Following their short tête-à-tête, Harry finally managed to retreat upstairs. He got through perhaps three fourths of his homework before he heard noises coming from the hallway.

It sounded like an odd, blunted shuffle, and a pronounced sniffling sound, before the distinctive sound of scratching could be heard through the thin door, followed by pitiful—and annoying—whining.

Shaking his head at the interruption, Harry opened his door just wide enough to try and urge the newcomer away with one hand.

"No!" He hissed, pushing at the dog's chest with one hand. "No, Cur Dog—go! You've got fleas, I don't want you in here."

The dog, uncomprehending, leant against the door with all of his weight, which trapped Harry's forearm in the crack, and he then set about licking at the boy's exposed palm and fingers with his long tongue.

First, Harry hissed in surprise, and then he couldn't help his giggle, for it had begun to tickle. Thirdly, he attempted to wrench his hand back so he could wipe it off on his trouser leg, as the feeling of a handful of dog spit was rather disgusting. In order to do so, he had to open the door further, which the dog took as an open invitation to nose his way into the room.

Before Harry could object, his forequarters were all the way in, and he was wiggling his backside until he managed to infiltrate the forbidden area.

"Oh," Harry sighed, rubbing at his scalp with the hand that wasn't covered in ick. "Severus won't like that…"

Cur Dog ignored him in favour of sniffing around the perimeter of the room, his whip-like tail nearly knocking over everything in his path.

"Just… erm… stay off the bed, kay?"

The dog, whose nose had been exploring one of the corners with the most cobwebs, sneezed loudly.

They passed the next few hours that way, interrupted only by the noises of Severus' father downstairs (mild crashes, swearing, loud thumping. He was an extraordinarily loud man), and a brief moment of terror where Harry had been forced to redirect Cur Dog's interest away from his tarantula.

"No," Harry scolded, gently pushing the dog's snout away from his pet. "That's Wheat—he's mine, and you don't touch. Or eat."

Cur Dog's nose made a wet smudge against the plastic, and he let out a deep sigh in response to Harry's latest proscription, dropping to his stomach so he could stare in at the spider.

Harry was ready to go scratch at the dog's nose, but he stopped himself when a closer inspection of the mutt's coat showed the tell-tale signs of a skin infection, and the bite marks of hundreds or thousands of tiny pests.

He used his thumb to gently press the fur away from Cur Dog's skin, parting it so he could look at his back.

"You know, I bet Severus could whip up a potion to make the fleas go away. Probably he could fix your skin too."

Cur Dog's ear twitched lazily at this information, his doleful blue eyes not having left the large spider which reposed in the corner of his enclosure.

"Is your name really Cur Dog, or is that just, you know, how Severus's dad talks?" Harry pondered aloud. He didn't expect a response, but even so, he asked in a way that was very nearly conversational.

Cur Dog's mouth opened, and for a bare second, Harry wondered if, like in some of the films he'd seen, the dog might actually have been about to speak.

Instead, his eyes squinted closed and he let out a violent sneeze that startled Wheat from his corner, the tarantula scurrying around until he hurried himself below a pile of leaves.

Cur Dog's long, pink tongue swiped from left to right, licking away the snot and moistening his nose in the process.

"What about…" Harry tapped a finger to his upper lip as he pondered, "what about Curry?"

The dog's tail flopped from one side to the other, making a loud thump against the floor.

"Good boy, Curry." Harry reached out a hesitant hand to the mutt and patted him with an open palm a few times on the top of his head, hesitant to scratch, lest he be bitten by fleas himself.

After the matter of Curry's name was decided, Harry spent more time wading through the final act of Richard III, managing to understand a bare quarter of what he'd read. He wasn't fully invested, in any case. He was instead looking forward to the point at which he finished and began playing some of his favourite tapes for the overgrown dog.

"Severus doesn't play this one much, but he must like it, 'cause it's in his collection, but there's a song on here about dogs," Harry narrated as he fast forwarded through the tracks, pausing periodically in order to assess whether he'd made it to the proper track.

