A/N: Last chapter I had a couple of intrepid commenters who identified the erumpent in the room. The Assa Marra used by Snape's father (and other characters at times). BlueRowley and Sunset74 mentioned that as readers, we are as confused by Tobias Snape's speech as Harry seems to be. That's pretty much on purpose. I had the option of providing rough translations at the end of the chapters, but given that the story is told from Harry's point of view, and he's confused by Tobias' vernacular, I thought the best way forward was to allow the readers to be equally confused. If there's a lot of interest I could direct anyone curious towards the resources I used to piece together an approximation of the dialect, but usually I tried to make clear what was being said either through context or through Severus' responses to his father.

Not long after, Snape managed to impress upon the young wizard the need for sleep. The next day was merely a Thursday, and what had transpired wasn't enough to justify excusing Harry from school, nor Severus from work. In the morning, both of them had roles to fulfill, and all the better to do it from a place of restfulness rather than ruin.

Harry didn't bother to put up even a token fight. He'd nodded his own agreement, wishing, once more, that he'd merely avoided answering the phone when it had rung hours earlier. If he'd done that, then it would have been a quiet evening in with Severus. They could have discussed what went wrong with the potion that day, and maybe Harry even could have helped in some way the next time Snape went off to work on it.

Now, that was all blown away into irrelevance. There was a fifteen stone nuisance taking up the entirety of the sofa in the other room, and neither Harry nor Snape knew what to do about the unexpected spanner that had fallen into the gears. It had brought their entire routine grinding to a halt.

Perhaps, at that, it would be refreshing to go off to school in the morning. That, at least, would remain the same.

Before Severus managed to cancel the muffliato charm on the doorway, Harry's stomach made itself known to the two, growling a fierce protest to the neglect it had suffered.

"Hungry?"

"I'll be fine," Harry denied, knowing he could manage an evening without a meal. He'd done so many times in the past, and really, it wasn't Severus' fault in the least that things had gone so far off the rails.

It appeared as though Severus disagreed, however, for he motioned for Harry to wait, looking dissatisfied with Harry's casual dismissal of his famishment, and he spent a few minutes rifling through the larder, tossing opened boxes of crackers and dented tins of potted meat onto the top of the cooker as he went.

"Really, it's alright, Severus—"

Snape ignored him and continued to unearth old packets of unperishables, apparently finding none of them suitable, until he discovered an unopened package of Twiglets. Seemingly satisfied with the nutritional content of the baked wheat sticks, he tossed them over to Harry with a small grunt.

"We'll not be making a habit of this."

Harry caught the package with ease, his eyes widening in appreciation. He didn't often get to indulge in these sorts of snack foods. "Of what?"

"Of eating in your room. Take those upstairs with you. And when you get there, I expect you to lock the door from the inside."

Harry clutched the Twiglets to his chest, his eyes widening a bit. "Lock myself in? Do you think he'll do anything...?"

Severus was already moving to where some of Harry's books and papers were stacked, and he tidied them up into a pile, shoving them into Harry's bag before he handed that over for Harry to sling about his shoulder.

"I don't expect so, but..." here Severus paused, looking uncomfortable. He gave a small shrug, his eyes sweeping the floor as he refused to say any more.

"Oh..."

"Lock your door, Harry. I'll come by when I go to bed in a few minutes and place wards over it. You'll be perfectly fine."

Harry nodded. If Snape thought so, then doubtless it was so. Severus was good like that, or at least his word was. If Severus had it in mind to protect him over the course of the night, then Harry figured that he may as well have been rolled up in a cloud of cotton wool. Surely, nothing would be touching him.

Still, it felt rather like trapping himself to not be able to leave. Even though he'd been in a similar position over the years when he'd been locked into the cupboard under the Dursleys' stairs, something about feeling a prisoner in Snape's old bedroom for the evening made him give a once over to any possible needs he might have before he was allowed out in the morning.

