January was cold, and school was boring, but life in Spinner's End was bustling with activity.

Tobias, prodded forward by Snape's constant nagging, had begun sourcing machinery and making lists of the needs of his new enterprise, and Severus had been in talks with the owner of the closed down shop that butted up to the bridge over the River Leven for a leasing option. It might have been over with two weeks ago, but Snape apparently knew how to drive a hard bargain, and he'd refused to agree to the terms of the lease as they were without negotiating over the price per month. According to him—for Harry had no desire to ask Tobias, whom he assumed couldn't be relied upon to actually know—the shop could be expected to open in February, which came rather quickly.

The rest of the late January weeks had been filled with Snape's scribblings at the kitchen table as he mulled over complicated paperwork. Some of it was for the shop, but some of it had come from the Crown Prosecution Service and when Harry had asked, he had been informed that Severus was preparing himself for the deposition, which had yet to be scheduled.

Snape spent long hours poring over the papers and jotting in his replies, and Harry had caught the man twice or more at the school before he was set to go in to The Yow, coming out of Headmistress Shaw's office.

It wasn't so much that Snape was being intentionally tight-lipped about his dealings with the Headmistress, it was more that he was so very preoccupied that he tended to mumble when questioned, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. Harry could hardly blame him.

Since his birthday, Severus had been receiving a weekly file in the mail with additional questions from both Child Protective Services and the Crown Prosecution Service, and Harry had stopped asking for the older wizard to clarify which he meant whenever he abbreviated either one into their shared acronym—CPS.

He'd admitted that his visits to the head's office were for the sake of the upcoming deposition, but he didn't have much to say outside of that besides snapping to Harry that what they discussed was private and that it didn't much concern Harry himself at all.

Harry wasn't sure how that could be, given that they were negotiating over his custody in some manner... but then again, the two agents that had visited them months earlier had seemed chiefly concerned with his relatives, hadn't they? Even when they'd asked Severus questions about himself, they'd seemed mostly satisfied that his custodianship was on the up and up...

Still, it was a worry that kept Harry awake at night. Severus seemed to think that their status was fragile enough to be threatened should they lose their house, which didn't paint such a nice picture, all in all. To that end, Snape had been putting any additional hours he had into prodding at his father and picking up the copious amounts of slack that Tobias allowed.

When they'd needed to drive into Penrith for rudimentary tools to fix the most basic of complaints, it had been Severus who had bothered making the trip, and when that trip had proved insufficient and Severus had stood over their purchases cursing at the boot, he'd toted Harry with him on to Carlisle so they could visit Texas Homecare, which had been so big and overwhelming as to feel like a wonderland to the small boy.

He'd even heeded Harry's whispered advice not to buy the Grunnings' drill but the Black & Decker instead.

"They imported the steel for the drill bits 'cause it was cheaper," Harry had confided to Severus at the time in a dramatic stage whisper. "It breaks easier, but that way they sell more," he'd continued, quoting something he'd heard his uncle confess to one of his business partners at dinner while Harry had eavesdropped from his cupboard.

"It's enough not to pad his pockets further," Snape had returned, placing the power drill back where he'd picked it from. He moved along until he found one that Harry knew to be produced by a direct competitor. "But thank you for the advice on quality."

Harry rarely got to feel quite so important. He'd not deflated for the rest of the day and had, in fact, offered any additional input he could on their selections; giving up pieces of gossip he'd learnt while skulking about underfoot in the Dursley household.

It was surprising even to him that he'd learnt so much about tools simply by overhearing his uncle's business gossip.

Of course, returning home, they found no appreciation from Tobias' corner. In fact, he'd seemed put out that Severus had taken matters into his own hands. Harry thought that rather rich. Were it up to Toby, the shop wouldn't be slated to open for anywhere from four more months to four more decades; such was the sense of urgency he demonstrated. That was to say: none at all.

Harry took to grousing about it to Severus whenever they were alone, but he found his audience curiously unreceptive.

