Seven Drops and Asphodel Blooms
Summary: When Harry blows up his aunt during the summer, Dumbledore is much quicker to react. Snape finds him far before the Minister does, but his plan of dropping him off with a lecture and half a dozen additional summer assignments doesn't work out.
In which Harry spends the summer at Spinner's End.
Chapter 5
Privet Drive was as unwelcoming as the last time Severus had had the displeasure of visiting. He eyed the perfectly trimmed lawns framed by pristine picket fences and wondered why he'd bothered to come. Was he so desperate to get out of the house? It was no concern of his if Potter failed to complete his summer assignments due to his own carelessness.
At least the errand was an easy one. He would inquire whether Potter's relatives were finally willing to take back their nephew and, should the answer be negative, retrieve the books and return. It would be quick. A matter of ten minutes at the most.
(Later, Severus would think back fondly on that past, glorious week in which his worldview had been painted an immaculate black and white.)
He had to force his way into the house. Vernon Dursley held no high opinion of either Severus or wizardkind, and he had no intention to let one of them 'barge in like he owned the place and threaten him and his family'.
Dursley had a short-temper and an attitude. Severus had a wand. Red-faced fury tuckered out in favor of chalk-white terror, and Severus wasted no effort on pretending like he did not enjoy the power he held.
"I'm here for Mr. Potter's books," Severus told him in a bored drawl, twirling his wand in his hand. Dursley's eyes tracked the movement like it was a flawed rune on the verge of self-destructing. "Every additional minute I spend in your home will be owed to you."
Dursley's face contorted with too many emotions trying to manifest as he thought. It looked like a lot of work.
"Fine," he spat out at last. A glimmer of fear twitched over his face. "Wait here."
Severus would have likely done so, had Dursley made an effort to sound civil.
"That won't be necessary." Severus strode into the house before Dursley had time to step into his way. "I would be delighted to lend a hand."
A mountain of a boy – Potter's cousin – squeaked and leaped to his feet. He seemed largely unbothered for somebody who'd been caught eavesdropping.
"Is Harry in trouble?" While the words were sympathetic, the boy's tone of voice was anything but. "They said he was gonna get thrown out if he did any more magic. He did magic. Did they throw him out?" He looked positively gleeful at the prospect.
"That remains to be seen." Severus gave Dursley an impatient look. "The books."
"Yes," Dursley stuttered. "Yes, I'll... Take a seat in the living room and I will... That is–"
"They're in the cupboard under the stairs," Potter's cousin piped up.
Dursley's eyes widened. Snape's lips thinned in a smile. How intriguing.
"This one?" he asked pleasantly, walking up to the door Potter's cousin had indicated.
Sweat trickled down Dursley's neck. His face had taken on the color of rancid milk. "It's not– T-That is... Hold on..."
Severus used his wand to unlock the door. It was a very disappointing discovery. Potter's trunk was wedged inside alongside his broom. Although they didn't seem to have been placed inside with the utmost care, nothing appeared to be broken.
"There you have it," Dursley said loudly. "Take it and leave."
Severus was tempted to wave off Dursley's behavior as simple Muggle antics and take his leave. He didn't bother asking whether he would take his nephew back. It took no Legilimens to tell that the Muggle had no intention of doing so.
His eyes caught on something inside of the cupboard. He pulled the trunk out of the way to make room and ducked halfway into the crowded space. Beside him, Dursley became very still.
A handful of broken crayons littered the dusty floor of the cupboard, and several children's drawings were pinned on the inner walls. A lone elementary school book was wedged into one of the corners. It appeared as though a child had used the cupboard as a hiding place once upon a time.
Except there was Dursley's odd reaction.
Severus pulled his head back through the doorway. A hatch just below eye level let sparing light through the door, and a bolt lock had been attached from the outside. Severus stared at it. Deep scratches were driven into the wood behind the bolt, formed through excessive use.
Dursley cleared his throat. "Will that be all?"