"I like it because it's got a sort of—" Harry bounced his hand in the air while making a low, droning 'waow-waow' noise, on beat. "Severus said it was 'funky,' but not like it smelled bad. Here."

"Yeah this is the story of a famous dog, for the dog that chases its tail will be dizzy—"

At this point, Harry took up chanting along to the words, his arms looped around his legs where he sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, he rocked back and forth with the rhythm.

"These are clapping dogs, rhythmic dogs—harmonic dogs! House dogs, street dogs—that's you!" He cried, poking Curry in the nose, which the dog then licked away. "Dogs of the world unite!"

While Harry caught his breath, not used to regulating his breathing for such lyrical delivery, the artist continued on on his own.

"Dancin' dogs—Yeah. Countin' dogs, funky dogs, nasty dogs..."

"Aaaaatomic Doooog," Harry yelled, tossing his head back as though he were howling. "Aaaatomic Dooo-oooog!"

That was when the floor under his bum seemed to jump at the same time as there came a sharp, rapping sound from somewhere below. This was followed by angry yelling, although the words were impossible to hear.

Harry sighed. At the very least he understood the meaning, even if he couldn't hear what the old man was saying. He turned the volume back down, and finished singing the remainder of the song to Curry under his breath, entertaining them both with more musical performances until Severus arrived home a half hour later.

When Harry led them both downstairs, hoping that with Severus' return, it would mean supper, he was still singing under his breath, "Bow-wow-wow-yippee-yo-yippee-yay, bow-wow-yippee-yo-yippee-yay—"

"So, your nut's finally cracked, has it, Potter?"

The words startled him from his focus on singing the song, and in other circumstances Harry might have been upset by the implication, but he was too relieved to see the wizard whose voice he'd heard, and his face couldn't help but to reveal his eagerness to see Severus home: he was grinning up at the older wizard like a loon.

Feeling the strange compunction that he ought to run up and throw his arms around him, Harry stopped himself just short of doing so, knowing that it would have been an unwise course of action.

"How was work?" He asked, for no other reason than to distract himself from his desire to hug Severus round the middle.

"Dreadful," Snape told him, his voice clipped. He braced himself against the wall with one hand as he went about untying the laces of his boots with the other, wrenching them off of his feet by the heel and tossing them into the corner by the door. "Tell me you finished your work for the evening."

"I finished my work for the evening," Harry repeated, gamely.

"Now tell me you actually understood what you read."

"I understood what I read."

"That's a lie."

Harry merely shrugged. "Did you bring anything home?"

"You'll have to be more specific, Harry."

Feeling reluctant to name it aloud, Harry wrung the hem of his shirt between his hands, "You know…"

"I don't."

Harry frowned down at the tips of his trainers in frustration.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," Snape snarled turning so he could reach into the jacket he'd already hung on the wall. From underneath it he withdrew a plastic bag laden with polystyrene clamshell containers. "Next time you want something, have the courage to say it directly, Potter. Like a man."

He handed the bag over and pointed one long finger into the kitchen. "Go get the table set for three. Where's Da'?"

"I'unno," the boy called back over his shoulder. "He was here half an hour ago. He wanted me to turn my music down."

Snape followed him into the kitchen, grabbing plates down from the high cabinets himself, likely because Harry would have needed a chair to have reached them himself.

"Just how loud were you playing it?"

"Quieter than you," Harry defended, pulling boxes out of the bag and trying to make room as he did so, pushing the empty cauldrons to the place where the kitchen table met the wall.

Snape let out a deep sigh as he allowed the plates to drop onto the formica. "He never liked a lot of noise in the house."

Harry seated himself as he waited for Severus to open up the boxes, and he had to hide a grin when he saw Curry's whiskery snout poking up near Snape's elbow, apparently scenting their supper. The dog betrayed his position when he loudly licked his chops.

"I think not!" The older wizard snarled, budging the hound out with his hip. "Go away!"

The dog's tail was wagging so enthusiastically now that he barely avoided knocking glasses off of the kitchen bench near the sink. He wasn't remotely deterred by Snape's prohibition.

