Harry's eyes tracked over the wood paneling of the room and he gulped.

Once more, he'd been forced into wearing the suit that Severus had insisted he wear during his baptism, Palm Sunday, and Easter Sunday, only this time, he was far more nervous than he'd been on the either of those occasions. This was important enough that even Severus had traded in his usual lazy excuse for formal wear (his trusty black poloneck), for a proper jacket, a crisp, white shirt, and, to Harry's amazement, a black, rayon tie.

April was ready to cede itself to May, and although truly warm days were still on the horizon, he felt uncomfortably toasty on the trip down to Kingston upon Thames. Although Severus was as unflappable as he ever was in mixed company, Harry knew he'd seen a bead of sweat forming on his kuya's brow as well whilst they'd sat in the train car. It was all the more noticeable for the fact that Severus' shining, black hair was pulled into a queue at the base of his thin neck, and from the hair elastic sprang a riot of unruly ringlets that he'd despaired over just that morning.

Harry was quite certain he'd even heard the older wizard mumbling something about wishing he'd been, at one point, prophetic enough to purchase a bottle of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion.

The boy had been a combination of too nervous and too wise to mock Snape over his momentary lapse into vanity. Things were dire enough if Snape had chosen to so thoroughly cleanse his hair for the occasion.

Of course, Ms. Tibbons had seemed to enjoy it. They'd elicited her aid in driving them to the train station in Carlisle early that morning, and when she'd thought Harry hadn't been looking, she seemed to take great joy in tugging on the ends of individual curls and giggling as they bounced back into a helical shape when she let go.

Snape bore it all with a certain level of stoicism. Probably because she'd tugged his starched lapels toward her before their departure and planted a great big smooch on his mouth (again, when she'd thought Harry to have been otherwise occupied).

It wasn't so much that Harry had been trying to watch, but so very early in the morning, there was little else to see, and it was amusing enough to watch Severus doing his best for the first fifteen minutes of their trip to remove the traces of Ms. Tibbons' lipstick from the edge of his mouth. It must have been some sort of long-lasting, hard-wearing formula, for despite his best efforts, once he'd entered the room set aside for mediation upon their arrival, he'd still had a touch of vibrant pink staining the corner of his mouth.

That thought inevitably brought home to Harry the reality of his present circumstances. He attempted to look just about anywhere that wasn't directly across the hall from himself, where in a chair that mirrored the placement of his own, pushed against the far wall, he felt a presence jeering at him.

Truthfully, it was more than merely feeling the presence when he heard the baiting call: "Potter! POTTER! Look up! Look here, knobhead!"

The calm presence of the spindly Mr. Clarke—whom he'd only somewhat remembered from their meeting months earlier—did nothing to dissuade the child seated across the hall from continuing his catcalls.

The man's eyes were trained on nothing in particular, at a point a few feet above where the other boy was sitting. If he'd chosen to look either slightly left or slightly right then Harry might have understood better how he could be staring so intently. On either side there were oil portraits of flabby-faced gentlemen from a hundred or more years past, proudly wearing their white, powdered wigs. As it was, he was staring at a point between the portraits, but north of Dudley Dursley's neatly-combed, blond hair. Literally at nothing. There wasn't even an interesting knot in the wood to examine.

Harry sighed, knowing that the social worker was disinclined to intervene on his behalf. He'd merely have to endure the abuse.

That was fine, so long as Dudley kept his great heft to himself on the other side of the hall. Harry had heard worse from him over the years, and nothing that the youngest Dursley now said could touch the levels of creatively insulting discourse that Severus could come up with when he'd been worked into a lather.

It was terribly strange seeing and hearing his cousin after almost a year away from the other boy. They'd both seemingly grown: Harry in height and his cousin in girth (although he might have been a bit taller, now that Harry glanced at him out of the corner of his eye). Yet he sounded the same. He used the same words to bully him, and he'd apparently not changed even a little bit since they'd last been in the same room, except, perhaps, to have become even nastier.

By contrast, Harry knew he, himself, had changed a lot. At one point in time, he'd have ducked his head under the barrage, or subjected himself to it, knowing that to fight back or argue would have meant being tattled on to his aunt and uncle. But he was under Severus' roof now, and Snape didn't care one whit whether Harry got in his own licks. Neither did he care if Harry stuck his nose in the air and refused to engage.

Given that they were in the imposing Crown Court building in downtown Kingston, Harry chose the latter. He might have tested his prowess at fighting back had he encountered his obese cousin on the street or at the play yard, having a newfound confidence in his physical abilities after long hours of labour spent at the Hill's and at Snape's shop, but he also knew he'd always been smarter than Dudley had ever been. Smart enough to know when things weren't looking good for his relatives and that Dudley was only painting an unsavoury picture of how they'd treated young Harry Potter from the very moment he'd been dropped at their doorstep.