"I need a wee..."

With a long-suffering sigh, Severus waved an impatient hand toward the back door. "By all means."

"What about my teeth? I can't brush if I eat while I'm up in my room and then can't leave—"

"For the love of—your teeth won't rot out of your skull after one night, Potter! Go use the loo. When you're finished, I want you upstairs and out of the way." Snape's eyes glinted down at him. He might have looked menacing had Harry not known that the man was as desperately worried about the change in household dynamic as Harry himself was. "Do we understand one another?"

Rather than answer, Harry made haste to the privy out back, setting his bag down on the chipped linoleum floor for a moment so that he could use the facilities unencumbered. The Twiglets he stashed in the body of the bag, hoping that if he did so, that their new guest wouldn't see them and that Harry wouldn't be made to share.

In all likelihood Severus would take care of feeding his father, but either way, Harry felt as though he were starving, and he hadn't a mind to split his spoils with a stranger that had so thoroughly disrupted his life.

When he emerged from using the toilet and grabbed up his school bag, he managed to leg it up the stairs without earning a single glance from the newcomer who'd seemingly colonized their sitting room (and he'd been looking over his shoulder to check).

The elder Snape was far too absorbed in watching the fuzzy display of Severus' old television set to pay him any mind. His rheumy eyes looked to be transfixed upon the chattering news anchors, and they appeared bleary; likely from a combination of lack of sleep and residual intoxication.

When he made it to his room, Harry lost no time at all in doing as Severus had bid him. He locked the door and sat on the floor with his back up to the bed frame, liberating the package of Twiglets from the confines of his bag and stuffing handfuls of the crispy morsels into his mouth, paying little heed to their flavour.

It was early yet, and really there hadn't been much sense in Severus sending him off to bed before it was even nine in the evening, but Harry knew that if he allowed himself to, he'd likely manage to make for the land of Nod with little prompting.

Indeed, after he polished off his snack, having sucked the seasoning off of his fingers to clean them, he spent only a few minutes under the covers with his copy of Richard III before he managed to drift away.

The play seemed to have that effect on him. It somehow managed to be both incomprehensibly dense and unforgivably boring.

In the morning, Harry wasted no time at all in attempting to evacuate the house. He stopped in the kitchen only to use the facilities out back, and to pick up the half-eaten bag of crisps that Severus had left out to be his breakfast.

A tiny note in Severus' cramped, spiky handwriting instructed him to take the remainder, and not to neglect at least a glass of milk before Harry left the house.

Snape's father remained asleep in the front room, the sound of his snores seeming to shake the very foundations of the narrow, terraced house.

With the assurance that he was most likely in the clear, which he gained after having listened to the uninterrupted quality of the man's somnolent wheezing, Harry crept to the front door, letting himself out into the crisp November morning.

He felt incomparable relief when he managed his way out without any sort of confrontation. So far, the elder Snape hadn't given him any reason to fear him, but Harry was all too aware that that could change. Uncle Vernon had been rather charming around good company. It was when he was alone with the family that the truth of his character shone out.

The walk to school was refreshingly normal. Nothing in the rest of the community of Cokeworth had changed at all, even as seemingly everything had changed within the Snape household.

At least, that was the case until Harry made it to the bridge that spanned the river.

He took his normal leisurely pace across, glancing over the stonework to survey the lay of the riverbed.

His eyes drifted immediately toward where he knew the lean-tos to be, only to find what appeared to have been a massacre had wiped the encampment away.

Swallowing now, he stopped and walked until he could rest his palms on the low wall, squinting to try and make out the carnage.

Littering the waterfront were ripped tarpaulins and oil cloths, broken spokes that had once held aloft the makeshift roofs for the campers, and the remains of several unfortunate people's livelihoods.

Harry grimaced. It looked like the police had done more than simply round up drunks. They must have busted up the entire encampment from the looks of things.

