A/N: Off-screen drug abuse mention.

Last time: Snape's directive was interrupted, however, by a loud shriek coming from a few meters down the street, behind them.

Before Severus could stop him, Harry darted away from the side of the Marina and ran a few steps forward toward the commotion, slipping on the slick pavement where the wet had frozen into a thin sheet of ice. He fell hard on his knees which was the only thing that allowed for his kuya to catch up with him, locking a hand around his thin upper arm in a punishing grip.

"Just what do you think you're doing!?" Severus hissed, his words almost going unheard under the shrill sound of a woman doing her best to pierce the night with the timbre of her voice alone. "What would possess you to run for the screaming! Little fool! Back to the car, now!"

Harry wasn't listening. He instead used Severus' assistance to climb to his feet where he began craning his neck to try and see what was causing the bray.

It wasn't just one woman screaming now. It was two. Together with them, a man bellowed.

Against the grip on his arm, Harry trudged forward, too curious to resist seeing what was happening.

From their spot, it was a bit difficult to see, as the snow was coming down fast now and obscuring his vision, but he thought he saw an orange, skinny figure bent over almost double as she loudly berated the pair standing before her.

"Potter, this is none of our business. Let's get home," Severus tugged against his arm again, but in spite of his admonishment, he wasn't expending much effort to remove Harry as he perhaps ought to have been. When Harry glanced up and back, he saw why: Severus' eyes were just as fixed on the scene unfolding behind their car as he was. He had that look in his black eyes that Harry had seen before on the face of his Aunt Petunia. He was being nosy.

Given that, Harry hardly felt bad about his own inappropriate interest in the loud row that was apparently taking place between Nicky's custodial parents and his and Snowdrop's estranged mother.

"I don't even know what made you think it was ok to show your face here! You've no shame! None at all! Do you have any idea what it does to him—to either of them!—to see you?"

"If you know what's good for you, you'll never talk to me again you god ugly bint! Act like you're better than me? I'm his mother! His real mother! I ain't gotta wonder why Davey took a turn with me when he had you to go home to!" Papagena Hill stopped to grab up a handful of slurry from the road and she threw it full force at Nicky's stepmother, with whom she seemed to be arguing the loudest.

It splattered against the wool of the woman's coat and dripped down her stockings, presumably into her shoes, and she bodily flinched away shaking her leg to get the cold ick off. "Demon slag—!"

Snowdrop's mother let out a strange cackling sort of giggle which saw both Harry and Severus cringing. It was a terrible sound.

"Whats smatter?" Tobias asked. He'd finally arrived alongside them and was squinting to try and see through the snowfall, one gnarled hand protecting his eyes. To Harry's surprise the man put a hand on his shoulder as he leaned over him for a look at the evolving fight.

"You couldn't even sit through their choral performance, and you call yourself their mother! Tell me, where've you been the last seven years since Snowdrop was born, hm?"

"Snowblossom saw me recently!" Papagena objected, crouching as she looked for more slurry to throw. Behind her Gammy crept up until she had ahold of her wrist which she used to attempt and pull her daughter to a standing position.

"Gerroff, Mam!"

"Recently!" Mrs. Henderson scoffed, crossing her arms in front of her ample bosom. "Nicky told me that his sister said it had been going on three years! That you were filthy and out of your mind—"

"Arl Scratch an' bovver," Tobias swore (or at least Harry assumed it must have been some sort of swear from how the man had said it). His hand tightened painfully on Harry's shoulder and then disappeared.

When Harry managed to tear his eyes away from the drama unfolding before them, he glanced back to see that Tobias had ducked his head and ambled off to the car, peering back over his shoulder every few steps until he made it to the passenger door. He tugged at it ineffectually for a few moments, cursing under his breath until he gave the locked door up for a lost cause and rounded the front end. Curiously, he crouched down until he was mostly hidden by the Marina's brown bonnet.

"Severus? Why's he—?"

"Shhhh!" Snape clamped a hand over Harry's mouth. He must have been fully invested now, for he and Harry—along with everyone else who had filed out of the church in the wake of the performance—were standing and watching with slightly stunned expressions on their faces.

"What are you doing talking to my daughter!? How fucking dare you? One child isn't enough to steal from a woman? Are you trying for another?"

"Why would I speak to that snotty little weasel? I've never said a word to your precious mongrel! One was enough of an imposition you put on us!"