His kuya would merely shrug and blink tiredly without taking his attention off of whatever it was that held his not inconsiderable focus for that moment of time.

Harry found it curiously out of character. Snape ought to be furious. Each new demonstration of laziness from the Snape family patriarch ought to have grated on Severus' frayed last nerve as it did Harry's.

"Why aren't you more mad?" Harry asked one afternoon. Severus had gotten off early for another of his conferences with the headmistress and had decided to take Harry home with him directly.

"You're always mad!" Harry breathed under his breath, once more giving voice to his grievance from Christmas Eve.

"Would it be better if I were angry?" Snape asked in a dispassionate voice. His eyes were ringed underneath with circles so dark that he could have been wearing a robber's mask.

Hesitating now, Harry examined his feelings for a second, though it was in vain. He couldn't say why, but he could say what was. "Well yeah, it would, wouldn't it."

Snape took a deep breath as he pulled to a rolling stop before a stop sign. He seemed to be concentrating very hard for a moment and then his face clouded over with familiar fury.

Familiar, and yet far more terrifying than what Harry had seen from him before. If Harry hadn't known anything about the man up until that moment, he might have still been convinced that Snape was fully capable of unrepentant murder.

His eyes were glinting with the promise of bloody, dripping homicide and his movements on the wheel—which, as of late, had been an improvement over when Harry had met him—grew violent and jagged.

"This is what you like to see, is it Potter?" He demanded, taking the turn in a whipping motion which almost threw Harry's head against the back window. "You want me angry, is that it?"

"N-no—" Harry managed through clenched teeth.

'He won't hurt me, he wouldn't hurt me…'

"This makes things… better?" Snape taunted in a sickening sing-song, slamming to a stop in front of the old playground. Thankfully, no one was about, as was normal. Even so, in early February people avoided spending time out in Cokeworth at all costs, not that there were ever that many out to begin with.

Severus removed his shaking hands from the wheel, nearly wheezing with strain as he sat in his seat. If Harry hadn't been more concerned about Snape's abrupt turn towards rage, he might have been concerned that Snape appeared to be having some sort of fit.

"N-no, that's not what I meant..."

"You bade me get angry," Snape spat, rocking slightly back and forth. "You've never before seen me angry, Potter. Not once—"

This was a bridge too far. Forgetting his apprehension, Harry rolled his eyes.

'He won't hurt me.'

"What are you talking about!? I see you angry all the time!"

It was like watching a man struggling to stuff a full-grown, rampaging lion into a container the approximate size of a matchbox. Severus snarled and pressed at his face with his hands, seeming to be fully incapable of managing whatever had possessed him in that moment.

"And you can stop acting. I get it, alright? I guess it's... it's better if you're not mad—"

Snape grunted, his foot stomping so hard that it shook the body of the car.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Harry continued, starting to feel desperate. "I yelled at you about being mad all the time and now I told you you should be mad... I'm sorry..."

Struggling with his breathing now, Severus took a ragged, deep inhale, the air seeming to rattle in his throat and chest. "I. Am. Not. Acting."

Harry's lower lip wobbled and his eyes went as wide as saucers as he pushed himself backwards into the back bench. "Y-you're not?"

Snape didn't answer directly except to unlatch the car door and step out onto the slush-covered pavement.

"Stay in the car."

He didn't look back to see Harry nod, and Harry watched with his nose pressed to the window and his breath fogging the glass while Snape scooped up a handful of dirty snow and smashed it against his face and then rubbed more of it on the back of his neck.

Harry winced. Even with Severus' habitual disregard for the finer points of hygiene, it seemed strange that he'd scoop up nearly black snow to slather on himself unless he was in a very bad way.

Indeed, it appeared he was. He was hunched over nearly double, his thick, stringy hair hiding his face, and his back and legs shaking as though he might collapse at any moment. If Harry hadn't been explicitly warned to stay in the car—and if he weren't already wary of Snape's sudden fit of pique—he would have immediately been out beside him, attempting to badger the older wizard back into his seat and pester him into allowing the boy to help him.

