Palm Sunday came with a bit of fuss, and it took Harry by surprise, given that he'd assumed that all of the fuss would have ended the previous week.

Not only because of the impromptu visit from Mr. Weasley and the head-spinning news that Tobias Snape had fathered Snowdrop Hill, but because just a week before, Harry had been baptised. Sponsored by Lola and Severus as his godparents for the sake of the ceremony and in the eyes of the church, he'd afterwards stepped into the confessional and had made a rather meager confession to theft from his aunt (the tomatoes and courgette he'd taken to feed himself and Severus back in July) and cursing in the wake of seeing Die Hard. When he'd felt pressed by his own conscience, he had scrounged around for a few instances in which he'd lied as well, using them to pad out the larger offenses.

He'd spent many nights reflecting on what he might confess and had come up decidedly empty-handed, yet the priest had been happy to assign him a number of prayers to repent, even with a dearth of material to correct against.

Harry had pledged his restitution and was summarily offered to partake of the Eucharist.

Although the full ceremony had been long, it had felt as though he'd walked through it in a sort of fugue.

After, on the way back to Backbarrow, Harry had been so quiet that Severus actually needled him over it. Normally, Harry would have sung along to Quiet Riot almost so loudly that it would drown out the recording.

His attention had been captured by the road, however, and he'd mumbled something irrelevant, having not even paid attention to Severus' question.

Abruptly, the music cut off.

Harry raised his head from the glass and rubbed at his cheek, which he'd had smashed against the pane. The glasses he'd removed to his hand he pushed back into place on the bridge of his nose.

"Out with it. Now."

"Out with what?" Harry asked, his voice betraying how tired and irritable he was. He'd felt greatly affected by the three joint sacraments he'd partaken in, but in the wake of that, he was drained. As though it'd taken everything in him to sanctify his soul.

There was some deep, chasmic part of him that felt rubbed raw by his encounter, particularly with the Eucharist, although properly speaking it'd begun when Father Pearson had initiated the exorcistic portion of the baptism.

Where the priest had touched his nostrils and mouth, they had burned fiercely, and the oil he'd been anointed with had felt hot against his brow. Harry was grateful that he'd not been dunked into a full body of water—as he'd heard was done in some places and circumstances—as he was quite certain that he would have been pulled under by some force and drowned.

For some part of him had fought. Some part of him had lost. It left him with a searing headache, right along the front and right side of his temple, which he rubbed with his fingertips, encountering the raised scar tissue he'd been cursed with since he was too young to remember.

"Is your head hurting you?" Severus asked instead of answering Harry's question, his eyes narrowing and flitting back and forth between observing Harry and watching the road.

"N—" Harry then stopped himself before he finished fibbing, thinking that it was a terrible way to start off the hour after he'd given confession. Did he really want another lie saddled upon his conscience so soon after he'd seen it wiped clean?

"Yeah, a bit," he admitted instead, massaging the scar beneath his fingers with a bit more pressure.

"Probably it was all that incense," his kuya mused. "It's always stronger during Lent. My sinuses haven't been so terribly assaulted for many a year," Snape groused.

Harry grunted, not saying what he'd thought which was that Snape's potions and the fumes they put off were about a thousand times worse on any given day.

"Severus, if you're my godfather, does that mean you're not my kuya anymore?"

"If you take 'kuya' to mean older brother in truth, then I've never been your kuya."

"Yeah, but—"

"A kuya is an older male of the same approximate generation as yourself, thus it probably always would have been more appropriate to have called me your 'Tito,' which is a generation removed. An uncle, if you will."

Harry's nose wrinkled at this information. "I have an uncle, and I don't like him much." He crossed his arms over his thin chest and pouted out at the passing countryside. "I don't want another uncle. I wantyou to be my kuya."

Then, Snape had snorted and bent over to retrieve something from the passenger seat, causing the car to swerve a bit with his inattention. Harry paled.

When he straightened back up, it was with the case for Quiet Riot's tape in his grasp. With his left hand he popped the tape out of the player and closed it back in its case.

For several moments the only sound that passed between them was the rhythmic noise coming from the tyres against the road.

"Incidentally, you also already have a godfather," Snape admitted to him, seemingly with great reluctance. "So, if you find me to also be superfluous in that role, I can't see why I couldn't remain your kuya, so long as you're content to have me."

Although Harry was warmed by this, he couldn't help but to furrow his brow. "How can I already have a godfather, Severus?"

"You were likely christened when you were born. Your father, as far as I know, didn't much practise any form of religion, but your mother's family always attended St. Mark's while she lived in Cokeworth. I imagine he was appointed at your christening."

"What's... erm... what's the difference between that and what I just did?"

"It's largely similar. You were likely baptized into the Church of England, but you also would have been formally introduced with your name—Harold James Potter—and godparents would have been appointed to see to your spiritual growth. Not that the man they chose would know anything about that." Snape muttered the last bit in an agitated manner, not trying to hide his disdain.

"He... he wouldn't? Who is he? Are you gonna have to fight with him now, 'cause now I'm Catholic?"

Severus snorted, his mirth ill-concealed. "Hardly. The man's been in prison for years."