A couple of the regulars were standing about, shifting through the carnage. Harry couldn't get a good enough look at their faces to see whether they were enduring this newest hardship with any amount of equanimity.

One of the people, a woman, was standing near the riverbed, allowing the churning waters to wash up over her feet. Although she was clad in a pair of rubber boots, Harry still couldn't imagine that she was comfortable. By her side was the poorly-looking dog that he imagined belonged to Snape's father. He was snapping his jaws at the frothy spray of water over the rocks, and leaping into the shallows, attempting to catch fish. It looked as though the woman was supervising him, at least for that moment.

She, at least, Harry was able to see, and her face—surprisingly youthful—looked drawn. Indeed, she didn't look as though she were much older than Severus, but for all that, she'd clearly lived a difficult life if the lines running down her cheeks, and the choppy quality of her hair were any indication.

Harry left the side of the bridge with reluctance, wishing that the police hadn't felt it necessary to tear down the poor people's tents. It was nearing December, and as far north as Backbarrow was, the cold had already set in.

He made it to Rowky Syke with a lot on his mind, not least of all the fact that he could be grateful for the heating in the school. He felt rather toasty as soon as he'd walked through the doors, and the temperature in Mr. Fowler's classroom was deliciously comfortable after the too-brisk walk in the morning air.

Harry couldn't help but to think that he was fortunate for the warmth. It became harder to begrudge Snape's father the shelter he'd gained in returning to Spinner's End, then. Harry wouldn't wish living out in the cold on anyone. There had been times with the Dursleys where his aunt had thrown him out for the evening, and he'd sought refuge in the garden shed, and that had been far further south, and during the late summer—it hadn't been nearly so frigid, but Harry remembered well the discomfort of the elements and the fear that came with exposure in the night.

The day proceeded as most Thursdays did: lessons with Mr. Fowler, their break, lunch, and then music in the afternoon. He'd had a difficult time paying attention, for he was left to wonder what it was that Severus and his father were up to while he was gone. Was there now a dog in his bedroom? Had the older Mr. Snape made a mess of things while Severus was gone at work?

"Harry?" A pleasant voice interrupted his reverie.

The boy blinked, looking around and seeing that the eyes of most of the class—seated in their customary semi-circle—were upon him, with Ms. Tibbons calling his name. "Er... yeah?"

"We're singing to I Saw Three Ships. I'd appreciate your attention and your voice."

"Sorry, Ms. Tibbons," he muttered, flipping open the booklet with the music he was meant to be singing from. He had a difficult time in locating the song, and struggled for so long that Snowdrop, who was seated beside him, gave a dramatic sigh and snatched the book from him, turning to the proper page before she shoved it back into his hands.

One of her fingers pointed to the line they'd left off on. "There. We were there."

"Er... thanks."

They sang through the song at least three times more before moving onto the next carol.

It was all in preparation for the Christmas performance. In addition to the Nativity, their class was meant to perform a few selections, while other classes had been assigned the rest.

Harry still hadn't bothered to tell Severus. He wasn't sure that he even wanted him to know about it. If he were lucky, perhaps Severus would have to work, and then he wouldn't sit sneering in one of the pews of St. Mark's at the lack of talent on display.

The young wizard could scarcely stand to think of how embarrassed he'd be for Snape to see him like that. Decidedly not cool.

At long last the day ended, and Harry lingered longer than he normally did while packing away his bag. Ultimately, he wore out Mr. Fowler's patience, who had waited at the front while Harry took an extraordinarily long time in gathering his things.

A not too subtle cough, and a pointed wave towards the door were what eventually provided enough incentive for him to finally leave the room, and Mr. Fowler followed him out, turning off the lights and locking up the classroom behind him.

By the time Harry exited the school building, most of the students had trickled away, either walking home themselves, or—as the weather had taken a turn for the frosty—having been picked up by their parents.