Behind Papagena, Gammy gasped and let go of her daughter's arm, stumbling back. She hadn't been doing much good in attempting to redirect Snowdrop and Nicky's mother in any case, as, even though the woman was as thin as a rail, she seemed possessed of some sort of strange and unholy strength.

Gammy spun on her heel and darted off into the crowd, which Harry thought cowardly until he saw that she had lassoed both of her grandchildren to her, their faces stricken, and held them to her front while she attempted to block the exchange with her body and thick coat.

As if waking from a trance, Harry abruptly had a realisation that him watching so breathlessly along with everyone else was probably terribly hurtful, and he felt a reluctant stab of pity for the siblings.

Nicky's mother—well, his stepmother, at least—had as good as called her youngest son unwanted (he'd be a damned liar if he couldn't admit to knowing how that felt), and if she saw Nicky as a bastard, then by extension Snowdrop was twice the abomination.

That was only Nicky's stepmother, too. If Mrs. Henderson's words were hurtful, it was nothing compared to the sheer shame and embarrassment of everyone knowing that the woman causing a terrible scene in the middle of the street the evening of her children's choral concert (and right before both of their birthdays), was their actual blood and bone mother.

Harry was about to turn to Severus and suggest they both leave when to his astonishment he saw that his guardian had left his side and was marching toward the altercation.

From across the way, Harry thought he saw Headmistress Shaw and Ms. Tibbons hurrying down the steps of St. Mark's, their eyes as big as saucers as they tried to get to the fight as quickly as they could without slipping and falling on the iced-over cement.

Their loud cries for the combatants to stop went unheeded. In the end they didn't make it to the trio before Severus did, even though Snape did slide a bit near the end. He somehow managed to maintain his balance and looked as though he were surfing on the sheet of ice until he managed to stop by leaning over and planting his hands on the pavement to arrest his forward motion.

When he stood, he stomped through the mounting embankment of snow and stood up to his shins in the snowdrift, stationed between Papagena Hill and the two Hendersons.

With a quick glance back to see where Tobias had gotten to—and upon seeing that the elder Snape was still, for reasons unknown, cowering in front of the car—Harry slowly picked his way out towards where Severus was speaking in too low of a voice to the three for him to readily hear.

Before Harry made it there, Severus was joined by both the headmistress and Harry's music teacher, who were standing in a huddle, both shivering and with their arms wrapped around their middles. Neither had thought to put coats on before rushing out to try and break up the fight.

"This is entirely inappropriate," Harry made out, the deep voice clearly Severus'. He had pulled himself up to his full height, which was only perhaps an inch or so taller than Nicky's father, and he looked so pale that Harry knew it must have been wearing on the wizard to pretend that he wasn't freezing his cleppets off, standing in the snow as he was.

Both of his arms were extended, his fingers spread as he held his hands out to try and enforce a barrier of physical space between the Hendersons and Papagena Hill. For the moment it looked as though both the headmistress and Ms. Tibbons were willing to allow Severus the chance to mediate the disagreement, as neither seemed brave enough to step forward.

Harry crept onward until he approached where Gammy was holding onto Nicky and Snowdrop.

For the moment, they were both burying their faces into her chest, and Snowdrop actually looked to be heaving with deep sobs that were so quiet Harry couldn't even hear her.

He didn't announce his presence, but he did stand by. For a reason he couldn't name, it felt as though it were important to stand sentinel near the two. He wouldn't call the pair his friends, they still annoyed him too much for that, but he certainly felt bad for them in that moment.

In truth, he wasn't sure what else he could possibly do. No one had ever stood with him against Dudley or his relatives when the going got tough, but he surely had always wished someone would.

With this in mind, he met Gammy Hill's gaze when she glanced over the heads of her grandchildren at him, and he nodded resolutely at her with his face set in grim lines of determination. He was freezing and could barely repress his desire to shiver in the punishing wind and under the onslaught of the snow, but he stood, soldier like, at attention.

He watched as the old woman covered both Snow and Nicky's ears with her hands. With their heads pressed against her chest and turned toward one another, likely their other ears were muffled by her coat.

Harry almost wished she had an extra pair of arms and hands. It would have been nice if she could have cradled him too and protected him against the terrible words flying through the air.

