News seemed to come every day for the next week with updates on the Exxon Valdez crash in Alaska. The story captivated the international news media and articles were syndicated across the globe to the breathless public, detailing horrific accounts of dead wildlife, blackened shores, and a thick, oily cover over the gulf's once pristine waters.
After Severus had compared his own mistakes to the catastrophe happening in Prince William Sound, Harry had felt an indelible compulsion to listen to every story and to read each day's paper with a self-castigatory impetus.
It had become such an obsession that whenever Severus observed that the muggle radio was on, he would pull the plug from the wall, and if he saw Harry poring over the front page, he'd yank it from his fingers, often tearing the newspaper in the process.
Why his kuya was so annoyed by Harry's interest was beyond his ability to understand. If anything, he'd have thought that would have been what Severus would have wanted. He really and truly felt awful about his lack of foresight in adding Potion Mu to the engines of cars that could either crash or simply allow the substance to leak out into the environment.
When he realised that Snape wasn't going to let him get away with consuming the muggle news for the foreseeable future, Harry turned his attention to the magical side of things, hoping against hope that he wouldn't hear a story about any impossibly slick places on the roads that they suspected of being magical in origin.
He wasn't sure whether the silence on that front was comforting or only made his worry worse.
Ganymede hadn't mentioned any such thing, but then he seemed far more concerned with the forecasts on his own investments, and his broadcasts were often exclusively financial in scope.
Although the wizarding wireless had been gifted to him with the stated intention of opening him up to magical music acts, Harry found much more enjoyment in listening to the spoken-word programming. He found it terribly informative (not to mention that he considered magical music to be decidedly uninspired and annoyingly old-fashioned at times).
Whenever it came time for Hortencia Higgle's bi-weekly broadcast about the history of magical Herefordshire to end and Mildred Monkridge's Mystical Music Hour followed, Harry usually found himself switching the set off. He'd heard enough Weird Sisters to know that it wasn't really for him, and he was no fonder of Lethifold's music than he was of As Above—not to mention his indifference to their former lead singer's spin-off project after having been kicked from the band: So Below. And that was merely the rock acts. Everything else reminded of the sort of music his Aunt Marge would have liked: crooners and songstresses whose voices were backed by the wizarding version of big band music.
The only time he switched the little magical puck off was when he heard the bell for the shop ringing, at which time he would quickly disable the device and stash it on the shelf below the counter, out of sight. Still, for all of his hours of straining his ears for mention of Potion Mu's escape, he heard nothing that suggested that a magical substance was being abused or passed around to unsuspecting muggles.
His excessive focus had come at the expense of his homework and his practising on Lady Godiva. Truthfully, his practise had already taken a hit in the past week, from mere inattention. When he'd had his weekly lesson with Joe, days before, the turtle-headed rocker had clucked his tongue disapprovingly at Harry and set him to identifying and playing every A note on the fretboard, a task as boring as it was difficult. Usually, they worked together on something a bit more creative and inspiring, but it was as though the other guitarist could tell that Harry's mind simply wasn't on his task that week.
In all honesty, with every degree that the temperatures warmed outside, Harry felt his interest and engagement with school waning. The world beyond the stuffy gymnasium looked more and more appealing during their breaks, and he yearned for the days when they'd be allowed out into the play yard once more, even if hidden dangers lurked.
Namely, poisonous plants (that the yew had died the previous autumn notwithstanding) and spectral magical beings that had neither been caught nor identified, as per Severus' story weeks earlier.
He was grateful each week for the time he got to spend on the farm, outdoors, for he so seldom was granted the opportunity in recent months. Between the cold of winter and the activity surrounding Snape & Sonopening, life had simply prevented such small occasions for fresh air and sunlight. The short walk to the shop from Rowky Syke hardly sufficed.
He was happy, at least, that Ms. Tibbons had finally seemed to think them capable of doing things more complex than rhythms and piano scales off of printed papers. While her curriculum still wasn't curated to what he, in particular, would have wanted to learn, he'd been enjoying that recently they'd done things such as learning local folk dances, which at least allowed for some physical exercise.
He also discovered that he rather liked dancing. No, he wasn't very good. None of the children were, with the exception of Lucy Givens, who had breathlessly explained that she'd been in tap lessons since she was four. Still, there was something freeing about dance, even when he was meant to follow a prescribed set of steps and otherwise clap along with the beat. The local songs and steps spoke to him, and he wondered often whether his mother and grandparents had once danced to the same tune, in some long distant time.
