In Care Of

By: Fang's Fawn

During the summer before sixth year, Harry finds an injured bat in the
garden and decides to try to heal it… and an unwilling Snape learns just
what kind of a person Harry Potter really is. No slash.

Status: complete

Published: 2009-03-16

Updated: 2015-02-03

Words: 47029

Chapters: 16

Rated: Fiction T - Language: English - Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Drama -

Characters: Harry P., Severus S. - Reviews: 2,090 - Favs: 10,143 - Follows:
3,516

Original source: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4927160/1/In-Care-Of

Exported with the assistance of FicHub.net

In Care Of
Introduction
Something New
An Unexpected Turn of Events
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Author's Note
Something New
Author's Note: I thought I'd add a short note to commemorate this
story's tenth anniversary. In March 2009, I wrote "In Care Of" in a
white heat over the course of three days while I was home from work
recovering from the flu. It's my very first fan fiction piece, and I think
it very much shows it. It's unedited, un-Brit-picked, and rather clumsy
and overdone in places (I keep telling myself I need to go over it and
tighten it up; maybe one of these days I'll get around to it).

Even so, I have a special fondness for this story. It was my first foray
into fan fiction, and my first long, completed project. I think I've
grown as a writer over the last ten years, and I have fan fiction to
thank for that in part. I originally planned to make "In Care Of" the
first story in a trilogy, but inspiration for this particular fandom
deserted me before I could complete that project. Nonetheless, I
hope readers new and old will enjoy it, despite it's many flaws.

-FF, March 2019

At first, Harry hadn't been sure of what exactly he was seeing. He

thought it might be a large, dark brown rat lying under a black leather
glove.

He had never seen a bat in person… not up close, anyway, unless

you counted that disastrous trip to the zoo on Dudley's birthday five
years earlier. (And since those specimens had been housed in a
large, glass terrarium, he didn't count it.)

The fact that he'd never gotten a good look at one in the wild was
hardly surprising. Though not exactly endangered, Britain's bat
population was waning, and as such the creatures were protected.
Plus, being shy, quiet and nocturnal, one was not likely to find a bat
very easily - unless, of course, one had specifically gone bat-
spotting.
Harry hadn't been looking for this bat. He'd stumbled across it while
weeding the vegetable garden. Studying it a moment, he thought it
was rather larger than he would have expected.

Harry had only arrived home from Hogwarts six days previously, but
Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia already had him hard at work. Aunt
Petunia was determined to win a neighborhood prize for her
vegetable garden this year, so this meant plenty of extra work for
Harry. In truth, he didn't mind. The hard, physical labor was nothing
he wasn't used to when he was at the Dursleys', and it kept him from
thinking too much about Sirius - by the time he fell into bed at night,
he was too exhausted even to dream, which was a relief.

On this particular morning, Harry had gone straight out to the garden
immediately after making breakfast for the family. With summer
coming on fast, he preferred doing the garden work during the cooler
morning hours. Though not as talented with plants as, say, Neville
Longbottom, he did enjoy being outdoors and helping things grow.
Plus, it was nice to spend part of his summer around living things
that held no animosity toward him. Now that he didn't have Hedwig,
the plants were better than nothing.

Shortly before the school year ended, Hedwig had reinjured her
wing. Harry had taken the suffering owl straight to Hagrid.

"Well, Harry, she's in a righ' state," the half-giant rumbled, examining

the uneasy bird carefully. "Should heal up proper, tho'. You'd best
leave 'er wi' me… I'll have 'er right as rain in a month's time, then
send 'er on home to yer."

Hermione, seeing the look on Harry's face at this news, had added
reassuringly, "Don't worry, Harry. We'll write to you often, and you
can send your letters back with the owls we send to you."

"That's right, mate," Ron had added bracingly. "Give me a chance to

burn off some of Pig's endless energy!"
But it hadn't been only worry over Hedwig's well-being and anxiety at
being without a means of communication with the wizarding world
that had Harry troubled. Hedwig was more than a pet - she was his
friend and familiar, and no one had any idea (because he had never
told them) how much time he spent talking to her during the
summers. And now, with Sirus only just gone, Harry would not have
Hedwig to talk to about him.

He had just been going over this again in his mind when his hand
had brushed against the dead bat under a large cabbage leaf.

Harry's eyes first registered the leather glove, then the dead rat, then
he whipped his hand away in disgust. On closer inspection, he saw
that it was not a dead rat, but a dead bat. Fascinated, he raised the
plant leaf for a better look.

A sudden clout on the ear propelled him sideways, knocking his

glasses askew.

"Boy! What are you lollygagging around for?" Uncle Vernon towered
over him, purple-faced, mustache bristling. "Didn't you hear your
aunt tell you to get this garden weeded?"

Fixing his glasses with one hand and rubbing his throbbing ear and
head with the other, Harry glared resentfully up at his uncle, but
forced himself to stay civil. Daily shoves and cuffs aside, he'd
managed to avoid one of Vernon's full-out thrashings thus far, and he
wanted to keep it that way.

"Sorry, Uncle Vernon," he said quickly, gritting his teeth to keep back
a rude remark. "I just got distracted a bit when I saw this dead
animal."

Vernon took a closer look, then grimaced in disgust. The look on his
face was usually one he reserved for Harry.

"Well, get rid of that thing, then," he grumbled. "And don't put it in the
bin where it will smell the place up."
Uncle Vernon turned on his heel and strode toward the driveway.
"And heaven help you if you don't have your chores done by the time
I get home!" he shouted over his shoulder.

Muttering darkly to himself, Harry turned back to the plants. He could

almost feel the belt against his back already. Nothing he could do
about it, though. With a sigh, he pulled on his gardening gloves and
reached for the dead creature under the cabbage leaf. He was not
squeamish about touching dead or disgusting things (he'd never get
through Potions, Care of Magical Creatures or Herbology if he was),
but no point in taking any risks… some bats were known to carry
diseases. It might be fun to leave it in Dudley's bed… the thought
made him smirk, but he knew he'd never dare to do it. No point in
looking for trouble.

As Harry lifted the fragile creature in his gloved hands, he thought he

felt a fluttering in the area of its breast.

Not dead, after all.

Harry inspected the creature closely. It appeared to be a common

fruit bat (but how common were they? he didn't know for sure), with
rich, dark brown fur and black, leathery wings. A light froth around
the fox-like snout was tinged with red. Its eyes were half-shut, glazed
with pain and stupefaction. One of the wings appeared to be torn at
the shoulder, as though it had been grabbed by a predator.

Holding the bat in his hand, Harry sat back on his heels and
considered for a moment.

Probably he should put the creature out of its misery. But the idea of
killing anything, even out of mercy, repulsed him. Though he heard
the prophecy in Dumbledore's office, he had not yet come to terms
with the task before him. Besides, Voldemort was different - he'd
murdered his parents, and countless others. This small animal in his
hands was just a bat, uncomprehending and helpless.
Maybe he should just leave it where he found it. But that would
almost certainly condemn it to death - injured as it was, it would not
be able to fly off if one of Mrs. Figg's cats came by.