"Harry, dear, you needn't stand there—"

Whatever she was going to say was cut off when Mr. Henderson's voice suppressed her own. It had a booming, belligerent quality that Harry instantly disliked. It reminded him far too much of his uncle.

"I won't stand for some scruffy barkeep to stand around issuing me orders! That's right, I know you! God knows what business you have here at a children's concert anyway—I find that questionable—but I won't stand for you to lecture me and my wife about what's appropriate! This bit of cheap trim has been haunting me for eight and a half years, mate! Eight and a half! Tell me you've never been chased around by one bloody bad decision you made, eh? I'll bet you can't! Spending the night with this clarty bewer was the worst effing decision I've made in my entire life!"

Severus exhaled forcefully through his nose, bull-like. Twin streamers of air vapour appeared below his nose, only reinforcing the impression that he looked like some sort of harried beast.

"Calm down," he demanded, glowering at the irate man.

"She shows up out of the blue whenever it's good and convenient for her, and it's never once been to offer Nicky any kind of support. No—it's 'he should be with me,' 'he needs to come home to his mam,' 'my present, my gift, me, me, mine, mine!'" Mrs. Henderson stomped her foot on the last word. "You're an absolute cow, Genie! What about my husband, hmm? Since the concept of ownership is so very important to you? What did that matter to you in the least when you took what was mine?"

"Didn't take nowt but what was offered to me," Papagena had crossed her arms and was leering at Nicky's father, pointedly ignoring his wife. She gave a twee little wave of her fingers at him and blew him a kiss with a wink which caused him to pale and his wife to grow purple with rage.

Severus looked as though he'd all but given up. He was maintaining his post as some manner of guard, preventing more handfuls of sleet from being thrown—and perhaps a whole lot more, if that led to further violence—but the look on his face told Harry quite plainly that he didn't consider the disagreement to be any of his business, and he appeared to be rather regretful that he'd stepped in the centre to begin with.

Harry was forced to agree with him, and he also had to wonder why Snape had bothered in the first place. It wasn't his natural inclination to seek out these sorts of rows and insert himself into them. They'd passed plenty on the streets of Cokeworth and Backbarrow while walking through in the past few months and it was normally the older wizard's practise to steer Harry ahead of himself and frog-march him away until they were no longer within earshot of whatever was happening.

His saying was usually as follows: "Not my circus, not my erumpents."

It wasn't clear why Snape had decided to intervene now except, Harry considered, that perhaps his job as barkeeper at The Yow had rubbed off on him, and now it was second nature to break up fights...

But then hadn't he been a professor for seven years? A head of house, at that? Surely that would have involved some degree of fisticuff de-escalation.

No, Harry decided. It was likely that the reason for Snape suddenly deciding to play the hero was actually much, much closer at hand.

Only about a bare two feet away, at that. Standing just out of the man's reach and slightly to his left and rear, shivering and shaking in her cheap skirt suit, her patent court shoes ruined by the wet.

Ms. Tibbons was staring at Severus as though he'd personally hung the moon just for her to enjoy, and Harry scowled deeply upon seeing it.

By now, Ms. Shaw had carefully put a foot out of line and was speaking in a low voice to the Hendersons who looked mutinous, and, perhaps following her lead, Ms. Tibbons carefully stepped away from the pavement and down, off the kerb, in order to intercept Papagena Hill where she stood in the space between two parked cars.

She deliberately manoeuvered Hill until she was standing with her back to the Hendersons and kept her grip on the woman's arms. From that vantage point, Harry could actually catch a glimpse of her drawn face.

He stood by his earlier observation that she appeared young, but there was something disconcertingly familiar about her. With her hair mussed from the wind, her choppy bob had begun to tuft out in all directions under her beret, and the lines that bracketed her mouth were taut. Even for how thin she was, she seemed to be possessed of a pair of fleshy cheeks—doubtless one of the ways in which Snowdrop resembled her mother.

Harry blinked hard and long and tried to search through the impressions he was getting. Where, oh where...?

"Come on, Genie... wouldn't you rather settle this inside? The vicar's very kindly offered us his office if you'd like to sit for a bit. I can brew you a cup of tea and we can speak a spell," Ms. Tibbons offered, her voice gentle.

Papagena shook off Harry's teacher's hands and pulled away with a contemptuous look. "Don't act like you've been my friend, Tabby!" She hissed. She appeared disgusted.