He himself was made to pull his jacket closer around him, wishing it were just a tad thicker. Perhaps it was time to ask Severus about a coat, he mused, as he tucked his hands under his armpits to conserve heat.

The bridge was the coldest part of the walk, for the churning water from the river seemed to bring with it gales of icy air, and he didn't linger for long. At least not for the same length that he had that same morning. He did, however, stop briefly and search out the waterfront for the presence of the dog.

There, alongside the violent rapids, he saw that the vagrants had made short work of putting their tents to rights, apparently having found blankets—although whether by charity or by any other means remained unclear—that they had draped over the outside of the tarpaulins; a meager effort to ward off the chill.

He saw the same woman from earlier, poking at a fire in a great metal bin, but her companion was nowhere to be seen, which likely meant that Harry would be seeing the dopey beast later on.

He wasn't sure whether he ought to be glad for the dog or sad for the woman.

It was certainly a good turn that Severus' father had gotten in out of the cold, but it seemed unfair that he should receive such a boon out of luck alone. Not everyone had a son like Severus to take them in off the streets.

That was when a truly nasty gust of wind blew into Harry's face off the water; so cold that he nearly lost his breath, and he sprinted as fast as he could to get off the bridge, where the husks of old, closed-down businesses along the bank at least offered some protection by way of breaking up the wind.

Cokeworth began on the other side of the bridge, and it was amazing how much of a difference could be seen by merely walking over the river.

Not that Backbarrow was any sort of jewel of civilisation, but it was at least green and picturesque. Most of the buildings were occupied, even if they served a community with scant funds.

Cokeworth was, by contrast, very nearly a ghost town. It was still inhabited, but seemingly by wraiths, or phantoms, or... well. Harry couldn't quite put his finger on it. The sorts of being who sequestered themselves away, covering their faces with their hands when the sunlight hit them and probably hissing upon exposure.

Almost none of the businesses were open. Antique signage was still posted from as long ago as the sixties, with hand-painted advertisements and products on offer that simply didn't exist anymore. The window fronts that weren't boarded up were either broken or barricaded from the inside with strange assortments of junk. None of them bore signs that indicated they could be let out because the assumption was that they were all available.

Of course, no one in his right mind would look to let commercial property in Cokeworth.

Once one made it to the residential streets, it seemed even more barren, with half of the terraced houses having been torn down by the council once they'd become dangerous attractants to squatters. It had left large, gaping holes in the uniform rows of brick, and it produced the strange impression as a resident that one would be attempting to evade being the next house on the demolition bill. As though it were only a matter of time until a Compulsory Purchase Order appeared nailed to the door.

Of course, some of these things were outside of Harry's ability to imagine, but he knew well enough that Cokeworth seemed blighted, and that the feeling of discomfort he felt when walking the streets wasn't a mere fabrication of his own mind. The place was eerie, simple as.

He was always grateful when he finally arrived at the last house on Spinner's End, and that day was no exception, even knowing that he wouldn't be privy to his blissful solitude as soon as he made it in the door.

Indeed, upon entering, he was treated to the loud howling of two separate, but equally off-key, creatures.

The first was Severus' father, who was apparently doing his level best to wrestle a very unfortunate boot from the mouth of the dog that Harry had so often seen by the river. The dog, for his part, seemed to be thrilled by the game, and he would allow the boot to go for a few moments before he would pull back on his haunches, his front legs wide and spread, and grab for the boot again, baying joyfully in between bouts of this tug-of-war.

Snape's dad didn't seem to be enjoying this activity whatsoever.

"Bloody filthment—let'er gaw!"

The dog was far too large and rambunctious for Harry to want to risk putting himself in the middle of the fray, thus he stood with his back pressed against the door, watching the display with wide eyes and wondering whether he ought to risk the short distance he'd need to cover in order to make it to the staircase.

"Let'er gaw!" The old Snape bellowed again, pulling with all his might. The dog finally did, and the man fell back onto his backside—and then some—with an angry yell.