Let him call Harry names.

Harry snorted and smirked a bit down at the maroon carpet runner that spanned the length of the hall.

Dudley had no idea how much worse he was making it for his own parents, and by extension, himself.

All things considered, Harry was grateful that he'd not been called in to testify before the magistrate himself. Because of his age, Mrs. Plunkett had dropped by their house two weeks earlier—at a time and date prearranged with Severus—to debrief the two on their upcoming court date, the criminal charges being brought against the Dursleys, and to collect Harry's statements. Severus had stepped out of the room for that portion, and Harry had been left alone with the round, little woman.

She was still annoyingly condescending, but she was also genuinely kind and warm, and Harry couldn't find it in himself to fault her too much. She gasped and held her fluttering hand to her breast at all of the appropriate moments during Harry's recitation of his years residing at Number Four Privet Drive, and scowled darkly once they'd made it to the point in his tale where he'd been left all on his lonesome, taken by Severus for a week only to discover upon his return that the Dursleys had planned to sell the house out from underneath him with no plan in place for his ouster or care.

"It beggars belief," she'd muttered to herself. Along with her she'd brought a tape recorder to catch anything Harry might say for the sake of the record, and Harry noticed that she was careful to turn it off whenever she wanted to provide her own commentary. Her hand was rapidly flying across the clipboard that was perched on the edge of her knees, the pen she gripped moving so fast that Harry was amazed to see what she was writing was actually legible. Evidently she was paraphrasing his answers on paper even as he spoke toward the recording device.

Harry was grateful that his portion was done with. All that remained was for Severus to provide his own version of events to the magistrate, and to corroborate much of Harry's own account.

While the way Harry had been treated for years had certainly raised eyebrows with Mrs. Plunkett and Mr. Clarke, it seemed that for the sake of a potential criminal case, they had limited the scope of their concern to the point at which he'd been abandoned, and that the biggest sticking point with the solicitors was likely going to be proving that the Dursleys hadn't simply forgotten him underneath the staircase when they'd sojourned to Brighton and summarily chosen to move.

If that was the story that his aunt and uncle had come up with then Harry thought his chances pretty good. He was just glad that this hearing wasn't remotely concerned with his guardianship under Severus, and for his part, Snape had made a trip to the Ministry of Magic in Blackhall a week earlier to confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was in good standing.

Ever since that second visit from the social workers, Harry had done his best to ignore the inevitable. He, for the first time, devoted all of his attention to school, and did his best to actually engage with Mr. Fowler in class. Whenever he was out of the classroom, he tried to fill the hours with just about anything he could to take his mind off of the coming trip to Surrey: his guitar lessons and practise schedule, his weekly farm chores, taking on extra grunt work at the shop; he'd even invited Nicky and Snowdrop to Snape & Son in the hopes that they might come and distract him from his anxiety.

It had been just his luck that Gammy had accepted on Snowdrop's behalf, and Nicky tagged along just for something to occupy an empty afternoon. Yet, no sooner had they entered the shop than did Tobias set upon them, putting Nicky to work with a spanner to loosen a too-tight bolt and doing his level best to force his daughter to speak to him when she was resolved not to say a word. It made for yet another uncomfortable afternoon and Harry wished that the two would give it up already. They were difficult enough to be around when they'd not known that they were related.

Still, the strained quality of time spent with Tobias and Snowdrop making fools of themselves was preferable to reflecting on what might await him in Surrey, and so Harry had persisted in inviting the siblings over whenever he thought they might not otherwise be occupied.

If nothing else, then at least the last time they'd shown up, Snowdrop had begrudgingly shoved a jar of preserves into her father's hands (likely at the insistence of her grandmother) and by the end of their afternoon together—and after much needling and cajoling by Tobias, who was putting on his most charming face for the occasion—admitted to liking Hardy Boys novels. This came as news to Harry who, until that point, hadn't been aware that Snowdrop Hill liked anything at all.

Really though, if Dudley's idiotic taunting was all he'd have to contend with, then Harry could find it in himself to relax a bit. It was so strange but... he simply didn't care anymore. Dudley couldn't rally a group of friends to attack him. He couldn't get him in trouble or frame him for something that Dudley himself had done. Harry had his own school, full of his own—well... he wouldn't quite say he'd made friends, but his own group of acquaintances, at least. He had his own bedroom and his own guitar. He had his work at the farm (which he knew he'd have to miss for the afternoon, stuck in Surrey as he was) and his work in the shop. He had a kuya, a lola, a tarantula, and a dog, and also whatever it was that Tobias was to him, which he still couldn't put a name to.