Things took a far more alarming turn when, his hands on his hips, Snape pitched forward and emptied the contents of his stomach into the bank of grey snow along the kerb. Harry blanched as he watched the salmon pink spew fountaining forth. It was more violent than Harry had ever seen (and he had seen quite a lot of random sicking up from the other children in his primary schools).

Snape was shaking, which he'd been doing before, but now it seemed like his whole body was coursing with violent tremours from head to foot.

Cautiously, Harry knocked on the window of the car and called through the glass.

"Severus? Do you need help? Can I get out of the car now?"

Snape didn't answer him but took a sidestep away from where he'd stained the snow pink and collapsed against the side of the car, heedless to the fact that the seat of his trousers must have been soaking through with freezing wet.

"Stay there," he commanded, his voice wavering ever so slightly. It was still strong enough, however, for Harry to know that Snape at least wasn't dying. Probably.

Harry was about to knock and speak again when a loud, high-pitched squeal rent the air. He looked up through his fringe and saw that from the distance a woman was rushing forward, stumbling through the snow in her ankle boots as she struggled to reach them.

Even with her head down he could have easily identified his music teacher by her blonde top ponytail.

"Sevvy!" She called, her shrill voice piercing Harry's ear drums. When he glanced down to check Snape's face, he saw his kuya wince a bit. It must have sounded even louder outside of the car.

"Sevvy! Are you alright!?" She asked, finally stumbling closer until she shuffled awkwardly along the pavement beside where they'd parked. Likely beneath the snow there was a layer of ice that was making it difficult for his teacher to keep her balance. "I saw you as I was driving by, and then you were getting sick! What's the matter?"

"I..." Snape drew in a deep breath and seemed to steel himself. "I am reasonably well, Tabitha. I am merely catching my breath."

It seemed as though Ms. Tibbons hadn't yet realised that Harry was in the car, for she'd not looked at him once. It was odd to see her pouting down at his kuya the way she was, looking put out and disappointed.

"You can call me Tabby, Sevvy. You were before..."

"Yes, before you called me Sevvy, which I explicitly asked you to stop doing."

"Oh!" She chirped, brightening. "I'm so sorry, I forgot. It's hard when we called you that for years coming up—"

Snape struggled to his feet and began to kick more dirty snow from the embankment over the snow he'd spoilt with his vomit. He continued until the spot was sufficiently covered. By his standing, Harry was blocked from seeing his teacher and could see nothing more than Snape's rail thin back.

"I'm certain that I don't recall anyone calling me that," he deadpanned. "Your brother certainly didn't."

"Well of course he didn't," Ms. Tibbons moaned in exasperation. "He called you 'Rus."

Harry couldn't see her face as she said it, but it sounded as though she didn't at all care for Snape's alternative moniker.

"You... you don't prefer 'Rus, do you?"

Snape snorted and shoved his hands, which appeared to be red with the cold, deep into the pockets of his donkey jacket. "Not at all. I believe I mentioned at our last meeting that my given name would suffice."

"Sev-er-us," she tried out, trilling the syllables like she sometimes did when explaining how a certain word in a song they were learning ought to have been pronounced. "Sev-er-us, Sev-er-us, Sev-er-ussss—"

Harry winced. Even though she had quite a nice singing voice, it reminded him of some of the BBC specials his aunt was partial to. Every so often they would show an opera, and the way that Ms. Tibbons had sung Severus' name was a lot like that oh-so-famous line from The Barber of Seville: 'Fi-gar-o, Fi-gar-o, Fi-gar-ooooo!'

"Er... yes. Quite."

Harry frowned. He wished he could poke the man in the back. It wasn't right for Snape—of all people!—to stand there stammering. That was Harry's own remit.

"Severus, you're sure you don't need me to drive you to the clinic? It's no trouble—"

"I... no. That won't be necessary, Tabith—Tabby. I'm certain that it was merely my lunch from earlier that disagreed with me. I haven't felt ill all afternoon, and I don't feel ill now."