Before Severus could decide on how to feel about what he had found, the front door opened and revealed Petunia Evans – now Dursley – carrying bulging grocery bags. Petunia caught sight of Severus and froze. She looked at him, his wand and the open cupboard in rapid succession.
"Who are you?" she barked, setting the bags aside. "What are you doing in our house?"
"A pleasure to see you again as well," Severus said, pulling his lips into a sneer, "Tuney."
Petunia's eyes widened as her face contorted. "It's you."
It appeared that Petunia had not made the connection earlier that week. Her husband had been the one to slam their door in Severus' face on the day he'd picked Potter off the streets, not her.
"What are you doing here?" She stepped up to her husband's side and gave the wand held loosely in Severus' hand no more than a cursory glance.
"I'm here on Headmaster Dumbledore's orders," Severus lied smoothly. "I don't suppose your inclination of holding grudges has faded over the years?"
Petunia's face colored in angry, bright red blotches. "Not any more than your freakishness."
Severus' lips curved into a cold, joyless smile. "I will take that as a 'no' on taking back your nephew."
"He's not stepping a foot inside," Petunia said at the same time that Dursley yelled, "He blew up my sister!"
"Of course. Such a, ah... regrettable incident." Severus reached for Potter's trunk. Something – not the Dursleys' special kind of hospitality – held him back. "Why are there locks on this cupboard?"
Petunia looked like she'd run face-first into a brick wall. "Who do you think you are?" she whispered. "Barging in here, demanding answers like we owe anything to you lot–"
"You." Severus turned abruptly so he was looming over Potter's cousin. He asked, his voice sickly sweet, "Why have your parents put locks on this cupboard?"
"Don't you dare threaten my son!" Petunia screamed.
"Quiet." Severus did not need to raise his voice. It was a blessed ability to have as a teacher.
"Harry used to sleep in there." The brat's lips quivered. His eyes kept darting to his parents. "That's why there's locks."
"He slept there," Severus repeated slowly. "As a punishment?"
"No. All the time."
Severus missed a beat. "When?"
"I dunno." Potter's cousin shrugged. "I guess until those dumb letters came. From his freak school."
There was no way the brat was telling the truth. But when Severus turned to face the Dursleys, both adults had gone white as chalk. Petunia trembled.
"How interesting." Severus' lip twitched. "Does Dumbledore know how well you've been taking care of your nephew?"
"Don't you dare," Petunia whispered. Severus could now see that she was trembling from rage, rather than fear. "Don't you dare."
"The boy has been a nuisance in our lives ever since you lot decided to drop him off at our doorstep!" Dursley yelled.
Severus supposed that there was truth to Dursley's statement. He was mildly surprised that nobody had questioned that decision for over twelve years.
Dumbledore did not err often. When he did, he did so in the same spectacular fashion he did everything else in his life.
"You kept him locked inside of a cupboard," Severus said slowly, tasting the words on his tongue.
The image clashed horribly with everything he'd known the Potter brat to be for the past two years he'd had the misfortune of knowing him. And yet, inside of the cupboard were the traces of somebody Severus had known – believed – to be arrogant and spoiled.
Faded pictures and battered books and broken toys, squirreled away like treasure. No child with access to anything better would have felt the need to do so.
The Dursleys had not made a single attempt to deny the accusation.
Snippets of Potter's stay at Spinner's End darted to the front of Severus' mind. His apprehension towards the old wardrobe. Holding his tongue in a way Severus had not thought him capable of. His need for clear, precise instructions and their consequences upon failure.
At the beginning, he'd needed encouragement to make use of the kitchen. Severus had chalked it up as a silly, misplaced teenage rebellion. What if it hadn't been? What else had been going on underneath this roof?
"You've got what you came for." Dursley glowered at him from eyes still wide with fear. "Just take it!"
"I believe I would like a more detailed account of Potter's homelife, first," Severus said softly.