"Oh... like Bertie—"

"Not like Bertie. Bertram Tibbons is not guilty of murdering thirteen innocents."

"Th-thirteen?" Harry asked, feeling faint. "W-who—?"

"Sirius Black, Harry. I believe I already told you a bit about him."

"O-oh."

"Yes."

At the time that Snape had told him about his own involvement in his parents' deaths, the related story of Sirius Black having betrayed their position under the charm meant to keep them safe hadn't struck Harry nearly as strongly as it probably ought to have. After all, Severus Snape, the traitor, was right before him, and Sirius Black, the traitor, was remote. Already dealt with. Certainly, Black hadn't been driving the car that Harry'd been sitting in the back of, nor had Harry spent the week getting to know and appreciate Black's company.

Over the months since, however, he'd developed a deep hatred for the very idea of Sirius Black. A man who would not only pull off Snape's pants in front of the whole school for his own amusement (much as Dudley might have done), but also who would knowingly sell out his own best friend—and evidently his godson!—to the enemy, with the full knowledge that it would mean their deaths at Voldemort's hand.

Snape was guilty, yes. But he couldn't have known what his betrayal would mean, and indeed hadn't realised that he'd been betraying Harry's mother at all. Sirius Black had, as far as Harry was concerned, sold his very soul to the devil himself, chuckling all the while.

But thinking on that reminded him of something altogether separate.

He'd recalled then the way Snape's face had dripped with tears as he begged someone—maybe Harry, or maybe God himself—for absolution.

"I'm sorry... I'm so, so sorry—"

"Please forgive me, God... please forgive me..."

Harry blinked a few times. His eyelids moved sluggishly, like the shutter over a camera lens as he gazed into the past.

"Are you meant to go up there?"

"I will the day that you do."

But Severus hadn't. Not on that day, anyway. Not the day that Harry did.

"There's far more to it than merely allowing a priest to douse your brow, Potter! No, you can't go receive communion: not today. Possibly not ever."

A different sort of headache was plaguing him now. It felt as though it were right inside the socket of his eye, pressing against his browbone. He screwed his face up to try and make it go away, but it persisted, along with the phantom voices from days gone by.

"I murdered a man tonight, Dumbledore. I took a life. That is a sin—a mortal sin."

"It can't have been your first."

"Not my... how can that matter!? Each—each and every one—a leaden weight on my own soul, Dumbledore!"

"You've managed admirably thus far."

"For so many of those transgressions I was deluded! I was... I was wrong, but thought that I must have been right! And now? Now, I know better! To continue in that vein is... is..."

"Yes?"

"It is to spit in His face! It is to mock truth itself!"

No. It was no mere matter of dousing his brow, Harry understood now. He looked down at a small bit of paper that he'd picked up at some point from the back of the car. It looked like a bill of sale of some sort, or at least it had been before Harry's worrying had rubbed much of the ink away and crinkled the paper.

His baptism, his confession, partaking of the Eucharist. It had all been a trial. Harry had felt himself a battleground for the duration of the rites he'd participated in.

And what was missing for Severus himself? What prevented him from feeling the peace that came in the wake of war?

It had never been lost on Harry how he and his kuya were the only two left sitting in the pews while the rest of the congregation queued for the host.

"You've gotta go to confession, Severus," Harry had murmured at last. He then returned his head to the cool glass of the windowpane and squinted out at the countryside, a verdant expanse unfolding and awakening into the bloom of spring.

Snape choked, likely not having expected the conversation to take that turn in the wake of their discussion about Harry's first godfather.

"I beg your pardon?"

But Harry hadn't been inclined to make his case. He couldn't force the issue. So, he merely shrugged, his eyes occupied with the scenery outside the car.

"I think it would help you," he had finally said.

And now, Palm Sunday. A week to the day.

Severus was insisting he wear a suit. A proper one.

Of course, he'd been made to wear a suit the week before, which he'd understood given the solemnity of the occasion, and Severus often tried to gussy him up a bit for Sunday, but evidently, Holy Week required a bit more panache than the rest of the Sundays in the liturgical calendar.

He was threatened with the suit for the coming Easter Sunday, too.

Three weeks of discomfort.

Harry sighed and tapped his foot with impatience.

His hands tugged and played at the stiff collar that Lola had starched within an inch of the garment's tolerance. It was another one of her grandson's cast-offs, and therefore fit him a bit strangely in places. Harry had short legs, and by his foot Lola knelt pinning the hem of his trousers up so he wouldn't be stepping on it with his polished leather shoes—also a size too big—and the lapels of the jacket didn't sit nicely against his chest, as Lola's grandson was also broader around the shoulders and chest.

It was kind of Lola to have procured it for him, however, and he made sure to thank her several times.

While she fussed over his appearance in one of the back box rooms of Rice Bowl, Severus busied himself by fussing too, only in the equal and opposite direction.

Where Lola insisted that the trousers were too long, Severus complained that she now appeared to be readying Harry for a flood, as his socks were exposed even as he stood. When Lola did her best to pin a boutonnière made of pandan leaves to his lapel, Severus was just as quick to remove it, insisting that such a vain affectation was a distraction (not to mention unnecessary, as they'd be given actual palm fronds at St. Catherine's).