"Go!" Snape barked, pointing a finger out at the sitting room.

Curry backed up a step or two but remained within easy distance of the dinner table.

Harry jumped when Snape's fist came down on the table, making all of the objects sitting upon it jump an inch high in the air.

"Where the bloody hell did that man go?" He hissed, straightening up and looking around with a sort of frantic disquiet.

Harry thought it odd that he would be so very on edge with his own father in the house and decided it didn't bode well for what their relationship must have been like. "Maybe he's gone for a wee—"

"Don't say that." Snape scolded him, although he was too distracted to sound as though he meant much by it.

"What should I say?"

"That he's gone to the loo."

"Maybe he's gone to the loo."

Snape made a disgusted face. Evidently, he didn't care for that phrasing either. "Next time, perhaps a euphemism."

"A what?"

"For Christsake—"

They were interrupted by the back door opening, through which came sauntering the very man in question. He seemed in jolly spirits, for he was whistling a tune.

"Ooohh, when nature 'tis callin', plain speakin' thas owt, when ladies—Gawd bless 'em—be millin' about, ye ken make water, wee-wee, or empty t' glass; ye ken powdert yer nose; 'scuse me' might pass!"

Severus glowered. "So now you decide you can speak in proper English?"

The song continued on, as though the wizard hadn't interrupted. "Shake t' dew off the lily; see a man 'bout a dog; or when effryone's soused, 'is con-den-sing the fog, but be pleast to remember if ye want to know bliss: That only in Shakespeare does ennyone piss!"

"Are you trying to undermine me?" Snape asked, his mouth pressing into a thin slash of a line.

Harry's eyes widened at this and he ducked his head, hoping he could pass below Snape's notice. It was never a good sign when he got that look on his face.

"Nae, cannae—"

"Because I was just telling the boy that saying that someone was going 'for a wee' was a bit rude, when you come in providing no less than ten alternatives that are arguably even more objectionable!"

"Aye, 'ee's arl aneuff to larn—"

"He's old enough that he needs to learn manners and be expected to use them," Snape countered, hissing through his teeth. As if to illustrate his point, he pulled out the chair before him and gestured to it, inviting his father to the table, even though he'd endeavoured to perform the gesture with ill-grace and a scowl.

"Please, father, seat yourself."

The elder Snape did so, although not without answering his son's scowl with a poisonous look of his own.

"Aa laiked thee better when thou war but an ill raggelt." He informed the younger man, without a touch of regret for his words.

Severus, for his part, ignored them. Though, while he busied himself with unboxing the provisions he'd secured for them from The Yow's kitchen for the evening, his jaw was clenching; a sure sign of his displeasure.

Steak and kidney pie. Not exactly Harry's favourite dish off of The Yow's menu, but hearty and delicious when eaten warm on such a cold night.

Luckily for all of them, they shared a single-mindedness that so many men were prone to whenever food became a priority. None of them spoke further during the meal which proved to be a blessing. The meaty supper was enough to put each of their minds off of bickering and on to more pleasant topics, such as the potential for dessert.

Once this, too, proved to be a unanimous dream that was readily enough realised, all three relaxed into their chairs as they scooped raisin-stuffed sponge out of Heinz tins with their spoons.

"Nowtisht the Morris' owt there on blocks," Severus' father commented between bites.

Harry had finally learnt that the man was called Tobias, but that he preferred 'Toby' when it came to anyone but his late wife addressing him. It had been one of the few things that had been discussed over dinner when Harry had asked 'Mr. Snape' to pass him the salt.

"It's in need of an oil flush," Severus answered, his eyes trained on his own tin. Mention of the car had brought the tick back to his jaw, and Harry regretted to see its reappearance after Snape had, at long last, relaxed.

"If ye divn't care to djur it, we ken make 'er t' arl clipt an' heelt—"

"No, you can't," Snape protested, jerking his head up sharply. "The oil's been... well. It's rather like it's been poisoned, if that makes any sense at all to you."

Snape's tone had taken on a distincty patronising quality, and even Harry had to wince. He certainly didn't appreciate being talked down to, so he couldn't imagine that Toby did either.