Harry wondered if he could cure it himself. Suppose he kept it in

Hedwig's cage and protected it until it was well enough to fly on its
own? As he did every year, he'd built up a private store of potion
remedies (some he'd made himself, some he'd nicked from Snape's
stores) to help himself through another summer of Vernon's
"discipline."

Aunt Petunia would go to pieces if she found the bat, of course, but
she never came in his room anymore - he was expected to keep it
clean himself. Dudley wouldn't come into his former second
bedroom, either - nothing there to interest him . No, the only intruder
Harry would have to worry about would be Vernon, and Vernon only
ever came into his room to punish him. With any luck, there wouldn't
be a problem.

Mind made up, Harry rose, holding the bat still in one hand. He
pulled the glove off his right hand with his teeth and, using it to cover
the bat in his left, returned to the house. Aunt Petunia was getting
ready to go shopping; Dudley wasn't home yet from spending the
night at Piers's. Harry would have plenty of time to get his new pet
settled, then get back to work on the garden.

The stinging in his ear seemed to have abated with this new
preoccupation. For the first time since arriving "home," Harry felt…
cheerful. He didn't know if he could help the bat or not, but it would
be nice worrying about something so small and mundane for a
change.

And one other thing: the bat would be no replacement for Hedwig - it
might even be terrified of him - but it certainly wouldn't despise him
for just being Harry.
An Unexpected Turn of Events
A wizard can become an animagus in one of two ways: through
transfiguration or through the animagus potion. James Potter, who
had been particularly gifted at transfiguration, had chosen that
means to orchestrate his own transformation and that of his friends.
They performed the spell illegally, and at great personal risk to
themselves.

Severus Snape's transformation was just as illegal - and dangerous -

as that of the Marauders', but there the resemblance to their
escapade ended. Gifted at potions, Snape chose this (arguably even
more dangerous) route to make the change. Also, he was an adult,
fully qualified wizard when he underwent the transformation under
safer and more responsible conditions, with a powerful and more
experienced wizard on hand ready to assist if anything had wrong.
Also, Snape's motivations for going through with the spell were very
different than those of the Maruaders. James Potter, Sirius Black and
Peter Pettigrew (abetted by Remus Lupin) had been giddy with their
own talent, and eager to indulge in a bit of adolescent rebellion.
Snape, on the other hand, driven by his own desperate need to
atone for the mistakes of his youth, had hoped to use his own
transformation to further his spying capabilities for the Order of the
Phoenix.

Albus Dumbledore had been very serious when Snape first proposed
the plan.

"You do realize, Severus, that this is a very risky procedure," he

gently reminded his former student. "Apart from the illegality of the
thing, which is not to be overlooked should the Ministry get wind of it,
there is much that can go wrong."

"I am prepared," Snape replied calmly. His black eyes, as usual,

gave nothing away.
Dumbledore's piercing blue ones were more open, showing his
naked concern.

"Remember, too, that the risk may be for naught in the end," the
older wizard added. "You cannot choose the form your animagus self
will take. If, therefore, the result is something along the lines of, say,
a Tibetan yak, you will have undergone the danger for a result that
will - forgive me - be of very little use for clandestine activities."

"We can only try," Snape had replied, his black eyes glittering
strangely. And without further ado he had downed the smoking
potion in a single go. There had been something almost fatalistic in
his look that troubled his old mentor, but there was no going back
now.

As it turned out, Snape's new form could not have been more
conducive to spying. Smallish, nocturnal, dark-colored, and able to
fly and with highly sensitive hearing, his animagus self seemed
tailor-made for clandestine activities. Dumbledore was delighted (not
least because Snape came through the painful transformation
safely), and Snape was satisfied. (Though he might have preferred a
more… dignified animal form. And one with which he had not already
been unfavorably compared on numerous occasions by his
detractors.)

Still, it was done now, and as both a bat and a double-agent he had
been able to garner more valuable information on Voldemort and his
followers than all the Unspeakables at the Ministry combined. It
helped that only one man - Albus Dumbledore - knew he was an
animagus. Not even Voldemort himself suspected.

Snape thought sometimes, with a dry, humorless smile, that his

students might have guessed had they tried. They already referred
to him as an overgrown bat (as well as a greasy git) behind his back.
But as tempting as it was, he never used his animal form to try to
catch students in wrongdoing. Not even Potter. No, he made the
transformation for one reason, and one reason only - to aid in his
attempts to help bring down Voldemort. Let the Marauders be
tempted by nighttime kitchen raids and forbidden excursions; he,
Snape, liked to think he had more self-discipline. Nothing must
interfere in bringing Voldemort down.

Dumbledore understood him better than anyone - that it was not for
the Order that Snape put himself in danger time and again, not
specifically. It wasn't even to help the wizarding world at large. With
the possible exception of Dumbledore, he had no love for other
people, no desire for accolades, and no interest in what others
thought of him. His sole motivation was to destroy the man who had
murdered Lily Evans, and he was as single-minded in this purpose
as he was about protecting Lily's boy - not for the sake of the boy
himself (whom he disliked heartily), but for Lily alone. Snape's
devotion both impressed and saddened Dumbledore, but Snape had
no desire to change.

In truth, having only Dumbledore be aware of his animagus

achievement suited Snape… not only did the knowledge give him an
edge over the Death Eaters; it protected him from the well-meaning
comments of the Order. The Order knew that someone was there
during Snape's occasional guard duty stints at Privet Drive; they
simply did not know who, or even what, and this was fine with him.
Snape preferred, as always, to keep himself solitary. He did not
want, nor feel he deserved, friendship. Lily had been his only friend;
he had betrayed her to her death. Again, it had been so long since
he had been friends with Lily that he had forgotten how to be a friend
(Death Eaters notwithstanding - if one could even count such a
motley crew of suspicious, jealous, malicious toadies as friends,
even when he felt himself one of them). To Snape, the Order's
friendship would be as unwelcome as their insults. He rebuffed Molly
Weasley's well-meant attempts at drawing him in with dinner
invitations and kindly inquiries, finding them harder to deal with than
Moody's overt suspicions. Their respect (uncertain as it was) was
enough. He wanted nothing more.

This, then, was why he chose to perform his guard duties as a bat.
Strictly speaking, of course, Number 4 did not need to have anyone
stand guard over it: the blood wards were more powerful than any
Fidelius Charm. Although the exact location of his summer residence
was unknown to Voldemort and his Death Eaters, Potter did need an
escort when he left the protection of the wards - to wit, when he
stepped off the property. Granted, this did not happen often - after
last summer's Dementor attack, the boy was warier about wandering
than he had been formerly. But the fact remained that he did
occasionally (wonder of wonders, Snape though sarcastically) visit
the local library, and his aunt also occasionally send him on errands.
Thus the need for a guarded escort, albeit one unbeknownst to the
boy.

Potter-watching was a dull job, Snape thought. The boy spent most
of his time indoors, no doubt being waited on hand and foot by his
doting relatives even as his benighted father had been before him.
When he did come outdoors, it was to do yard work - his muggle
family was apparently slightly more adept than the elder Potter's
family when it came to attempting to instill responsibility into a teen.
Not that they were having much success, based on what Snape had
seen at school - and of Potter's overly large, obnoxious cousin.