They spent long minutes arguing over whether it was appropriate to wear such an item on Palm Sunday, or whether it was in bad taste.

Ultimately, Severus won, if only because he'd Vanished the boutonnière while Lola was reaching into her sewing box and wasn't looking. Harry couldn't very well wear something that now existed nowhere.

Or was it that it existed everywhere? Severus had never quite managed to satisfactorily explain the mechanics of that spell.

"It's gone. Wala na," he told Lola, which were the same words he'd used to explain the strange phenomenon of vanishment to Harry months earlier. "I must have misplaced it," he lied, with an elegant shrug.

Lola growled under her breath as she snipped a bit of thread with a pair of scissors. "'Rus!"

"Well, you're welcome to look for it," Snape added, being intentionally unhelpful. He nudged one of the cardboard boxes aside with the toe of his boot. "I can't imagine you'd make much progress, of course, and we haven't all the time in the world."

"'Rus!"

Lola cursed in Tagalog and made a show of spitting—which she faked—at his shoes, before she stood and looked Harry over with a critical eye.

"I think, maybe, some hair gel—"

"No. Don't touch his hair," Snape objected.

"It's everywhere! You've not been taking care of it. It's important that he looks presentable—"

"Lola," Harry interjected, "it'll look like this no matter what. My hair always goes everywhere."

"That cannot be! If only you'd brush it in the mornings and wash it more often—!"

"I do comb it every morning!" Harry insisted, flattening the top and fringe with his hand self-consciously. He wished he could explain to Lola what happened each time his aunt had tried to bring the tyranny of her orderliness to the nest of chaos that was his hair, but he'd have looked like a barmy liar if he'd informed Lola that it would grow back overnight whenever his aunt had decided to shear it off.

"I use a wet comb, and once Severus got me some pomade, but it still stuck up everywhere, only then it was also all sticky and smelled bad."

"Oh, pish!"

Harry wrinkled his nose at her, and not only because he wasn't entirely sure whether she was calling his story a load bologna or if it was the case that calling something 'fish' meant roughly the same thing, but in Tag-lish.

Either way, he felt the need to defend himself, and his rebellious head of nonsensical hair.

"It's true!"

When she opened her mouth to argue, Severus, incredibly, stepped in and repeated his words, defending him.

"It is true, Lola. Don't waste your time on it. We have to get going anyway if we don't wish to be late."

She finally allowed them to leave the box room, but as she trailed behind Harry, he was quite certain that he heard her muttering some rather unkind things about Snape's knowledge of healthy hair habits.

Because he couldn't exactly argue with that either, Harry wisely kept his mouth shut and had to hope that Snape hadn't heard her.

Although they'd driven to Rice Bowl to prepare for the day, they split into two separate cars to drive to Penrith, as was normal for most Sundays.

Tobias waited in the passenger seat of the Marina outside, his arms crossed over his slightly barreled chest. It was customary for him to ensure everyone knew just how much they'd inconvenienced him, so he was doing his best to look highly impatient. He even tapped his wrist—where a watch would have gone had he ever bothered to wear one—to show how very long they were taking.

Harry piled into the back behind the driver-side seat, and folded himself up small, hoping that Tobias wouldn't choose to talk to him.

Of course, his luck never held out.

The drive was conducted to the soundtrack of Toby's impassioned rant about how Snowdrop being raised as a member of the Church of England was a disgrace to the Snape family name.

That was all a bit rich, as far as Harry was concerned. He'd learnt in his catechism classes that it was a sin to skip Sundays, and to his knowledge, this was the first Sunday that Tobias had bothered to come with them to Mass.

All that Harry managed to contribute to the diatribe was a small noise here or there whenever Tobias made mention of his disdain for the Anglicans and their heresies.

If truth be told, he didn't usually find much to say in Snowdrop's defense, and he would obviously have preferred to come out on top over the girl in whatever way he could... but it seemed unfair of her newly declared father to go around asserting his will over her when he'd been entirely absent from her life until a mere week or so earlier.

As Toby kept on and on about it, Harry met Severus' eyes in the rear-view mirror several times to share commiserative glances. Of course, when Tobias Snape built up such a head of steam, it didn't often do much good to try and reason with him.

Although Harry very much liked the small parish of St. Catherine's, for that day, and that day only, he almost envied that Snowdrop and Nicky would be filling out the pews at St. Mark's in Backbarrow.

He wasn't entirely sure why there was such a difference of opinion between the Church of England and the Church in England, but whatever it was, perhaps he'd advise Snowdrop that she should stick where she was, if she at all valued her sanity and time spent away from the loquacious Snape patriarch that now seemed intent on bringing her back under his feather-bare wing.

"Da', if your intention is to convince Miss Hill into acting the part of your daughter, may I suggest you rethink your approach? Conversion at sword-point only sounds impressive in history books—"

"Snape! She's a Snape!"

Severus sighed aloud and pressed harder on the accelerator, bringing the car up into third gear with his shifting hand as he whipped around the curves in the road.

Harry closed his eyes. It was the only way he'd make it through the drive without putting his head between his legs, which had always struck him as a dangerous thing to do.

The bickering between the two only continued and the car kept speeding up in accordance with Snape's rising level of agitation.