Indeed that supposition was borne out when the older man began arguing in earnest.

"War our car, Sev'rus! Ours! What ye djarn nowt flushin' t' oil? Engine'll be a geet clarty scrow without proper flushin'—"

"I know that!" Snape exploded, slamming the remains of his tinned spotted dick on the table. There was still half of it left, but it looked as though he wouldn't be finishing it.

Toby scowled and tossed his own aside in favour of folding his arms over his chest. "Deek, Sev'rus, ars gan scower yon Morris—"

"Da'," Severus interrupted, bringing up his fingers to massage inside his eyesockets and against the bridge of his hooked nose, "English."

"Ye divvy, we're yatterin' in English awriddy!"

In response the face of his father's anger, Severus merely firmed up his mouth and stood—rather, sat—his ground, saying nothing.

"Aa will take a lewk a' the car t'morrow." Toby finally conceded, looking faintly murderous as he forced the marginally more comprehensible words past his unwilling lips.

Snape's lip curled, but he didn't prohibit his father from satisfying himself as to the car's health, which Harry thought fascinating. "I suppose that is acceptable."

From there, Severus stood and began to collect their dishes which he compiled into a dirty stack in the sink. When his eye fell upon Harry, the boy knew it was his own duty to rise immediately and start in on cleaning them.

Before Snape retreated from the room, he threw a last glance at his father's fuming form. "Do make an effort to speak in a way that's intelligible to the average Englishman. You know I can understand you perfectly well, but the boy can't," he said, nodding in Harry's direction.

The younger wizard felt himself quirking a shy smile of appreciation in Snape's direction—for which he received a correspondingly small smirk of acknowledgement—before the two men departed the kitchen and left Harry to his chore.

The evening was mostly uneventful after that minor dust up. Harry took his bath in the manner he always did: sat in the belly of the giant, tin washbasin that usually was leaned up against the back of the privy in the garden.

It was helpful to have a wizard on hand when one didn't have an indoor bath, Harry had learnt, as Severus was able to fill the tub with water using an Aguamenti spell, far faster than he could have had they been forced to rely on water from the sink faucet. He also could warm the water with a spell that didn't seem to wear off. After those particulars were out of the way, he was happy to conjure a curtain for the doorway that separated the kitchen from the sitting room and leave Harry to his own devices.

This all went off without a hitch, as was the usual, until Harry emerged from the bath, freshly scrubbed and clothed from the jumpers that had dried out on the clothesline earlier in the week, and told Severus of Curry's need for a proper bath.

"What's it matter? He can sleep in the privy," Snape snorted. He was absorbed in a newer potions text concerning novel techniques for working with fatty-acid chains (something which he'd attempted to explain to his young housemate, before the boy had yawned one too many times), while Toby was staring intently at the unreliable television set.

"He can stay with me," Harry argued. "He won't bother you; I promise! Only... Toby said he's got fleas—"

Snape's reaction was violent. "Fleas!?" He cried, jumping up from his seat as he strode over to the hound. Snape roused him from his spot on the floor by the sofa with a loud "Up!" And began to try and ferry him out the door.

"You should have told me immediately!" He shouted as he struggled to herd the dog out of the sitting room by blocking his escape with brisk side-steps. "Out! Out back!"

"Kuya, all he needs is a bath!" Harry argued as he followed in their wake. "Can't you make something for his fur so he can stay?"

Snape's head whipped around so fast that his hair went flying. "Don't you kuya me!"

"I know you can make a potion for him!" Harry objected, glaring now. "Why don't you like Curry?"

At this, Snape paused, which allowed the embattled dog to slip back into the sitting room, where he resumed his beloved spot at his master's feet.

"Why don't I—? Who says I don't like curries?" The older wizard protested, his face a picture of bewilderment.

"'Cause you obviously don't! You don't like him at all!" Harry cried, upset by now. "He can't sleep in the privy, Severus! It's cold out there!"

Snape reeled. Anger seemed to be replacing his confusion. Perhaps, at that, it was indignation over the fact that he so clearly wasn't following Harry's line of logic. "What does that have to do with whether I care for chicken bloody korma?"

