It was a tall order to go off to bed after enduring the blast of that magnitude of bomb.
And no matter that Harry was left reeling, Snape refused to answer any further questions for him, looking nearly as shell shocked as Harry knew he himself felt.
Even so, after several hours of staring at the ceiling, and then breaking for a few moments to speak quietly with Wheat in the perfect stillness of the early hours, Harry finally fell into a restless sleep just in time to wake up what felt like fifteen minutes later for school.
He was so distracted that he managed to arrive at Rowky Syke without noting the journey whatsoever. Had someone told him that he'd in fact apparated the distance, Harry might have believed the lie.
His preoccupation persisted throughout the morning, seeing him answer all questions put to him incorrectly, to the point that Mr. Fowler had frowned at him as though Harry were some sort of complicated maths equation in his own right.
When it came time for music class, Harry was nearing the end of his patience, and he felt prickly at the prospect of a whole hour spent repeating the carols they had been practising for a month by that point.
If anyone in the class didn't know the words to O' Come All Ye Faithful by then, then there was no hope for the student learning the song by the Nativity production.
His fingers drummed a tempo against his knee, far faster than the simple time keeping employed in I Saw Three Ships. In fact, had he his wits about him, he might have identified the song as Mr. Brownstone by Guns N' Roses.
Deposed. Severus was going to be deposed.
What did 'deposed' mean?
He'd understood the bit about his relatives getting in trouble for leaving him alone on Privet Drive, and evidently Snape was meant to become involved in their punishment in some capacity. Harry had seen approximations of criminal trials on the telly before. Perhaps Snape was meant to sit in the stall before some white-wigged judge?
They'd said Severus hadn't done anything wrong, so that led Harry to believe that Snape would be the one pointing the finger.
His overactive imagination conjured an image of his aunt and uncle (and Dudley for some reason, as though they would charge an eight-year-old for abandoning his cousin), huddled together in the dock, shackled and bound to giant iron balls, and wearing striped prison garb. They were sobbing and holding each other as they begged Harry for clemency.
"What could be so funny that you're grinning like a loon all to yourself, Harry?"
He looked up, wiping the grin off his face and saw that Ms. Tibbons, along with the rest of the class, were all staring at him with undisguised curiosity.
"I just was wondering why if there's only Christ and his lady in the ships, why it's taking three ships instead of two..." he pondered aloud, voicing something he'd wondered since they'd begun rehearsing weeks earlier. "Did they do something to him or his lady so that they'd fit into more than one ship?"
Ms. Tibbons scowled at him, her brightly coloured lips pursing into a tiny pucker as her eyes grew large. "Harry, that's perverse."
"What do you mean?" He protested, shifting. He'd only asked about the strange arithmetic. He'd certainly not intended to upset her. It'd struck him as funny that there should have been an extra ship.
"They certainly did not cut either of them up to fit into more than one ship, if that's what you're meaning to say!"
Several gasps rang out throughout the room as her words sunk in and the depths of Harry's purported blasphemy were fully known.
"That's not what I meant!" He argued. Then again, he wasn't really sure what he'd meant, only he knew that something about the scenario seemed off. "Or maybe the extra ship went along with the others, you know? For back-up."
Ms. Tibbons stared at him with a gimlet eye, as though she didn't trust his amendment to his earlier observation. "That's... possible."
When Harry ducked his head, hoping to avoid further humiliation, Ms. Tibbons rapped a drumstick against the top of the upright piano. "Count to measure five on the second page and resume, please."
What resulted was discordant noise, and Harry winced but managed not to cover his ears.
The hour passed slowly, but before they were out the door, Ms. Tibbons stood and blocked the exit while they were arranged in a queue.
She pulled a clipboard from the top of the piano and looked them over, her eyes lingering on several faces in the line of students before she gave a decisive nod.
"I have in my hands the cast list for our Nativity production this year."
A mixed chorus of groans and cheers met her announcement, with some of the students ahead of Harry in line clamouring verbally for their parts.
"Leave off! Shhh, quiet, all of you! I'll never manage to read it out if you won't all pipe down."
This muffled the wide-ranging response, but only just.
"Now, all of you are expected to participate in the choral arrangements we've been practising. Those will follow the Nativity play, and your year will go after year five which is after year six. Is that understood?"
It seemed as though the broad consensus was 'yeah, alright' but also 'awww, man!'