"You don't know Snow," Harry struggled to get out, at length. He took a deep breath in through his nose and held it, attempting to keep his nausea at bay. "If she thinks you want her to go left, then she'll go right and right and right again," he said, borrowing an expression he'd heard from Gammy when she'd described the behaviour of their stubborn ram.

"And then," Harry continued on, now that he had their attention, "then she'll do something like bite you or something. When you're not expecting it. If you try to make her be your daughter, she'll only hate you forever."

Harry peeked through one cracked eyelid and saw Snape nodding pointedly at his father. "Take it from the boy, Da', he knows her better than you're likely to, at least at the current rate you're going."

"Pah! An' whatn dost thou know aboot bein' a fatther, Sev'rus?" Tobias asked. "Deek'at'ow yeh turnt out—"

Severus, his face screwed up from what was visible to Harry in the rear-view mirror, looked flummoxed. "Which part exactly? When I began thieving as a mere toddler—which you never put a stop to because you found it too entertaining—or when I joined a criminal enterprise fresh out of school? Do you consider me evidence of your success in that arena, because I think there are more people than only myself who would have cause to disagree."

"Nae, deek'a'thee now—"

"I quit my well-appointed, well-paying job to work in a bloody pub and then gave that up because I was stupid enough to engage in a row in public!" Severus took a deep breath, but it seemed to do anything but calm him. "I do most of the work at your stupid little auto shop because you leveraged the house underneath my very nose! Yes, Da'! Look at me now! A piteous milksop who's allowed himself to be blown by the winds of—no! Not fate! But by mere passivity!"

Harry cringed and sank into the back seat. He dearly hoped that neither of the two up front would decide to call on him. He'd said what he knew to be true about Snowdrop, and that was about all he could reasonably contribute.

Thankfully Severus was driving fast, even though Harry hated it. The Marina was eating up the miles between Backbarrow and Penrith, and he cast a doleful look out the window, upon which he'd pressed his sweating brow, watching with desperation for the landmarks that would tell him that they were nearing the town.

The voices in the front row rose until they were as loud as Severus usually liked to listen to his music, but Harry forced the words from his conscious mind, choosing instead to do his best at counting the sheep in the farthest enclosures. He never managed to count the full flock before they'd sped past, but it at least was a suitable distraction.

When Severus finally pulled alongside the kerb in front of the church, Harry was the first out of the car, nearly falling over his own feet and the unfamiliar leather shoes in his haste to exit.

Lola was waiting for him on the steps of St. Catherine's and he didn't pause to see if Snape or Toby would catch up before he tripped up the stairs.

"Harr-eee," she chided, "you'll scuff your shoes." She held him by the shoulders and gave him a once over, her eyes narrowed. He knew that should she have found any objectionable patches of dirt or dust on him he'd have been subjected to a brisk pulpug-ing.

It must have been that he passed muster, for she only nodded and brought her hands from his shoulders to his cheeks where she gave each a gentle and playful pinch.

He wasn't quite able to suppress the giggle that produced.

"Come and wait in the front. They'll be starting soon."

She led him into the narthex and positioned him by a table festooned with palm leaves and stacked hymnals.

"Here, take one of these," she told him, picking up a frond and handing it to him, "and everyone will form a queue and we'll take them to be blessed at the front. Then it will be a Mass. Just as you're used to."

Harry gripped the fibrous plant between his fingers and stroked the long leaf nervously.

"I thought Severus didn't want me having one of these..."

"He didn't want me to decorate your jacket with pandan that wasn't even from the church," she explained. "I thought it would have been a nice touch, but nooo, 'Rus knows best," she rolled her eyes.

"He said it would be vain... what did that mean?"

"Harry, it could not have been vain when you didn't even understand why anyone might have thought it was. Do you understand why on the Sunday before Easter we use the palm leaves?"

Harry nodded and looked away, tickling the palm of his opposite hand with the tip of the leaf a bit. "I think so."

"Then you know I only thought it would be a nice way to mark the day. 'Rus thought that it would make it look like you thought you were..." she paused to think and sighed. "I think he thought it would look like we dressed you up to be more than you were."

"More than I am?" Harry wrinkled his nose. "Then why am I wearing a suit? I've never had to wear a suit before. Not except for last week."

"That is out of respect," she chided, reaching out to tug and straighten his lapel as she said so.

Tobias strode up to the table and snatched away a frond without a word to either of them. Harry assumed that he was likely still feeling upset at the boy's assessment over Snowdrop in the car. He strode through the central set of double doors into the nave and spared neither of them a look.

"Pah. Rude. Always so rude," Lola gripped her hips with her fingers and glowered after him, shaking her head.

"Severus can be rude," Harry confided, as though he were disclosing some great secret. He whispered it, as he watched the man he'd mentioned pacing on the opposite end of the narthex. He appeared terribly beleaguered by something and rebuffed the attempts of two elderly women when they came to speak to him, likely only out of a sense of good will.

"'Rus has never been rude like his father," Lola defended him, with a resolute shake of her head. She paused for a moment when her husband entered the front doors, looking for her and holding up his set of keys to pantomime that he'd locked the doors and found good parking.