"You're shaking!"

"I'm freezing," he deadpanned. "In any case, Harry is in the car. I'm certain he would prefer that I get him home so that he can begin his homework. I certainly can't—"

"Harry's in the car!?" She gasped.

Suddenly she came into his view as she ducked around Snape and looked in through the window, her pink painted lips pursed into a pucker.

Ms. Tibbons' eyes went wide as soon as she saw him, her dark brown eyebrows—evidence of her natural hair colour—crawling up high on her forehead and underneath her curled fringe.

"Oh! Hello, Harry!" She called, looking rather sheepish. She waved a mitten covered hand at him and grinned. Quite possibly his teacher looked mortified that she'd not noticed him, but it was impossible to tell whether her blush was from embarrassment, the biting cold, or simply her religious application of half a palette of rouge every morning.

"Hi, Ms. Tibbons!" Harry called back. He couldn't help but to quirk a smile at her.

"You've not forgotten we're working on our C-scale tomorrow, have you? You've been practising your finger placement?"

Harry winced. They'd all been given a printed-out keyboard on which to practise, and at the end of the coming week, they'd each be called up to demonstrate on the actual piano at the front of the classroom. He'd been following the picture guide, but it was rather boring playing on a soundless, fake piano when he had a gorgeous, cherry-red guitar propped up in the corner. It was like a siren song. He hadn't managed to resist it once, even when he never managed to coax more than nonsensical noise out of the fickle instrument.

"Er... could we do guitars instead?" He asked, wishing he could step outside to continue the conversation. Calling through the steel of the door was getting old, and it felt rather awkward.

"Piano is a part of the curriculum, I'm afraid," she winced. "Are you having any luck with your guitar at home?"

How did she...oh! Yes! He'd nearly forgotten that it had been Ms. Tibbons that had accompanied Severus to choose his gift... and that it had been she who had delivered it to their house Christmas morning.

"Do you play guitar?" He asked, suddenly. "Can I stay during break some days? I don't know any of the notes... I don't know where to put this hand," he said, holding up his left against the glass as he pointed to it with his right hand.

"For God's sake," Snape snarled. He stooped and pulled open the driver side door and bent his seat forward. "Out, Potter. You're giving me a headache with all of the shouting."

Harry scrambled out without any more prompting, deliberately stepping up onto the kerb to avoid treading anywhere close to where Snape had hurled.

Ms. Tibbons let out a small huff of air that crystalised in the air between the three as she smiled. "In answer to your question, Harry, I'm afraid I have never picked up a stringed instrument before—well... I do suppose that technically a piano is stringed..." she murmured as she glanced down and to the side with a frown, correcting herself.

"I'm sure you never picked up a piano, Ms. Tibbons," Harry granted, hoping he could still render her statement true if only to help her save face.

"Me? I can hardly pick up and move around the chairs before class! Of course I've never picked up a piano," she readily agreed. "Anyway, I don't know the first thing about playing guitar, besides in the interest of teaching you to read music. I guess that might be helpful."

"Yeah, I guess," Harry agreed. He was unable to hide his reluctance and disappointment, however, and his heavy sigh was betrayed by a giant plume of vapour in the air underneath his nose. He grabbed his glasses off his face when they fogged up and wiped them on the sleeve of his school jumper.

"But I know of a few guitarists around the area," she reassured him. She winced and glanced to Severus with a vaguely apologetic look. "Maybe one of them might agree to teach you—at least the basics—but I have no idea how much he would charge."

Harry couldn't help but to stare Severus down, knowing that his eyes must have gone wide as he silently pleaded his case.

Snape, to his credit, looked nonplussed. "Put me in contact with the gentleman and he and I will negotiate terms. I'm certain we can find an agreeable middle ground."

Harry wanted to let out a whoop of triumph, but he managed—by the skin of his teeth—to subdue the impulse. He didn't, however, manage to contain his wide-mouthed grin of excitement.