Dudley could call him whatever he liked, it was no more inventive or nasty than half of the things he'd heard bandied about between Jack Sandys and Carl Masters while they were engaged in a match of footy in the school yard. At Rowky Syke, Harry was just a nobody. That suited him just fine. No one liked him all that much, it was true, but no one hated him either. He was as inconsequential to their lives as they were to his. He was just one boy in a class that had nine boys total. He was neither the smartest, nor the stupidest. He was neither the problem child, nor the teacher's pet.

With this thought in mind, he finally looked at Dudley and surveyed him silently. At first, it seemed that under Harry's attention, Dudley grew larger, as though he'd finally gotten what he wanted, but within moments the gargantuan child across from him seemed to recognise that his scrawny cousin wasn't reacting as he properly should have, and he grew red about the face, and screamed abuses anew.

Beside Harry, Mr. Clarke sighed, tapping his knobby knees with his spindle-thin fingers. "Is this quite normal for your cousin?"

"Yeah." Harry began to swing his feet out of boredom. At least he hadn't had to see his aunt or uncle. They'd already been in with the magistrate when he and Severus had arrived. "'Cept usually he has his friends doing it too."

Mr. Clarke nodded but said no more on the matter. He didn't seem inclined to put a stop to Dudley's taunting, but Harry thought that was probably fine. It was at least more of what he was used to. The teachers in Little Whinging had never stepped in either.

If anything, the social worker seemed as though he might be a bit frightened of the bully sitting across from them, who was likely heavy enough that he could have bowled the skeletal frame of Mr. Clarke over if it came to a full-on scrum. He was doing his best to look as though he didn't at all notice Dudley, and a bit of sweat was beading up on his pinched brow.

Harry had to sigh. Dudley was a menace, but Mr. Clarke's cowardice was bothersome. He'd have liked to see what Severus would have done with his cousin instead. Probably he could have scared the older boy so witless that he'd piss himself.

Entertained with this thought, Harry sat back and grinned a bit, meeting Dudley's increasingly flushed face and small, piggish eyes with his own.

"What are you smiling about, Potter!? Stop smiling or I'll come over and knock your front teeth out!"

Harry grinned wider and flashed his pearly whites at his cousin, turning his head this way and that in an effort to show off the dimples that Lola insisted he had (and insisted on pinching) each time she saw him in recent months. He wasn't inclined to speak to the other boy, but he'd be damned if he'd let Dudley boss him around. He'd smile even if by the end of the day his cheeks hurt and his face were to be stuck that way.

"You freaky little plonker," Dudley growled, screwing up his face so that small wrinkles appeared on the bridge of his upturned nose. It looked like he was beginning to rise, which instantly had the effect of chilling the smile on Harry's lips until it fell away.

With alarm, Harry glanced to Mr. Clarke and saw that the man looked equally uncertain. He'd raised his index finger and opened his mouth as though he were going to object, but any words he might have said died on his lips.

"Excuse me? I hope I'm not interrupting?" It was a feminine voice, calling from down the hall and echoing slightly around the walls. All three glanced to where it had come from.

Hurrying down the carpeted aisle was a small, stooped figure who seemed to favour her left leg. She hobbled fairly quickly, however, and soon made it to them, huffing and out of breath, but in enough time to look sharply at Dudley and to shake a thin finger at him.

"I haven't any idea what you're preparing to do, Dudley, but I'd advise you to think a bit harder about it, if I were you."

Dudley sneered at the newcomer, but he did refrain from saying anything else. With a scowl, he crossed his thick arms over his middle and sank into a sulk, blowing a stray strand of straw-coloured hair from out of his vision with an irritated puff of air released through his pursed lips.

Harry shifted a bit until he sat on his restless hands. His bum had begun to go numb from the hard wooden chair, and then he resumed swinging his legs which had stilled when he'd been certain that Dudley might actually come over and physically antagonise him.

"'Ello, Mrs. Figg."

"Hello, Harry," the stooped older woman replied, her voice kind. She then turned to the man sat beside him and nodded her head in greeting. "Mr. Clarke, how do you do?"

"Equable, Mrs. Figg."

Harry wrinkled his nose. Besides the fact that he hadn't the foggiest idea of what that word should mean, it sounded so stuffy. Mr. Clarke may well have been the biggest bore he'd ever met in his life.

It seemed as though Mrs. Figg was similarly unimpressed with his answer, for she made a non-committal humming noise and looked at the staid pencil-pusher with a bit of uncertainty in her gaze, as though she thought he might be just a bit thick or something.

"I'm afraid Tibbles and Mr. Paws had it out this morning, and it took a bit of doing to separate them... I'm terribly sorry for being so very tardy. I've not missed the deposition, have I?"