"You can't make us talk!" Dursley yelled. "And you can't prove anything!"
Severus' lips thinned. "That was not a request."
Dursley opened his mouth and made furious eye-contact. Severus took the gracious invitation and dove into his mind. Memories readily unravelled as though they'd been printed in a handy photo album.
A younger Dursley sprinted to the front door of his home, joining his wife in gawking at the squirming bundle left on their doorstep.
Dursley stared at the ceiling of his bedroom as a second baby joined the first's ear-piercing wails. He would leave for work in three hours. Gentle humming told him his wife had already gone to take care of their son. Dursley pushed himself up and headed towards his nephew's shrill cries.
Dursley bitterly watched his nephew take his first, wobbly steps while his son would crawl no further than the flickering television set.
Dursley walked in on his hysterical wife and two floating toddlers. He caught his son from thin air, passed him to a sobbing Petunia, snatched up the second child and stuffed him into the nearest cupboard before anybody got hurt. He paused with one hand on the door, conflicted. The child's screams were muffled through the door. His son's were louder. He walked away.
It was dark outside. Dursley opened the cupboard door to a bleary-eyed, exhausted, docile toddler. Conflicted guilt was washed away by relief and the desperate hope that there'd be no more floating babies in their house.
The images came more quickly. Severus sorted through them with practiced ease.
Dursley installed the hatch on the cupboard door once the children outgrew their cribs.
Dursley bought ten colorful packages for his son's fourth birthday and picked up a shabby, second-hand picture-book for his nephew.
Dursley snatched up a buttered bun from his nephew's plate to soothe his tantrum-throwing son.
Dursley pushed a meal through a cat flap in his nephew's bedroom door that would not have fed a child half his age.
Dursley watched his wife narrowly miss his nephew's head with a frying pan. He said and did nothing.
Potter– Dursley's nephew– a two-year-old child screamed out his lungs behind the cupboard door in vain. A four-year-old watched his cousin open present after present after present. A five-year-old cried soundlessly after scraping open his knee. A four- and seven- and ten-year-old disappeared inside the cupboard. Out of sight, out of mind.
Severus ducked out of Dursley's vile memories and schooled his expression as the Muggle stumbled away from him.
Petunia couldn't know what had happened, but she seemed to realize that whatever it had been, they couldn't stop Severus from doing worse.
"You don't know anything about us," she bit out. She seemed to be thinking very quickly. "We took care of him. He has his own room. He went to school. He was clothed, and fed, and housed. We never touched him."
"Are you trying to blackmail us?" asked Dursley, his voice an octave higher than before. "Is that it? Well, you win. We'll take him back. You tell your headmaster, that Dumbly-what-was-it. You tell him, we'll keep our promise. We'll take him. Just leave!"
Severus tried to imagine the chi– Potter spending his next summer with his relatives. He imagined him silent and obedient. Making himself as little a nuisance as possible. Eating too little and being expected to be grateful for it.
Severus drew his finger along the handle of Potter's trunk. He half-expected it to tremble, but his hand was steady.
"Didn't you hear?" Petunia yelled, tugging her son protectively against her side. "Leave!"
"I believe I will be taking the rest, first."
Nobody was more surprised about his words than Severus.
"What rest?" Petunia stared at him.
Somehow Severus' wand found itself aimed at the Dursleys. All three of them went rigid in terror. "Collect everything in this house that has ever belonged to Harry Potter," he said, listening to his own voice as though he'd been put under the Imperio and somebody else was using it. He narrowed his eyes at Potter's cousin. "Go."
The brat squeaked in alarm and rushed up the stairs as quickly as his pudgy legs could carry him. Dursley shared a glance with Petunia before hurrying after his son.
Some of the numbness began to fade while he waited for them to return. His actions felt more like his own. The thoughts in his mind resembled some kind of order.
Was he the first who had stumbled over the true nature of Potter's life with his relatives? Severus couldn't understand how such a thing could have gone by unnoticed. Dumbledore cared about the boy. Many people supposedly did.