He knew Snape wouldn't welcome a hug in front of Ms. Tibbons, so he did his best to convey the sentiment with his eyes and face.

Snape rolled his eyes and looked away.

"If... if you're sure, Severus—"

"What I am sure of is that I am entirely capable of protecting and advancing my own interests," Snape cut in, business-like. "It is a protection of my investment in that guitar for Harry to learn to play it properly, and it is in my own interest—and sanity—to hear him play it well. From what I've heard over the last few months, I doubt the damn thing is even in tune."

Harry winced and shuffled his feet in the snow, feeling the snow beginning to seep in through the canvas of his trainers. He mimicked Severus and shoved his hands deep into his pockets, wishing he'd not taken off his coat once he'd gotten into the car. It had been plenty warm with the heater blowing but standing out with the wind whipping across the barren playground on the top of a hill was chilling him to the bone.

In any case, he thought as he pulled the collar of his jumper up over his dripping nose, it wasn't his fault if he didn't know the first thing about tuning a guitar! He sniffed violently to draw a string of mucus back up his sinuses.

"Stop that," Snape bent at the waist and drew a paper serviette from his trouser pocket that was stamped with the logo for The Jiggered Yow. "Wipe your nose with this, say farewell to your teacher for the afternoon and sit back in the car, I left it running for a reason."

"I thought—" Harry stopped himself before he could argue that he'd thought Snape was far too angry to have had any sense of forethought over Harry's comfort. It didn't seem right to bring that up in front of Ms. Tibbons, and he still wasn't entirely sure what had happened with his kuya to cause him to lose control and become so ill.

Instead he shook his head and took the proffered paper, using it to wipe ineffectually against his bright red nostrils. All things considered, it was pretty bad at sopping up drippy bogeys as it wasn't at all absorbent. The construction wasn't soft like the Kleenex tissues Harry's aunt used to buy, which had been designed specifically for the task of wiping noses.

Still, he held on to the token of Snape's care for him if only to remind himself that, in spite of the anger he'd seen earlier, Snape still must have only bothered to give it to him for a reason. He hoped that reason was because he still liked Harry on some level.

Behind him, Snape was pulling the door open for him, and Harry could feel the warm air escaping the body of the car, calling to him with welcoming arms.

"Er... I'll see you tomorrow, Ms. Tibbons."

"I'm looking forward to it, Harry," She grinned, giving him a little wave and showing off, once more, her festive, fair-isle-patterned mittens. "Practise your C-scale when you get home."

"I will," he promised, clambering into the back bench seat and sighing with relief when Snape shut the door on the wind whipping past the car's frame.

Outside he still caught snippets of the two's muted conversation.

"—located a bit out of the way—town over. I don't know if he's ever taught before—bit barmy if you were to ask—"

"I'm sure he'll do just fine," Snape answered. His own words were clearer as he was still standing leaned up against the Marina.

"—his number for you. When—good time to—up?" Harry watched as Ms. Tibbons ducked her head down, attempting to draw her shoulders up, presumably to protect her uncovered ears within the lapel of her coat's standing collar.

"Next week would be amenable," Snape answered, too slowly. His black eyes were darting around their surroundings as if looking for possible interlopers. "I would... I would propose next Tuesday, except that those are my evenings to close up at The Yow."

For reasons Harry couldn't fathom, Ms. Tibbons looked delighted to have been told that he'd have met her next Tuesday if only for the fact that he couldn't.

Girls were barmy.

"Oh! Well—could come in while you're at the bar! Wouldn't—bother you, of course. Only if—it will be a problem..."

Snape swallowed, his Adam's apple visibly dipping in his throat with the action. "I'm certain it will be no trouble at all, but of course you shall have to contend with whatever the patrons choose to throw my way. Otherwise, I believe the menu is set for some local salmon dish that evening. If that doesn't suit, I've always had luck with our bangers. We source from some bloke up in Crosthwaite. They're alright, of course. I've had better. But he's claimed he processes his own pigs himself and—"

"—sounds lovely," Ms. Tibbons answered, her cheeks certainly pinker than they'd been as she pulled her head—tortoise-like—further into her coat.