"They're meeting as we speak," Mr. Clarke answered, rising from his chair. He affected what might have been an attempt at an accommodating bow, but which was really only a slight bend at the waist as he gestured to the door a scant few meters from where they'd been waiting in the chairs. "I'll see if they can be joined presently and collect you when they're ready. Please, take my seat," he offered, gesturing to the chair beside Harry's.

She took it gratefully and propped up her gammy foot on its heel, so it rested out in front of her.

"What's wrong with your leg, Mrs. Figg?" Harry asked, peering down at the appendage curiously.

"I've been feeling a bit poorly over the spring," Mrs. Figg explained, looking down at Harry with a strangely conspiratorial look in her eyes. "Hayfever. Nothing especially bad, but not at all fun. When I was in the garden tending my beds for the spring planting, I had a bit of a sneeze and tripped over Tufty, poor dear, so, of course, I've gone and sprained it."

"Oh..." Harry winced in sympathy. He'd never been especially fond of Mrs. Figg. She was just as much of a bore as he found Mr. Clarke, generally, but she'd never been unfair to him, like so many others around Little Whinging had been. In his books that made her at least ok, if not downright likable.

"Tufty...? He's the... uh... er... the—"

"He's my ragdoll. Goodness, I'm amazed you remember!" She gushed. She pulled her handbag up from beside her, where it rested against her hip and unsnicked the clasp, pulling from within a tiny reticule.

Harry almost groaned aloud.

"There's Tufty," she explained, handing him an unfocused polaroid of a cat that was rapidly darting out of the frame. A lens flare obscured most of his front end, which left only his rear legs and his tail lifted aloft into the air.

Not particularly flattering.

"Oh... he's er... right."

"Now, here are the two who got into a tussle and gave me hell this morning, Mr. Paws and that devil Tibbles," she explained, handing him two more bad quality polaroids.

What he wouldn't have given to have been mucking out stalls instead.

Harry almost groaned aloud.

Instead, he made an appreciative humming noise. "That's right, Tibbles is the orange one..."

"Orange like one of Satan's own." She nodded after the odd pronouncement, looking quite solemn, as though she'd professed something of truth.

Harry had never seen an orange demon depicted before, and if that wasn't what she'd been referring to, then he hadn't any idea what the barmy old lady was on about.

"Oh, yeah," he agreed, figuring that was the safest bet.

"Now, Mr. Paws is usually the most self-possessed of them all, but Tibbles must have really put it to him over breakfast. That's usually his way," she explained. "Dear Pawsy simply lost it. It's lucky Tibbles didn't lose his ear over the matter," she nattered, explaining in greater detail the political intrigues of her pack of cats to the utterly disinterested eight-year-old beside her.

He didn't have to listen for long, luckily, as Mr. Clarke returned moments later and relieved him of Mrs. Figg's company. Harry hastily shoved the cat pictures back at the widow as she stood and watched with undue relief when she carefully inserted them back into her reticule.

"It's been so lovely to see you again, Harry." She looked over at Dudley, who was seething and made a face at him that might have been a smile but which easily could have been mistaken for a grimace. "Dudley."

Mr. Clarke escorted her into the room, looking very much like Harry imagined Mr. Sowerberry from Oliver Twist would have looked as he did so. He was like an enormous, gangly skeleton, but at least he was nowhere close to sour Mr. Sowerberry in disposition. No, he wasn't warm or particularly kind, but he also didn't seem cruel.

In fact, it seemed as though he lacked any markers of true personality or individuality whatsoever.

When he returned, he levered himself back into the abandoned seat with his hands on his knees and a soft "oomph."

"What's Mrs. Figg here for?" Harry thought to ask. It hadn't occurred to him to ask the woman herself, as he'd too easily fallen into the same pattern of their acquaintance as he'd always done with her: lying about his interest in her cats and obliging the old woman whenever she shoved a bad picture into his hands.

"It was our understanding that she's been your babysitter for many years," Mr. Clarke answered, fishing around in his jacket until he pulled loose a seemingly full pack of cigarettes. He opened the top of the box and seemed to be counting them, but, of course, he didn't light up. If anything, his hang-dog gaze was slightly wistful as he stared at the butt ends that seemed to tempt him.

"Your guardian also mentioned that it was she who informed him that you'd been left alone, so she's been asked in as both a character witness to testify on your years with your relatives and on the events as they unfolded this past July."

Harry nodded slowly, not quite trusting himself to speak. He still wasn't entirely sure he understood what was meant to happen after this... deposition. Severus had taken pains to explain it to him, but none of it made much sense to him.

Supposedly his relatives were in trouble... but they weren't in trouble yet. According to Snape, the level of trouble they were in was yet to be determined.

He absently wondered whether anyone had informed Dudley, for the boy was acting as though everything was the same as it had ever been for him. Then again, he'd never once been in trouble. It was entirely possible that he didn't understand that trouble was even in the cards for himself or his family.

