Following Snape's impassioned disavowal of confidence in any self-styled Lord, the air between the two men grew so tense and thick that it might have been possible to cut through it with a blade.
Neither Severus nor his father seemed likely or intent to cede any ground, and Harry found himself wishing that at least one of them might be gracious enough to be charitable.
Alas, it seemed that in this way, the pair were truly of the same root. The mulish stubbornness that Harry had grown so used to in his kuya seemed to come quite naturally to every male born of the Snape line, and it didn't look as though any progress was likely to be made through any well-meaning concessions from either party.
It was just as well in that moment that the tête-à-tête was interrupted by the sound of knuckles rapping briskly against the front door.
"What the devil?" Snape pivoted, his face still pinched in the ever-so-familiar expression of irritation. "Who the bloody hell is that? Are you expecting someone?" He asked, his black eyes lingering on the equally bewildered face of Snape the senior.
"Nae, nowt yan ken to us," Tobias negated, his head swiveling to scan the entryway.
Snape strode past him and pressed the older man by his shoulder into the wall. "Stay here."
Harry could hear the plodding echo of Severus' footsteps on his way to the door.
While he listened for the tell-tale sound of Snape meeting their visitor, Harry twisted his fingers into the hair at Cur Dog's neck. The mutt had taken up sentinel beside him, and Harry couldn't help but to notice that the fur on his bunched shoulders seemed to be standing on end.
A faint growl rumbled from deep within the dog's chest, and Harry raised surprised eyes up to survey his head.
Curry's ears were laid back against the top of his flat skull.
Over the low rumble, Tobias voice could be discerned from his place near the wall. "Hoald, cur dog. Wud be daft to be drawrn bleudd yit. Barrie jewkel."
The low murmur of voices could be heard from the other room, and Tobias craned his neck to look in on his son meeting with whomever was at the door.
"Mr. Toby, who is it?" Harry asked, petting along the back of Curry's neck for something to do. He was painfully aware that people coming to Snape's door had historically never been a good thing.
What if it was more of his old comrades, back for another attempt on Harry's life? Or that rich fellow that Snape seemed so sour about? What if it was Headmaster Dumbledore, back to meddle in their lives once more…
Harry froze, and the blood in his veins slowed to the sort of crawl one would expect from an ice floe.
Maybe someone had finally figured out what Snape had been forced to do nearly a month before… what if they were there to arrest him for taking pity on the poor lorry driver?
He was only alerted to the fact that his grip on the dog beneath his hands had grown too tight when Curry tossed his head back and whined, his giant blue eyes pinning Harry with a doleful, put-upon expression.
"Sorry, old boy…"
"We divvn't laik t' deek of 'em," Tobias finally answered, tossing his head so that his tufts of greying, mousy brown hair fluffed out around his protruding ears.
Harry's face screwed up in confusion. "Huh—?"
"Said: Aa dun' laik the look of 'em," Tobias clarified, his voice slow as he corrected for Harry's ability to understand. His eyes were still peering around the wall as he reclined in the doorway with his arms crossed over his broad chest. One finger was tapping an impatient rhythm against the opposite bicep.
"What do they look like?" Harry asked in an undertone, trying not to let on how worried he was becoming the longer that Severus was at the door.
"Laik tooa dunderhead clot-heeds—"
Before Harry could ask what a 'clot-heed' was, Snape's voice boomed through the house, interrupting their vigil.
"Harry! Come join us at the door!"
Harry frowned at Tobias in confusion, who merely shrugged back. He slid from his chair and cautiously approached the sitting room, thinking it odd that Snape has been so polite in his summons. That wasn't to say that Severus was a tyrant, but if Harry didn't know better, he'd have suspected he heard the seeds of nervousness straining at the young man's characteristic baritone.
"Coming, Severus," he called back as he rounded the wall that divided the two rooms. He stopped short of the door, which Snape was still mostly blocking with his body, and peered out around the man's thin waist.
On the stoop were a pair of rather unremarkable individuals. A tall, thin, balding man, and a woman as short and stout as her associate was lanky. Her hair seemed to have been tamed into submission using repeated applications of entirely too much hair spray, and it was arranged in a fussy, curled halo around her ears and crown. Their ages were impossible to determine, for neither looked youthful, nor did either appear notably old.
"Ahem," Snape cleared his throat into his fist. Looking up at his guardian from his position slightly behind, Harry's trepidation only grew. Severus looked ill at ease, and as though he were putting on a rather large production of being unconcerned.
Harry had only ever seen him dissemble so obviously when Yax and Wulf had showed up out of the blue. Even then, Snape had seemed better shrouded in his wits than he currently was, which told the younger wizard that his kuya was decidedly out of his element in their current company.
Snape gave another contrived cough into his fist as he stepped aside, reaching with his free hand to hook around Harry's upper arm as he drew him up beside himself into the doorway. "As you see, I have produced the child. I'm certain that you can surmise at a glance that he's all correct and accounted for. Harry? Don't be rude: greet our guests."
Harry blinked, nonplussed. He didn't even have the first idea about who these guests were. Even so, he aped Snape's throat-clearing and attempted a greeting. "Hi—"
"'How do you do,'" Snape barked down at him with a glare. Had Harry not been so confused he would have likely snapped back at him for issuing such an inane correction.