Harry couldn't help but to make a face.

What was with Severus, anyway? He didn't stand around talking about pig farmers or waffle over the best bangers he'd ever tried. He was behaving—as he himself may have said of anyone else—like a total lackwit.

Drawing in a deep breath and nodding briskly, Snape knocked his knuckles twice against the top of the car, as though to seal the deal. "Tuesday then."

"After school."

"After school," he agreed, echoing the woman standing across from him.

They parted ways with two sheepish good-byes and Severus ducked his head to fit himself back into the seat. The door slammed shut with a certain level of finality, and he began to pull away from the kerb without another word.

As though nothing from the past half hour had ever happened.

Harry frowned. If Snape thought he'd get away with that then he had another thing coming.

"You're alright to drive?"

Snape's reply was terse. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You were having some kind of fit."

"I was having nothing of the sort, thank you—"

"You were madder than a bag of cats," Harry said, borrowing one of Gammy's favourite sayings, "and spitting venom," he continued, borrowing yet another, "and then you fouled up the whole pavement."

"It was a tiny spot of snow beside the pavement," Snape corrected.

"So what happened?" Harry pressed again, leaning forward so he could poke his head between the front two seats and pester Severus even more. "When I said get mad, I meant at your dad for being such a... such a—"

"A bum?"

"Yeah."

"A momentary lapse in judgement, Harry. It won't happen again," Snape sighed, his words sounding resigned. Then, under his breath, he murmured: "I can little afford to ever let go like that again."

"Let go? What did you let go of?"

Severus sighed again, sounding even more put-upon this time. "My magic."

"You... you let go of your magic?"

"My... my mental magic, yes."

Harry's mouth opened in a 'o.' Mental magic! Whoever could have imagined such a thing?

"But Severus," he argued, feeling rather chary at bringing the incident up yet again, particularly when he'd gone on to directly contradict himself months later, "when I was...er... well. When I was flying, you said after that I shouldn't ever try and... and..."

"Suppress your magic, I believe I said, yes." Snape finished for him, supplying his own wording from Christmas Eve. "I stand by that, it's dangerous. However, what I employ to keep myself in check is, in fact, quite the opposite. I am constantly using my magic. In this instance I stopped using it for only a moment. Not nearly long enough to turn myself into an... well. In any case, that's a lecture for another time. I was quite safe from magical blowback or disintegration, Harry."

Magical blowback hardly sounded like a walk in the park, but, Harry decided, whatever 'magical disintegration' was sounded at least ten times worse.

"But it... you were sick. You got sick. Why?"

"The perils of suppressing your emotions. There are different consequences—far lesser consequences, to be sure—but in life there is nothing so satisfying as a universally good approach, nor a universally bad one. There are only... trade-offs."

That made even less sense to Harry than his previous supposition that Snape had lost his lunch over the sheer magnitude of his anger alone. In his own way, Snape went on to say as much.

"I wouldn't expect you to understand, Harry. But I have tried to keep my anger in check for far longer than you might assume. On Christmas Eve, when you called my control into question, I realised that my practise had been... perhaps lacking. I redoubled my efforts. Earlier, when you insisted I ought to feel angry, I made the mistake of searching for that anger, and dipping into it momentarily. It was... it was far stronger and deeper than I had remembered or anticipated. My mental magic was insufficient to keep myself from falling in and losing myself for a time."

Harry was trying to visualise how such a system worked and failing. In the end, he concluded that it must have been something like a... like a...

"A well. It was like you fell into a well? Like those kids we see on the news stories sometimes?"

"That is a way of putting it."

"How would you put it, then?!" Harry asked, throwing his hands up in exasperation at Severus' evasive replies.