A great, resounding bellow interrupted his musings, and as one, three pairs of eyes turned toward the door through which Severus, the Dursleys, Mrs. Figg, and Mrs. Plunkett had disappeared. Harry couldn't help but to duck reflexively at hearing it, bringing up his hands to cover his ears, but not out of a protection for his fragile hearing.

That was the sort of shouting that preceded physical punishment of some kind, and he wanted no part in it. Mr. Clarke sat between him and the door, but he was too thin to wholly conceal Harry's presence if anyone were to walk out. Worse, it seemed as though Dudley had witnessed Harry's full body cringe, and he was now rocking back and forth in delight, knowing that if things were as they always had been, he was about to be roundly entertained by a reprisal of the role Harry always had played in the past: that of family whipping boy.

His look of triumph seemed to say "Boy, are you in for it now!"

More yelling was spilling forth from behind the closed door, some of it unmistakably that of Uncle Vernon and some of it possessing a shrill quality: it belonged to Aunt Petunia. Only a scant few of the words they were shouting were discernable.

"—TORMENTING MY WIFE!—LETTING THAT FREAK IN A RESPECTABLE—HER MAJESTY HERSELF WOULD WEEP!"

"—into my ear! Nasty things, terrible—criminal harassment, surely!"

There came a string of mumbled responses, and Harry thought he might have heard Snape's own lower timbre somewhere in the mix, but his voice certainly hadn't raised high enough for anyone outside the room to overhear his words.

Footsteps were approaching the door and Harry leaned forward, peering out from around Mr. Clarke's frame to watch, wide-eyed with apprehension, as someone from the party seemed ready to exit.

"—due warning, Mister and Mrs. Dursley: if you choose to leave this meeting, it will not at all reflect well on you—"

"This is an absolute farce! And when you're all quite finished impugning our characters, I'll be speaking to my own solicitor about a counterclaim! Defamation! Libel!"

"—certainly welcome to make the attempt, Mr. Dursley. However, it is not the Crown Court with whom you can claim to take issue. Mr. Potter was—for several months! It was all over the news—!"

The door inched open and Harry winced at seeing a meaty, purplish-red hued hand gripping the knob. His uncle.

For whatever reason, however, he stopped short of opening the door fully and stepping into the hall.

"Then they'll hear from us as well! To expect a man to tolerate such... such slander against his name! It's unthinkable! My nephew," he spat the word out, "is a criminal nuisance! What are my Petunia and I to do when he insists on swanning off to who knows where with no notice!"

"You maintain that your nephew left the rental home in Brighton."

"Of course he did! Why would we have left him? I'd been meeting with the estate agent for months about selling our home by that point!"

"How could he have made it all the way from Brighton back to Surrey on foot!?" Mrs. Figg's agitated voice broke in. "I know what I saw, sirs, I saw that Harry Potter came out of the house several times in order to first, tend the garden—that was in the earlier days, before I'd realised that the family car had been gone too long and that Mrs. Dursley hadn't made an appearance in several days, as is her usual routine—and then to take food from it. Food that wasn't even ripe, by my observation!"

"And why were you spying on our house, you crone!?" Harry's aunt's shrill question rose from the din, sounding panicked. "You don't live on our street! Your garden doesn't have a view into ours—"

"You'll remember, your honour, that I—"

"Mrs. Figg, it is unnecessary to address me as 'Your Honour,' during the current proceedings."

"You'll remember that I mentioned harbouring grave concerns for the past few years. Admittedly, it is not exactly my place... but upon visiting with Mrs. Goggins—whose back garden abuts the Dursley garden. She lives on the next street over: Greenbriar—which I have cause to do every few days, when we're scheduled for bridge and cakes, I couldn't help but to notice Harry's actions. He's always been on the thin side, yes, but he looked positively desperate for food, and by the end, when I reached out to Severus, he looked as though he were beginning to take ill."

"Of all the lies—"

"Mr. Dursley, if you please—there is record of Mr. Potter having been treated at the A&E several days later for a tonsillar haemorrhage. However, I am quite perplexed at the impression the nurses and doctors had at the time that Mr. Snape was, in fact, Mr. Potter's father—"

"If you please," Severus interjected, his voice smooth, "I was quite panicked at the time. It seemed the most expedient way of seeing to Harry's care."

"Mr. Snape, I do not doubt that you were quite... frazzled at the events that you maintain you observed upon arriving at Number Four this past summer, but the doctors would be duty bound to treat young Mr. Potter regardless of your relationship to him. It seems strange that you would assume paternity over him—"

"That's what you always wanted," Aunt Petunia broke in, her voice containing a nasty, sniping quality. "He's been obsessed with my sister for years! Probably he abducted the boy just to have a piece of her—"

"Now THAT is libel!" Snape shouted, accompanied by the sound of a chair's legs scraping the floor. "See if I won't see you in court for that, 'Tuney!"