After a short conversation that required mostly gestures and mouthed words, she successfully shoo-ed him through the doors into the nave, where presumably he found their normal seats.

This task completed, she turned to the table and selected another palm frond, which she stroked lovingly for a moment before tucking it next to her own.

"For Lolo," she confided to Harry in a whisper.

Harry offered a weak smile in return, and looked again to Severus, whom he witnessed accosting Father Pearson as the priest stepped from a hallway with a door that led into the aisle. They conducted a hurried, whispered conversation in which Pearson looked a tad uncomfortable and impatient, but ultimately, he pointed Severus back to the door and allowed the younger man to proceed him through, as he followed up behind him.

"I dunno," Harry finally said, after having watched the odd exchange. "Sometimes I think Severus can be meaner..."

"That's only because he's your kuya. He picks on you."

Harry made a strangled growl-grunt in protest, feeling a bit huffy over it, even though he'd told Snape himself just a week earlier how he wanted him to remain his kuya.

"But you love your 'Rus, that's clear as day. Do you love Toby? Do you even like him?"

"No," Harry said immediately. He'd not even had to hesitate.

"And don't you enjoy bothering 'Rus as much as he likes taking the mick out of you?"

Harry made another annoyed vocalisation. He didn't care to say yes, but he also didn't care to lie.

Lola laughed aloud as though she knew this all very well.

"Toby is mean as a snake, although he's got his moments with a bit of charm. I've known him long enough to know. He could be lovely as a dove to Leenie when he wanted, and that kept her sweet on him long enough to suit them both—"

"I don't think it was long enough for him, actually," Harry objected. Tobias never tired of complaining about the early departure of his wife from the realm of the living, and although he treated it as though it had been yet another dreadful inconvenience, it seemed rather obvious to Harry that it was still an enormously sore point with the elder Snape.

"I think he misses her," he told Lola, peering up at her with a bit of solemnity.

She nodded back, the movement of it slow and considering.

"You're probably right. Leenie... Leenie was like one of my own, Harry. And I didn't like to see her in a tough spot. And Toby often looked to anyone outside looking in like he was her tough spot."

She exhaled deeply out her nose and watched the door that Severus had disappeared through with the parish priest. "But she wouldn't hear a word against him. Never. Said Toby made her laugh, and that he was good enough to her. Perhaps that was true."

Although Harry wasn't at all feeling charitable toward Tobias Snape, particularly after having endured the drive from Backbarrow in the man's company, he had to give a weak shrug and concede the point.

"He can be pretty funny sometimes," he admitted with a small grin. "Sometimes me and Toby watch the telly Severus got us all for Christmas and he'll say some really silly things."

Silly was an understatement bordering on a full-on lie. The things Tobias Snape said were unquestionably 'rude,' and that only seemed to go along with Lola's point.

Tobias Snape, even when he was in one of his more likable moods, was a rude fellow. In temperament, in discourse, and in his sense of humour. He was uncouth.

Finally, Harry had to think that maybe, at that, he really did like the old blowhard. At least just a smidge...

He giggled when he thought back on some of the nasty comments Toby had made about clients who'd come by the shop. At times, it evolved into a bit of a pissing match between father and son, where the two would try and top each other with their insults and observations, or even mean-spirited impressions of the hapless innocents they mercilessly bullied.

And while Harry always felt a bit badly about it, there hadn't been a single time where he'd not ended up doubled over or rolling on the ground of the garage, afflicted by gut-busting laughter.

Even Cur Dog sometimes seemed affected by the hilarity. Upon seeing Harry rolling around in the dust, he would usually join him, writhing around on his long back with his four paws kicked up in the air as he woofed along to Harry's guffaws.

Harry smiled as he thought about it and tickled the end of his nose with the palm frond, scrunching his face up a bit at the sensation and fighting down a sneeze.

"When do you think Sev'rus and Father Pearson will be back?" He asked at length, realising that it had been at least ten minutes. Lola glanced around until her eyes landed on a fussy clock, situated upon an ornate table with a marble top. She squinted at it from behind her spectacles.

"It's nearly—"

Her words were interrupted by the bell tolling out the hour, and she grimaced. "Time."

They waited a minute more, and the door across the narthex didn't budge.

"Go on and find Toby, Harry. We ought to go in..."

"But where's Severus?"

"I'm sure Father Pearson hasn't kidnapped him," Lola scoffed, now pushing Harry forward by his shoulders until she tracked down where Toby was seated. She found him in the row at the very back and furthest to the side aisle, where he presumably would go unnoticed when he inevitably failed to observe proper form throughout Mass. "Go. Go take your seat. When Father Pearson comes back, we'll all have our fronds blessed and then it'll be all the same as normal."

"I should go back and get one for Severus—"

"You should go and sit down." Lola planted her fists on her hips and glared him down, jerking her head so that her short bob of hair fluffed around her heart-shaped face as she indicated his place in the hall.

Harry grumbled as he took his seat.

"Sev'rus always lets us sit at least in the middle," he complained aloud, taking his hymnal and flipping through to the pages to find the numbers listed up front near the altar.