Harry was reasonably sure that in the middle of the fracas, no one had yet noticed that he'd borne witness to the misadventure. With this in mind, he attempted to sidle along the perimeter, unobtrusively, and with his back and rear pressed against the wall.

He made it about halfway to the staircase before the dog was distracted from his play by the whiff of a newcomer, and the great beast alerted his master to the interloper with an enthusiastic "Woof!"

That was all the warning Harry got before the eight stone hound had him bowled over on the ground, sticking his wet, black nose along his neck and face, pressing his snout under Harry's glasses for a better sniff of him.

"D'an cur dog! D'an!"

The beast was now enthusiastically licking Harry's face while the boy attempted to push him back with both hands, helpless but to laugh as Cur Dog's tongue tickled under his jaw.

Suddenly, the weight of the hound was lifted from him, and Harry managed to catch his breath enough to open his eyes once more; seeing that Severus' father had seized the dog by the skin at his neck and had hauled the excited canine off of his unwitting prey.

The large man flung the dog easily to the corner, barking something to the overgrown puppy that left the dog looking suitably chastised for the moment, before he reached down and grasped at Harry's thin forearm, wrenching him to his feet.

"Theer's a laddo, yeh'll be ahreet."

Harry staggered back against the wall as soon as Old Snape released his arm, blinking rapidly as his eyes darted between the dog, whose tail thumped a happy 4:4 against the floor, and Severus' father, who was looking him up and down with an inscrutable expression. His pale grey eyes appeared to be sizing him up, and Harry wished he could be an inch tall, rather than his modest three foot nine inches.

"An' now Sev'rus' nowt 'ere, thou ken tell us: whaa t' dickins ir thee?"

Harry blinked more, his blank expression displaying his incomprehension.

"Wh'ista?" Snape's dad asked again, his accent having the initial H sound coming out like the hoot of an owl.

"I… my name's Harry—"

Snape's father snarled and rolled his eyes so violently they might well have popped from his eye sockets and rolled to the floor. He worked up a cheek of spittle and hawked it to his heel. "Reet. Thas wha' Sev'rus did say. Whaa ir ye?"

Harry blinked with wide eyes, aware that he probably looked quite dim. It was usually a good strategy with his aunt and uncle to act as stupid as they thought he was in truth. Sometimes they decided he was too much of a dullard to possibly be held responsible. Not always, but… sometimes. When he was lucky.

Apparently having run out of patience, Old Snape stuck his fisted hands onto his hips and leaned over him a bit. "Waa ir ye here for!? In our house?"

Harry sighed, his mouth making a small 'o' of realisation. "Oh… I'm here… er… Severus was… he took me in. Over… over the summer. He's my—er— my c-custodian.

"I… I live here now." He concluded, not able to suppress the urge to wring his hands together. There was no other way to channel the nervous jitter he'd developed.

Now it was Snape Senior's turn to blink like an uncomprehending dunce.

"Thou leeves here?" He repeated, slow enough that the words sounded like dripping treacle.

"Yeah." Harry pointed a finger upstairs. "Severus gave me his old room. The one with all the posters—"

"Ods bobs! Aa know whilkan belangs t' Sev'rus', wee barn, thisn is our house!"

"Oh," Harry said again, feeling rather annoyed by this point. He couldn't help himself as he straightened up, finally, and rolled his eyes. "I thought maybe you forgot. 'Cause you were gone for so long and all."

Snape's father stared at him, some fierce emotion shining bright in his luminous silver eyes, and Harry worried for a moment that he'd tread too far, before the man tossed his head back and released a roar of bracing laughter. Loud. Inelegant. Rude almost.

Harry quirked his lip in a reluctant smile, even though he didn't see what it was that he'd said that could have been seen as all that funny.

It was hard to wring even a bare chuckle from Severus, and he'd never once succeeded in getting his relatives to laugh, at least as far as anything witty he might have said. They had laughed plenty of times at Harry's expense.