"Mr. Snape—"

"There's NO proof of any such thing—!"

"Mr. Snape!"

"I've never stepped foot in Brighton!"

"Sit! Now!"

There came a pregnant pause, and it sounded as though a leaden weight landed back down. Probably Snape's boney arse against the seat of the chair.

Harry could just imagine his kuya sulking. The idea might have been funny if the allegations against Severus weren't so horrific.

"Do either of you have proof that would back up your claims?"

"What do you mean?" Snape demanded. "It would be incumbent upon her to provide proof of her baseless allegation to begin with! I was granted custody of Harry without exception, and with prejudice. Please feel free to ask my solicitor about the specifics of that finding, if you must—"

"And why was it that they had cause to find in your favour so strongly, Mr. Snape?"

"I imagine it was because the evidence of maltreatment at the hands of Harry's relatives was sufficient for them to know that he'd be better provided for by myself: a schoolteacher and trusted custodial chaperone for a premier institution."

"Which you will not name."

"Which I cannot name," Severus corrected.

"Mr. Snape is, indeed, not at liberty to discuss the particulars of his former employment," came a high-pitched male voice that had not yet spoken.

"Yes... former. That is no longer your place of employment?"

"Harry took precedence."

"May I interject to remind those present that this hearing is not to review my client's custodianship over Mr. Potter?"

"Granted. And granted that it is incumbent upon Mrs. Dursley to provide proof of her allegation that Mr. Snape took Harry Potter from their house in Brighton in the first place—which, by the way, Mrs. Dursley, I don't personally find credible—it certainly wouldn't hurt you, Mr. Snape, if you could simply explain where you were on July third and fourth of last year? These are the days where Mr. and Mrs. Dursley allege that Harry Potter disappeared from their rental accommodations."

"July third was the day they left," Severus corrected, familiar with the story. "That was the Sunday where Harry woke up alone, thinking that his relatives must have been off to church. Evidently, it was common for them to leave him home alone while they attended together," Snape informed the magistrate.

"July fourth, that Monday, is when we're meant to believe that a seven-year-old high-tailed it, all by his lonesome, from Brighton to Little Whinging—a trip of no less than fifty miles—only to make it within less than a day. May I remind you that Mr. Dursley said he'd left his house keys with the estate agent so that the agency could come photograph the house? I am not sure how anyone could expect Harry to have acquired his own copy of the keys, or to have stolen keys from his uncle that had already been entrusted to a third party. Moreover—"

"I saw Harry outside working on the third, that Sunday," Mrs. Figg testified.

"So you see?" Severus, continued, sounding pleased. "And if Petunia really wants to insist on this ridiculous distraction from her own wrongdoings, I will admit, and can furnish the paperwork to prove, that I..." Severus trailed off and Harry could hear his heavy, begrudging sigh echoing through the cracked door. "I was given a penalty for a driving offence on that Monday. In Backbarrow."

"That doesn't mean he couldn't've come down to take the boy away from our room in Brighton—!" Aunt Petunia objected.

"Mrs. Dursley, please," the voice of the magistrate sounded strained and rather tired. "You yourself have given no concrete reasons why any of us ought to suppose that Mr. Snape kidnapped Harry Potter out from underneath your noses. I am not entirely certain that you understand the value of what is at stake here, or the testimony of all the witnesses we've had cause to collect interviews from. Let me be clear when I assert that all evidence points to young Mr. Potter being present at Privet Drive on July third, and that you were observed to have dined with and collected the keys to your new accommodations accompanied only by your husband and son on that same day. Do you really wish to pursue this any further?"

"I... I..."

"Proceed with caution."

Hissed words were being spoken, but Harry couldn't hear any of them. However, after that pronouncement, neither his uncle nor his aunt said a word more. He could still see the stiff arm of his uncle's jacket from where he stood sentinel near the door, but it seemed their flight from the room had been effectively curtailed.

"Have you any evidence to substantiate your claim against Mr. Snape?"

Harry's aunt didn't say a word, and the young wizard could nearly hear his ears ringing in the resultant silence.

"An answer, Mrs. Dursley; we'll be requiring one."

There was another hushed conversation.

"N-no."

"Thank you. Mr. Kirk, Mr. Gorse, have either of you any remarks you should like to add? Or would you prefer a moment to confer with your clients in the interest of offering further evidence of interest to this investigation?"

Two voices answered in the negative, one of them belonging to whom Harry assumed must have been Snape's solicitor.

"In that case, the proceedings for any further actions will be decided upon by the Crown Prosecution Service. All parties involved in these proceedings will be notified at the earliest date possible and given further directives. Good day, ladies and gentlemen."