Tobias only grumbled back under his breath. Something too soft for Harry to properly hear. When the boy slanted his eyes over to see what the man was up to, he discovered Toby's long nose pressed into an on-the-go book of word puzzles and crosswords.

Months ago, Harry had been amazed to discover that it was a perennial shared pastime of the two Snapes. Mostly he wouldn't have expected it because it often seemed as though Tobias must have only been a bare step above illiteracy, but that idea had been put paid to time and time again.

If Toby preferred to speak in his local dialect, it was only because he enjoyed being a stubborn old mule, and he seemingly took perverse pride in making others strain to understand his meaning.

And although Severus himself had warned Harry multiple times not to assume his father to be a lackwit, even he had been surprised one evening a few months earlier when, struggling over a clue in the Daily Prophet, it had been Toby who had deciphered its meaning.

Severus' hand came down hard against the formica tabletop, causing the milk in Harry's glass to slosh around with the disturbance. He hastily grabbed his cup up to save it from further trouble.

"Watch it!" Harry snapped, glaring at the older wizard. It was early. The hour before any of the three left to begin their days, and neither of them was yet at their best. Severus was poring over the Daily Prophet's puzzle page as he did every morning, his slice of toast hanging from the limp fingers of his opposite hand.

The one he'd used to assault the table and to disrupt their breakfast was twirling a red biro over its knuckles in a frenetic rhythm that annoyed Harry to no end.

Most daily crosswords weren't too terribly difficult for Severus, and it often put him in a better mood to start the morning when he felt as though he'd handily accomplished that morning's puzzle. Other days...

Well. He tended to pick up the rest of his daily duties with a bit more antipathy than was his usual.

"I can't make the damn thing fit!"

"What doesn't fit?"

"William Tell."

Harry squinted at the page. 'William' would have been three too many letters, and the I and middle L, if it were to be shortened to 'Will' were also spoken for, having been rendered into a D and an A by the other filled-in answers.

"What's the clue?"

Snape grunted and took a swig of his Nescafé, which made Harry wince, having tasted it himself. Brackish stuff.

"I don't expect you to figure it out," he went on, bad naturedly.

It was true that Harry never usually could solve the questions for the Prophet's crosswords. They required a working knowledge of both history and wizarding lore that went far beyond his ken. He didn't, however, appreciate Severus' complete and utter lack of faith in him, and when he went to say so, Snape cut him off by beginning to read the clue aloud, just to shut him up.

"A wizard not in legend but truth

Who with the brigands dwelt.

His capture: a dark day, forsooth,

And fortold by St. Mary's knell

Shot an apple from his booth

Off his lad's head did ..."

Snape waited a beat. "William Tell should be the answer! It should be! When he and his son were meant to be executed, they offered Tell their lives if he managed to shoot an apple from his son's head with his crossbow—"

A choked cry came from behind Harry's chair. "William Tell!?"

Both turned their heads to see the Snape patriarch leaning against the kitchen bench, a disgusted look marring his already ugly mug.

"William Tell! Is it wat! Bloody ladgeful of ye! 'N ye call thyself our gadgey!"

Snape's lips twitched and his hands shook with his irritation. "And I suppose you think you have a better idea of—"

"Adam Bell, ye feckless clot-heed." Tobias crossed his arms over his barrel chest and stared his son down. "Ga'an. Try't owt."

With a disgusted sigh Severus turned his attention back to the column and muttered under his breath, tapping each unfilled box with his pen until he cursed and covered the top half of his face with his hand.

"I'll be damned—" he groaned to his father's laughter.

Harry grinned at the memory, and not only because Severus had finally been made to eat crow, which he'd enjoyed a little too much.

It had been one of the first instances in which he'd felt small glimmers of respect for Toby beginning to manifest, even if half of Tobias Snape's other actions tended to reduce such infantile embers back into lifeless ash.

"What'er ye leughin about?"

Harry coughed and tried to wipe the smile from his face. "Nothin'."

"L'al leear."

His face reddened and he feigned interest in the hymnal, even though he didn't find it terribly interesting.

"I was thinking about how Severus didn't know the answer to the crossword that one time."

"Awrsh. That." Tobias scratched at his scruffy chin and looked out over the pews in front of them for a moment before he managed to completely blow Harry out of the water.

He recited the poem from the Prophet word for word, and with perfect elocution.

Harry's eyes widened in amazement. Tobias Snape easily could have passed for one of the actors employed to play parts in the specials that aired on the telly.

"Eh and wat?! Steukk thy mouth, laddo."

"How did you remember all that?" Harry asked, slightly breathless. He scooched himself in closer to the man, attracted by his sense of awe.

"Aye, pig in, 'n arl tell thee." Tobias gestured beside himself, where Harry had already slid, rather sardonically. For all his bluster, however, he didn't seem at all bothered that Harry finally was warming to him a bit.

"Ken remember everythin', ken't we?" He asked, tapping his own forehead.

"Er... can we?" Harry replied, supremely doubtful.

Toby let out a disgusted noise. "Nae! We ken!" he emphasized. "Me. Myself. Divnt nivver read nowt that we couldn't think on, later."

Harry thought on that for a second, imagining what it must have been like to remember every word he'd ever read.

It certainly would have improved his marks by a lot.