If Severus had known Potter was to be left on Petunia Evans' doorsteps... he would have likely rejoiced at the news that they both had gotten what they deserved.
Some of the fear in Petunia's eyes faded as they waited for her son and husband. They listened to their trampling footsteps as they scuttled about the first floor.
"Don't give me that look," she said quietly, watching him with seething eyes. "I know what you're thinking."
Severus couldn't hold himself back. "Lily would have been proud."
Petunia's eyes sparked icy fire. "We never asked for him. Nobody gave us a choice. We took him in, allowed him to... to use our protection, or however it's supposed to work. You could make us do that, but you couldn't make us love him."
Severus gave no reply, though Petunia didn't expect him to.
"What are you asking of us?" She laughed without humor. "None of you cared enough to take him. None of you cared enough to check up on him until he was old enough to– to be swept off to that blasted school of yours. Where were any of you until then? Where were any of her precious friends?"
There was no satisfaction in Petunia's eyes. Only pure, unconcealed bitterness.
"You're such a hypocrite," she said. "Twelve years, and now we're suddenly the villains? Don't pretend like you care about him. Don't pretend like all these years you've wasted a single thought on him."
He hadn't, Severus silently agreed.
Petunia narrowed her eyes. "What makes us so different?"
What made them different indeed? Few things brought Severus genuine joy, but knocking down Potter's arrogance by treating him the same as – or worse than – the other brats that made up his house was one of them.
Severus thought of classes he'd spent picking apart the flaws in Potter's potion brewing, insults he'd crafted to cut deeply and the satisfaction he felt upon seeing the brat struggle not to lash out in return.
(He thought of the bruises Severus had carried to school in his childhood. Of the ability to make himself invisible that had nothing to do with magic. He thought of summers he'd spent in misery and terror, and the desperate longing for the one place that had ever felt like home.)
(Potter had never, ever spent a week more at Privet Drive than he absolutely needed to.)
(Severus was not a good person. He realized that if nothing else could be said about his life, he at least did not want to fall into his father's footsteps.)
"I'm not too arrogant to admit that I might have been mistaken." Severus pulled his lips into a sneer. "It didn't take me twelve years to realize."
He grabbed Potter's trunk and broom and brushed past Petunia to wait at the front door.
Dursley soon came scurrying back, carrying the garbage bag he'd stuffed Potter's belongings into. There wasn't much inside. There were mismatched clothes that appeared too large, a wristwatch and an alarm clock that looked like they had been broken and fixed with a lot of sellotape, and a handful of books that had nothing to do with magic.
Dursley had even thrown the drawings and the broken crayons on top. It was depressingly little for a boy who had supposedly spent twelve years of his life living here.
Petunia shuffled back into the hallway as her husband beat a hasty retreat. She shoved a thick stack of papers into his arms. They were letters, strung together with yarn.
Severus narrowed his eyes. "What are these?"
"They were hers." Petunia scowled into nothing. "She kept sending them. I never answered."
Severus' heart stuttered. On closer inspection, he could make out Lily's neat script. All the letters were opened. Petunia had read them. All of them.
"I want them out of my house."
Severus put the letters into the bag, careful not to crinkle a single one. The simple reminder of Lily sent pulsing waves of longing through Severus' chest. He wondered what she would think of him now.
(He had a good idea of what she might think. He locked the thought away before it did more damage than it already had.)
He bid Petunia goodbye with a curt, "You won't be seeing him again."
Petunia went stiff at the proclamation. She nodded.
Severus turned and walked away from Privet Drive without looking back.
It was only after he reached the familiar shabbiness of Spinner's End that Severus realized the magnitude of what he'd just done. Of all the sentimental, poorly thought-out whims...
It was too early to tell whether he felt regretful. What he'd done in a fit of recklessness unbecoming for somebody of Severus' position was going to draw waves of consequences in its wake.