There came a loud, collective shuffle from the other room as papers were shoved into briefcases and chairs were slid back from tables. A low murmur of conversation rose, with voices both familiar and unfamiliar, but Harry couldn't focus in on what they were saying. Presently, the door opened and nearly bounced against the wall from the force which propelled it, his uncle bursting forth into the hall with a look on his face that said he'd just been made to swallow pure poison without the small mercy of sugar.

Behind him, his wife sidled into view, her eyes darting first far down the hall and then landing on Mr. Clarke. They didn't widen in recognition, however, until she finally focused on Harry's wan face, poking out from his side.

"...V-Vernon?"

"Dudders!" Uncle Vernon bellowed, looking first the wrong way down the hall—as his wife had done already—and then in the correct direction. He, however, didn't pay Mr. Clarke so much as a second glance (probably because he'd already decided that the man was so far below him as to be beneath his notice) and therefore he didn't quickly identify that his nephew was seated in the hall. "Gather your things. We're for lunch."

The mention of food saw Dudley's watery eyes widening with greed, and he was fast to grab at his bag of gadgetry that he'd brought with him (and had ignored once he'd realised he could instead try to bait Harry after a long time away from his most favoured sport). He began shoving small, silvery, calculator-like items away into his satchel. One of them appeared to be an electronic approximation of football, and another of a card game. Perhaps Black Jack. A third depicted a cartoonishly proportioned man in a blue shirt and red dungarees, saluting the player beside the screen.

Probably each one of them had been gifted to him over the Christmas hols which had Harry thinking of his sparse array of belongings up in Severus' old bedroom. Doubtless Dudley had been given every new toy and trinket under the sun, and Harry didn't envy even one of them.

Why waste hours meddling away on a little calculator-thing when one could instead learn a valuable skill like playing the guitar?

When Harry peered into the opening of the bag, he also saw that there was a mostly eaten bag of crisps which had been rolled closed at the top and two, empty aluminium cans of Tango Tropical that appeared to have dripped their last sticky drops onto what was likely Dudley's totally neglected homework.

Harry shook his head minutely. What was this nonsense he felt? It shouldn't have been pity. He oughtn't pity Dudley Dursley for his poor nutrition, his parents' utter inattention to his schooling, his depressing lack of meaningful hobbies...

And yet, he did.

What awaited Harry when he got home with Severus that evening? If he was lucky, he could possibly hope that Snape might declare a hankering for a box of barbeque pork skewers from Rice Bowl. It wasn't that they never got to indulge in take away, after all, especially with the surprising success they'd found in Snape & Son. But if that weren't on the menu for the evening, then Harry would go home to fresh milk he'd skimmed himself, a crusty slice of bread that he'd helped Gammy to knead, butter from the cream he'd skimmed off the milk upon bringing it into the house, and either cheese or preserves of a similar origin.

Sure there were crisps often enough, and Severus always had his Coke on hand, which was available to Harry if ever he should have liked one, but Dudley was only ever offered those sorts of luxuries. Dinner out happened whenever he demanded it, not whenever it was allowed to him. What would Dudley have made of the uncomplicated fare that Harry had been subsisting off of for the past several months? Or, prior to that, the tinned and preserved stuff that he and Severus had been using to get by before the job at The Yow?

Through all of that struggle, Harry's homework had always been done and checked over on time, and his own interests encouraged, if for no other reason than that they couldn't afford the sorts of distractions that Dudley had to placate his persistent ennui at every waking moment.

"YOU!"

The bellowed word was enough to startle Harry away from his curiosity over the contents of Dudley's school bag.

The sound a hulking, elephantine body made when storming down the hall was substantial enough that he jumped slightly in his seat. He no longer had to peer around Mr. Clarke in order to see his relatives, for now his uncle stood before him, looming overhead and large enough to block the scant light, as his aunt trailed behind, ineffectually pulling at the back of her husband's tent-like jacket.

"I should have known I'd not seen the last of you—!"

"Vernon, please," Aunt Petunia wheedled, her eyes darting from Mr. Clarke to the open doorway, "there are people about!"

Incredibly, this forestalled him for at least a brief moment in which his moustache twitched over his tiny, puckered mouth. His face was purpling at an alarming rate, but a cruel, canny light had entered his eye as he trained it anew upon Harry's slouched over form.

"You wanted away from us so badly, boy? Eh? Well, that's fine by me. If I'd had it my way, I'd have seen you sent off into a home somewhere when you were left on our doorstep, but then I guess that freak in there," he jerked his head toward the door where Severus now stood in the frame, glaring out at the scene which was unfolding ten paces down the hall, "didn't care to take you then. More's the pity."