"But then your voice changed," Harry added, still feeling somewhat unconvinced. "How did your voice change?"

Tobias shimmied in his seat a bit and set his puzzle book on his knees. He straightened and lifted his enormous nose into the air. Seemingly, for a moment, he was an entirely different person.

"And you can't do a proper accent, Sonny Jim?" he asked, his voice clear as a bell, mocking, and slightly posh.

Left with nothing else to do but to blink stupidly, Harry mouthed words he didn't even know the meaning of, for had had given them voice, they'd have been unintelligible.

"You... you can talk!" He finally muttered, regarding old Snape as though he were an elaborate marionette come to life.

Tobias, for his part, looked down on him with an expression of mild disgust, and he returned to his puzzle book without deigning to answer him.

"But then, how did you know the answer? It was in the Prophet and you're not a wizard like Severus is..."

"Shhh, laddo," Tobias hushed him, glancing around at the elderly parishioners who were seated in front of them. Thankfully neither of them seemed to hear that Harry had accused his legal custodian—and godfather, in the eyes of the church—of practising witchcraft.

"Jes 'cause we divn't yatter on like offcomers, divn't mean we know nowt, nor jes 'cause arm not a dang witch," he said in a stage whisper, his eyes darting around and narrowing at any suspected busybodies. "Adam Bell were our gadgey. Sev'rus sud've known. Was a charva from Pereth—aye, Pereth, where we're sittin. Ee's our Robin Hood. Ladgeful of Sev'rus to forgit."

Harry thought it was awfully convenient for Tobias to accuse his son of embarrassing himself by forgetting local lore when there were likely much greater things that the elder Snape ought to have felt ashamed over, but he didn't get the opportunity to say so.

A few opening chords from the church organ kicked off and propelled the congregants to the central aisle, where they proceeded to queue for the front. Father Pearson had emerged from a side door and looked ever so slightly befuddled—and flustered—but otherwise in an affable enough disposition.

When Harry joined the back of the queue he was startled by a hand coming down on his shoulder. It was neither Lola's nor Toby's, and he then recognised it only by the slight yellowing of the fingertips and the rough callouses that that identified it as Severus' own.

He glanced over his shoulder to see that Snape appeared troubled. His mouth was thinned into a grim slash and around his eyes were the faintest wrinkles, betraying a state of tension.

"Is everything alright?" The boy whispered, looking askance at the older wizard's tormented countenance.

"No harm will come of it," Snape muttered. The choice of words was as uncomforting as it was unconvincing, and it shed absolutely no light on why he was so upset, but before Harry could respond, they'd arrived before the altar.

The procession to have the leaves blessed went by in a blur, and Mass too, so that before long, Harry joined the queue for a second time to accept communion.

He thought maybe he understood a bit of what Snape might've meant when he saw that, for the first time, Severus too had lined up for the host.

The remainder of Holy Week proved to be odd. There was a general feeling of displacement that Harry couldn't quite put his finger on. Everything felt just a bit wrong-side-up and top-side-down.

Harry could look on neither Snape nor his father in exactly the same way as he had before Palm Sunday. For one thing, he now felt more distrustful of Tobias than ever. It was disconcerting that he presumably was far smarter and more alert than Harry would ever have anticipated given Toby's general disposition and behaviour, and it put him on edge.

As for Severus? Well, he was in a dreadful state of malaise for the days following his presumptive confession. He conducted himself through his daily tasks with the sort of despondency that seemed more appropriate for having just observed someone's death. It was a far cry from what Harry assumed might have happened after having finally felt unencumbered enough to presume upon Christ's grace and mercy.

He began to feel just a bit bad for having suggested it, but by Wednesday, Severus began to act more normal, as though having recuperated from some dreadful bout of illness, and by Good Friday, he was his old self again.

Upon entering the shop after school, Harry was unceremoniously shushed by the older wizard as he indicated that he was busy on the phone. With a fair bit of drama, Severus rolled his eyes skyward while he listened to whomever was on the other end detailing their list of complaints, which caused Harry to giggle as he settled his school bag on the ground and made to take off his jacket.

In the background, Snape had turned on the muggle radio that Toby kept in the shop, which meant that he'd been doing mostly administrative work that day. If it had been music, or Snape's own tapes playing, it would have meant that he'd been absorbed under the bonnet for the whole morning and most of the afternoon. Whenever he had the radio tuned to the news, it was usually so that he had something to yell at when paperwork became all too aggravating.

"No, madam," Snape answered, his voice the low drawl that he used for the most dimwitted of their patrons. "As I mentioned to your husband when he called: we're not equipped to do engine rebuilds."

Harry heard an answering torrent of words, which Snape frowned against, looking displeased.

"This used to be Culpepper Motors. Used to be. It hasn't been in operation for at least fifteen years, possibly more. We have absolutely no expertise in rehabilitating or replacing your car's engine, and had you any sense, you'd not be arguing with me suggesting that a team of unqualified individuals service your family car. Far be it for me to offer you any aid at this point after your deplorable insults against my person, but I suggest you look into a tow to Margoyle's Engine Repair in Workington. I proffer this advice not for your own sake, but on behalf of your terribly hen-pecked husband, who is likely, even now, suffering as you ignore all good advice freely dispensed to your benefit in favour of your own delusional view of the world as it ought to be, rather than the truth of what is. We are not a shop specialising in engine work of that level of complexity. Thank you for your call."