"We'll begin with the—"
"Who plays Jesus?!" An excitable voice interrupted her from behind Harry. He turned and saw that it was from a boy as loud as he was small. One Joshua Sharp.
Harry thought the kid a bit thick, but he was fair enough on the football field, and was a good sport all things considered, even if he didn't know when to keep his mouth shut.
"No one plays Jesus, Josh. We have a doll for that part." Ms. Tibbons replied with a tad too much patience. She looked like she was only moments away from rolling her eyes. "Please don't interrupt again."
Harry glanced over his shoulder—as did everyone else in line—in time to see the sandy-haired boy shuffling back against the wall, looking rather sheepish as he did so.
Harry felt a stab of pity for him. Joshua Sharp was the type of child who had so many words that they seemed to spill, unbidden, from his mouth at any opportunity, and seemingly even more often when he ought to have been silent.
"Now, as I was saying, I'll go ahead and read out the principal roles first, and then the wise men, and then the shepherds, followed by the angels, King Herod, and the Innkeeper. Alright?" She asked, not waiting for a response. "Playing Mary will be Snowdrop Hill."
"Snowdrop!" A girl named Candace Rhys cried, curling her lip. She was one of the girls who liked to hold court at the table in the yard during break.
She'd yelled so loud, and the resulting furor was so great, that they almost missed Ms. Tibbons next words.
"Playing opposite Snowdrop will be Harry, cast in the role of Joseph—"
"He's new!" Jack Sandys protested. He was usually the first in line to volunteer for any opportunity and was especially fond of hovering around the teachers' elbows in order to soak up any spare praise they might have decided to toss his way. Harry wasn't especially fond of the boy, although in this instance, he considered that they were in agreement.
Him? As the lead role for the play?
Ms. Tibbons had lost it. She must have misplaced her mind at the KISS concert and had never recovered it; that was the only explanation possible.
"Can't I be a sheep or something?" He asked, only to be shouted over by Ms. Tibbon's rising voice as she attempted to call out the rest of the cast list over the litany of complaints.
"Playing wise men will be Carl Masters, Alec Benjamin, and Bruce Prior—"
The boys groaned, with the exception of Carl who pumped his fist in triumph as their teacher continued reading off her list.
"Nicholas Henderson and Matthew Hecker are to play shepherds. Lucy Givens, Alessandra Cox, and Candace Rhys are our angels—"
"Who gets to be Gabriel?" Candace asked, turning her nose up in the air.
"I don't suppose you wish to play Gabriel, Candace?" Ms. Tibbons asked, with an air of sorely tested patience.
Candace shrugged, and elbowed Portia Foster—her best friend and best sycophant—to stop the other girl from sniggering. "Gabriel is a boy, Ms. Tibbons."
The woman's mouth drew into a thin line and she didn't say another word to the girl, instead turning to Lucy Givens and offering the role to her.
Lucy seemed pleased, at least. She thanked Ms. Tibbons and seemed to melt back against the wall. Lucy had always been a pleasant, if quiet, girl.
Of course, Gabriel was a speaking part, so Harry figured she'd have to learn to speak aloud if she wanted to play the archangel.
"Why is there more than one angel, anyway? In the story there's only s'possed to be one—" Candace whinged.
When Ms. Tibbons instead offered the girl the free part of the donkey—a role she'd not intended on casting—the girl finally shut her mouth for good.
Their teacher paused to glare out over the mutinying students and waved with her hand to indicate that they ought to bring themselves back under orders, as the line was beginning to waver and zig-zag where students were beginning to pace about.
"King Herod will be played by Joshua Sharp," she announced, grinning as Joshua clapped his hands together and began to shake them while clasped together as though he were peacocking about during the curtain call. He was happy enough to celebrate his first acting triumph well before he'd even stepped on the stage.
"And the Inn Keeper is going to be Woodrow Ward. Portia Foster, Margaret Montrose, Jessica Moore, and Jack Sandys will be sheep, and—"
"Who's gonna tell the story?"
That was Jack, who had begun fuming as soon as he had been announced as one of Nicky and Matthew's white-fleeced flock.
Ms. Tibbons straightened from her slouched position against the upright piano and brought her hand to her chest. "I'll be playing the narrator, Jack. It's the policy of this school that the narrator role is always the teacher's."
"But why!?" The boy protested, his voice rising with an undercurrent of hysteria. "I wanna play a speaking part!"