"Er... how do you do?" The boy tried again, not truly interested in an answer. The question he would have much preferred been answered undoubtably was: 'Who in the bloody hell are you people, anyway?'
"Ah, a well-mannered boy," the man on their stoop commented, nodding appreciatively. "I daresay we're quite well, Mr. Potter, though I think the better question at this juncture is about how you yourself are faring."
"Er—" Harry began, but before he could give his own answer, the strange man turned to Snape with an expectant look on his face.
"If you'll allow us in for a few moments, Mister..."
"Snape," Severus supplied, behaving in an uncharacteristically solicitous manner.
"Mr. Snape, yes. If you'd be kind enough to entertain us for a few moments, we could explain our business in a more satisfactory way. I'm afraid that merely proving Mr. Potter's residence doesn't even remotely satisfy the questions we need answered."
"Of course," Severus nodded, appearing pensive. "Please come in," he bade, opening the door as wide as it would go and stepping away in order to gesture the two inside.
As they passed, Harry surveyed the pair, his eyes taking an inventory of their apparel, their mannerisms, their general behaviour...
They were really quite ordinary.
Neither appeared anything like the handful of magical men and women he'd been occasioned to meet. For one thing, they were clothed in drab suits of brown and grey: the man wearing a charcoal, pinstriped pair of trousers with an ill-fitting jacket thrown over his inexpensive, white cotton shirt. His companion wore an unflattering, walnut-coloured, boucle skirt suit. Her wide calves were made shiny by the cheap, flesh-toned nylon stockings that covered her legs, and around her neck was a tacky, technicolour neckerchief in lieu of a tie.
No. Nothing at all seemed to suggest that the two were magical. This conclusion was supported by the fact that, upon closing the door behind them, Harry spotted a spic-and-span Rover 3500 parked out by the kerb. Its front bumper was pulled up to nearly kiss the Marina's rear bumper, although the Marina was sitting at least a foot taller, being up on blocks as she was.
"And who is this?" The woman asked, her eyes landing on Tobias' form where he stood between the two rooms. She was assessing elder Snape with narrowed eyes, seeming to take him in from the toe of his boot to the top of his mussed head.
"May I introduce you to Tobias Snape, Mrs. Plunkett," Snape answered, gesturing to the man in question. "My father. He's come to stay with us on a temporary basis."
When it looked as though Tobias was ready to object to this news of his transient living circumstances, Severus openly glowered at the man, raising and lowering his eyebrows in a clear indication that he expected his father to remain silent and compliant.
Finally, after a tense silence fell, blanketing the occupants of the house for several moments, Tobias grunted and pushed off from the wall he'd been leaning against for the better part of the last quarter hour.
"Aas garn upstairs," he announced, striding to the stairwell. He disappeared without another word, and as soon as he was well and truly gone, Severus visibly relaxed.
"Mrs. Plunkett, Mr. Clarke, please feel free to take a seat," he offered, gesturing them toward the dusty sofa. "Harry, you're welcome to the chair," he added, pointing to the single chair that sat caddy-corner to the sofa.
Severus himself elected to remain standing, at least until it seemed as though he saw how very strange it looked for him to be towering above his guests.
He glanced around then, looking oddly flummoxed, before he excused himself from the room for a moment and returned hefting one of the chairs that they usually used in the kitchen.
All the while, Harry could feel the uncomfortable weight of two people staring at him, and he did his very best to keep his eyes trained down on his sock-clad feet, which he was rubbing together for lack of anything else to do.
The two strangers were watching him. He hated it.
After several more laden seconds, the woman raised a hand to wave through the air, as if it were possible for her to wipe away the awkwardness as one might wipe away dust off a bannister.
"We're very glad to be having this chance to speak to you, Harry—may we call you Harry?" She asked, leaning forward a bit in her seat. She'd crossed her ankles together beneath her, and her toes barely reached the floor given her diminutive height. She had brought her hands back until they were curled into loose fists on her knees.
"I guess," Harry permitted, frowning at the odd question. "It's what everyone calls me."
"Good, good," she nodded along, a small smile pulling at the edges of her wide cheeks and crinkling the edges of her eyes. "You know, you've given us quite a bit of worry, young man. It's fortunate that we've finally located you—"
"Located me?" Harry asked, his brow screwing up in confusion.
"Yes, I daresay it will be best if you speak plainly," Severus cut in, having settled into his kitchen chair. He'd affected a posture of dispassionate casualness, but Harry could read the tension in the way the fingers of Snape's hand tapped out a furious tempo against his bristled jaw.
"Just so," the man—Mr. Clarke—acceded, nodding his head in Snape's direction. "We're with the Child Protective Service, and we've been looking for young Mr. Potter here for some time—"
'For some time…' Harry thought, rather distantly.
"How long?" He asked out loud.
"Hm?" Mr. Clarke pivoted to look at him with a bemused stare, as though not having expected for Harry to speak on his own behalf. "Oh, more than three months, young man. Since your absence was noticed at your primary school in Little Whinging."
With a start, Harry leaned forward. "They noticed I was gone?" He asked, doubt dripping from every word.
No one had ever noticed him at his old primary school. If attention was paid to him, it was only because he'd been put in an unenviable position by his lout of a cousin.