Potter did not appear to have any muggle friends, nor did he spend
much time with his cousin that Snape could see, though they were
close in age - apparently Potter felt he was above such
acquaintances. Snape did not dwell on this particular weakness of
character, given that he'd been the same way himself at Potter's age.
His aversion to muggles, however, had been as a result of his harsh
upbringing. He'd had to soothe the spirit crushed by his alcoholic,
abusive father somehow, and feeling himself above and apart from
the muggle schoolchildren who teased him about his wretched
clothing, drunken father, and abject poverty was one way in which to
do it. It wasn't as though he, Snape, had had a choice in how he
appeared to others at that time, either. Potter, he noticed, dressed
poorly, but as the muggle cousin was always well turned-out, Snape
figured this could be attributed to either the boy's plebian tastes or to
a desire to emulate muggle gang fashions. Either way, it was none of
his business - he needed only to ensure the boy stayed safe during
his few excursions.

On the eve of the morning Potter found a crumpled bat huddled

under a cabbage leaf, Snape, in his animal form, was perched high
in a sycamore tree in front of Mrs. Figg's house. A great advantage
of his animagus self was that he did not need to get too near
Number 4 to be aware of what was going on there. As a bat, his
exceptional hearing was magnified many times, and he could easily
make out the voices of the inhabitants of the dully normal home
while they were in the kitchen - and even distinguish the voices, if
not the words, when they were in other parts of the house. This was
how he'd known Potter was being sent out again; he could hear a
woman, presumably Petunia, screeching that she was missing an
ingredient she needed for the evening meal, and someone had
better fetch it from the shop a few blocks away.

Potter came through the back door a moment later, looking sullen -
probably disgusted at being dragged away from an inane television
program, Snape thought. As the boy started up the pavement,
Petunia appeared in the doorway herself, a shadowy silhouette
illuminated in the twilight by the glow of the kitchen light behind her.

"And make it quick," she cried, her voice as grating as Snape

remembered from his childhood. "Or you won't get any!" The back
door slammed.

Potter muttered something under his breath and quickened his pace.

Must be an off-night for this happy little family, Snape smirked to

himself. I must say, Petunia has not aged well at all.

He unfolded his leathery wings and gently launched himself from the
twig to which he was clinging, soaring silently above Potter's head as
the hunched figure hurried along the pavement.

Snape had never been particularly at home on a broom - competent,

but that was all. As a bat, however, he rejoiced in flight, the way a
real bat would. The only problem was landing - bats were graceful in
the air, but had a tendency to crash-land. It took a great deal of
practice before Snape was able to overcome nature's design to the
point that he could swoop from tree to tree, spotting a branch to
seize onto, then launch off again in the next breath. In this way, he
managed to keep up with Potter.

It was getting dark. The streetlights were flickering on. The

ephemeral heat of this pre-summer day was quickly losing ground to
the waning light. Snape could feel the pavement from the road below
throwing off its warm, afternoon mantle in preparation for the night.
With his bat's hearing he could pick up a plethora of sounds - distant
cars, children at a playground a street over, dishes being washed in
houses he passed, insects. The soft padding of Harry's trainers on
the pavement.

It seemed like an ordinary, early summer evening in Little Whinging,

and yet something felt… off.

It wasn't until Potter disappeared into the corner grocer's seven

blocks away from Number 4 that Snape spotted McNair. His fellow
Death Eater was standing casually in front of the newsstand across
the street from the grocery, dressed in muggle clothing and smoking
a cigarette. Snape felt the fur prickle along his back and neck as his
hackles rose. He had not been aware of any plans to attack Potter…
but then, the Dark Lord didn't tell him everything . And he had been
aware for some time that there were plans being made that he was
unaware of. Like Dumbledore, Voldemort preferred not to put all his
eggs in one basket - particularly, perhaps, when that basket spent so
much time on the arm of Albus Dumbledore. Snape smiled grimly to
himself at the irony of that thought.

While Snape clung to a street lamp, considering the situation, Potter

came out of the grocer's, a brown paper bag in his arms. It looked
heavy - so much for Petunia's "one or two" things she forgot, Snape
thought sardonically.
Potter glanced around carefully, frowning slightly. His eyes skated
over McNair. With a slight shrug, the teen turned and headed for
home. Snape held himself still on the lamp post, watching McNair
carefully.

When Potter was about a block and half ahead of him, McNair
stretched, tossed away his cigarette, and began moving in the same
direction as the boy. He did not hurry.

Snape began flying slowly after him.

This had all the makings of a conundrum. Was McNair alone? If not,
Snape had not yet spotted an accomplice. And whether the Death
Eater was alone or not, what was his plan? If he had wanted to kill
Potter he could have done so already with no muggles being aware
of his presence. Snape could not believe, anyway, that Voldemort
would give such an order to any Death Eater. Capturing Potter would
be easy enough, too, Snape thought, on a walk like this: he was
alone, there appeared to be no one near. So what was McNair
waiting for? He must know that Potter would vanish before his eyes
when he came into the immediate vicinity of his home. He could
simply be trying to map the area, but Snape would have been
surprised to learn that this had not already been done.

Meanwhile, Snape had to make a decision: stay and see what

McNair was up to, or disapparate and call in reinforcements? If he
stayed and an attack was mounted on Potter, he would have to deal
with it alone, and by doing so would have to compromise both his
position as a double agent and his status as an unregistered
animagus (since no wizard could perform magic while in animal
form). This would be a serious blow to his usefulness as an
intelligence gatherer. But how could he risk leaving Potter to have to
deal with an attack on his own? He clicked his teeth together softly, a
habit his bat self had developed when he thought hard.

They were getting closer to Privet Drive. McNair was maintaining an

even distance from Potter, not trying to catch up at all - merely
keeping him in sight. He did not notice the bat swooping from tree to
lamppost to telephone pole above his head.

With his highly sensitive hearing, Snape should have heard what
was coming sooner, but so intent was he upon watching McNair, and
so certain of the infallibility of his disguise, that he grew careless. A
very, very slight hissing sound, along with the lightening of the air
behind him, caused him to finally look up just as he was preparing to
launch off a rain gutter.

He saw what looked like a twirling, round saw blade made of fire,
coming straight for him.

With a squeak, Snape flung himself sideways off the rain gutter, but
could not evade the speeding flame-blade entirely. It sliced into his
webbed foreleg, just where the wing met the shoulder.

There was no time to feel any pain. The blow knocked him straight
down, hard onto the pavement below, and he knew nothing more.

McNair, hearing the scuffle, turned just as the boy vanished behind
the blood wards. He stared down at the bat, startled, then looked up
as Bellatrix Lestrange approached.

Bellatrix aimed her wand at the inert animal. " Animagus revelio !"

Nothing happened. She stepped forward and picked it up without a

shudder.

"Bella? What is it?" McNair drew closer.

"Just a bat." She gave an indifferent shrug. "I thought perhaps an

auror… well, never mind that now. The boy?"

McNair jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Should be home by now."

"Good. We shall report back to the Dark Lord." Bellatrix flung the
body of the wounded bat away from her, in the direction Potter
himself had taken. It also vanished within the wards.
The two dark wizards turned on the spot and vanished as well.
Chapter 3
He hurt all over. Badly. That was the first thing he became aware of.