Besides, he got to partner with every girl in the class as they formed up parallel lines on opposite sides. He thought he might have considered Portia Foster quite pretty, at least when she wasn't giggling at something nasty that Candace Rhys was saying.
He was beginning to understand why all of his favourite bands seemed to write about girls, at least half the time. Plenty of the things they said still made no sense to him, but the girls certainly were a curious bunch. Or at least they made him curious.
About what, he wasn't entirely certain.
But that didn't seem to matter. All he knew was that whenever Portia smiled at something he said, he simultaneously felt triumphant and a bit like he might sick up all over her. It was a good thing indeed that he was quickly off to dancing with someone else, better yet if it were Snowdrop who usually doused the impulse to vomit with her customarily dour scowl and constant complaints about the accursed activity.
As for his coursework, he'd very nearly given it up for a lost cause. If Snape hadn't continued to hound him over his marks and still wasn't looking over his work before he turned it in, Harry would have slipped back into failing grades easily. At the very least, it wasn't a hard sell to convince Severus that the real problem was with Mr. Fowler's instruction, as the older wizard was clearly already predisposed toward hating the other man.
Snape seemed determined to prove that he could do better, which was probably the real reason why he grilled Harry over his spelling while he laid on his back underneath the chassis of the cars he worked on, a torch between his teeth as he struggled to correct Harry's numerous mistakes through the obstruction.
It didn't help much, given that Harry could barely make out what he was saying, but he knew if he brought home anything less than top marks, that Severus would take it personally as a way in which he had failed as a teacher.
For a man who allegedly hated his former occupation as much as he professed to, it was a bit of a lark that he seemed to put so much stock in his measurable abilities at performing such duties as teaching his charge in Mr. Fowler's stead.
Even though Harry sort of wished he could have gone back to being one of the lower performers in his class, as the Dursleys had expected of him while attending primary with Dudley, part of him still felt warm knowing that Severus expected better of him and knew him well enough to think he could perform at a higher level than he'd been doing for years.
Today they hadn't much in the way of homework, however. It left him with very little to do on such a boring afternoon, and it was still too cold out in late March to spend it playing in the fenced in side-yard where Toby and Severus kept the cars they'd yet to see to.
It was a bit of a mud pit anyway, and he'd been warned more than once not to play there with Snape's childhood football, lest he risk breaking a window on one of their client's vehicles. That left him with few options as far as play was concerned.
Every so often Cur Dog was down for a game of fetch, but the dog was absent that afternoon, as he always was whenever Tobias Snape stayed back at Spinner's End for reasons that Severus either didn't care to know, or that he didn't find credible enough to question in the first place.
"He's decided not to work today," was all that Snape had said when Harry asked about Toby's where-abouts.
Harry knew better than to ask why or whether Tobias Snape wasn't feeling well. He merely rolled his eyes—to which Snape nodded with a commiserative sneer—and headed toward the front office, disappointed but not surprised that his companion in play was gone for the afternoon.
Nicky and Snowdrop weren't coming by either, as Harry's days with them had turned out to be on Monday and Tuesday of that week, given Gammy's schedule, so he was well and truly alone, as Severus seemed to be getting more business each day, and now had his work cut out for him with five cars waiting in the adjoining lot that he'd not yet serviced.
It was unfortunate that it hadn't been that day that Snowdrop had been forced to stay, in any case, for watching her with her father present was painful. She categorically refused to speak to Tobias Snape and he, for his part, was disinclined to leave the poor girl alone. It had made for a terrible, awkward afternoon, and Harry had spent it wishing that he could have been just about anywhere else in the world.
Snape had, of course, banned him from doing oil changes or the tiny things he'd been allowed to do before around the shop, and that left him with almost nothing to do save for reading Watership Down, or staring, uncomprehending, at the jumble of numbers that his maths homework always appeared to him to be.
It was lucky for him that he'd instead lucked upon an old cache of user manuals and engineering periodicals that had likely been left in the office by whoever occupied the space while Culpepper's was still in operation. Of course, the equations he found in the engineering materials were far harder than what he worked on at Mr. Fowler's behest, but the difference was principally in how little he cared about fractions when presented in the scenarios that Mr. Fowler tended to favour.