"Of course they did, Harry!" Mrs. Plunkett crooned, looking at the boy with a faintly pitying expression that Harry felt himself bristling under. "You didn't show up on the first day, and of course, neither did your cousin, but where they finally managed to unearth the records that showed that he'd moved to a school in Brighton, we found no such paperwork for you.
"Naturally, we thought at first it must have been misplaced, but upon calling your cousin's school, there was no record of your enrollment, which is how your case found itself in our hands," she informed him, gently patting her breast in a self-referential way. "We were concerned when, upon paying a visit to your relatives' new neighborhood, no one on the street recalled seeing a second boy in residence, and when we finally interviewed your aunt and uncle we found their answers less than satisfying," she finished on a rather dark inflection, her eyes clouding over with righteous anger.
"For the sake of satisfying my own curiosity, what was it that Petunia told you?" Snape asked, his voice kept deceptively light. He was fidgeting with the hem of his trousers where he'd crossed an ankle over the opposite knee.
It wasn't like him to be so restless.
"You have to understand, that we're not precisely at liberty to discuss the particulars of Mr. Potter's case with an individual who isn't legally responsible for his care—" Mr. Clarke began repressively, but the comparatively more loquacious Mrs. Plunkett undermined him by telling them anyway.
"The terrible woman!" She cried, sitting up straighter—as straight as she could, anyway, as her size had her nearly sinking into the cushions of the sofa—with her hands rubbing frantically against her knees. "I've never been treated like such a fool in my life! Despicable—"
"Maryanne," Mr. Clarke gentled his partner with a repressive look.
"Yes, well… if I didn't know any better, I'd think she took me for an imbecile," she retorted, her eyes staring at a spot of filth on the opposite wall. She shook her head and her mien softened once more. "She tried to say that she'd never had custody of anyone called Harry Potter! The gall!"
"We did have a bit of bother in finding the original paperwork," Mr. Clarke reminded her, perhaps urging her to be charitable.
In spite of this, Maryanne Plunkett didn't seem remotely inclined to look at Aunt Petunia's evasion of her responsibilities as a misunderstanding in good faith.
For that, Harry felt a reluctant thawing towards the stranger. At least she had the proper read on his ersatz guardians. He felt his lips quirking in a small grin, despite his best efforts.
Mrs. Plunkett caught his smile and winked back.
"Incidentally," Snape drawled, leaning forward in his seat, "Mr. Clarke's assessment is mistaken. I am Harry's legal custodian. The paperwork was finalised in the last week of July," he announced.
Harry blinked, his worry mounting. For Snape to make such an assertion seemed, to him, dangerous, for wasn't it only within the purview of the magical world that Harry was Snape's ward?
Really he ought to have given Snape more credit. After having announced this to the two social workers who had come to call, Severus rose from his seat and approached one of the bookcases along the wall, extracting from a small cranny between two tomes a stapled packet of papers which looked as though they had been thumbed through many a time. He presented them to Mr. Clarke, who peered down at them, blinking in surprise.
When the man didn't quite seem to know what to make of the documents, he withdrew a small leather case from an interior pocket of his jacket and produced a pair of bifocal readers, which he perched at the end of his thin nose.
Flipping through the pages and studying them closely, Mr. Clarke finally allowed his partner to read over his shoulder, for she had been leaning over his arm the entire time, urging him to turn the pages slower so that she could follow along.
When Harry glanced over to Snape, it was to see that he looked suitably at ease, which suggested to Harry that Severus didn't expect anything to come up to bite them out of the paperwork.
Either it was entirely legitimate, or it must have been a very convincing fabrication.
Finally, catching his kuya's eye, Harry raised both of his eyebrows in an inquisitive look as his gaze darted over to the paperwork and then back to meet Snape's own black eyes. He wagged his eyebrows one more time in a clear question, then read the silent reply that Snape mouthed back.
"Dumb-bull-door," Snape took care to enunciate as best he could without the syllables producing any appreciable noise.
Harry nodded back his understanding and then clasped his hands in his lap as he sat back to wait. There was a lot of paperwork for the pair on the sofa to pore over, and at least several moments had already elapsed as their heads bowed together over the complicated legalese.
He was startled from his reverie by Maryanne Plunkett's saccharine voice.
"How exactly did you come to be Mr. Potter's guardian, Mr. Snape? It would appear that your claim is indisputable, but it seems to me that there's a rather large gulf between where Harry began the summer to where he ended up now... Lord knows that that woman was of no help, so perhaps you'll be kind enough to provide us with some answers."
She was unfailingly polite, but Harry didn't think for one second that her request was anything but a direct order for an explanation of his present circumstances. It seemed that Snape understood the same, for he shifted forward in his seat and gripped both of his bony knees in his flexing hands.
"I expect that telling you may muddy the waters—"
"Muddy away, Mr. Snape," Mrs. Plunkett dismissed his concerns, leaning back into the couch cushions. Sitting this way, her feet no longer touched the floor, but instead hovered an inch or two above. Clearly, she'd settled in for a while.
"Would I be correct to surmise that you followed Harry's trail from July for a while?" Snape asked, giving nothing away. "It seems a rather large leap you would have had to make to find him up here in Cumbria."