"The narrator speaks the most, and to avoid hurting feelings—and avoiding any potential problems—we don't give that role out to students. I'm sorry, Jack."
"Well, my feelings are hurt!" He announced, crossing his arms mulishly against his chest. A couple of voices rose in agreement with him, namely Candace and Matthew Hecker, who probably both supposed that they should have been cast in leading parts.
Curiously, throughout the entire proceedings, Snowdrop had remained silent. Harry hadn't thought to check on her after the strange announcement that she was expected to play the part of Mary, but when he did glance her way, it was to find that the girl had tucked herself away by the wall, looking down so her choppy brown hair was hanging over her features.
Harry's observation of her was interrupted by Ms. Tibbons announcing that she was willing to listen to any complaints at the end of the day, but that the cast list was finalised and wouldn't be changed.
As she led them out of the room, she looked the queue of students over with an exasperated, but fond, eye.
"I'll have Mr. Fowler give you your scripts tomorrow, and, as I understand it, he's agreed to run through the play for the first time with you in class," she announced as they walked, clapping her hands together in excitement.
"Now, I know that I've heard from most of your parents concerning their involvement already, but I'm really going to need firm commitments made by the parents of the principal players—"
Harry blinked. Joseph was considered a principal part... this was the first he'd heard of parental involvement...
To his chagrin, most of the other students were nodding along, even if they were rolling their eyes. Apparently, this was par for the course. Even Snowdrop looked unsurprised.
Suddenly, he felt as though he were the only student who hadn't known.
Indeed, when he glanced up at their teacher, it was to see that she had looked back over her shoulder as she walked, her eyes trained on him specifically.
...Bugger.
"So, please go home this evening and speak to your parents about the volunteer schedule that we've arranged. St. Mark's has agreed to let us use some of their back storerooms for the month so that we can arrange the sets, costumes, and risers for the play. We'll be meeting there at least four nights a week until the work is completed, although I certainly don't expect our volunteers to show up all four nights."
Under his breath Harry groaned.
Severus was not going to like that. Not to mention that the wizard only ever was free for perhaps one night a week on Wednesdays.
He felt as though he'd only just gotten the man back! They had nearly no time together whatsoever anymore, and as of only yesterday, Severus had finally managed to finish up his business in the Hogwarts labs. Now there was to be yet another item added to the never-ending list that comprised their lives.
Living with the Dursleys had never been anywhere near as busy. Then again, he couldn't find it in himself to regret that.
He only hated the busy-ness because he liked spending time with the older wizard so much. With his relatives, it had been a blessing when they left him entirely alone.
Still, it'd have been nice if he'd had more time with Severus to spend on potions, like they had at the end of summer...
Things had felt so much simpler then, he thought, a bit ruefully.
Perhaps there would be more time after the Christmas hols.
For the rest of the afternoon, Harry dithered over how he ought to approach the young man about his new obligation on the single afternoon free he had each week.
In the end, none of his postulating mattered, for Ms. Tibbons had evidently taken the task out of his hands.
Harry arrived home as he always did and shut himself away in Severus' old bedroom, still feeling too off balance with Snape's perennially grumbling father to spend any time alone with the strange man.
It wasn't so much that Tobias Snape offended him—that would be nearly impossible given the fact that Harry could scarcely understand one word in ten that fell from the his mouth. No, it was more that Harry got the feeling that he ought to be on his guard around the newcomer to their household. That, and Tobias didn't seem any more inclined to get to know Harry than Harry was to know him.
Even though the argument over purchasing a new television set was far from settled to the older Snape's satisfaction, he still maintained his position as sentinel over the sofa, watching the news—or at least Harry supposed it must have been the news—for hours a day, grumbling in Cumbrian, and generally acting as an immovable roadblock to Harry's freedom to roam as he pleased throughout the house.
He was becoming thoroughly sick of it, but he supposed that on one level, the house still apparently belonged to the former vagrant.
At least Cur Dog was good company. When he wasn't trying to get too close for comfort to Wheat, Curry wound his way under the kitchen table if that's where Harry happened to be sitting, or else he would sometimes climb the rickety staircase to join Harry in Severus' old bedroom, curling up in Harry's pile of unwashed laundry with his nose tucked underneath his tail.
He didn't seem to mind Harry's frequent use of Severus' tape deck as long as it wasn't too near the dog's sensitive ears. Otherwise, at times Harry caught the bedraggled hound thumping his whip-like tail along to the songs.