Although far beyond his current abilities, Harry liked to think that someday he'd be the one figuring out the best thickness for hoses fed into the engine block based on their expected capacity for facilitating fluid exchange, and if he had it his way, he'd have the opportunity to crow all about it to both Mr. Fowler and Severus (who had never passed up an opportunity to give him grief over his marks).
He entertained a brief fantasy of himself telling Snape off for using the wrong hose and then succeeding where his kuya had failed. In his imaginings, Severus admitted that he'd not known, and that Harry had impressed him...
Unfortunately, that was so unlikely that Harry had to snort even at his own imagination. A real fat chance that would be.
"When you're done giggling, perhaps you could lend me a hand in the garage," a voice to his rear drawled. He turned about and saw Snape wiping his hands on a spare oil rag and then stuffing the rag into the pocket of his boilersuit.
Harry blushed, feeling embarrassed that he'd been caught daydreaming. "Er... yeah, be right there."
Snape's eagle-eyed look seemed to pierce through him, and suddenly, Harry felt the strange urge to cover himself, as though he'd been exposed somehow.
The moment was quickly over.
"I only need you to hold the torch for me. We'll not have need of your vaunted skills in selecting hosing."
Harry knew his mouth must have fallen open at that. "How did you—?"
"You are disgustingly transparent at times, Harry."
"Yeah but—" he floundered, not sure how to express that he still didn't understand how it could be that Snape would have known the exact scenario he'd been imagining.
"Yeah but?" Snape mimicked, making his voice go a bit high and nasally as he mocked the boy.
Harry snarled and ripped himself away from the chair, closing the engineering book with a snap. "Yeah, but you're a git," he mumbled as quietly as he could get away with.
When he passed Snape by, he ducked, having anticipated the swat that Severus would aim at his head.
"At least your reflexes aren't poor, even if your repartee could use some work."
Harry's mouth moved in a silent and petulant "whe-wah-meh-mehhh" motion as his back was turned, now trying to mock Snape, even though he knew—or hoped he knew—that Snape couldn't see him.
He was well aware of how much he could get away with, and that he was likely pushing it.
He gamely led the way into the garage and picked up the heavy torch, flipping it on.
"Where do you need me to shine it?"
"Just into the engine block, if you please."
Harry directed the beam of light where he'd been asked and observed as Snape inspected for leaks.
"It looks pretty dry to me."
"Looks can be deceiving. There was a puddle the size of your foot beneath the front end when I moved the car earlier. It had to have come from somewhere here," Snape finished by muttering to himself. He was now leaned so far forward into the engine compartment that his feet were barely touching the ground and he was levered by his midsection over the front grill. His cheek was smashed to the top of the engine block and it almost appeared as though he were giving it a great big hug while he felt around underneath.
His hands patted along until he drew in a short breath of air and withdrew his left arm, finding his fingertips wet with fluid.
"You see? Leaking." Snape indulged in a triumphant little smirk, which looked odd given that his spare cheek was still pressed against the top of the cast iron, and he peeled himself away carefully, finding his footing with no little difficulty.
"And now?"
"Sealant of course," Snape replied, repairing to the bench with his tools and hosting a startling array of open metal canisters. He found one that contained a paintbrush and a black, tar-like substance, bringing it with him as he returned to where the bonnet stood propped open.
"Sealant? We're not replacing it?"
"There's no need. Not for something this small." With his wand drawn, he turned the crank on the jack magically and hoisted the frame up as far as it would go, using his customary charm to hold the car safely in place. Then, Snape flipped himself back over onto his little four-wheeled creeper and used his heels to push himself back underneath the frame, holding his hand out for the can of sealant and snapping his fingers at Harry when the boy wasn't fast enough for his liking.
"I'm trialing a new formula," he explained, his voice sounding slightly muffled—yet also, oddly, echo-y—coming from below, "and these kinds of small leaks present the perfect opportunity."
"So you're allowed to do any new potion you like in the cars for clients?" Harry asked, crossing his arms over his chest. He resisted the urge to kick Snape's scrawny shins.
"Strictly speaking, it's not a potion, although, because I don't have a full petrochemical lab at my disposal, I did employ a few magical shortcuts in its formulation and manufacture."
"It took you months to come up with Potion Mu—"
"You're wondering how this one came to me so much faster?" Snape asked, scooching out from beneath. He tilted his head at an awkward angle to avoid hitting it. "It's rather simple. Now that I'm employed working on cars, there is no shortage of problems I'm identifying in the way the fluids are formulated. It is much easier for me to come up with solutions when I have a long list of problems. With Potion Mu we were shooting into the dark and merely hoping something came back. Now, I find myself annoyed with the unreliability of standard sealants and it was no large matter to come up with something more suitable.