"We all have our sources, sir," Mr. Clarke answered, adjusting the readers on his nose with the tip of his index finger. "But, if you would agree to tell us directly...?"
Severus seemed to study Mr. Clarke closely for several moments before he straightened and rubbed at his knees with his hands, drawing in a deep breath.
Harry half had to wonder whether the man intended to tell the two the whole sordid ordeal, but when Snape opened his mouth, what emerged wasn't precisely the story as it had happened.
"I suppose you could say that I've been a friend to the Evans family for the past twenty years," he began, looking a tad regretful. Harry didn't have to guess at why. Snape always became a bit morose whenever the topic of Harry's mother came up.
"That was Petunia Dursley's maiden name: Evans. She grew up here, in Cokeworth. I'm not sure how much of her history you've been made aware of—"
"When we received the call about Harry's whereabouts, it was explained to me over the phone that he seemed to have been taken in by one of his late mother's old friends," Mrs. Plunkett conceded, nodding. She offered up the information with a slight wince when she said the word 'late,' and looked apologetically in Harry's direction.
"Yes," Snape agreed, looking relieved that he didn't have to go into further detail about his relationship to the Evanses.
"Petunia is..." he sighed then, rubbing the bridge of his overlarge nose with the tips of his fingers and pinching between his eyes. "She is not what I would term 'tolerant,' nor would I say that she is adaptable. It was not her idea to take in her nephew when... when Lily passed.
"I ought to have been expecting it," Severus mused, looking up and over the heads of his guests, his eyes seemingly focused upon a bit of flimsy cobweb that festooned the furthest part of the ceiling. "She never wanted to take Harry on, and she had a notoriously poor relationship with her sister and Lily's husband. Unfortunately, her own parents passed before the Potters did, and thus there was nowhere else for Harry to go.
"I have to admit to being rather surprised when I got a phone call in mid-July from some blubbering child. I rarely give my number out, you see? But eventually I managed to get the boy to admit to how he'd reached me," Snape fibbed, waving an errant hand to embellish his fraudulent tale.
Harry frowned. He had not blubbered. Not at any point...
Well. Perhaps he'd been a bit teary eyed when Snape had taken him grocery shopping... but that was only because he'd been so very, very hungry! Additionally, his throat had felt as though it had been torn to shreds by that point. He had hardly been at his best... but really! Him. Blubbering!
He scowled and crossed his arms, even though he knew better than to undermine Snape's account.
"Harry located my number from the pages of his late mother's private journal, which had been left to him. It was lucky for him that my house's phone number never changed. Evidently, next to my number, Lily had specified that I was a friend, and so Harry thought his best bet was to call someone whom his mother had seemed to trust—"
"Why exactly did Mr. Potter feel the need to call you, Mr. Snape?" Mr. Clarke asked, leaning forward, his brown eyes shining with intent curiosity. He turned to size up Harry, who quickly fixed his faceso that he was no longer glowering at Snape. "It is quite important for us to understand your departure, Mr. Potter. Certain actions on the part of our department may well be decided by the course that your relatives took in ceding responsibility for you to Mr. Snape."
"Oh..." Harry nodded, even though he really wished he could say 'Huh?'
As things went, that seemed rather vague to him. What could 'certain actions' be?
"Of course, Harry was rather upset when he managed to reach me," Snape answered, apparently having no trouble in divining the direction that Mr. Clarke was driving at. "He had been left alone at the Dursley residence for nearly a week by that point, with no food in the house and acute tonsilitis."
Mrs. Plunkett gasped and then latched herself on to Mr. Clarke's arm upon hearing this, looking comically scandalised. Her partner's mouth thinned as he glanced down at her while he made quick work of peeling her fingers away from his bicep.
"Almost a week, you say," Maryanne Plunkett drew in a faltering breath. "How long, exactly? Do you know?"
"They left on Sunday," Harry admitted, wishing he didn't have to think back to that week of his life. It had been both wonderful and terrible all at once. For the first time, he could do as he liked without the constant threat of retribution hanging over his neck. On the other hand, he'd been starving, and the loneliness he'd felt in that empty, dead house had only been superseded by the sense of terror he'd felt at not having had a capable adult around to protect him should the worst have happened. "Severus showed up on Thursday..."
"Yes," Snape cut in, sending a warning glance at Harry. The boy swallowed. He'd almost forgotten that in this version of events, Snape's arrival wasn't meant to have been as out-of-the-blue as it had been in reality. "Harry called me late Wednesday evening, and I drove out immediately upon hearing from him. I found the house abandoned, and no suitable foodstuffs in the larder. When I arrived, Harry tried to serve me raw courgette and green tomatoes out of the back garden—"
"Which you didn't eat," Harry grumped mutinously. He crossed his arms over his chest, not liking the flush of humiliation he felt at the memory. "I'm s'posta give guests something to eat—"
"There's no shame in your hosting skills, Harry," Severus soothed, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. Harry couldn't tell whether he was really being sincere or whether it was an act for the sake of the two social workers who were hanging on their every word, but even so, he felt himself somewhat mollified by Snape's words.