The second thing Snape became aware of was that he seemed to be

lying in a sort of thick nest made of soft, white, cotton wool. It was
very warm and comfortable. He lay quietly for a few moments,
enjoying the warmth and softness. He felt… peaceful. There didn't
seem to be any reason to move.

A memory nudged at the edge of his consciousness, trying to get in.

He tried to shoo it away, but then it came back to him. Potter, walking
through the streets of Little Whinging. McNair. A fiery blade coming
at him.

A sudden burst of adrenalin shot through Snape and he leaped to his

feet. He realized immediately that this was a mistake when a
sudden, searing pain shot through his neck, shoulder and side,
taking his breath away - a good thing, or he might have cried out.
Shaken, he sank back down into the cotton wool. Blinking blearily, he
drew his hand slowly forward in an attempt to inspect the damage to
his arm and shoulder. Instead of an arm and hand, though, a furry
foreleg came into view, with long, leather-webbed fingers. Still in bat
form, then.

Snape abandoned the attempt at self-examination - at least for the

moment - and began to examine his surroundings instead. He
shifted slightly in his bed, and found that it was indeed a nest of
white cotton wool he was lying in. Someone had lined a white,
cardboard box with the stuff and placed it in - he looked up and
around - what looked like a bird cage. For a very large bird, maybe
an owl or a parrot, he thought. He sniffed - probably an owl; although
the cage had been recently cleaned, his sensitive bat's nose could
detect traces of the former occupant.
The cage was a good four feet high and wide enough in diameter to
accommodate an owl's wingspan, at least partially. About a foot
above his head, a thick, wooden dowel formed a sturdy perch. A pair
of jingle bells hung from the apex of the cage. Bent metal strips fixed
a cuttlebone to one side of the cage and a small mirror to the other.
Food and water dishes were also hung at levels that an occupant of
the perch could easily reach. The floor of the cage was lined with
clean newspaper, and several inches in front of his makeshift bed
Snape spotted two more dishes - one filled with fresh water, the
other with - he sniffed - strawberries. Outside the cage he could not
see - a heavy blue cloth covered it. He thought it was probably still
day, though, as light was filtering gently through.

Snape listed carefully. He could hear outdoor sounds - birdsong,

children playing in the distance, tires on asphalt - from a nearby
open window. He could hear no movement, no breathing, no
heartbeat in his immediate area. Therefore, he reasoned, he could
assess his own physical condition without fear of immediate
intrusion.

Snape took a quick inventory of his aches and pains. The severest
pain was located in his right shoulder. He remembered the fiery
blade coming at him and twisted around, gingerly, to inspect the
area. To his surprise, it was bandaged quite competently - a thick,
white pad was held in place over the wound with strips of gauze that
crisscrossed his body between and around his wings and passed
around his breast. His keen sense of smell picked up something else
under the bandage, too… a whiff of an astringent made from, if he
was not mistaken, birch bark; a strain of vanilla, feverfew and
rosehips. Strange… he might almost have made this pain-relieving,
infection-fighting concoction himself.

Painfully, Snape crept over to the dishes that had been left for him.
He was not in the least interested in the food, but desperately thirsty.
He sniffed at the water - lavender and chamomile extracts had been
added to it; not much - just enough to calm and relax him. He
hesitated, then drank deeply before returning to the homemade nest.
Moving carefully, Snape sat back on his haunches and considered
the situation. He was… perplexed.

On the face of it, whoever had picked him up had done so in an

attempt to help. But who would bother picking up an injured bat in a
muggle neighborhood? A muggle child might do it - many children,
muggle or wizard, might try to "rescue" an injured animal and try to
heal it. But a small child would surely have been clumsier with the
bandage, even if he or she could have gotten past a watchful
mother, carrying a wounded animal, without being intercepted. And
while a muggle adult might know enough to add lavender and
chamomile to his water, the complex herb-and-mineral mixture
applied to his injury could only have been brewed by a wizard, he
would bet his degree on that.

This was another worry. He was certain the animagus revelio charm
had been cast upon him - even allowing for the magical injury and
the fall, he would not be feeling nearly so sore if it hadn't. If it had,
the potion he had invented to counteract the spell (a potion that
would not have helped him if he'd transformed through
transfiguration) appeared to work, but the strain on his body had
been as severe as he'd expected it might be. Every muscle in his
body felt as though it had held on to its assumed shape for dear life,
and he now ached terribly all over.

So… if a wizard had cast the spell, and his counter-spell had
worked, why would that wizard then try to heal him unless he was
wanted for questioning? And if he was wanted for questioning, why
was he being kept in a cage where he would be unable to transform
back into a human? And, most of all, how could anyone even
suspect that he was an animagus after animagus revelio had failed?
He and he alone knew of the existence of his potion - he had not
even shared the invention with Dumbledore, yet. He felt badly
shaken by the thought that his disguise had been compromised in
some way.

The headache that had been circling like an ominous bird settled in
like a conquering enemy. Pain from his wound and recent blood loss
weakened him, and, sinking down into the cotton nest, he gave in to
the relaxing herbal concoction.

When Snape woke again, his entire right foreleg felt numb, and the
pain in his shoulder had subsided to a dull ache. He ran his tongue
around the inside of his mouth and tasted the remnants of a fever-
reducing potion, with a pain reliever mixed in. Slowly, he opened his
eyes and raised his head from his nest.

The cover had been removed from his cage. It was quite dark out -
he caught a glimpse of starry sky from a small, square window. A
light breeze came in, twirling the drab curtains that framed the
window. Without moving, he cast his eyes around the rest of the
room.

It was a small room, painted a dull beige. There was no carpet on

the floor. His cage hung from a hook in the ceiling in one corner
adjacent to the door; in the corner opposite from him on the same
wall was a single twin bed with a thin blanket, made but rumpled, as
though someone had been lying on it earlier. A battered nightstand
with a small reading lamp, its bulb switched on, stood next to the
bed. Beside to the lamp on the nightstand was a leather-bound
photo album, a half-empty water glass and a book - Snape could just
make out the title: Quidditch Through the Ages . On the wall just over
the head of the bed hung a scarlet and gold pennant featuring the
Gryffindor lion. Arranged at the foot of the bed was a large trunk, the
kind students used to transport their things to school.

In the corner next to the door was a tall, shabby wardrobe. One door
of the wardrobe had a broken latch, so that it stood slightly ajar.
Under the window stood a very small, rickety writing desk with a
number of spell books, sheets of parchment, quills, and a bottle of
ink scattered across its surface. The simple, straight-backed chair in
front of it did not match the desk, and one of its four legs was
missing a caster so that it was an inch shorter than the other legs.

The door to the room was closed. Strangely, it had pet door installed
in it.
It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out whose room he had
wound up in - the place he went down, the Gryffindor pennant, the
spell books, parchment and ink, Quidditch Through the Ages. Even
the cage made sense; he knew the boy's injured owl was with
Hagrid. But Snape was still confused. Certainly, this was not how he
expected Harry Potter's room to look. It looked like… a storage room
in a house with no extra rooms to spare, thrown together in a hurry
for an unexpected guest who would not be staying long. Adequate
as shelter (barely), but hardly a schoolboy's sanctuary. It looked like
his own childhood room in the house at Spinner's End after he had
started going to Hogwarts.