Now it was Harry's turn to feel the fool. "Chicken korma?"

"That's a type of curry, Potter—"

Finally catching on to Snape's meaning, Harry shook his head so sharply that his glasses nearly dislodged from his nose. "Not curries, Severus. Curry," he stressed, pointing to the dog, which was doing his best to pass beneath the irate man's notice. His face was hidden beneath Toby's outstretched legs, and his tail had worked itself up between his thighs.

"Curry? Curry, Potter? What on Earth possessed you to name yet another animal after food!?"

"It's not after food, Severus," Harry explained, attempting to be patient with Snape's incredulity. "It's cause Mr. Toby kept calling him 'Cur Dog,' and I thought that was a bit long."

The responses came nearly at the same time from both quarters.

"Mista' Toby!?"

"People will think I'm not feeding you!"

"You feed me good," Harry soothed, ignoring the way Snape corrected his 'good' with 'enough' under his breath. "But I can't go calling him Cur Dog. It's weird."

Snape's mouth twisted. "Particularly given that he's a sighthound and not a shepherd."

"'Ee's a dab 'and wif the yows; nashes right off af'er 'em—"

"Da'," Severus interrupted, his patience clearly dwindling. "That's because he's a hunting dog. He's a courser."

"Well, I ain't nae yakka. I'm jes'a wukn fella."

Snape wrinkled his nose in response to this pronouncement. "The last time you could claim to be a working man would have been more than a decade ago, by my reckoning."

Evidently, he'd had enough of the two other occupants of the house, for he turned on his heel and stalked into the kitchen, where Harry heard him making the type of noise that informed him that Severus was likely doing it on purpose in order to express his displeasure to greater satisfaction.

Probably that was fine, Harry decided. After all, it wasn't every day that a man's indigent father came home to roost. It would only make sense for the older wizard to have a difficult time of handling yet another mouth to feed.

And this additional mouth a rather more disagreeable one than Harry's own.

Harry nearly hopped a foot in the air when Snape's voice cut through his reverie.

"Potter! If you want this bag of bones and skin to sleep inside tonight, you'll get yourself in here to bathe him! I'm on the verge of banishing this water to the Styx if you don't come use it soon!"

"Coming, Severus!" Harry hastened to cross around the sofa, where he did his best to coax Curry to come along with him, using his weak powers of persuasion in order to try and entice the dog away from under its master's legs.

It took a bit of doing, and likely the large hound had only come along willingly because he'd taken pity on the hapless human making such a fool of himself, but eventually Harry managed to lead the mutt to the water, and he even got the recalcitrant dog to climb in.

Severus had unearthed some sort of all-purpose shampoo for animals which he'd grudgingly handed over for Harry's use. When questioned over how he'd produced it so quickly, he'd said something about a giant's boarhound. Harry was so confused over his answer that part of him wished he hadn't asked.

After that, Harry was left to his own devices, and he merrily chattered to Curry while he lathered the dog's face—making sure to pay special attention to the long bridge of his nose, the spot high up on his shoulder blades, and at the base of the dog's tail as he watched the black spots fill the sudsy pool of bubbles. The poor beast was covered with bites and skin plaque, but he seemed grateful to be liberated from the wee biting pests he'd likely hosted for years.

"—and the giant said, 'FEE FIE FOE FUM,'" Harry told the dog, in a booming deep voice, while the dog's eagerly wagging tail sent water flinging over every surface of the kitchen. "'I SMELL THE BLOOD OF AN ENGLISHMAN!"

Curry let out an appreciative 'WHUFF!' and his front paws jumped, bracing up against the edge of the washbasin.

"'BE HE ALIVE OR BE HE DEAD, I'LL BIND HIS BONES TO MAKE MY SHED!'"

"That's not how it goes."

Harry turned around to find that Severus was leaned up against the doorway, his expression eloquent in the way it spoke to his exasperation.

"It isn't?"

"No. He'll grind your bones to make his bread, Harry."