"The shame," he continued, "lies entirely with your absent aunt—deadbeat that she is," he sneered. "The first thing I did was to take Harry out for groceries. You must understand, Mrs. Plunkett, Mr. Clarke: I hadn't the faintest idea that he'd be coming back with me to Cokeworth at that juncture. My first instinct was to stay with Harry in Surrey until his relatives decided to return."
"I suppose that changed at some point?" Mr. Clarke pressed.
"My plans changed when, upon feeding Harry his supper back at the house that first night, he fainted and I was made to take him to the A&E. On the drive over, his tonsils haemorrhaged, and they elected to perform surgery on him that very night. I wasn't equipped for a longer stay, and after he was released from hospital, he came with me to stay here in Cokeworth for around a week."
"We did find record of his surgery. Most of the fields were left blank, but his name was at least recorded," Mrs. Plunkett admitted, "although the staff we interviewed seemed to remember him being accompanied by a man they thought to have been his father—"
"Can I help it that they made an erroneous assumption?" Snape cut in with an annoyed shrug, barely keeping the bite of impatience out of his voice. "No. They did not ask, and I certainly did not tell them that I was Harry's father—"
Harry bit his tongue to avoid blurting out that Snape was lying. For, in fact, the man had referred to the younger wizard as his son when prompted.
"So, you returned him after a week," their male guest prompted, whisking his readers off of his nose and stuffing them back into his pocket, folded up. "Did you hear from Mister or Mrs. Dursley at any point during that week?"
"I did not."
"And when it was time that you returned Mr. Potter to his house in Little Whinging? What happened then?"
"Upon returning to the house, we found that it had remained unoccupied for the duration of Harry's weeklong stay with me," Snape informed them, latticing his fingers together in his lap. His thumbs thrummed against one another. "Not long after we returned, we were joined by a representative for an estate agent who had come to photograph the property. Purportedly, the owners—the Dursleys—had every intention of listing it for sale."
"You mean to tell me that they thought they could merely leave their nephew there while selling the house out from underneath him?" Mrs. Plunkett asked, skepticism colouring her voice. "That seems... irrational."
"When faced with extraordinary circumstances, Petunia was never known for acting with the most discretion. Neither is she particularly proficient at thinking long-term."
"What do you imagine she thought would become of Mr. Potter? Can you hazard a guess?"
"Well," Snape began, leaning back in his chair as though it were a comfortable throne rather than the rickety, metal-legged stool it more closely resembled. "Far be it for me to assume I could be privy to the workings of that woman's puerile mind—and take it as read that I would never want to be—but my only guess is that she thought that by abandoning Harry to his own devices, he might vacate the property on his own once it became clear that his relatives weren't coming back, otherwise I can't fathom why she imagined that this might work out in her favour. Indeed, based on your very presence here today, might I assume that suitable consequences for her decision to abdicate her responsibilities are forthcoming?"
"We are considering our options, Mr. Snape," Mr. Clarke informed the wizard, without furnishing any additional details or offering any promises to that end.
It seemed to be good enough for Severus, however, for he nodded his head. "That is welcome news."
Standing then, Severus seemed ready to signal that his hospitality had about run dry. "If that was all you needed," he prompted, making as though he were readying himself to show them to the door.
"Not quite so fast, Mr. Snape," Mrs. Plunkett piped up then. She'd not moved from her sunken-in spot on the sofa, but had furnished her own stack of papers along with a biro from a leather folio that she'd brought along with her. "Your paperwork seemed well in order, but given that, until we found Harry living here, we had been treating his case like a missing person, we still have a few questions and will need to keep in contact with you in the future."
Severus stiffened and he turned slowly back to face the two, his ears having flushed scarlet where they poked through the curtain of his hair on either side of his head. "Oh?"
"Yes. We received a call from the headmistress of Harry's school informing us of his whereabouts a day ago. Evidently, she had seen his face on the news when it broadcast with a picture of him we published—"
"You broadcast a picture of him," Snape repeated, the words falling from his lips dull with disbelief. "Do you have any idea of the danger—?"
"We certainly believed he was in a great deal of danger," Mrs. Plunkett continued on, with blithe oblivion to Snape's meaning. "We are gratified to find him in good health here, Mr. Snape, but I must admit that I still have a few concerns about his living here."
"Concerns? What concerns?" Snape stomped back over to the chair and fell heavily into it, apparently resigned to the fact that the social workers weren't yet ready to vacate his sitting room.
"Headmistress Shaw informed us that she'd known you quite well while you were coming up in Rowky Syke—"
"Quite well?" Snape spat, looking incredulous. "She barely knows me from Adam—!"
"And that she knew Harry's mother and aunt, as well," Maryanne Plunkett soldiered on, as though she'd not been interrupted. "While she didn't mention any issues that she considered might have posed problems for Harry's wellbeing under your care, she did make passing mention of a few topics that I feel we ought to discuss."
"Is that so?" The wizard ground out, his arms crossing over his chest.
Harry clamped down on the urge to tell Snape that he ought to lighten up. Furiously, he worried his hands together in his lap. At this rate, Snape's rudeness and evasiveness were going to make the social workers think that he was a bad caretaker, and Harry didn't want to think about what might happen should they decide that Harry was better off with someone else...
"Ms. Shaw mentioned that you had been raised in something of a troubled family, yourself, and that she'd often had concerns over the influence of your father while you attended at Rowky Syke. I notice that he's now staying with you?"