He dropped off Potter's belongings at the house and made sure not to run into the boy by accident. He didn't want to contemplate what his little eye-opening had changed. Just this once, he'd take the coward's way and put off the confrontation.
The one he was about to have instead was hardly an improvement.
Albus had not hoped for a miracle when he'd sent Severus after Harry. He'd seen a problem – Harry, alone, vulnerable to be found and killed by Sirius Black only weeks after his escape from Azkaban – and sent the person most capable of solving it.
He knew that he was punishing them both. This, while regretful, Albus was willing to accept as long as their temporary unhappiness ensured Harry's continuous safety.
Severus would keep Harry safe. He would do so reluctantly – even bitterly – but Albus had no doubt in his mind that Severus would complete the task admirably. He had not attempted to find another solution as thoroughly as he'd let Severus believe.
Albus had not foreseen him to take a deeper interest.
"Find someone else to house him," Severus said, finishing his account of what had transpired at Privet Drive. He didn't meet Albus' eyes. "Find anyone. But not them."
"Tempers have been high today," Albus said slowly. "I will talk to them. Surely, there was some sort of misunderstanding–"
"Albus," Severus interrupted sharply. "They made him sleep in a cupboard. They starved him. He's a freak to them, a bother, not a– not family." He finally met Albus' eyes. "If you trust in my judgement and care in the slightest about his well-being, find somebody else."
Severus held eye contact. It wasn't the sign of trust, nor the betrayal of carelessness it could have been from somebody else. Coming from Severus, it was something cutting, something challenging.
Albus looked away first, feeling something inside of him deflate.
To Albus, family was everything. He couldn't understand how anyone – be their ways misguided and terribly inadequate – could feel anything other than love for their own blood.
People weren't perfect. Parents weren't. But ultimately, deep down, Albus wanted to believe that every living creature was capable – even pre-destined – to love those that were born their own flesh and blood.
There was no stronger branch of magic than blood magic for a reason.
Severus, Albus knew, didn't share his view. It hadn't occurred to him that Harry – Harry, who looked so like his father, who had his mother's love written into every fiber of his being (who wore clothes that didn't fit and felt at home at Hogwarts like few students did) – no, it hadn't occurred to him that Harry might not share his view, either.
"Forgive an old man his foolish optimism," he said. There were moments when he felt every single of the days he'd lived weighing on his soul.
Losing the blood wards before Harry's fourteenth birthday was not something Albus had foreseen. But if the situation was as dire as Severus claimed...
Albus sighed. "I trust you." He met Severus' blank expression. "Unless he wishes to, Harry won't be returning to his relatives next summer."
Even though it was what Severus had wished, the words painted a scowl on his face.
"I assume that you realize what this means?" Albus said carefully.
"Quite," Severus muttered, crossing his arms.
While many would have found the gesture intimidating, Albus was reminded of the schoolboy Severus had been not long ago. "Harry needs our protection more than he's ever needed it before. You know this."
"Black," Severus spat with all the resentment he'd had festering inside of him since he'd been eleven years old.
"Yes," Albus agreed. "Harry won't be safe until he's back at Hogwarts. Even then..." He sighed, deciding to be frank. "It is unlikely I will find a suitable alternative before the end of the summer."
Severus' scowl deepened, though he said nothing.
"I trust you with my life," Albus said gently, "and I trust you with his. I wouldn't ask if I saw another option."
"You say it as though I have a choice," Severus muttered. After a few moments, he jerked his head.
Albus leaned back, relieved. It pained him that Severus and Harry were so miserable in each other's company. But as long as Harry was safe, it was a price worth paying.
A/N:
Snape, entering Privet Drive: Yes, good. I shall use this opportunity to learn details of Potter's home life to taunt him with
Snape, learning about his home life:
Snape:
Snape: Wait
Many thanks to To Mockingbird, Igornerd, JustAnotherOutcast and flyingcat!
Let me know what you think!
~Gwen