The boy couldn't help but to stick his tongue out as he registered his disgust. "Oh! Yuck!"

"Quite realistic too. Giants really would grind you up for a meal. I somehow don't imagine they've discovered the proper craft of breadmaking, though." Snape mused, seeming all the sudden philosophical.

Harry had seen Gammy Hill make bread enough times to know there wasn't a whole lot to it. Certainly, it was easier than potions. He frowned.

"What, are they stupid or something?"

"They're known for being quite dull-witted, yes."

Harry was able to breathe a bit easier knowing this. He picked up one of the glass cups he'd appropriated for his purposes and used it to pour water over Curry's forequarters, rinsing the shampoo out of his wiry coat.

"That's a relief—"

Severus' head shook where Harry could see it in the periphery of his vision. "Don't delude yourself. A giant would have hold of you before you could say Arthur Pendragon, and he'd eat you in a single bite. At least if he meant to grind your bones, there might be some chance of escape while he prepared the rest of the ingredients and lit the oven."

His expression souring, Harry stood and reached for the towel that Severus had conjured for him, a hideous yellow thing the colour of stomach bile that he'd (in Harry's unique parlance) zhipped from a peeled-off scrap of the kitchen wallpaper. It had retained its dreadful floral pattern, to which Snape had, at the time, shrugged and dismissed by claiming that he was pants at transfiguration in any case.

"Well, don't try too hard to reassure me—"

"I wouldn't dream of it."

Harry completed Curry's bath by giving the canine a thorough rinse—which the dog delighted in shaking off all over the kitchen. Snape, none too pleased with the result, had given Harry the dish towel and a look that spelled out his expectation that the boy dry all of the surfaces in the narrow galley.

He'd barely managed to finish wiping down the vinyl-upholstered seats of the kitchen chairs before an infuriated bellow issued from the sitting room, followed closely by the sound of uproarious laughter.

The shouting that followed was so impassioned that Harry could scarcely make out the words, and he was surprised to realise that it was actually Severus, and not Toby, who was doing most of the yelling.

Snape getting his dander up enough to yell was odd enough; he usually got quieter the more he raged. Harry could count on one hand the number of times he'd heard him properly shout.

What was more telling was that he'd apparently reverted back to his roots and was screaming furious invectives in his native Cumbrian, which apparently had his father laughing all the louder.

Curry came slinking out of the sitting room with his tail between his legs; a strange, doggy-grin gracing his face, seemingly at odds with his shame-tailed exit from the room.

"—the privy! He's staying in the privy!" Snape was yelling.

Harry ducked his head through the doorway to see Snape waving one of his boots around, liquid dripping from the leather upper and spraying the walls.

Toby laughed even as he blocked his face with his hands to fend off the droplets.

"Pissed in my boots! Son of a bitch had a slash in my boots!"

Harry couldn't help the wholly inappropriate twisting of his lips.

"He what?" He asked, wanting to hear it again, even in the face of Severus' holy ire.

"THAT FUCKING DOG HAD A SLASH IN MY BOOT, POTTER!"

Harry doubled over, grabbing the wall for support. He was wheezing and couldn't help himself. Truthfully, what Curry had done to Snape's only pair of boots wasn't as funny as Severus' reaction to it.

"He—" Harry gasped, attempting to catch his breath, "he used it as a loo?"

"THERE'S URINE IN MY BLOODY BOOTS," Snape continued to rage, looking like he wanted to stick his hand inside to peel the soles out, but then recoiling at the state they were in.

Harry was still chortling, kept in good company by Snape's own father who had collapsed on the sofa in fits.

"Eu-fee-mism, Severus," Harry chided, sardonically.

After that, Harry had been banished to his room. He found he didn't regret it for a second, even in the face of Snape's righteous anger.

He slept poorly, his dreams beset by more nightmares that he never seemed to remember when waking. He often found that when he came to, panting while laying on his side, his arm, pinned under him while he'd slept, would have fallen asleep, necessitating some violent shaking in order to encourage blood to flow to his fingers once more.