Severus had the good grace to wince. "For the moment," he conceded. "It wasn't exactly planned—"
"The Headmistress indicated that she'd often courted concerns over a possible alcohol problem?" The small woman grilled him, her eyebrows raising in a clear prompt.
Clearing his throat, Severus gave a strange, sideways nod of his head. "He has... ah. He has struggled, in the past."
'If by past you mean only a few weeks ago,' Harry wished he could say. After all, what had presaged Tobias' stay with them had been his disorderly conduct while drunk, according to the police in Penrith.
"A condition of his stay with us was that he maintained a record of attendance at a twelve-step programme," Severus added, "and that he keeps to absolute sobriety. I don't keep any alcohol under this roof that he could get his hands on, and I've been monitoring his attendance at his meetings."
"Good," Mr. Clarke nodded, "but given his presence in the home, I hope you won't mind hearing from us in the future? It is only out of our interest in Mr. Potter's wellbeing, of course."
Harry could almost hear Snape's molars grinding together as the older wizard fought to keep his composure.
"Of course," he acknowledged with a smile that was properly more of a grimace.
"I believe the only other note that Ms. Shaw had for us was that at least twice a week, Harry leaves from the school with another adult entirely?"
"He spends two evenings a week with Mrs. Pamina Hill. She owns a farm outside of town. I work late on those evenings, and thought it best that he not stay at the house alone and unsupervised."
Maryanne Plunkett nodded along, wearing a small, agreeable smile all the while. Too agreeable. It was actually a touch condescending, which Snape obviously realised from the way his own mouth had tightened into a slash across the lower half of his face.
"That's a worthy consideration, Mr. Snape, undoubtably, but it sounds as though you work rather a lot?"
"I work five days a week. Surely that was, at one point, considered the national average?" Snape's lip curled as he posed this rhetorical question. Disdain had dripped from every word, a foil to the comparatively breezy condescension he was receiving from Mrs. Plunkett.
"Please don't be offended, sir, I only mean to ask because it seems as though it's not best practise to assume responsibility for a child only to foist him off onto another adult—"
"No one is foisting Harry off," Severus bit out, his hands clenching in the denim of his jeans. "Pamina graciously offered to watch Harry on those two days a week. She is the grandmother of two of his classmates, and this gives Harry an opportunity for additional—supervised—socialisation. I'll bet that your people wouldn't frown on such a thing as that?"
"No," Mr. Clarke answered for his partner, looking as though he were considering this a great deal more than it warranted, at least in Harry's estimation. "I can't say that we take a dim view on children forming friendships with each other."
Harry rolled his eyes, restraining himself from spitting out an unenthusiastic 'yippee.' There was no use in telling the two that the day he called Snowdrop Hill a friend would be the day that he willingly walked off with Yax and Wulf to whatever nefarious end they had envisioned for him. That wouldn't help Snape's case.
Anyway, Nicky could be alright when he wasn't being a stuck-up jerk.
"Additionally, Pamina has offered to train Harry on some of her farm tasks. I certainly didn't urge him to accept, and it's in no way a paid job he's doing, but if you ask him, he likely will tell you that he enjoys his time at the Hills'."
"Were you going to ask me?" Harry interjected, a rather sour look stealing across his face. He didn't remotely appreciate being left out of the majority of the conversation, given that it was chiefly concerned with his life and wellbeing.
Snape's answering stare was rather exasperated, and he responded in a bored, terse tone. "If you have something to say, no one will object to your saying it."
"Good," Harry spat back, mulishly. His legs began to swing underneath him from his perch at the edge of his seat, a surefire indication that he was losing patience. He looked to the two social workers who were now eyeing him with their interest clearly piqued.
"I like working on the farm—a lot. Aunt Petunia used to have me work out in the garden and do a bunch of chores. Severus doesn't make me," he hastened to defend the man, whose eyes had turned a stormy black as he'd prepared to mutiny, "and neither does Gammy—that's Mrs. Hill—but at least when I do work for Gammy, she teaches me stuff," he admitted.
"It's not like, a punishment. It's something I want to do. It's nice to sit and milk the cow after school. No one's there talking, no one's arguing, or anything. It's just... it's quiet. Quiet and nice. And I like finding the eggs in the barn, and churning butter. I even like doing the mucking out—"
"She has you muck the stalls?" Mrs. Plunkett asked, evidently finding this activity objectionable, if her twisted lips and slight cringe were any indication.
"Yeah! I get to use the pitchfork, and I get to throw it as far as I can!" Harry answered back, rather hotly. He'd crossed his arms over his chest once it became clear that he was going to have to defend his life to the people sitting opposite him.
"And Gammy gives me jars of jam, and the butter I make, and eggs, and all the milk I can drink. I like helping. And I like helping Severus put food on the table. I like feeling..."
Harry trailed off when it became clear that three pairs of eyes were now pinning him with rather curious stares. A feeling of sheepishness crashed down over his shoulders and he finished his impassioned speech with a small shrug of his thin shoulders. "I like feeling... useful."
"Harry," Mrs. Plunkett clucked, sympathy rolling thick like golden syrup down the syllables of his name, "who's told you you're not useful?" She shot an appraising glance to Snape, who, to his credit, didn't respond to the implicit slight against his honour.