Probably he just enjoyed being inside, however. And so long as he didn't wee in Severus' boots—which had happened, by Harry's count, at least three more times since the first offense—Severus did his best to ignore the beast's presence in his home, unwelcome as it no doubt was. And for his part, Curry did his best to slink around corners whenever Severus was about, as he no doubt realised that the presumptive master of the house wasn't fond of his boot-splashing ways.
Harry counted himself lucky that Cur Dog had never had a go at his trainers. Then again, he kept those safely tucked under his bed frame. It was Severus' own fault if he invited calamity by taking his boots off by the door after all this time.
That evening followed the same pattern as many others. The nights where Harry wasn't at Gammy Hill's, Tobias wasn't out wherever it was that he wandered to, and where Severus wasn't holed up in some mystical castle that Harry couldn't even imagine the shape of.
Harry came home, grabbed a bag of crisps out of the kitchen which looked to only be a quarter full, and patted his leg, summoning Curry to follow behind him as he skirted the sitting room wall and avoided speaking to the red-eyed gargoyle who now seemed to be a permanent fixture on the sofa.
Homework had wound down in preparation for the Christmas hols, and it seemed as though Mr. Fowler and Ms. Tibbons were in cahoots, as his only assignment was to familiarise himself with the Nativity script in preparation for the read-through that Mr. Fowler had planned for the next day's class.
Because the dog didn't protest, Harry decided that it might be more fun to read through his parts in the play if he draped his spare pillowcase over the hound's head and pretended that Cur Dog was Mary.
After an hour at work, he felt quite certain that the amenable dog was likely a far better costar than Snowdrop would prove to be.
He felt rather than heard when Severus arrived home. The walls of the house shook with the force of the front door slamming, and then the floor seemed to quake as Snape's footsteps pounded through the entryway and sitting room.
The silencing charm that protected the upstairs from the noise produced on the ground floor (and vice versa) prevented him from hearing Severus' impassioned snarling, but as soon as he ducked his head down the second half of the flight of stairs his hair might have blown back from his forehead in the face of his kuya's towering indignation.
"Like I don't work enough! Like I have all the fucking time in the world! Two nights a week! Two!"
There came a sound like a gunshot, and when Harry poked his head around the corner, it was to see that Snape had slammed his fist into the plaster wall and now seemed to be regretting his lack of restraint if the way he cradled his hand was anything to go off of.
"Faugh, 'ee's thine laddo, like. Git wukn fer 'im." Tobias Snape chortled, letting his scruffy head loll lazily back against the back of the couch.
"What the bloody hell do you think I do when I'm not at the house!?" Snape seethed, turning on his father and gesticulating wildly with his uninjured hand.
"Perhaps this is a foreign concept to you, but I've not let a single claggy blade of grass grow under my boots—no matter what it is that you, or those two feckless divvys from Child Protective Services, or Tabby," he drawled her name in an appalling falsetto; one clearly meant to mimic Ms. Tibbon's own squeaky, soprano register, "think! I spend all my time sowing for tomorrow! And not for my own sake—no! Not for myself to enjoy! IT'S ALL FOR THE BOY'S SAKE! So don't you bloody well tell me to go out and get to work for him! I couldn't possibly be doing more for Harry if I tried!"
Severus paced as he raved, his hands flying wildly through the air, and Harry ducked back into the stairwell, feeling his heart plummet as he heard how angry the older wizard was.
He'd worked Snape into a conniption.
Without his say so, his hand sought out Curry's wet nose behind him, and he used the orientation he found therein to guide his shaking palm to pat at the dog's long nose, appreciating the way that his imperturbable new friend licked placidly at his fingers even as Snape's voice continued to rise with his hysteria.
"Yet she was bold enough—she had the gall!—to come to my place of work and tell me that I'd better beg off early for some flaming school play like I play at barkeeper for my own fucking amusement! And you! You shrug and look at me as though it's all merely part of what I signed on for! As if you ever—ever!—bothered to volunteer for functions at my school when I was in attendance! You have the nerve to sit here in my house that you ran from and roll your eyes at me and tell me to be a man about it!"
There were two beats of silence.
"Aye."
The scream of jumbled invectives and curses that followed raised the hair on the back of Harry's neck, and from the feel of it, Curry's too. But the dog didn't seem afraid; rather, he was growling low in his throat and the fur on the back of his haunches was beginning to rile.