He slammed the receiver down and then picked it up and did it again for good measure. When he appeared ready to do it for a third time, a scant inch from it making contact, his hand abruptly stopped in its descent, and he took a deep, turbulent breath, expelling it through his nostrils with such violence that they flared wide.

"Don't... er... don't you think you shouldn't have been so cross? Maybe she won't call back to us if they have a problem we do fix."

"Those are not the clients we want, Harry," Snape informed him. He began gathering paperwork strewn across the counter and shuffling it into some semblance of orderliness, his eyes hard on his task. "Likely she'd find something wrong with absolutely every little thing we did, and demand restitution or remediation of all of our efforts at no cost. Better to discourage her now."

"Oh," Harry hummed a little. "I didn't think of that."

"Only because you've never had to deal with her kind before," Snape snorted. "We saw that a lot at The Yow. Every bowl of stew can't have a fly in it, but they sure will claim that it did."

"Was it like that as a teacher too?"

Snape actually paused in what he was doing to think. He frowned down at the papers he held and flipped through, separating them into two piles and beginning to sort. "There were similar experiences, to be certain, although because I wasn't offering service in such a direct way, there was a bit of insulation from such complaints. For one thing, usually if a parent had something to say, they'd take it to the headmaster or to the board of governors. Between the two, they saw so many complaints of that timbre that they knew when to listen and when to tell the parents to get stuffed."

Nodding, Harry acted as though this were all very unsurprising to him, even though he had no real understanding of how faculty politics worked at a school.

"That must have been nice, then. 'Cause you wouldn't ever have to deal with it."

"You'd be right on the money if it wasn't for the fact that you're completely wrong. I received more complaints than any other teacher and was regularly ruled against by the board and often called to account for my behaviour in meetings between Headmaster Dumbledore and the parents of the aggrieved party. It was a bloody nightmare."

"Oh." Harry wasn't at all sure how to respond to that, as he felt like he ought to offer some sort of consolation.

There really wasn't anything to say, however. He knew well that Severus had it in him to be both a harsh taskmaster, and relentless critic. It wasn't entirely clear to him why Snape's words no longer stung, or at least why they didn't often sting as they might, but for all of Severus' attempts at getting under his skin, it often felt as though Harry had built up a sort of tolerance to the man's venom, such that he was easily able to shrug off his nastier commentary and respond with something as impertinent as Severus' remark had been cruel.

"I bet you were a good teacher though," Harry told him, at long last. He withdrew his notebook from his school bag and flipped through, looking to the corner of each page to locate the marks he'd made on his assignments.

"I've gotten loads better from when I was going to school last year."

Snape looked ready to retort, but he seemed, for once, to think better of it. Instead, he released a pent-up sigh and shook his head. From the circles under his eyes, he must have been exhausted. His elbows came down to rest on the counter and he bent awkwardly over it with a rounded spine, dropping the crown of his head between his fingers so he could massage his scalp. "Thank you, Harry."

"A breaking story out of Prince William Sound, Alaska, United States," came the urgent voice of a very earnest news anchor.

Both Harry and Severus glanced up at once, Harry looking up and around as would a startled meercat as Snape merely looked distracted by the broadcast that had interrupted a story on the repopulation efforts for native fauna.

"Statements from the area—which are now being disseminated to international press—are indicating that there has been a catastrophic shipwreck upon Bligh Reef, outside of the costal town of Valdez. Initial reports from mariners are indicating that the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground the reef and that so far hundreds of gallons of crude oil are being spilt into the gulf. With no way of containing the damage or addressing the vessel's integrity, it is feared that the entire payload may be emptied into the surrounding areas—"

"Oh God," Harry gasped, darting over and turning the volume knob on the radio up.

"It is, at this juncture, unclear what the extenuating damage and impact of such a spill will mean, or what level of ownership the company Exxon can claim for events leading to the grounding of their vessel, but the outlook is, according to experts available for comment, grim.

"This is the second calamitous disaster to affect Prince William Sound in twenty-five years. Our listeners might remember the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964, widely reported upon for being the second-most-powerful earthquake recorded in world history—after the earthquake that struck Valdivia, Chile in 1960—and the most powerful ever having been recorded in the United States. Port Valdez lost thirty-two people following an underwater landslide which decimated the local harbour and docks, and a resulting landslide killed nearly half the population of a neighboring town, Chenega—"

Blinking uncomprehendingly, Harry finally dialed the volume back with his index on the knob, his mouth slightly slack. The broadcast had returned to news that was slightly more germane to their population thousands of miles away from Alaska, as no more information was yet available.

"They both happened on Good Friday..." he marveled aloud to Severus.

Snape merely grunted, looking at most inconvenienced by the report. Possibly because it had interrupted his paper sorting.

"I'm far more interested in the fact that I now have the perfect illustration for you as to why what you did with Potion Mu was just about the stupidest thing I've heard done with a potion in all of my years studying the subject."

Harry wrinkled his nose and collected his homework with a huff.