"With this covering the leak, it should prolong the life of the part itself—which is otherwise in passable condition—for no less than ten to twenty thousand additional miles. That is a substantial saving for the clients, who won't have to buy replacement parts as often."
"And what if it gets out into the environment?" Harry asked, sardonically, but also with real concern. "Is there gonna be hedgehogs and stuff that have their mouths and eyes sealed shut?"
"It cures with an application of heat. I used my wand, but anyone else could use a standard hairdryer or heat lamp. Once cured, it may flake off over time, but I've already experimented with the properties of the flakes. They don't rehydrate by mere exposure to water, or anything else I can readily identify. Also, given the method I used to produce the sealant, it is far less chemically manufactured than other options on the market. It is largely bio-degradable, with any compounds remaining being less damaging in small amounts to living creatures and plant life than what's being used by just about everyone else."
Snape stood and meandered to the side of the car, using his wand once more to lower the body back to its normal height. He peered in and began to change the oil.
"Bring me the fresh, if you would."
Harry sighed and did as he was bid. The container was so heavy that he had to waddle with it hanging between his legs. His palms were screaming from where the metal handle bit into his flesh and both of his arms were pulled into a locked position at the elbow from the weight. He squatted it down with great relief and stepped away again.
Harry leaned himself up against the bench and watched Snape draining the engine and preparing the funnel to add in the new.
Which was when his mouth fell open and he began to sputter.
"What are you doing!? Hey! Kuya! What—!?"
Harry pushed away from his spot and stumbled in his attempt to reach Snape's side fast enough. His hand reached out to try and still Snape's own where it hovered above the funnel with a small dropper.
"Don't break my concentration! Do you want me spilling this anywhere but into the funnel?"
With great reluctance Harry watched, dumbfounded as Snape squeezed out four drops of Potion Mu into the funnel before he removed it, wiped the end with his rag, and capped the phial as though he'd conducted himself in an entirely routine fashion. With a businesslike nod, he closed the bonnet and gave it a smart little pat.
"W-what!?" Harry searched for words and couldn't find any to suit his sense of mounting fury, betrayal, and foremost, confusion. "You told me—"
"You knew nothing about what you were doing, Potter." Snape smirked down at him. He pulled out the phial and tipped it side to side so that the black lubricant moved slickly around the walls. "I've had months to study the properties of Mu. She's harmless."
Snape grinned at the tiny bottle with a hint of affection in his snaggletoothed smile.
"On her own she loses her annoying propensity for removing all friction from a surface within a week, and because of the unlikely combination of ingredients you proposed for her formula, she's non-corrosive. Within the same week, it becomes entirely possible to clean her with a normal, kitchen-grade degreaser—no magic required—which means that so long as I don't add drops of fresh Mu to the substrate, she only enhances the lubrication and does a fine job of cleaning the gunk from any remaining oil as well as anything built up along the walls of the system. Probably, she'll make it unnecessary to replace oil filters anymore: they'll be sparkling after a few hours—"
"YOU TOLD ME I COULD HAVE GOTTEN US IN TROUBLE!" Harry raged, feeling his chest heave as he failed to take in enough breath. "YOU TOLD ME IT COULD HAVE BEEN ANOTHER EXXON—"
"It could have been," Snape quipped, stowing Potion Mu back in his pocket. "How many times must I say that it was your failure to test the product you were introducing which could have been most disastrous? You didn't even consider the possible consequences."
Harry sputtered again, his hands shaking. He brought them up before him, not entirely sure what he'd do with them, and ended up flailing them before his chest, his fingers curled into frenzied claws.
He let out a little scream that spoke of his pure frustration.
"You—you—!"
"So you may desist with your pitiful campaign of self-flagellation," Snape informed him, raising an eyebrow. "Nothing in Alaska will improve because Harry bleeding Potter has decided he must be appraised of the particulars throughout the entirety of Exxon's clean up job. Though, I must say, it may be somewhatcommendable that you took my words to heart. Perhaps after this you'll have actually learnt something worth knowing."
"Something—?"
"One ought never take it on faith that his venture will be assured from the start, particularly if the one in question has devoted absolutely no time to considering how it might go wrong. And yet, a risk not taken is a reward never realised."