Sleep seemed far away, and evidently, he'd not woken Severus this time with his somnolent fits. The house was eerily quiet, and for once, the familiar faces staring down from the walls at him didn't provide the comfort he felt lost without.

His head poked out into the still corridor.

It would be a pity to wake Severus over something so silly…

Harry bit his lip and crept out into the narrow hall, his back sliding along the wall as he attempted to mute his steps.

The stairs very nearly gave him away, but it seemed that Severus' father, still allocated to the sofa as he was, was a man of sound sleep. His snores were thunderous enough to mask any noise Harry worried he might make. It was a wonder that Harry hadn't heard them from upstairs, but then, it figured that Snape had probably put up some sort of spell to prevent his father's snoring from disturbing their sleep on the first floor.

Harry's bare feet, undeterred by the cold floorboards, padded softly into the kitchen where he filled a glass from the tap, the faucet and pipe creaking and protesting as soon as the water was turned on. He gulped it down greedily, his bleary eyes taking in the familiar phantasmic silhouettes of the potions equipment that occupied a permanent place at the far edge of the kitchen table, pushed up against the wall.

In the scant light, all colour was washed away, and everything was a spectral shade of deep navy. Even the deep snores of Tobias Snape couldn't shake the creeping panic Harry felt, perhaps a holdover from the terror he'd suffered in his dreams.

The cloistered air of the narrow house was stifling, and it didn't feel as though any of it was filling his lungs, at least not all the way. Harry leaned back, his face up to the ceiling, feeling instinctually that this ought to help him breathe. He tried to draw in air as forcefully as he could, but still felt as though the deepest reaches of his lungs were left wanting for precious oxygen.

It wasn't that he couldn't breathe, per se, but what breath he was managing to draw was woefully insufficient; nearly a mockery of what he felt he actually needed, until the inadequacy of it seemed to send his conscious thought into a spiraling panic.

He attempted several more ragged inhales before the dire reality of his mounting hunger for air grew too great, and his desperation drove him to run to the door, sensing that the cool air from outside might cut through the leaden weight that seemed to have settled into the deepest recesses of his chest.

Bursting forth from the house, into the frigid cold, Harry pitched over against the pitted brick wall, his hand holding himself steady as he took long drags from the November night's breeze, drinking greedily until he felt his mind begin to clear.

It took several moments, but at long last he felt his body relaxing against the side of the house, until he slid down the outer wall, allowing himself to take a seat in the dirt.

In all likelihood his bare feet would be filthy, but Harry didn't much mind. For the moment, the cold was biting at his toes, but he found it suited his mood. The sensations he felt when digging his toes into the chilled dirt felt like life, as opposed to the stultifying, unobjectionable nothingness that felt sort of like… well… the absence of life.

When he finally grew tired of the chill, Harry pushed himself up and plodded out to the privy, intent on emptying his bladder before he went back in for the remainder of the night.

He was nearly bowled over upon opening the door; Curry's nose sniffing along his head and face while his whip-like tail cut through the air, producing whooshing noises.

"Gerroff!" He couldn't help but to laugh; his hands pushing the dog's cold, black nose away from his glasses, which the hound had smeared. "Down! Down, now!"

It took a bit more insistence on his part, but eventually Cur Dog was encouraged to step aside outside the small outbuilding while Harry shut the door behind himself. He waited impatiently for Harry to finish up in the privy before he resumed his place following at the boy's heels.

Snape had begun to maintain a warming charm on the privy ever since the temperatures had started to dip down low, and Harry almost wished he didn't have to step back into the night now that he'd gotten used to the comfort of warmth again, but he gamely departed from the tiny, brick shed and made his way back to the house proper, holding the door for Curry to follow in behind him.

Severus would just have to deal with it, Harry decided. He simply didn't have the heart to force the mutt back into the cramped space that housed their toilet, warmed or not.

A/N: The song Tobias sings I found somewhere online, but I'm having a hard time locating it. I'd thought I'd saved the source somewhere in my notes, but its seemingly disappeared. In any case, it's not mine. I'm not sure if it's a proper folk song that's been passed down for ages or if some clever person came up with it and can lay claim.