"Shhhh," Harry urged him, wishing that the dog had a collar he could have held on to. As it was, he hugged the beast around the shoulders, hoping to forestall any attempts Curry might have made to stampede down the stairs.
To his gratification, the dog stood stock still. Statue-like, if statues could rumble with low tones of imminent threat and warning.
The next sound that issued from the ground floor caused the walls to shudder, and Harry winced, hearing the snapping sound that he somehow knew must have been the bones in Snape's fingers splintering after he slammed his fist ineffectually into the wall.
Echoing in the resultant stillness, Severus' breaths sounded as though they were being ripped from him.
Harry risked another peek out and saw that the wizard had rested his forehead against the crumbled patch of wall he'd cratered with his fist. His bloodied hand was resting adjacent to his face, the bruised knuckles weeping down the back of his hand, painting his tendons red.
"If yer done wid yer l'al razzie now," Tobias drawled from the couch, looking utterly unperturbed, "mebby thou could make a start on supper."
"Cook it yourself," Severus snarled, still breathing raggedly. He'd not pulled his head up from where he'd brought it to rest against the plaster. "Where's Harry?"
Tobias shrugged, although Snape wouldn't have seen it with his back turned, and opened his mouth, but then his watery grey eyes found Harry's scared form where he huddled on the bottommost step. He closed his mouth with a snap and smirked.
"Slew an' deek fer thyself."
Harry winced and almost ducked his head back into the stairwell again, but he wasn't quite quick enough.
One blaring black eye stared balefully out from beneath the limp curtain that was Severus' mass of unwashed black hair.
"I suppose it's outside the realm of possibility that you didn't hear all of that," he stated, not bothering to phrase it as a question.
Harry's mouth twisted, betraying him.
Snape's eye left him as he glowered at the faded wallpaper in front of his eyes, his head coming up and slamming down against the wall with startling force.
"Typical."
When he finally peeled his skin from the plaster, there was a conspicuous red spot on his brow, above his nose and between his eyes.
"Ahreeeettt..." Tobias drawled, leaning the bulk of his weight against the armrest, "Supper—"
"Shut. Up." Snape snarled, aiming a kick at the back of the sofa. It didn't do much, but it did force his father to move his arm as it jarred the entire frame of the rickety piece of furniture.
For a moment, Harry feared it would collapse, and then where would they be?
Not that the sofa was particularly endeared to him… but it was practically the only serviceable seat in the entire house, with the exception of the kitchen chairs, and of Severus' reading chair, which rested in the corner. Harry didn't have such a death wish that he'd dare place his bottom upon such a sacred seat, however.
Even Tobias seemed to know better than to trespass on that particular armchair, inviting though it often seemed.
Giving up his place in the stairwell as a lost cause, Harry carefully unfolded himself from where he'd been perched and slunk down to the ground floor.
Snape wasn't looking at him. He was still glaring daggers at the wall, the corner of his mouth twitching with barely restrained hysteria, and although Harry felt too wary to approach the older wizard, he also felt a stab of pity.
Severus really had been doing his utmost. He'd been stressed out and overworked before all of this. To ask him now to waste what precious free time remained to him in overseeing the production of a primary school Nativity play seemed cruel.
With this in mind, Harry took slow, careful steps up to Snape's shoulder, hoping that he could still see him out of the corner of his eye, lest he end up spooking like a startled horse.
"Ms. Tibbons found you?" He asked, his voice a low whisper.
He may as well have shouted it. There could be almost no privacy without a well-placed Muffliato charm in the Snape household, but even so, when he glanced back, it was to see that Tobias was studiously acting as though he wasn't listening, when clearly he was.
Snape turned to him, looking down at the boy under his care with a doleful expression, although whether that was because of his forced conscription into the Nativity or the fact that Harry had heard his tantrum was indecipherable.
"Come, Harry," he bid the boy before him. There wasn't much command in the voice, but there needn't have been. At that moment, Harry would have followed Severus just about anywhere if it would have made the overwrought young man feel better.
Severus led them into the kitchen and did as he could to ensure their privacy, not seeming to care in the least that his father saw him erecting charms to preserve the sanctity of their conversation.
Curry followed Harry through the doorway at his heels, his long neck trained down and without giving a bare glance to Severus, whom he seemed to wish to avoid.
Snape paid the dog the same courtesy.
"Have you eaten?"