"We were friends once," Ms. Tibbons insisted, reaching for the other woman's hand once more. "Don't act like we weren't—"

"Playing Oranges and Lemons in the school yard when we were six doesn't count!"

"That's not what I'm talking about, don't be dense. We saw each other every day for months, just after we left school," Ms. Tibbons begged, her posture hunched over.

In response, Papagena sneered at her. "I wasn't there for you! As if I'd stick around that dump your family called a home just to see you! I was there for your brother."

"Well of course you were there for Bertie," Ms. Tibbons soothed, holding her hands with the palms up.

"Did you even know we didn't want you there?" Papagena Hill hissed, crossing her arms and hunching over against a positively arctic gust. "I let you stick around because if I didn't then your shit-for-brains brother wouldn't have given me the time of day."

The blonde woman standing opposite her straightened so that she stood rigid, these last words finally meeting their mark. Harry could see the way her fire-red nails were biting into her palms, hard enough to leave indentations surely.

"You always were a bitch, Genie..." Ms. Tibbons breathed, her face pinched.

"Better a bitch than a little idiot who doesn't even know when she's unwanted—"

"He really cared, you know? He always liked you. Even when you were coming up in school, he'd tell me he thought that you were real tidy. That's what he called you. 'A real tidy mott.'" Ms. Tibbons paused to draw her sleeve up over the fleshy part of her thumb and she looked to be rubbing at her eyes with it. When her arm fell back to her side, Harry saw the hem of her jacket was smudged with black and blue. "Maybe you didn't know that everyone in our class had something to say about you sprogging up so young with Ni—with... with your first.

"He felt bad for you. He asked me every week how you were doing, even after I told him you'd not come back after your first week back in September."

"Then he was a bigger idiot than I thought," Papagena rolled her eyes and looked away. For the first time it seemed she'd caught sight of Severus, and she gave him an odd look, seeming to size him up—from his buried feet up to his head—out of the corner of her eye. She frowned at him, but Harry couldn't fathom what it might have been that she thought was lacking in his kuya.

She sure was a piece of work.

"Say whatever you want about him now, Genie; he was the only one who would have wanted to be there for you. He was the only one who was there for you. You're going to stand there, cold as ice, and swear up and down that you always hated him—that you always hated the both of us—but he was the one that went to the hospital with you even though it was Christmas Eve.

"He let you kip in his bed for months when you didn't want to go home to your Mam and Da', he told you he'd claim Ni—claim him as his own if you wanted... and it only took you a bare two months after that before you threw him to the dogs!"

Nicky and Snowdrop's mother scoffed and tossed her head back, her hair flying around her face in clumps. "I wasn't the genius who decided to cop to possession."

Stomping her foot now, her hands shaking by her sides with rage, Ms. Tibbons soldiered on in the face of an utterly unrepentant menace. "That wasn't his!"

"That's what he told the police—"

"Bertie was a lot of things, Genie, but he Didn't. Do. Heroin."

Harry blinked, feeling a bit of snow melting against his eyelid as he did, the track of it coursing into his eye. That was that word... like from the Guns N' Roses song 'My Michelle.' The word that Severus had refused to explain to him...

He couldn't shake the confusion. Of course Bertie Tibbons couldn't do heroine: he was a bloke. Although it did sound as though he had tried his best to play the hero for Papagena Hill, even with as undeserving as she was.

Harry had never liked what he'd heard about Severus' erstwhile friend from his days at Rowky Syke. Bertie sounded like the kind of boy he'd always known to avoid. The kind of boy he always would have avoided, even without having been warned by his aunt or by Severus himself. Bad news. Trouble.

'In bovver.'

Yet, from what he was hearing now, it sounded as though Bertie might have been an alright guy where it counted... at least if he was doing it for the sake of a... what had he called her...? 'A right tidy mott.'

"That's what you say. You always were too stupid to see what was going on in your own house..." Papagena spoke the words but looked for all the world as though she couldn't convince herself of their truth. Where she'd had her arms crossed over her chest in a combative posture before, she now looked as though she were hugging herself. She was still looking at Severus, but now her gaze was distant. He was nothing more than a point in the near distance to fix her eyes upon.

"Bertie did an eight-ball of coke almost every night since the day he got out of gaol the first time—"

Boy, that was a lot of pop to drink, Harry winced. Even Severus limited himself to one bottle or so a week.