"The anger is too much a part of me—any given emotion is too much a part of me—to be buried underground. It is more like... more like an ocean. And the magic is closer to a dyke—which is like a wall that keeps the water away from the town, you understand?—and when a storm comes, usually the dyke is sturdy enough to keep the water out. At other times? A storm surge floods the town."

"And that's what happened? The town flooded?"

"In a matter of speaking."

Harry groaned and banged his head against the back of Severus' seat.

"There wasn't a storm. Not properly. I wasn't getting angry already, and you did nothing to make me angry... but I took down the dyke as an experiment. To test the waters so to speak. I apologise if my anger alarmed you. I didn't expect..."

Snape stopped speaking and shook his head, his troubled eyes finding Harry's own in the rear-view. Harry, for his part, couldn't bring himself to offer any kind of comfort.

Severus had scared him nearly witless. It was a side of the man he'd not seen since July, and even then, in the company of those former comrades of his, he'd been colder and more calculated. A far cry from the roiling chaos and madness Harry had seen promised in the man's narrowed gaze less than an hour ago.

"Things have become far worse since the last time I thought to check on my anger, Harry. You have to understand... it has, in the past, behooved me to keep it in reserve. There have been instances—instances like the one you regrettably witnessed with Yax and Wulf—where having ready access to my rage could prove lifesaving. I don't think—"

"You didn't know you were that angry inside." Harry answered for him, blinking.

"I suppose I didn't."

"I was wondering why you weren't more mad about your dad, Severus, 'cause it seems real strange to me that after that first day where he lost the house—"

"He reversed the mortgage. We have not yet lost the house."

"Yeah, anyway, it seemed really weird that you just... got on with it. That's not like you."

"I have been making an effort, for your sake, to 'be less angry,'" Snape drawled, his mouth curling into a lazy and unconvincing sneer. His heart simply wasn't in it.

Oh. Harry deflated, worried then that his request had somehow injured Snape. On the inside. That he'd somehow endangered that town that Snape had spoken about and had ruined its defenses.

"Maybe... maybe you need to be angry." Harry granted, hoping that with the admission he could move a step forward in undoing some of the damage. "Maybe it's good to be mad sometimes. At least for you."

Snape merely shrugged one shoulder, not looking entirely convinced one way or the other. "It is difficult to say. Regardless, the answer was not to frighten you out of your pants and then collapse into the snow in front of—" he sighed. "In front of her."

Harry couldn't help but to grin, welcoming the subject change.

So. She was 'her' now, was she? He sniggered, knowing that the only other woman that he'd heard Snape refer to as 'her' was his own mother, with whom he'd been infatuated for years.

"Her? I thought she told you to call her Taaabby—" Harry mocked in a gleeful sing-song voice.

"Little brat!" Snape cried, turning around in his seat and pinning Harry with a glare. It was a good thing no cars were coming or Harry might have worried they'd crash. "You will call her 'Ms. Tibbons,' as you are obliged to do as her student!"

"Well if you're gonna go dating her, Kuya, I think at some point I should call her something else."

"We are not 'dating,'" Snape snarled. From the back, Harry could see his ears turning red.

He scented victory in the air.

"So if you're not dating, what's Tuesday?"

"Your teacher is merely stopping by to deliver me the phone number for her guitarist friend. I see nothing special or romantic about that."

Harry's grin widened, looking much like a cat satisfied that it had trapped some hapless mouse against the wall. "Then why were you talking about what's on the menu? She can drop off a phone number without eating dinner with you too—"

"She will not be dining with me. I will be working. If anything, I shall be serving her dinner," Snape said, before he looked back in the rearview with a murderous glance, perhaps realising that what he'd indicated, indeed, sounded even more romantic than merely dining together as friends often do.

Harry mashed his lips together to try and hide his grin, pulling them between his teeth. "Mm'okay, Severus."

A/N: Happy to announce that as of tonight I completed my 50k words for NaNo! That's the first I've written all year since having my daughter, so it feels pretty momentous lol