Harry shook his head, a wry grimace of impatience twisting at his lips. "Yeah, Severus. I had a couple of slices of toast when I got home." Harry, wisely, chose not to mention the bag of crisps.
"That would have been hours ago," Snape continued to dither, turning his back on the boy in order to begin plundering the pantry. "Certainly you'll be hungry again—"
"Severus," Harry drew the name out, his pronounced lisp making it sound somewhat comical. "How did you find out about the Nativity play?"
"How indeed!" Severus snarled, although without looking back. He apparently had decided that if Harry wasn't going to eat, that he'd prepare something for himself, although Harry suspected that it likely had a lot more to do with giving the ornery wizard something to do with his hands. They were busily grabbing up ingredients at random from the shelves, and Harry had to wonder what abominable concoction would result from a jar of yeast paste and a tin of Spam.
If that's what Snape had in mind then Harry wanted no part of it.
"You're not really going to have Marmite on potted meat, are you?"
"Marmite on—" Snape paused and then looked down at the items occupying his hands. "—oh... no. No."
He hastily stuffed them back onto the shelves, looking for a moment more before he heaved a heavy sigh and seemed to give up.
Finally, with no other way to delay the conversation, he let out a long, expressive burst of air through flared nostrils.
"Your 'Ms. Tibbons' came by The Yow this afternoon."
Harry nodded his encouragement. "She said she's been there before. Over the summer. She said she hadn't seen you there when I told her you worked there, but then of course she didn't: you weren't there yet."
"You told her I worked at The Yow?"
"Er..." Harry stalled for time, but saw no way around admitting his complicity. "Yeah. After the KISS concert. She wanted to know how I knew you. Why I was there with you."
Snape snorted. "Nosy. She's always been nosy."
"You said you barely spoke two words to her!" Harry accused, frowning now.
"That was a slight exaggeration. I was, for a time, friends with her older brother. She did her utmost to become embroiled in the same shenanigans that we did. Naturally, we did our best to lose her as quickly as possible." Snape reminisced, looking mildly uncomfortable.
"That doesn't seem very nice," Harry tutted. Poor Ms. Tibbons...
"If you were to go out playing with Mr. Henderson, would you welcome Miss Hill's company?" Snape posed, raising a black eyebrow in question.
"That's different! Snowdrop is mean," Harry argued back, tipping forward in his seat with his elbows planted on the tabletop. It caused the surface to dip an inch toward him as the far legs lifted from the ground.
"And Tabitha was a little talebarer. We all have our reasons."
Harry was still glaring at the older wizard. "You did bad things with her brother, maybe she ought to have told somebody."
"Bad things," Snape scoffed. "What do you know about my time with Bertie? Fat lot of nothing—"
"I know that Mrs. Murray is still mad 'cause of what you and Bertie did," Harry argued. "And I know that you stole with Bertie, cause of what the Detective Sergeant said—"
"None of which even remotely touches what I was made to do when in the rank and file alongside the likes of Yax and Wulf," Snape growled, his head dipping down low as his fingers splayed over the tabletop. "I suppose you've decided now that I'm beyond forgiveness?"
Shaking his head now and pushing back so that the chair nearly tipped backwards, Harry glared at where Snape sat caddy-corner to him. "No! Just, you should admit if you did something, Severus. What you did around Cokeworth probably wasn't as bad, but it was still bad, see?"
Seemingly with some level of amusement, Snape's lip began to curl. "Do I see?"
"Well? Do you?"
"I think I understand your meaning, Harry," the man finally admitted, rubbing one palm over his mouth to obscure the wry smile threatening to break out. "You know, you're quite a little moralist."
Harry shook his head again with a frown, but not to negate the assertion. More because he couldn't be sure what Snape meant.
"It's nothing, Harry," Snape gave a soft laugh. "It's for the best, really."
"What's for—?"
"Bertie and I got into all sorts of trouble. That's the truth. I probably tend to gloss over these things because, truth be told, I'm a bit embarrassed over it. At twenty-eight, I'd prefer not to think about the time I was caught at the corner store attempting to lift a case of lager. As I told you before: I was sixteen—"
"I'm eight!" Harry argued again, not understanding how he could know something was wrong at eight and how that could possibly change with a whole lifetime of additional knowledge.
"You were..." He tried to think on his times tables. Eight by two was sixteen. "Twice that old!"
Snape looked regretful for a moment. "A lot changes from eight to sixteen, Harry."
"But now you're twenty-eight and you know it's bad again?"