Harry heard the slap of a leather-soled, hob-nailed boot taking the first of many slow, measured steps in their direction, but his uncle must not have heard, for he kept on.

"Had the whole country out looking for you for a few months, like you actually mattered—hah! When you've never been anything more than an ungrateful—"

Another loud step.

"—lazy—"

Two more steps, apparently quickened now.

"—idler!"

More of the occupants of the room had since spilled out into the hall, and Harry thought he heard a bracing (and rather persnickety) voice cautioning "Mr. Dursley" to watch more closely what he was saying.

(What the voice had actually said was "Mr. Dursley! Mr. Dursley, may I impress upon you the superlative wisdom of keeping your own counsel?")

The stomping stopped short of them and Harry glanced up to see that Snape's wraith-thin form had shadowed his uncle over the man's right shoulder while his attention had been trained on Harry. Aunt Petunia, whom Severus had circumnavigated in order to flank the overgrown bully, stood cowering on Uncle Vernon's left side, still ineffectually tugging at her husband in the hopes of drawing him away from Harry.

"You've hired a good solicitor, Dursley. Smarter than you by miles. I advise you listen to him," Snape murmured, loudly enough to incite Harry's uncle into a violent start.

Vernon rounded on Snape, pulling his wife away from the dangerous-looking wizard with a firm grip around her bicep. He puffed up his chest and tucked his chin, which produced a more walrus-like effect than was usual for even him. "Going to start whispering nasty things in my ear now, you degenerate?! That's what does it for you, eh?"

Severus looked terribly bored by this accusation. "Pray tell why I'd bother soliciting the attentions of your wife—or indeed, yourself—when any such fraudulent overtures as I might extend may have the unfortunate and disgusting consequence of actually being considered genuine, or worse, welcomed?"

Snape raised an eyebrow, as if to ask if that was indeed what Vernon might be suggesting. Harry's uncle looked momentarily flummoxed, even as his aunt's face coloured a blotchy rose.

"Mmm," Snape hummed, with a nasty smirk as he looked at the woman. "Perhaps I ought to have considered that a long while ago. Your jealousy over Lily always did strike me as a bit... odd."

Uncle Vernon gasped, finally catching his meaning as he took a step back, forcing his wife even further from Snape. "You could never dream of attracting the attention of a woman as upstanding as my Petunia, you... you—!"

"I didn't say a word to your wife, Dursley. You may stand down, now." Severus growled the final word of his demand as he stepped forward into the Dursleys' space, close enough that his thin ribcage was in danger of brushing Uncle Vernon's own barrel-shaped chest.

The proximity must have unnerved the muggle man, for he finally pulled his wife away (from Snape, and consequently from Harry, whom he'd been initially harassing) and toward their son, who was watching the argument with all of the excitement of a spectator at a boxing match.

Indeed, his expression of slack-jawed rapture at the potential for a violent confrontation turned to keen disappointment as soon as Harry's aunt began to gently usher and cajole her son towards the door. As she led him to the exit, she threw nervous, furious glances behind her at both Severus and Harry alike.

Vernon Dursley, never having been one to know when to accept a loss gracefully, looked poised to attack still. His breaths were coming in quick gasps even as his hands clenched ineffectually at his sides, his fine moustache had bristled until it resembled a gentleman's shaving brush on either end, but finally, he seemed to read the room.

Sure, there were his likely targets of Harry and Severus, standing now side-by-side with Snape's hand gripping tight to Harry's right shoulder, but there was also Mrs. Figg, the pair of solicitors, two social workers already disposed against him, and the magistrate responsible to the Crown Prosecution Service who were now standing in silent witness against anything further he might have chosen to say.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Vernon Dursley chose silence.

A/N: I hate to always be doing this, but I have to explain that I know very little about how depositions work, particularly for the 1980s in the UK. (Same deal with laws and procedures pertaining to child safeguarding). I found no recordings on Youtube that I could watch, and much of the procedure/law seems to have been changed over the last 30-40 years. When I did find literature that might well shed light on some of the practices common in that day and age, it was largely print only, kept as a single copy in a London-area library, which could only be accessed through checking it out to the reading room. (I live in Indiana, so this wasn't an option). I did my best with this, but if you know better how these things would have proceeded, feel free to tell me, but also (I beg of thee) grant me a bit of grace lol

I was strongly considering avoiding this chapter, but I ultimately decided that that would have been out of cowardice. I had a large number of reviews and comments on G&L asking about just desserts for the Dursleys, so skirting the issue (or creating a one-shot from Severus' POV in the deposition, which would have exposed even further my myriad misunderstandings of how depositions proceed) may not have been sufficiently satisfying. I am, however, really, truly sorry to any solicitors, barristers, or court stenographers who are like "um... wtf is this? This is shit." Mea culpa lmao