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 15
Spinner's End hadn't changed at all. The neighboring buildings were as shabby and run-down as Snape's own, the occasional passerby looked as ordinarily muggle as could be, and no hint of glass made one suspect a magical greenhouse hidden among bricks and cobblestone.
Though nobody had likely stepped a foot inside since, it was still startling to find everything the exact same way as they'd left it. Harry certainly felt nothing like the boy who'd stepped over the doorstep almost a year ago.
"Leave the trunk," Snape told him, striding towards the kitchen. "I won't have you break your neck trying to drag it upstairs."
"I wasn't going to–"
"Should you desire any control over what to find in the fridge this evening, I suggest you be ready to go out in half an hour."
Harry rolled his eyes, snatched up his broom and Hedwig's cage (he'd already let her out for a flight), and climbed the stairs to the first floor. Half an hour was plenty of time.
The mirror in the downstairs bathroom gave him brilliantly red hair in greeting, while the forest painting in the living room showed off abstract shapes in radiant colors Harry knew for sure Snape would be annoyed by. Maybe it was because up until a week ago he'd thought he'd never see it again, but Harry thought it had never looked better.
The travel-sized fridge in his room was still there (currently unplugged), though the coffee table in the living room was empty. The night sky flowers were gone, as was the sparkling flower pot that had held them.
The key to the wardrobe still fit. Harry didn't know why he had the need to check, but he felt a vague sense of relief when he slipped the key back into his trunk afterwards.
Later, well after their grocery run, Harry found the night sky flowers inside of the greenhouse, blooming as radiantly as when he'd first found them all those months ago.
"How come the plants all look exactly the same?" he asked in the evening once the fridge was filled and both of them had finished unpacking.
"The greenhouse is put under a stasis spell." Snape sent him an incredulous look. "Have you thought they would be left to their fate during the school year?"
"Is that why you put the flowers back?"
Snape's brows dropped into a moody frown. "Leaving them to rot would have been pointless."
Harry's lip twitched. "So I can bring them back into the house now?"
"If you must."
Snape did a decent job sounding as though he didn't care either way. Yet, Harry thought it would have been easy for him to 'forget' about the supposedly useless plant so as to get rid of it without hurting Professor Sprout's feelings, had he really wanted to.
Not counting the greenhouse, the spot on the sofa right underneath the forest painting was still Harry's favorite place in the house. He could watch both the painting and the night sky flowers from here, as well as the people passing by the house on the boardwalk outside.
He recognized an ink stain on the floor next to the coffee table, right where he'd dropped his quill a few days before they'd left for Hogwarts the past summer. He thought of cleaning it up, but seeing the trace of his first stay made him feel something he couldn't quite put into words.
The first few days at Spinner's End were uneventful. After the fourth, Snape started dropping unsubtle comments about laziness and the merits of starting one's summer assignments early.
On the fifth, Harry was torn out of his sleep by what felt like a soldering iron pressed against his scar and images of Voldemort plotting his murder seared into his mind.
As a rule, Severus attempted to involve himself in Potter's business as little as possible. He grudgingly tolerated him pouring orange juice into a coffee mug during breakfast the next morning, as well as taking three attempts to get the toaster working. He finally drew the line when Potter scooped tomato paste out of a jar instead of jam.
"If it is attention you seek, there are simpler ways of asking for it."
Potter sent him a look that was more tired than moody. "What?"
Severus slowed his voice as though talking to a particularly dense first-grader. "Is there something you wish to share?"
"Not really." Potter frowned at his toast. "Didn't sleep well."
Stubborn boy. "As I am not yet so desperate to read your mind, I suggest you tell the truth or lie more convincingly."
"Is that something you could do? Read my mind?"
"Do not change the subject," Severus said testily.
Potter pushed his bowl away with a scowl. "It's not important."
"The longer you attempt to weasel out of a reply, the more you convince me that it is."
Potter propped his head up on his hands and huffed out a breath of air. "It's my scar." He hesitated. "It started hurting again."
"Again," Severus repeated. Potter said it as though it was unfathomable to him that somebody might not be informed about all the intricate details of his life.
"It's done that before. Last time it was because of Vol– You-Know-Who," said Potter, undeterred. "Because he was near me. But he can't be here." He sounded not at all sure of himself. "Can he?"
Severus held himself very still. "Were the Dark Lord to approach this house, I would know."
"How?"
"Irrelevant." Severus smothered a new wave of protests with a look. The skin on his left inner forearm ached. "I will not discuss my past over breakfast."
Potter dropped his gaze and glared at the kitchen table.
Severus sighed deeply. "And?"
Prying answers out of the boy was somehow more irritating than wrangling his entire class during the school term. By the time he'd gotten Potter to tell him about his dream, Severus' patience had come close to snapping.
His dream sounded too straightforward to be made up entirely by his mind. Were Potter plagued by prophetic visions, Dumbledore ought to have mentioned it. Perhaps the development was a recent one, or perhaps Dumbledore had deemed the information not worth sharing.