"And even more changes from sixteen to your late twenties."
Harry threw his hands up in exasperation. None of that made a lick of sense. How could one go from knowing something was bad as a child, to thinking it was perfectly fine as an adolescent, only to then admit for once and for all that whatever it was really was wrong?
Snape stared intently into his eyes, the sustained contact mildly uncomfortable. Finally, he blinked.
"Adolescence is... a difficult time for us all, Harry. Someday you'll know that to be the truth." He clasped his hands together before him and drew in a deep breath through his nostrils, as though bracing himself. "It isn't so much a matter of no longer knowing right from wrong, per se, but that by your teenage years, you may find yourself questioning what you always knew—what you always thought you knew—to be true."
His face screwing up as he attempted to give this all due consideration, Harry couldn't help but to feel that he still didn't fully grasp Snape's meaning.
"Well, so, you thought you knew it, and then you thought maybe you were wrong... but then you turned out to be wrong about being wrong?"
Snape drew in another breath through his teeth. "In this instance."
"Only then, or... or other times?"
Snape's clasped hands became a steeple beneath his face, and his two pointer fingers which formed the spire poked against his lips as he spoke. "In this and other instances," he amended, before he went on to complicate this by adding, "and at times, I found that with maturity came clarity."
Harry pouted. He didn't care to hear that. The way Snape made it sound, growing older in the next few years would make some sort of pig-headed petty criminal out of him, if for no other reason than the fact that he would grow cynical. "So, were you ever right about stuff when you were sixteen? Stuff that you were wrong about when you were... were my age?"
Those long fingers tapped against the cupid's bow of Snape's mouth as he considered this for a moment. "It is difficult to say. I daresay I knew a great deal more at sixteen than at eight, as you might imagine, but I was already terribly bitter. That is to say, I took the least charitable view of the world that was possible and never sought to see the best in anything.
"Sure, stealing was wrong, but to that point I understood that it was wrong because to be caught was to be punished—"
"But you were caught," Harry couldn't help but to remind the man, feeling disagreeable.
"That time I was," Snape sniffed, looking as though he might have been far too proud of the times where he'd gotten away with it. "But when your sense of morality is informed merely by the sense—the good sense, that is—to avoid punishment, then there is something deeply lacking in one's thinking. And to that end, at sixteen, one may figure that if one merely avoids being caught, that stealing is perfectly agreeable. Good even, particularly if you're from such a poor background that it makes no sense to you why it should hurt the person you're stealing from more than it hurts you to go without.
"Oh, it's merely a store," he rationalised aloud, affecting a posture that suggested that he was pantomiming his younger self. "It's a national chain—they won't be hurting if I purloin a pocketful of this, or a handful of that."
"So..." Harry drew out, feeling as though he'd seen the face of extraordinary revelation, "it's ok so long as it's worse if you don't have it? Whatever it is? And so long as it's not taking from someone else who doesn't have enough—"
Snape's hand came down suddenly against the tabletop, startling Harry into throwing his back against the kitchen chair.
"No, you dolt! That's precisely where I was wrong! Stealing is always, in nearly every sense, wrong. I suppose, if we had to get into a much deeper philosophical discussion about it, it might be excused if you are truly on the verge of death and need to sustain yourself, but I stole out of envy! I felt that it wasn't fair that I had to be so poor, Harry. I didn't think it right that other people had things that I didn't, or had the means to pay for them, so I thought it perfectly fine to go about evening up the score. It was pettiness. It was spite. It was that same bitterness.
"The truly pernicious thing about envy is that it's never satisfied," Snape sighed, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. "There is always someone who has what you want. Even if you managed to steal half the country, you'd find that you envied people for their happiness, or the fact that they have loving families and friends. You'd envy things that could never be stolen," he murmured, tracing one finger down along the pronounced ridge of his hooked nose mindlessly.
Harry had to wonder at that. He certainly had never thought Snape was any sort of exemplar of male beauty—often, quite the opposite—but he'd never thought that Snape noticed or gave much thought to it. Could it have been that the man actually felt insecure about his homeliness?
"When you envy those sorts of things it's easy for someone to manipulate you into doing anything they like, provided they promise one of two things," Snape continued, his voice growing dark. "They either promise to give you what you most desire..."
When Snape didn't keep going, Harry, his mouth hanging open in anticipation, decided to prompt him. "Or...?"
"Or they promise to take it all away from the person you're most jealous of."