Interspersing his spirited hooting, Severus' dad bent over almost double, wheezing as he gripped his knees for support.

He finally calmed himself after a few moments, all the while Harry eyed the stairwell, wondering if this might have been his chance to beat a hasty retreat. For all that he was happy he could have made the man laugh, he still wasn't at all sure of the stranger, and he'd have preferred to get to know him while Severus was within screaming distance.

Of course, he still wore the tiny pin that would alert the older wizard to any trouble, but it was best that it shouldn't get to that point to begin with.

"I've got homework, Mr. Snape… er… loads of it. Severus doesn't like it if he gets home and I've not done it. So, I'll just—" and he raised a hesitant hand up, jerking his thumb in the direction of the stairs. "I'll be in my room."

Mr. Snape snorted with alarming inelegance, his mouth pulling into a mocking sneer as he fisted his hands on his hips.

"Reet real stickler, izz'ee?"

"He's erm…" Harry scratched at one wonky lock of hair that was growing out of his left temple. "He was a teacher, so I guess he takes it pretty serious."

The elder Snape's sneer grew more pronounced. "A teacher?" He parroted back, sounding incredulous. "Whatn dud'ee 'ave enny bizness larnin'?"

Harry opened his mouth to reply but then stopped short, his jaw hanging slack as he realized that he didn't know whether he could be honest with Snape's father about his son's former profession.

Finally, with a gulp, he thought up a suitable lie. "S-science."

"Science," Mr. Snape deadpanned, glaring now as he positively loomed over the small boy.

Swallowing, Harry managed to nod, even as he averted his eyes away from the rough man's twisted visage.

"Te foond to tell us that efter mithy years a' that wibbly skooal of 'is that 'ee went an' were a 'science teacher.'"

Wibbly school… that must have meant the castle Severus so often spoke of, in tones of mixed admiration and antipathy. Hogwarts.

So, the elder Snape must have had some inkling of magic, then.

"It's sorta like science," Harry hedged, still not willing to give more ground when he was unsure of his footing.

"Ohh," the older man intoned, his voice sardonic. "It's laik science."

Harry knew then that he hadn't fooled the wily old drunk. He had nothing else to say, so he offered up a reluctant shrug.

"An' why's 'ee nowt larnin' barns their letters ennymore?"

"He… he quit." Harry swallowed, feeling once more a deep sense of regret over what Snape had needed to sacrifice in order to care for him. "He works at The Jiggered Yow now…"

This Severus' father waved away with an impatient gesture, as if to say this was not news to him. "Our son weren't nivver wantin' to be enny teacher, nor enny barkeep."

"What did Severus want to be?" Harry asked, his curiosity piqued. At least if being a teacher hadn't been high on Severus' priorities for his life, perhaps Harry wouldn't need to be so very regretful that he'd stripped Snape of the opportunity.

The man opposite him let out a snort of laughter. "'Ee were darn 'is best to make fer t' leetest fingert theeaf in t' isles!"

Harry's face must have shown his shock, for Snape's father let ought another spirited round of laughter at Harry's (and perhaps also Severus') expense.

"'Ee laiked 'is rock music, an' 'ee laiked them bonny motts. Best we could reckon, 'ee'd've made fer nowt much'a owt barrie."

Harry frowned at this, feeling a rising tide of upset forming in the pit of his gut. Although he didn't understand the particulars of whatever Old Snape must've been saying, he could at least deduce that the thrust of the man's assessment of his son was overwhelmingly negative.

"Severus is really smart, Mr. Snape. You didn't think he was smart?"

Harry couldn't hide the tiny undercurrent of hurt from his voice. He hated the idea that anyone else didn't see his kuya as the impressive, imposing person he was. To him, Snape was titan-esque in stature; if not physically, then at the very least in terms of his intellect.

