. "Ooh-ho, ye wad laik that, waddent ye. Thou wad laik to see our arl arse end walken away—"

Severus shook his head, his grease-laden hair swinging like vines around his face and shoulders. "You mistake me. I don't care. I can't afford to care whether you bother to stay or not. And I won't let your presence—or your absence—make or break me. You're nothing to me," Snape hissed, the words dripping from his mouth pure poison. "I'm no chip off the block, and you're no skin off my nose."

By the end of his declaration, Severus was breathing heavy, and the commotion had attracted Curry, who nosed his way into the room, standing with his head wedged between the doorway and Tobias Snape's thigh. His large, soulful eyes were flashing between all the occupants of the kitchen, wary of the raised voices.

"April of '76, Da'." More than twelve years. That's almost half a lifetime for me." The wizard swallowed, his face looking pinched. His entreaty—if you could call it that—having sounded almost agonisingly frank. "I've moved on from you. All this," and here Snape gestured broadly with his two index fingers of both hands held up to point 'round the house, "has moved on from you."

"T' laa—"

The smirk that Snape sent Tobias' way was tinged with a sinful sort of triumph. "Whatever the law may be with regards to your ownership, any attempt to retake the house would be quite impossible. Even if your claim to the property could theoretically be enforced, I caution you to remember just what I am."

Snape's unspoken threat hovered between the two combatants, hanging like a veil that separated father from son. Muggle from wizard.

Tobias stared his progeny down with his fists clenched at his sides, looking simultaneously murderous and terrified.

Snape hadn't had to specify which precautions he'd taken to shore up the house as his own. It must have gone without his saying so that the young man had enchanted the old house with countless wards and protections.

It seemed this ability of his—the gift of magic—may well always stand between the two, for it didn't seem as though Tobias appreciated in the least that his son was blessed with a talent for the arcane and mystical. If anything, whenever it came up, he looked distinctly uncomfortable, and at times even angry.

Ultimately the veil was breeched by Curry, who had snuck between the three humans while they were focused on the argument, and had popped himself up against the kitchen table. His head was turned sideways as his long tongue reached out like a sticky, pink hand, swiping the remnants of Severus' meal from his plate.

It was the sound of his jowls smacking that alerted them all to the theft in progress.

"Curry! No!" Harry gasped, hopping up from his chair and throwing his arms around the dog's thick neck. He did his best to tug the hound from the table, but the animal was single-minded in his quest for Severus' food.

"For Christsake! Are you not feeding the beast?" Snape roared, seeing his snack disappearing before his eyes. He rushed over to help Harry restrain Curry, his superior height and weight allowing him to rope his arms around the dog's ribs. He managed to haul him off the table but earned a rather vicious snarl from Curry in the process.

"Er… Severus—" Harry warned backing away from the tussle.

"Greedy scoundrel," Snape was growling. "You stay down! Off the table," he insisted, finally unhanding the indignant canine.

"Da'! You tell this filthy sneak-thief to keep his damn nose in his own bowl—" Snape demanded as he snatched the plate from the table, ferrying the last bits left into the rubbish bin with a grimace of distaste.

"Mebby, laddo," Tobias feigned a ponderous look, as though he were sincerely considering the younger Snape's demand. "Aa meeght cud do if ye'd keep the Lort's bliss't neamm owt thy mouth!"

To this Snape curled his upper lip, his expression communicating clear disgust. "I recognise no Lord."