Plenty of people had told Harry he wasn't useful. His aunt, uncle, and cousin, to start. Most of the teachers at his old primary school who had taken his poor grades as a sure sign that Harry was beyond help. Other children, too cowed by Dudley, or otherwise simply cruel in their own right...
"No one," he lied with a shake of his head. "But I still like to feel like I'm doing something. It feels really good, to know that what I'm doing matters."
"What about going to school?" Mrs. Plunkett pressed, leaning forward with an earnest look in her eyes. "Surely there are other important things you're doing besides scooping... waste."
Harry shrugged with a bit of a grimace. "School's okay, I guess. Sometimes I like music class, and Severus and Gammy make sure I get real good grades—"
"Do they? Because looking through your reports for previous years in Surrey, it seemed as though there may have been some cause for concern in that department," she pointed out, keeping her voice gentle.
She was looking at Snape again, as though informing on Harry's lack of academic success to the adult in the room who presumptively could do something about it.
"We have been attempting to address Harry's shortcomings in reading comprehension and his innumeracy. I work with him for no less than an hour a day on correcting and improving his homework, and I'm given to understand that Mrs. Hill also spends a good amount of time with Harry and her granddaughter at the kitchen table. Her granddaughter, Snowdrop, makes passable grades herself, and I have no doubt that Harry has benefitted from studying alongside her."
A big fat lie, that was what that was, Harry thought to himself. Or at least, the latter half had been a big fat lie, for Snape certainly spent a generous portion of his week pulling his hair out over Harry's incalculable mistakes in spelling, grammar, and arithmetic.
Their time together poring over Harry's homework could be terribly dull, and it frustrated both wizards to the point where they often ended up at each other's throats... but Harry wouldn't have traded it for the world.
For the very first time in his life he had adults who were invested in his success, and it made him feel rather warm inside knowing that they expected him to do well because they believed he was capable of doing well.
In that spirit, Harry nodded along, corroborating Snape's small fib in favour of supporting the greater truth: that Snape truly did sacrifice the lion's share of his scant free time in order to help Harry academically.
"Ms. Shaw mentioned over the phone that in spite of your own record, Mr. Snape, that you were most recently employed as a schoolteacher."
Severus seemed to stiffen, perhaps scenting the danger that lay in this line of questioning. "She is correct."
"Why is it that you're no longer employed at the school?" Mr. Clarke had apparently decided to take the reins for this portion of the interview, as Mrs. Plunkett had her eyes riveted upon her partner, nodding along complacently to his inquiry.
Harry wasn't sure which of the pair was shrewder, but he had a sense that Mrs. Plunkett may well have been more dangerous, as she seemed far more animated in her antipathy for any signs of purported mistreatment.
Perhaps the danger lay in the fact that Harry felt strangely amenable to the pushy, squat woman for her impassioned championship of him: a boy she had met only half an hour before.
Even if her suspicion of Snape was misplaced, it was nice that she cared enough about his wellbeing that she looked at his kuya with a discerning eye.
By contrast, Mr. Clarke had scarcely blinked the entire time he'd been on the premises. Harry, somehow, couldn't mistake this for ambivalence, however. He hadn't missed how the man's eyes had tracked over every detail of the sitting room and his guest, having first surveyed Tobias from head to toe, next looked toward Curry's curious form, who had remained in the kitchen, watching the proceedings. Then, examining every inch of the sitting room, presumably he had catalogued the dust in the corners, the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, and the places where the faded wallpaper was pulling away to expose wet, crumbling, stuccoed, plaster walls. His eyes hadn't failed to trace the spines of the books, and Harry might have been worried had Severus not once explained to him the nature of the enchantments he had working on the magical grimoires and cauldrons that lay spread throughout the house.
Likely, all he was seeing were rather anemic chemistry texts. Still. His unerring attention to detail had the hair on the back of Harry's neck standing on end—well. More than it normally did, at any rate.
He seemed a canny fellow. Of course, Harry had faith in Severus' own canniness, but still. He'd have just as soon wished that it never had to be tested against the likes of the man sitting like a leggy locust on their sofa.
"I resigned when it became apparent that Harry needed me more," Snape deadpanned, his face blank of anything that might have pointed at how he felt about such a sacrifice.
"Rather a demotion you took, going from schoolteacher to barman," Mr. Clarke replied in an even tone of voice, his face equally as placid as Severus' own.
"It was needful," Snape said, doing an admirable job of hiding the anger that Harry saw simmering just under the surface, churning the dark waters of his spider-black eyes. His loose lower lip twitched slightly, as would have a horse beginning to lather at the mouth.
"Certainly, Harry needed care and assistance," he began, his use of Harry's name causing the boy to bristle—he hadn't asked permission!—as he peered at Snape with a queer little smile playing at his bloodless lips. "But why should it have needed to be you who assumed the role of caregiver?
"Indeed, had you referred his case to us, we would have gladly found Mr. Potter a suitable family to look after him—perhaps one with other children. Certainly, a family whose chief breadwinner wouldn't have had to change his profession in order to accommodate Harry's needs—"
"As touching as I find your concern, I'm afraid that Harry's needs were such that my own custodianship was preferable. I cannot pretend that it was not a step backwards for my career to give up my position on the faculty, but it proved a worthy sacrifice when weighed against Harry's need. I've not felt as though I regret my decision even once. The demands of my position at the school would have precluded me from being able to provide the necessary level of care, and even if that hadn't been the case, they don't board children under eleven."