"Since he got out after copping to your heroin, he's gone back in at least four more times for theft, assault, and vandalism. My brother is a criminal. I'm not stupid; I know that," Harry's teacher seethed, her words emerging staccato. "Do you know why he doesn't even bother to try? Why he doesn't like the outside? He told me last time he was free that he knows his wee'an is out there, and he can't live with that—"

At this Papagena straightened and scoffed, her face contorted in an ugly expression of disbelief. "His? She ain't his! No more than Nicky's his!"

"Don't treat me like an idiot, Genie! I heard what the two of you got up to in his room—"

Papagena rolled her eyes skyward. "Obviously, you little snoop! Only, Snow was born early and Bertie was put away in February. There's no way she could be his," she said, her lip rolling up contemptuously.

"She... she's not?"

"Of course she's bloody well not! What, are you disappointed?" She mocked, her voice going high in an approximation of Ms. Tibbons shrill, nasally chirp. "Oh, isn't it wonderful? I get to be an auntie?"

She then spat, the glob of it landing at Ms. Tibbon's feet. "I bet you were over the moon that you got to have your niece in class. Well guess what: she ain't. She's of no relation to you. Serves you right for making that little brat into the mother of God."

Ms. Tibbons took a step back, and from what Harry could see of her—turned away as she was—she snuck a quick, shared look at Severus, who had been listening silently the whole time, his face ashen as he heard an account of what had happened to his childhood friend. Then, turning back to Papagena, she shook her head, her frizz—which was festooned with cheerful flakes of bright white snow—pillowing out around her shoulders.

"I didn't make her Mary because I thought she was my niece. Your daughter is a very good actress, but naturally you have no interest in that. I'll admit it might have been nice if I'd had a niece to call my own, but now I'm just glad that I can tell Bert that he doesn't have to worry over his own child out in the world without him. I can't imagine the relief he'll feel when he realises how big of a whore you really are."

"You bitch—!"

Ms. Tibbons turned away and seemed to break from the daze her conversation had held over her, and she didn't see the way in which Papagena stooped to scoop up another handful of sleet.

Harry was certain that she scraped along the kerb just to get a few rocks in with the ice chunks.

As quick as he could he rushed forward in an attempt to warn her, but in the end it wasn't necessary.

Severus was far quicker.

As Papagena had stood, he snatched her wrist as quick as a viper diving for a rat and held it up and over her head in a painful position, his grasp so strong that both of their arms were shaking with strain as she fought against him. Within moments the mixture dripped out of her palm and sluiced down her forearm, soaking the sleeve of the blouse she was wearing. It wasn't until it had all seeped out of her hand that he finally released her, his fingers spasming as though he'd been forced to touch something highly unpleasant.

"Don't act all high and mighty! You're no better! I remember—"

"I stopped running with Bertram Tibbons almost twenty years ago," Severus scoffed, sounding offended.

Papagena's mouth formed into a tiny 'o' of realisation as a malicious glee lit her eyes from within, making her appear faintly demonic. "You left our school with that prissy red-head after year six," she corrected. "I saw you with Bertie every summer a few years after that, you liar!"

Snape's face twitched in a mild wince, but he otherwise didn't move a muscle.

"You think because you went to some posh school that you were better than all of us! You're not!" She cackled and shook out the arm that had become sodden from ice melt. She must have been growing nearly hypothermic in her thin shirt. Indeed, her lips were turning blue. "You wouldn't act so big if you knew—"

Sighing, Severus raised an eyebrow in the expression he customarily wore when faced with unrelenting stupidity. "What am I supposed to know?"

"Who he was," she giggled. She'd begun to shake, her teeth audibly chattering.

"Who who was? Bertie?" Snape asked, coming forward to grab her by the arm again. This time he grasped her upper arm and she stumbled against him, looking to be too weak from the cold to hold herself up properly. He quickly glanced about for the Ford Cortina and found it parked on the opposite side of the road with the door ajar.

Well. That explained where she'd come from and why she'd not been wearing her coat.

The car was idling, warm air spilling out into the night from the heater.

He began to march her over, obviously intent on forcing her into the passenger seat.

"I'm no more blind to Bertie's faults than his sister is," Harry heard Severus say, his voice becoming more distant the further they walked.

The last Harry heard from Papagena's poison mouth was an indignant "Pfah! No. Not—"

The wind whistled.