There were many things Dumbledore deemed not worth sharing.
"What I saw can't be true, right?" Potter chewed on his lip. "I saw Pettigrew, but he's with the Ministry, isn't he?"
Severus did not answer. Were it up to him, Pettigrew would have been sent on a one-way trip to Azkaban with no trial, like so many other Death Eaters back in the day. It was a shame that now that they were at peace, the Ministry was back to pretending it had principles to upkeep.
"Tell me the instant you have another of these dreams," he said instead, firmly ending the conversation.
His Mark may have been dormant for the past decade of his life, but neither he nor Dumbledore were so foolish to hope that it would remain so.
When news of Pettigrew's escape from Ministry custody became public, neither one of them was surprised. They'd had little hope that the dream had been just that, and they knew better than to assume that Pettigrew had done anything other than crawl straight back to his old master's feet.
Harry got used to waking up with a headache. He had no more dreams, but his scar wouldn't settle; the pain wasn't unbearable and usually disappeared by lunchtime, but it was a constant reminder that somewhere out there, Voldemort was plotting his demise.
Snape finally explained his own link to Voldemort after some more prodding on Harry's part. The tattoo – the scar? The mark? – he revealed was faint but no less grotesque. Harry didn't understand how anyone could have agreed to have it seared into their skin permanently.
"It was once a mark of pride," Snape told him. "A way to distinguish the Dark Lord's true followers from those bewitched to carry out his deeds."
"What about the Malfoys?" Harry asked. "If they've got the Mark, how come they weren't punished?"
"The more cowardly started to turn as soon as there were rumors about the Dark Lord's fall." Snape pulled his lips into a sneer. "They claimed they'd been forced to take on the Mark. Utter nonsense. The Dark Lord prided himself on his followers' loyalty. He would not have tainted his reputation by marking ordinary people."
Harry wondered what Voldemort would do, could he see how many of his loyal servants had abandoned him the instant he'd lost his power.
He wondered what would have happened, had Snape not changed his mind when he had. Would he have been one of those carded off to prison, loyal to the end, or would he have followed in the Malfoys' footsteps and pretended to have been controlled against his will?
Harry decided that he didn't want to know. He'd only just started processing that Snape had been a Death Eater in the first place. He only made himself upset thinking about it.
"What are you doing?"
Snape's back went rigid. A bright flare escaped the tip of his wand, but he smothered it before it could do any damage. "After three years of studying magic you ought to have the common sense not to sneak up on an armed wizard."
"I wasn't sneaking." Harry took a closer look at the paper strewn over the coffee table. Snape's writing was too messy to make anything out. "I've never seen those wand movements before," he said, ignoring the illegible scrawl. Snape had gone from seemingly writing into thin air to conducting an invisible orchestra.
"Hardly a surprise, seeing as you've completed only a fraction of your education."
Harry flopped down on the couch. "When am I going to learn them?"
"You won't."
"Why? You said–"
"I implied that there are a great many number of incantations and wand movements you would not yet know, having just finished your third year."
"And what you were doing isn't something we're going to learn, because..." He trailed off, looking at Snape expectantly.
Snape covered his eyes with one hand and gave an impatient sigh. He lowered himself into the nearest armchair. "What do you know of spell creation?"
Harry trusted his clueless expression to convey his answer.
Snape sighed again, though it sounded exasperated more than annoyed. "Spell creation is the act of discovering new ways of shaping one's magic through unique physical cues, incantations or both." He paused. "Essentially one determines a gap in one's repertoire of spells and pursues the goal of filling it."
Harry gaped. "You can do that? Just… make up magic spells?"
Snape raised his eyebrow. "'You' as in 'one', or me specifically?"
Harry flushed. He supposed that spells had to be coming from somewhere. "Is this what you do for fun?"
Snape sent him a scathing look as though the idea of doing anything 'for fun' was as ridiculous as it was insulting.
"Did you invent some before?"
"It has been known to happen."
Harry decided that he was actually impressed. Admittedly he had no idea how one would go about inventing a magic spell, so Hermione would have to tell him just how impressed he ought to be.
He imagined his friends' faces if he returned to school being able to cast spells they weren't taught in class. Even Ron might be willing to overlook who he'd learned them from, as long as Harry showed him how to do it, too.
Harry learned forward eagerly, cursing himself for leaving his wand upstairs. "Can you show me?"
"Do I need to remind you of the underage magic ban?"
Harry winced. Magic existed so casually in Snape's home, he'd almost forgotten he wasn't allowed to use it himself. "At school then," he pressed. "You can teach me when we go back."
"And be forced to endure your subpar attention span in my free time additionally to my classes?"
"I did fine with the Patronus," Harry protested. "And you're the one who said it was difficult to learn for a third-year. I must have been doing something right."
Snape seemed to have nothing to say to that. Him not coming up with a fresh insult to Harry's intelligence was probably the closest to a compliment he was going to get.