"And which school was it that you were employed at?" Mrs. Plunkett pressed, looking curious. "Surely, there are policies for teachers with their own children?"
Snape cleared his throat. "It has been a very long time since there was a teacher in residence who needed to accommodate his own family, and indeed there are provisions in place, however I had the additional responsibilities of a head of house, and it was presumed that I operated in loco parentis for no less than thirty-five other children at any given time. My employer did not think I would be able to do justice to the students under my care if my attention was split between them and an eight-year-old boy, and I'm inclined to agree with him."
"It is admirable that you would give up that sort of career for the sake of taking Harry on, Mr. Snape, but you didn't mention where it was that you worked," she reminded him, quirking her head to the side.
"Ah, but I'm afraid that was a purposeful omission," Severus drawled, leaning back in his chair. "My employment was subject to an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement. Saying anything more about my place of employment would see me subject to litigation. I'm sure you understand."
Harry had to frown. He glanced over at the older wizard sitting to his side and was met with a small grimace that seemed to tell him: 'Don't say a word.'
Harry didn't.
"Oh, come now, there's no need to play coy," Mrs. Plunkett's smile was disarming and she laughed at her own words. "You know that we have access to all publicly available employment records, Mr. Snape. You may as well tell us the name of the school—"
"I assure you, Mrs. Plunkett, that had I the permission to do so, I would be happy to tell you. Unfortunately, my hands are tied. If you find record of my employment, you are most welcome to all of the details available on the public account of my service, but given that I've not checked with the school solicitors, I can't in good conscience speak on my former employer without concern that I might violate the agreement I signed."
The two social workers looked about as perplexed as Harry felt. Then again, he supposed that Snape couldn't have merely named any old school and gotten away with it. Likely, had he done such a thing, or even made up a fake school, it would have been worse when they found out that either no such school existed, or that he had fibbed his way onto the faculty; either lie would have been relatively easy to disprove.
After a moment of awkward floundering, the small woman took a deep breath of air and slapped her knees with an air of finality. "Well, it does seem to be getting late," Mrs. Plunkett announced, using a rather clumsy segue into announcing their departure. Snape rose and crossed to the sofa, offering the woman a hand—in what Harry thought was a rather gallant gesture coming from the taciturn young man—in order to lever the woman's strange shape off of the sofa cushions she'd sunk into.
Looking like a lanky skeleton, Mr. Clarke unfolded himself off his own perch and loomed over her shoulder, the very image of some sort of dismal undertaker.
"I see you have a phone," Mrs. Plunkett observed, not quite managing to sound casual about her inquiry.
"We do," Snape acknowledged as he brought them to the door. "I take it you'll be wanting our number."
"If it's not too much trouble," she nodded, although it was very clear that she considered it compulsory that Snape should share it with her.
Harry would never understand why adults did such things. Playing at asking when really they were telling. It seemed as though such a ham-fisted mode of communication must lead to misunderstandings, and thereafter to disappointment.
Snape rolled his eyes, and Harry got the feeling that he likely felt the same about such facile circumlocutions. "Have you a pen?"
Once handed something to write with and a legal pad, he jotted down their number and added his name next to it.
"If that's all? Harry and I have an early start ahead of us in the morning," he drawled, clearly looking to speed the social workers' departure.
"Oh," Mrs Plunkett stalled at the door, peering at Mr. Clarke who paused on the other side, waiting for his partner to join him in making for the Rover 3500. "I very nearly forgot… Peter, if you have a free hand, can you locate that document for me?"
The stone-faced man nodded and, perching his leather folio on one enormous and spindly hand, he flipped open the latch and began rifling through a messy cache of papers. "The one for the deposition, I expect?"
Beside him, Severus suddenly stiffened, his face draining of what little colour he'd ever had to begin with.
"Deposition?" He repeated, "I'm to be deposed?"
Feeling worried over Snape's near loss of composure, Harry reached up to tug on the man's fraying shirtsleeve. "Kuya," he hissed, "what's a depo—that? What's that mean?"
Snape ignored him. "I thought the paperwork I provided was satisfactory. Am I to understand that I've broken some law—?"
"On the contrary, Mr. Snape, although I cannot pretend that it wouldn't have been better for us to have been alerted to Harry's whereabouts well before we had his name and face plastered over the news. No, you're not being prosecuted. Rather, your testimony is to be a key portion of the prosecution in the criminal child abandonment case being brought against Petunia and Vernon Dursley."
A/N: I had a bit of trouble with determining the exact organizational structure in place for child welfare in the late eighties. It was evidently a time of great change in lawfare for child welfare, and the organizations in charge were being shuffled, renamed, etc. I also couldn't find much about what the law actually was, as none of it was seemingly recorded digitally, and the only physical copy of the guidelines issued to social workers is kept in a library in London, and is available only as a reference copy.
A/N at time of posting: Tonight I finished editing the epilogue! Yay! Also, it's my husband's birthday! Yay!