Before he had time to reflect further, the door opened, and the boy
himself stepped in, confirming his suspicions.

It was Snape's first close-up view of Potter since school let out.
Scrawny the boy always was, but he looked skinnier than ever now.
He also looked a trifle on the unhealthy side, with dark circles under
his eyes that made his thin face seem even paler than usual. His
shoulders were slightly slumped, as though he was very tired, or
carrying the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders, or both.
Grief over Black, Snape supposed.

Potter shut the door behind him, turned, spotted the bat in Hedwig's
cage and grew still.

"You're awake," he said softly.

Not since the boy's first year had Snape seen Potter's expression
turned on him with an emotion other than wariness, fear, anger or
loathing. Now he looked… curious, but gentle and concerned. He
came toward the cage, moving slowly and carefully, as though he
were approaching an injured, frightened animal - which, of course,
was exactly what he thought he was doing.

"Well, you look like you're doing a bit better, then." The boy kept his
voice low, and his tone soothing. "I brought you something fresher if
you feel like eating anything. You should try to eat it this time… build
up your strength."

Potter carefully opened the door to the cage, lifted out the food dish,
and emptied the wilted berries into a wastebasket next to the desk.
He added a few slices of apple to the bowl and replaced it, shutting
the cage door again. Snape watched warily.

"You should eat those," the boy said encouragingly. "I got a book out
of the library so I could see what kind of fruit you'd take… glad I can
do this instead of bugs!" The boy smiled a little.

Potter retreated from the cage until he had backed up against his
school trunk. Slowly, he sat down on the lid, keeping his eyes on
Snape in frank fascination. Probably never saw a bat from this close
before, Snape thought sardonically. He looks like a gaping idiot .

"You got a pretty bad rip in that wing," Potter said, still speaking in
what he clearly hoped was a soothing, non-threatening tone. "I did
my best to heal you with what I have, but I don't know many healing
spells and I'm not allowed to do magic outside of school anyway. The
Ministry would know."

He sat quite still on the lid of his trunk - stiller than he does in my
classroom, Snape thought bitterly. The boy looked relaxed, his
hands hanging loosely over the knees of his patched, baggy jeans.

"Well, I'll leave the cover off the cage for you since it's your time to
be awake," Potter said finally, apparently decided he was making the
bat nervous. "Tomorrow I'll check your wing again and give you
some more potions. I'm not sure how long it's going to take you to
heal - hopefully before Hedwig gets back. She'd be furious if she
found another pet here."

Potter's pet! Snape thought furiously. Merlin, has it really come to

this? How am I going to manage to get out of this mess? I wish it had
been Dark wizards getting ready to interrogate me, after all!
"Guess I should give you a name while you're here," the boy went
on. He appeared to consider the matter for a moment. "I could call
you 'Snape' or 'Severus' - you remind me of my git of a potions
master!" He grinned impudently.

Snape could not keep back a slight hiss.

"Yeah, you're right- you probably deserve better than that. Look, I'll
call you something close - Spartacus. I got that name out of a
Roman history book." The boy smiled. "Spartacus was a slave who
became a warrior, and freed a lot of other slaves. I think that'll fit you
just fine. I'll free you as soon as you're well, too."

The boy rose, retrieved a pair of tattered blue pajamas and a

toothbrush from the wardrobe, and disappeared down the hall.

Snape was confounded. How was he supposed to get out of this!

Dumbledore would was probably already worried, and what if the
Dark Lord called?

Perhaps, when Potter responds to a letter from Lupin or one of the

Weasley's, he'll mention me, Snape thought. Then he realized that
wouldn't do him any good unless it was mentioned to Dumbledore,
since no one else knew he was an animagus. And with all that was
going on with the war, it didn't seem likely that someone would
casually mention to Dumbledore during an Order meeting that Harry
Potter had adopted an injured bat over the summer holiday.

There was a good chance that, when Potter next tended the injured
wing, he would risk removing Snape from the cage. But then what?
Should he take the opportunity to transform? If so, his cover would
be blown, for Snape didn't trust Potter to keep such a secret from his
friends. It would be all over the school next Fall - not only was the
"overgrown bat" really a bat, but Potter had caged him! Snape
shuddered. No, best to wait until Potter removed him from the cage,
then make a break for the open window. If Potter left it open. And if
the wing was well enough to support his weight. Snape attempted to
stretch the injured limb, and, wincing with pain, gave it up as a bad
job. Wonderful. I'm going to be Potter's pet for Merlin only knows
how long.

The door opened - Potter had returned. He shut the door, stowed the
toothbrush away in his wardrobe, and got into bed, removing his
glasses and setting them on the nightstand as he did so, giving
Snape a clear view of Lily's brilliant, expressive green eyes,
unimpeded by James Potter's glasses.

"Good night, Spartacus," the boy said quietly, switching off the lamp
on the nightstand. He settled down in the blankets and was still. Less
than fifteen minutes later, Snape heard his breathing change and
knew he'd fallen asleep.

With a weary sigh, "Spartacus" made his way over to his food bowl
for a meal of apple slices. This was going to be a long
convalescence.
Chapter 4
It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful
arc as he sank backwards through the ragged veil hanging from the
arch. Harry saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his
godfather's wasted, once-handsome face as he fell through the
ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for
a moment as though in a high wind, then fell back into place.

" SIRIUS!" Harry yelled. "SIRIUS, SIRIUS!"

Sirius, was there, just beyond the veil, he knew it, he could save him,
he could… but something was holding him back, something was
tangling around his legs… a snake, a huge snake, hissing and
coiling itself around his ankles and knees, hampering him in his
efforts to run to his godfather. He had to get away, he had to - he had
to save Sirius!

" Sirius! Harry called out in an agony of grief. "Sirius, Sirius !"With an
almighty wrench, he broke free of the snake's sinuous grasp and
lurched forward and down-

-and landed hard on the bare floor of his bedroom in Privet Drive, the
sheet tangled around his legs.

Slowly, Harry sat up. His breath came in short, hard gasps, as
though he had been running long and fast. His heart thundered in his
ears, and sweat tricked down his face.

Merlin, Uncle Vernon! He thought. If I woke him up I'm dead-

Scrambling to his feet, Harry hurried to his bedroom door. Not daring
to open it, he leaned against the jamb, listening hard.

After a tense moment, his heartbeat calmed enough to allow him to

make out Uncle Vernon's steady snores.
Sighing in relief, Harry returned to his bed and sat down. The light
sweat on his body had begun to dry, and he shivered a little. Turning
on his bedside lamp, he put on his glasses, then reached for the
glass of water on the nightstand, draining it empty.

A faint rustling noise caught Harry's attention, and he turned to look

toward Hedwig's cage.

The bat he had rescued from the garden earlier in the day was
awake, watching him impassively.

"Hey, Spartacus," Harry said quietly.

The bat simply stared at him, unblinking. Its black eyes glowed in the
dim light from the lamp.

Harry looked away first. He glanced at the clock on the shelf that had
once been Dudley's, then abandoned to this room after Dudley had
thrown it against the wall one morning. Harry had managed to repair
it, and it read 2:30 a.m.