He always made Harry feel rather slow-witted by comparison.

Besides that, Harry took a dim view of anyone who would give such a poor valuation of his own son's worth. He'd been on the receiving end of such searing criticisms his whole life, and he knew that Severus could hardly have been deserving of it.

"Aye, 'ee were smart aneuff. Smart mouthed," the man groused.

Harry straightened and sent a slightly accusatory glare the elder Snape's way. "I think he's brilliant."

Snape's father made a non-committal grunting noise as he waved a dismissive hand, but its effect was lessened somewhat as the dog, at the same moment, made a strangled sort of snort, his back leg moving like the arm of a metronome to scratch an itch under one of its ears.

"Cur Dog seems itchy," Harry observed, hoping that the change in subject would help to diffuse the tense atmosphere that had developed.

This produced another grunt from the man, this one acknowledging the truth of the statement. "'Ee's got a spot o' the mange. That an' a cwoat full of l'al biddies."

"Biddies?" Harry asked.

"Whatcher call them…?" Snape Sr. snapped his fingers a few times, apparently attempting to find the common English word. "Fleas. Ee's sonsy with them."

Harry couldn't cover his wince, as he looked over at the oblivious canine, whose long tongue lolled to the side while he scratched with increasing vehemence.

Well. There was no way Severus would like that development.

"Right… erm… well, I'm sure we can give him a good wash. I'm meant to have my bath tonight; he can use the water after I'm done," Harry offered.

"Aback t' house? 'Ee'll freeze 'is cleppets off—"

Harry shook his head. "Severus brings the tub inside the kitchen for baths. And he does something to the water so it keeps warm," Harry informed him, attempting to be evasive about the fact that what his son was, in fact, doing was charming the water to remain hot in the old, tin washbasin.

"Ahh," the man drawled, seeming amused. "Yeh 'ave it yeazier than dud we, shoor as a gun."

There were several, laden beats of silence where Harry managed to make a few more inches of progress on his eternal trek towards the staircase when his escape was thwarted once more by the man who was turning out to be the chattiest member of the Snape family.

"Seems queerly to us. To see 'im laik this."

"Yeah," Harry hastened to agree, even as he hadn't the first clue what he was agreeing with.

"To see 'im a t'ol fella to 'is oan wee'an, 'imself."

Harry shrugged. "Yeah," he agreed again, "I guess he is pretty tall..." he trailed off, not entirely sure where Snape's dad was going with that observation.

"Nowt 'Tall,'" the man said, making some effort to say the word the same way Harry had. "T'ol. Arl.. 'Old.' Yer arl man—"

"Mine?" Harry asked.

For perhaps the first time he was grateful to Mr. Fowler for the inclusion of Richard III in their curriculum. Elsewise, he'd have not managed to follow a great deal of the elder Snape's speech.

"Aye. Thine. Laik a Da'—"

Harry straightened up and raised both hands up, perhaps in an attempt to get out in front of this dangerous diversion. "Oh, no—no. He's not my dad."

"Aye, 'ee sed 'ee weren't—"

"Right, but he's not like my dad, see? Severus is... he's like..." As Harry struggled, the man before him's nonplussed expression grew rather patronising, and the boy didn't care for it one whit.

"He's like my brother," he finally said, breathing out a sigh of relief when, as soon as the words emerged from his mouth, they rang true in the air before him. Harry liked the thought of Snape being his brother a great deal.

If only he could convince the older wizard to accept the role.

"Thy broffer, what thee sed?"

"Yeah," Harry answered back, steeling his backbone with a bit of defiance.

Severus' father sneered, looking as though he pitied the poor, delusional boy before him a great deal. "Well an' what's that make us?"

The young wizard swallowed and frowned. "Not father and son."

"Nae," Old Snape said, his voice soft. It was hard to understand whether he meant to agree or disagree with Harry's assessment until he next spoke.

"Nowt fatther an' son."