Harry's quivering lips must have spoken to the fact that he was too far gone to ask Snape to clarify, for he paused a moment, surveyed Harry's reaction, and added, almost gently, "Don't become discouraged from trying to do great things, or from imagining that great things can come of your efforts, merely because you've now recognised that making mistakes could be the harbinger of great harm. Refusing to take any risks at all—refusing to act on things that have enormous potential—is cowardly. Just... do me a favour, Potter?"
Harry's jaw twitched and he brought his hands together before him, unable to keep from rubbing them against each other as he tottered from foot to foot, still off-balance from his anger and befuddlement. "Er... yeah?"
"Think next time. Think long and hard. Because if something goes wrong, you are the responsible party. Identify points of failure and learn to measure risk against reward."
"How?"
Snape straightened and walked to him, clapping a hand on his shoulder, which was rare enough for the taciturn young man. He peered down at Harry with fathomless black eyes.
"We'll work on that," his kuya promised.
And for the next half hour, they did. Harry kept Snape company as he swapped the completed car out for his next client's vehicle and enumerated possible points of failure, at Snape's prompting, with the new sealant potion that Snape had begun applying to fissures and cracks in the engine and frame.
"What about... er..." Harry wracked his brains and tapped his foot as he screwed up his eyes to think. "What if it gets really really hot? Like the car's been running at high rpms in a low gear for ages? Is it still good if it gets that hot?"
"Exposure to extreme and inappropriate heat will, indeed, shorten the life of the sealant," Snape granted, even as he painted a coat onto some part underneath the Vauxhall he was wheeled under. "But only after such a time as would be impossible to replicate under normal circumstances. It would take hours of running in that condition and sustaining heat which would, by then, endanger other parts of the car and engine, before the sealant was compromised to such a degree."
He wheeled himself far enough out as to peer up at Harry with an amused glint in his eye. "That's exactly the right question to be asking, however. So, given my answer, is that reason enough not to make use of the sealant?"
"Well, no?"
"Why not?"
"Because it probably won't ever happen, will it? And 'cause if the engine goes before the sealant or whatever, it means that it doesn't matter if the sealant lasts—"
"Exactly." Snape used his heels to propel himself back underneath the frame. His voice became an echo. "You now have completed a rather rudimentary risk-reward assessment. So you see, Harry, that before trialing something new, one must seek to ask all such questions, furnish sufficient answers, and then determine, on balance, whether it is worth the risk."
Harry nodded, even though he knew Snape couldn't see him. He thought he was beginning to understand what Snape meant... although it seemed impossible to come up with every single eventuality under the sun...
"Ah, but you must do your best. None of us is omniscient, and we all make mistakes at some point. Sometimes... terrible mistakes..."
"It's okay," Harry said, stopping him. "You don't have to say."
He already knew what Snape was thinking.
Severus thought he'd had everything to gain by taking the prophesy he'd overheard to Lord Voldemort, and he'd not stopped to think about who it possibly could have applied to.
Snape wheeled out once more, this time sitting up on the creeper and grasping his shins with his filthy hands. He shook his head and looked away, apparently unable to meet Harry's gaze. "It's not okay at all. Not only because I didn't assess the risk, but because I assessed it incorrectly.
"I knew full well that the prophesy meant someone would be targeted. I simply didn't care who. It was a tragedy that it was your mother, yes... but I should have realised that it was a tragedy no matter whom I managed to put under the spotlight."
Sighing, he stretched his legs out before him in a wide V and crossed his arms, which looked rather odd, seated, as he was, only a few inches off the floor. "It was not an intellectual failing, but a moral one. It should have been the same to me no matter who was impacted by my relay of the prophesy to the Dark Lord's ears. Sometimes, there is very little personal risk involved, and you see nothing but the promise of a great pay-out... but it is still wrong. It is that risk that I urge you to pay most heed to.
"Do not compromise what is right for what is rewarding."
Ducking his head now so he could try and catch Snape's eye—a difficult endeavor with Severus looking anywhere but at the vessel of so much of his guilt—Harry gave a sharp, earnest nod. "I won't, Severus."
"Good—"
From the other room, the bell to the front door tinkled, and the two wizards glanced up.
"Go see who's—"
Loud, exuberant voices seemed to fill the adjoining office, and Snape broke off into a glower before he finished his sentence.
"Nevermind. Don't bother. I think I know who's joined us."
(To be continued in Part II...)