Harry leaned forward, elbows on his knees, face in his hands, and
brought his thumbs up under his glasses to rub slow circles over his
burning eyes. Every night it was the same thing - if it wasn't Sirius, it
was Cedric. If it wasn't Cedric, it was Voldemort. The nightmares
jerked him out of a sound sleep nightly; sometimes he called out
loudly enough to wake Vernon, who would then come storming down
the hall to reward his nephew with threats or even blows. Either way,
Harry would be done sleeping for the night. This was the earliest a
nightmare had awakened him so far. He didn't see how he could go
on like this. He'd not be able to keep up with his chores, and that
would put Vernon on the rampage. Getting hit was bad, but having
the Dursleys' railing at him, jarring him out of his grieving, was even
worse.

Harry wished Hedwig were here. Hedwig always seemed to…

seemed to listen to him when he talked to her, and he felt badly in
need of someone to talk to.
Maybe he should write to Ron or Hermione. Without Hedwig he
couldn't send a letter right away, of course, but he could send it with
the next owl that came with letters from them. They were such great
friends… they'd each already written to him once, and he'd also
gotten a note from a very distracted Remus, plus a quick update on
Hedwig (healing nicely) from Hagrid. But somehow, Harry didn't want
to put his thoughts and feelings about Sirius in a letter. Nor did he
especially want to confess to his closest friends (who didn't even
know about the prophecy yet) how worried and frightened he was
feeling. How fragile and uncertain everything seemed, and how weak
he felt.

He missed Hedwig.

With a sigh, Harry switched off the lamp on his bedside table and lay
back against his pillow, glasses still on. A light breeze gently parted
the curtains, allowing a frail shaft of light from the streetlamp on the
corner to beam into the room, illuminating Hedwig's cage with the
bat inside it.

From his bed, Harry watched the bat grooming the claws on its left
forepaw for a while. Presently, it seemed to feel his gaze on it and
looked up at him.

"Hey, Spartacus," Harry said again, keeping his voice soft. "I hope I
didn't scare you. Hedwig gets pretty freaked out by my bad dreams
sometimes."

The bat just looked at him.

Harry sighed, and turned his eyes to the ceiling. After a moment, he
added, in a still quieter voice, "I had a nightmare."

He shifted his gaze back to the bat. It was still watching him.

Harry sat up again, sitting cross-legged in the tangled blankets. "It

was… the dream, I mean… about my godfather. He's dead. He got
killed." Harry made himself say that, looking down at his knees.
When, after a long moment, he looked up, Spartacus was still
watching him. The expression in its black eyes was inscrutable, but
somehow Harry felt strangely comforted. Unlike Hedwig who, as a
wizard's familiar, possessed intelligence far above that of an ordinary
owl, this bat was just a dumb animal… but it was a living creature
sharing his space, and, more importantly, it wasn't a Dursley.

He had not dared to linger over it when he'd smuggled it into the
house earlier the day before; if Aunt Petunia had caught him indoors
when he was supposed to be outside working there would have
been hell to pay. Harry had hurried swiftly upstairs while his aunt was
in the shower, deposited the unconscious bat on the floor of
Hedwig's cage, closed the bedroom door behind him, and headed
back outdoors. Half an hour later, after Petunia had left to do her
shopping, he'd slipped back upstairs to examine the little creature
more closely, and see what he could do for it.

In truth, he'd more than half expected it to be dead on his return. A

number of times he'd attempted to care for injured birds and even a
squirrel or two as a small child - if only to keep Dudley, who could be
as cruel to animals as he was to anything weaker and smaller than
himself, from tormenting them further. He'd rarely had any success
though… particularly with the birds.

When he got back to his room, however, the bat was still alive, lying
just where he'd left it on the floor of Hedwig's cage, its tongue lolling
between its teeth.

Harry quickly determined that the bloody foam on its snout came
from when the creature's teeth had pierced its own tongue, perhaps
when it fell. It was not a serious wound, and he left it to heal on its
own.

More serious by far was the tear along the joint of its right shoulder,
a tear that continued past the shoulder itself and stretched along the
membrane of webbing that formed its wing. Harry stared at the
wound for a long time. He could not even begin to imagine what had
caused such an injury. Not teeth or claws, sure - it was long and
even at the surface, while the torn muscle within could have been cut
with a serrated blade. The brown hairs along each side of the wound
were appeared singed.

Harry gave up trying to figure out the cause of the injury and set to
work to repair it. He cleaned it carefully with a cleansing potion, then
added a feverfew-and-birch bark salve, coating it carefully. He used
a muggle butterfly bandage to hold the gaping wound closed; then,
wound gauze over and under the bat's body to hold a sterile pad in
place over it. He examined his handiwork and was pleased enough
with the results, though unsure if the bat would ever be able to fly
again.

Harry used an eye dropper to feed the unconscious animal a few

drops of painkiller, then settled it in a small box that had once held
Chocolate Frogs, but was now lined with cotton wool. He set the box
on his desk while he gave Hedwig's cage a thorough cleaning and
lined it with fresh newspaper. Leaving Hedwig's dishes empty, he
instead added a pair of small bowls on the floor of the cage, one for
food (which he filled with berries he had nicked from the refrigerator),
and one with water. To the water he added a few drops of a relaxing
infusion meant to calm the creature and enable it to sleep.

After installing the bat in its new home, Harry covered the cage.
Since bats are nocturnal creatures, he figured he would keep it
covered by day and remove the cover at night. This would
encourage the animal to keep to its regular sleep patterns, which
was not only healthier, but made it even less likely any of the
Dursleys would spot it by accident.

Caring for the bat took about an hour and a half. Harry skipped lunch
(a true sacrifice) and worked with all speed on finishing the garden
before moving on to his other chores. Fortunately, Petunia was late
getting home, and so he was not found to be shirking by either of his
guardians. They rewarded this feat by allowing him to have dinner,
such as it was (Dudley was dieting again, which meant Harry was,
too).
When Harry returned to his room that night after dinner, he was
pleasantly surprised to find the bat not only alive, but awake and,
apparently, somewhat active. He'd spoken softly to it, but determined
to give it some space while it got used to its new surroundings. He
was impressed by how calm it appeared - part of him had worried
that it would make a fuss, drawing unwanted attention to his room.

Now, at almost three o'clock in the morning, Harry watched it as it

sipped nectar from the grapes he'd brought it earlier, drank from its
bowl, and began grooming itself thoroughly in an almost cat-like
fashion.

When he spoke again, its small ear flickered, but it didn't look up.
Somehow, this encouraged Harry to go on talking.

"He got killed… my godfather, I mean," Harry repeated. Spartacus

continued to wash his toes. "I think maybe… I mean, I know it's my
fault he got killed." Harry paused, thinking hard. He settled back
against the pillows.

"Sometimes I think… I think I may have… not been what he wanted

in a godson, Spartacus," Harry went on, quietly. The bat paused in
its grooming and looked up, but Hary didn't notice at first. "There
were times last year when… well, he was… disappointed in me, I
think. Because he thinks - thought, I mean - I'm not like my Dad.
That made me feel pretty bad, because I wanted to be like my Dad."

The bat sneezed slightly at this, a noise that was somehow derisive,
and made a strange, soft, trilling sound. Harry looked up at it.