"Who... who was that?" Harry asked. He wished he could have looked up into Severus' face as he asked, but he couldn't help but to stare instead at the laminate tabletop. One hand reached out beneath the surface to search for Curry's head which he petted for comfort.
On some level, after all he'd heard of his mother and the terrible things that had occurred between his kuya and his father in their school days, he already knew.
Thankfully, Severus spared him.
"It doesn't bear mentioning."
When Harry finally glanced up, it was to see Snape studying the swirling patterns on the kitchen table with the same sort of faux-intensity that Harry himself had been employing moments earlier.
"In any case, I believe that we meandered rather far off the subject," the older wizard sighed, one stained fingertip tracing a curly-Q along a red line. "I know Tabitha Tibbons. Not well, mind you, but she's not precisely a stranger."
"Did she... did she ever hang out with you and my mum?"
"No." Snape shook his head for additional emphasis, his hair swinging gently about his curtained face. "Tabitha was younger than us by perhaps three years, and your mother never cared at all for Bertie, which should come as no surprise. I tend to think that her judgement of his character was actually rather astute. He was a bad influence."
"You did that stuff 'cause of him?" Harry asked, feeling a sense of relief. Of course it hadn't been Severus' own idea to steal—
But Snape dashed his hopes almost as soon as they began to rise. "Not at all. Certainly, he goaded me on... but it was just as often my own idea as it was his. He was a partner in crime. And when we were much, much younger, he wasn't such a bad friend. Younger than you are now. My earliest friend. We... we fed off of each other. If he had a bad idea, I lost no time in topping it with a worse one. Choose your friends wisely, Harry, you'll find that you become something of a reflection of the people you surround yourself with."
The boy frowned. What did that make him? Surrounded by Severus, Snowdrop, Nicky, Gammy, and now Mr. Toby? He had the utmost respect for Severus, but he especially could get a bit... dark at times.
For that matter, what did it make Severus?
He didn't quite manage to avoid asking that question aloud.
His lips mashed together over his unfortunate teeth, Snape made a non-committal "mmmm" noise. "Plenty of people would agree with you, I daresay. I've not exactly made stellar choices in who I've chosen to befriend. Certainly your mother never approved of my associates at school, and had the... the word I'd used never been uttered... I can't help but to think she eventually would have given me up for a lost cause anyway at a later point in time. Perhaps she even would have been right to do so."
"Don't say that—"
"Don't' say what?" Snape snorted, appearing disgruntled. "The truth? Here's another thing to remember, Harry: even if you find yourself circled on all sides by malicious evil of the worst sort, your sense of what is right can point you back north. They can lie, and they can tell you all sorts of pretty untruths, but if you know what's what then all is not lost. Is never lost."
Fascinated, Harry leant his elbows up against the table and cradled his face in his palms. "What's true?"
"Christ, could you ask a more complicated question?" Snape grumbled, bringing up both hands to rub at his eyes, as though he could black out the world along with Harry's unanswerable inquiries by merely rubbing until he saw stars. "What's true in this instance is that you've gone and gotten me off-topic once more. Tabby. At The Yow. And she expects me to put in two nights a week for some bloody Nativity play," Snape sneered.
Harry glowered for all the good it did him. Snape wasn't looking. Which was just as well.
The man had some nerve! It had been Severus who had directed them down the path of who Tabitha Tibbons was to him rather than what she was doing showing up at his place of work. How could Harry help it if Severus left himself so glaringly open to fruitful avenues for inquiry?
"Are you gonna do it?" Harry asked, feeling a sense of deep misgiving. He'd truly have preferred that Snape wasn't involved at all. In fact, he'd harboured a thought that he might not have even told the man about the scheduled date of the performance.
It was hardly going to compare to a KISS concert! He felt the sick tinge of embarrassment even thinking about how very uncool he'd look up there bleating out carols and garbed in a tablecloth and cotton-wool beard.
Snape sighed deeply and pitched forward over the table, one long-fingered hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck which must have been tight with tension.
"It wouldn't exactly be true to claim that I don't have a choice. I'm certain I could come up with some reason why I might be excused from this pointless exercise but..." and then Severus was staring at Harry with a slightly wistful expression, "but it bothered me for years that Da' never showed up to any of my school events for me. And I know for certain that had she been able, your mother would have jumped at the chance. I can't think she'd be very happy with me if I passed up the opportunity to act in her stead."