"We shall see," Snape said, which Harry decided to take as a victory.
He found an intimidating volume titled 'A History of Spell Crafting' on the coffee table the next day. Knowing it was Snape's way of telling him that they wouldn't be going any further until he'd made an effort of working his way through it, Harry swallowed down a groan and heaved the book into his lap.
He'd been the one who'd insisted. He knew Snape well enough by now to know that changing his mind because the reading looked hard wouldn't be well received.
Harry had finished breakfast and was psyching himself up for another few frustrating paragraphs when the howler arrived. It was delivered by a jittery owl that dropped it in through the open kitchen window and fled before it had even hit the table.
Snape chose to enter the room right as it opened.
"YO, HARRY!"
Harry froze wide-eyed. His godfather's voice boomed through the air at a volume that might prompt Snape's muggle neighbors to call the police on them.
"HOPE YOU'RE HAVING A DECENT SUMMER! JUST MAKING SURE THIS MESSAGE FINDS YOU WITHOUT INTERFERENCE FROM NEARBY DUNGEON GHOULS."
Harry covered his eyes with one hand. At the doorway, Snape had gone very still.
"ME AND REMUS ARE STILL CLEANING UP THE HOUSE, BUT WE GOT RID OF THE KNEECAP BREAKING CURSES AND A BUNDIMUN INFESTATION. YOU SHOULD COME OVER! UNLESS CERTAIN FACTORS KEEP YOU." Sirius' voice turned into an ear-drum ripping drawl. "IN WHICH CASE I WILL GLADLY COME OVER AND FETCH YOU. JUST SAY THE WORD. OR SAY NOTHING. I'LL COME GET YOU EITHER WAY."
Sirius' voice sharpened. "YOU HEAR THAT, OLD BAT? YOU BETTER NOT BE MISTREATING MY GODSON."
Harry's eyes drilled into Snape's ugly kitchen wallpaper. He willed the ground to open and swallow him up.
"I'LL SEE YOU SOON," Sirius boomed. "HANG ON TIGHT, HARRY!"
The letter proceeded to set itself on fire in standard howler fashion.
If the letter had been deafening, it was nothing compared to the silence that followed.
"I think Sirius might want to see me," Harry said.
"Does he."
There was an uncomfortable pause.
"You're gonna let me go, right?"
"Seeing as my choices seem to be that or have an incarcerated convict break into my house, I suppose I shall have to."
"Ex-convict," Harry corrected, realizing as soon as he'd said it that he wasn't helping his case. "Sorry. About the howler, I mean. Sirius is just..." He trailed off.
Snape arched an eyebrow. "Just what?"
"He hasn't been around people," Harry finished awkwardly, like Sirius' hatred for Snape was somehow related to his stay in Azkaban.
Seeing as Snape glared into the distance instead of at Harry, he dared hoping that he wasn't being blamed for the howler.
Secretly, Harry felt relieved. Sure, Sirius hadn't sounded like his hatred for Snape had lessened even slightly since the last time they'd spoken. But Harry hadn't heard from him since Hogwarts, and even though Sirius had told him not to worry, Harry had secretly felt anxious that Sirius resented him for choosing Snape over him.
He wondered how long Sirius would wait before showing up at Spinner's End to 'rescue' him. Even knowing him for as short a time as he did, Harry doubted it would be long.
"About visiting–"
Snape silenced him wordlessly. His glares may not have had the same effect on Harry they'd had a year ago, but they could still be very effective if Snape wanted them to be.
"You can inform your godfather that we will not drop everything to cater to his impulsive whims," he said.
Harry tilted his head. "And..."
Snape settled for a sour grimace. It wasn't much different from the way he usually looked. "There might be time for a visit at the end of the week."
"Awesome." Harry leaped to his feet. They had nothing planned that warranted postponing, but he didn't call Snape out on it. He'd been half-prepared to argue his way into visiting Sirius at all, so waiting a few days to make Snape feel like he had the upper hand was nothing. "I'll tell him."
"Have at least one of your summer assignments ready before we leave," Snape called after him. "Merlin knows what nonsense he will distract you with."
"Sure." He'd just grab his supplies and do his Herbology homework in the greenhouse, surrounded by magical plants that reminded him why the subject wasn't as boring as his textbooks made it sound.
Harry skipped back into the room, picking up the gigantic book on spell creation he'd forgotten. "If I told Sirius to come get me, what do you think he'd do to break me out?"
Snape's scathing glare would have made him fear for his life a year ago. Now, Harry simply smothered a grin and rushed for the stairs, already crafting his reply to Sirius.
A/N:
Harry five minutes later, debating whether to send Sirius the letter or letting him 'rescue' him: On one hand, Snape would probably kill me
Harry: On the other, it would be really really funny
Snape, downstairs: How many security measures can I cramp into this house before it literally becomes impossible to live in
xxx
Many thanks to To Mockingbird, Igornerd, JustAnotherOutcast and flyingcat!
~Gwen