"It's not even like I want to be like my Dad anymore," he told it. "I…
found out last year that my Dad wasn't… at least, not always… what
I thought… hoped he might have been like. I was… it was a bit of a
letdown, to tell you the truth." Harry sighed, removed his glasses,
and turned over on this side. His eyes were wide open, though, and
he stared unseeingly at the wall.
After a long time, he said in a near-whisper, "Sirius was the closest
thing I had to family. I wanted him to - to be proud of me." He'd
almost said to love me, but changed it at the last moment. "I think he
was… but I never got to spend that much time with him. I think
Azkaban left him… a bit unstable, you know, Spartacus?" He
glanced in the direction of the cage; with his glasses off he couldn't
see much, but it seemed to him that Spartacus had settled down in
his nest and was again watching him intently.

Harry felt a bit better, as though some of the huge weight he often
felt bearing down on him had lessened slightly. And, wonder of
wonders, he also felt very tired - he thought he might even be able to
drift off again.

It suddenly occurred to him that if Spartacus was moving around well

enough, he might like to roost upside-own when he slept. Resolving
to look into rigging something in the cage that would allow the bat to
do this the very next day, Harry closed his eyes and let go of all other
conscious thought.

"'Night, Spartacus," he mumbled.

Long after he was asleep, the bat sat and watched over him
unblinkingly.
Chapter 5
Snape was fuming. Of all the things he'd had to put up with in both
his career as a teacher and as a spy, this was the limit. Potter's pet.
Potter's pet, of all things!

The thought of the look on Dumbledore's face when the old wizard
found out about this was maddening.

It was 6:30 in the morning. The potions master-turned-bat could hear

movement in a distant room as someone, presumably the boy's
uncle, began to prepare for the day head. The boy himself had not
awakened again after the nightmare that had sent him to the floor
earlier this morning, jerking Snape out of his meditations. The one-
sided conversation during the small hours had seemed to ease him
greatly, and Potter had slept without stirring the rest of the night.

Snape paused in his awkward, limited pacing to look toward the

teenager's bed. A tuft of black hair was all that was visible from one
end of the jumbled mound of blankets.

Snape had heard a rumor that Potter suffered from frequent

nightmares, but of course, not being the boy's head of house, he had
never witnessed him having one. He had been alarmed by the
violence of the boy's thrashings, and surprised at his obvious fear
that one of the other inmates of the house had heard him.

Gryffindor pride, Snape thought scathingly. Too proud to seek

comfort from his family.

Then he remembered the short, pitiful cry that had first drawn his
attention to the fact that Potter's dreams were far from sweet and
felt, in spite of himself, a little ashamed. The boy had tried to help
him, and, he was forced to grudgingly admit, had done an admirable
job. As misplaced as his grief might be, it was obvious he was truly
hurting over the death of Sirius Black, though why the boy would
choose not to turn to his family for comfort, Snape could not guess.

A flurry of sharp raps on the door made Snape jump. Glancing swiftly
at Potter, he saw that the boy, too, had jerked awake, popping
straight up, his myopic, wary green eyes fixed on the door.

"Aren't you up yet?!" Petunia's screechy voice knifed through

Snape's aching head. "Your uncle will be downstairs in ten minutes;
why isn't breakfast ready?!"

Potter scrambled out of bed and lunged for the pair of jeans he'd left
on the floor the night before.

"Down in a minute, Aunt Petunia!" the boy called, trying to sound

brisk and ready (and failing utterly, in Snape's opinion) as he stripped
off his pajamas.

Petunia's sharp, quick footsteps could be heard retreating down the

hall outside the door. Potter swiftly pulled on his jeans and grabbed a
t-shirt. As he turned to make a grab for his glasses, he noticed the
cage.

"Hey, Spartacus," the boy mumbled distractedly. "I'll take care of you
in a bit… just hang on, OK?"

Glasses on, the boy left the room, still barefoot, and pulled the door
shut behind him. A moment later, Snape heard his feet padding
down a flight of stairs.

Snape sat back in his cotton bed, feeling… perplexed.

Was this a daily occurrence? Surely not… his superior bat's hearing
could make out the snores of the cousin in a nearby room. Perhaps
preparing breakfast for his aunt and uncle on certain days was a
chore assigned to Potter. Maybe the boy made a habit of
oversleeping, which was why his aunt had sounded so irritable (not
that Snape remembered her sounding anything but irritable in his
childhood).

Still, Snape was surprised the savior of the wizarding world was not
as coddled as he'd first thought. His guardians were apparently
attempting to instill some measure of responsibility into him, however
unsuccessful at it they might be. Good .

These thoughts, along with the scant claustrophobia of his confined

quarters, swept away the faint feelings of sympathy for Potter that
had been creeping into his breast like a broom sweeps away loose
cobwebs. He felt a sudden surge of anger, along with a savage
satisfaction that the boy had been dragged out of bed early and
scolded into the bargain. Suddenly, even the boy's careful care of
him seemed more indicative of a teen who wanted to cause chaos in
his family home rather than a compassionate, soft-hearted youth
intent on healing a suffering fellow creature. Potter probably wanted
to show off his "cool" new pet to his nasty little friends.

Perhaps when Potter tended to his injuries Snape could try to

escape. He tried lifting his right forepaw, but winced, realizing it
would never hold his weight. He had no choice but to wait until he
had healed… unless he transformed. The idea of frightening the wits
out of the boy - and embarrassing him utterly with the memory of
their "conversation" last night - by turning back into a human was
appealing, but he simply did not trust Potter not to blow his cover. He
wondered if the boy had spilled the beans yet about what he had
seen in the Pensieve last year.

There was nothing for it. He had to stay in this form and allow Potter
to help him.

It did have to be Potter who found me, Snape thought bitterly. Still, I
suppose it could have been worse.

He suddenly found himself imagining what might have happened

had that bubble-headed Gryffindor girl, Lavender Brown, found him
instead. The ditzy chit probably would have given him a bath in
rosewater and tried to force him into a small argyle jumper.

This thought (along with the memory of the Pensieve incident)

enraged Snape and, although Harry Potter had shown no inclination
whatever to dress him up like a doll, his anger at the boy - at the
whole situation -increased irrationally. He even found the
comfortable bed Potter had made for him infuriating, and so began
tearing it to bits with his sharp little teeth and claws.

I may not be able to take points, but if Potter tries treating me like a
toy, I will bite him, Snape thought viciously as he shredded his way
through the cotton wool right down to the cardboard. For a moment
he felt ashamed by the idea - I'm not really a wild bat! - then absurdly
pleased.

It had been a tense morning. Aunt Petunia was livid that he'd almost
overslept. Harry was just thankful that she woke him in time… if
Uncle Vernon had gotten downstairs before him, there would have
been hell to pay.

His being late to cook breakfast for his aunt and uncle before Uncle
Vernon left for work had not been an issue so far this summer - his
nightmares had kept him from sleeping deeply so it took little to wake
him, and more often than not he was already awake anyway by the
time he heard the shower turn on in the master bathroom down the
hall. Last night had been the first time he'd been able to get back to
sleep after a bad dream, and he'd slept deeply. Thinking of this, he
felt a vague sort of gratitude toward the living creature that now
shared his room.

Now that Vernon was gone to work, Petunia occupied with getting
ready for the day, and Dudley (who rarely got up before lunch) still
asleep, he could tend to his new pet. The sooner the better - he was
sure that Spartacus, a nocturnal animal, would be wanting to sleep.
Plus, he imagined the bat would be in pain… perhaps hungry, too, so
after a quick trip to the garden shed for some supplies and a stop in
the kitchen for a small bowl of hot, soapy water, he headed back
upstairs.

Harry slipped into his room, shutting the door behind him. "Hey
Spartacus," he called softly. "I brought you some break- whoa!"

Spartacus was standing in the middle of a tumbled pile of shredded

cotton and cardboard in the middle of Hedwig's cage. The look on
his small, fox-like face was decidedly pissy.

"Well… uh, I guess it's a good thing I brought you this," Harry said
after a bemused look at the angry bat. He set the roll of chicken wire
he'd retrieved from the garden shed down on the desk and
approached the cage cautiously.

"I guess I'd better take a look at that wing first… you going to be OK
with letting me take you out of there for a bit?" Cautiously, Harry
opened the door to the cage and reached in hesitantly. Spartacus did
not seem thrilled to see Harry's hands coming towards him, but he
did not scurry away, cower, or try to snap either, and Harry took that
as a good sign. He slipped his hands under the bat and carefully
lifted him out.

To his great surprise, Spartacus was perfectly passive, allowing

Harry to carry him over to the bed. Harry marveled at the light
creature, so large for a bat… he guessed it weighed just under two
pounds, and at just under a foot long was somewhere over a third of
Hedwig's length.

Harry set Spartacus down on the foot of his bed, then, after listening
at the door to make sure no one was moving around, pried up the
loose floorboard to reveal the compartment where he hid his more
important items - his cloak, wand, photo album and kit of healing
potions. Pulling the latter item from the hole, then retrieving a first aid
kit from under the bed, he picked the bat up again and sat down on
the bed, settling the creature onto his lap.
While he worked, Harry kept up a steady stream of conversation,
hoping his calm voice would soothe and reassure the wild animal.
He figured it didn't matter what he said; Hagrid had told him once
that animals responded to a voice, not words.

"Don't worry, I'm not half-bad at this," he said conversationally,

clipping away the gauze bandages with a pair of small, sharp
scissors. "I'm not even that bad at potions, either, though my
professor would probably tell you different. It's true my marks are
pretty mediocre in his class, but it's hard for me to concentrate
sometimes because he makes me nervous, hovering over me and
all. I don't think I did half-bad on my potions O.W.L." Gingerly, he
lifted the cotton padding away from the wound, careful not to tug at it
in case it stuck and started the bleeding again.

"I guess my mum was really good at potions when she was in
school," Harry continued. "She was good at charms, too. I wish I'd
gotten some of her brains… my O.W.L. results are due any day now,
and Snape's already told us he won't take anyone into his N.E.W.T.-
level class who gets less than an 'Outstanding' on the O.W.L." Harry
carefully cleansed the wound with an antiseptic. "Sorry if that stings.
You don't have to worry; I didn't brew that one… I nicked it from
Snape's stores."

The bat stirred slightly under his ministering hand. Harry figured it
was suffering a twinge of pain. "Anyway, I need to take potions if I'm
to be an auror, but at the same time I wouldn't mind not having class
with Snape anymore. Greasy git! My friend Ron and I figure he
hasn't washed his hair since 19-"

CHOMP.

Harry leapt to his feet with a yell that was part pain, part surprise as
the tiny fangs sank into the ball of his thumb. Flinging his hand out
roughly, he shook the bat loose.

For a moment he stood shaking the wounded hand and swearing

quietly but frenziedly.
"What did you do that for?" Harry demanded furiously as he swung
round to the bed - then froze in astonishment.

He had expected the bat to be either cowering down or attempting to

scurry away, but it was doing neither. Instead, it was standing on
three legs at the foot of his bed, holding the sore paw up off of the
blankets, glaring up at him. For a moment, Harry thought it had a
decidedly smug look on its sharp-featured little face.

Like twin onyx stones, the black eyes glittered up at him, and briefly
a memory brushed against Harry's mind -

Late again, Potter? Five points from Gryffindor!

-but was gone before he latched onto it.

Harry shook his head to clear it, then looked down at his thumb. It
wasn't deep, but bites could be serious, so he figured he'd better
clean and tend it.

He'd finish taking care of the bat first, though.

"I guess I must have touched a sore spot, huh?" Picking the bat back
up gingerly in case it should take it into its head to bite him again,
Harry reseated himself on the bed. Leaning to one side, he began
rifling through his potions kit.

His hand hesitated over the bottle of essence of murtlap.

When Hermione had introduced him to this potion last year to ease
the pain of Umbridge's sadistic detentions, Harry had privately
planned to bring some to Privet Drive with him. It would be just the
thing to use after a session with his uncle's belt. He could imagine
how cooling the mixture would feel to the fiery welts, bruises and
broken skin that instrument of punishment left on his back.

There wasn't a lot in the bottle, though - what with O.W.L.'s and the
fiasco at the ministry, he hadn't had time to have Hermione show him
how to brew more, nor had he been able to find all the ingredients in
Snape's storeroom.

He looked from the bottle to the bat, considering.

The suffering creature needed relief now. He, on the other hand, was
relatively fine, apart from a few bruises. Vernon had not yet come
down on him very hard this summer, and with any luck Harry might
manage to avoid such a scenario altogether (he ignored the voice at
the back of his mind that said this was unlikely). And who knew? He
might get liberated from Privet Drive long before that happened if
Dumbledore -

But he pushed the thought of Dumbledore aside. It hurt too much to

think of the wizard he idolized just now.

Mind made up, he pulled out the bottle of essence of murtlap. The
bat wouldn't need much; there was still plenty left over for him. He
applied a few drops to a cotton pad and applied it to the wounded
shoulder.

A moment later and Harry was glad he'd decided to use it when he
felt Spartacus's muscles relax under his hands.

Quickly, Harry rebandaged the torn shoulder, then set Spartacus on

the bed again and stood up. He swiftly but efficiently cleaned out
Hedwig's cage, changing the newspaper and removing every last bit
of the destroyed bed. He then began fitting the chicken wire in the
cage, securing it to one side of the cage with wire and forming it into
a kind of canopy at the top of the cage. The bat watched these
proceedings intently from his spot on Harry's bed.

"There you go, Spartacus," Harry exclaimed proudly, standing back.

"You should have no trouble climbing around on that, even with your
hurt shoulder."

Harry changed the water in the water bowl, then added a few
strawberries to the food bowl.
"Full of vitamin C," he explained, picking the bat up and carrying him
back to the cage. "It will help you heal, so try to eat it all today, OK?"

He settled Spartacus inside, closed the door to the cage, then stood
back and waited to see what would happen.

Spartacus took a drink. He nibbled at a berry. Then, casually, he

shuffled on his awkward bat feet to the side of the cage where Harry
had tacked up the chicken wire and examined it carefully.

"Yes!" Harry exclaimed, pleased, as the bat climbed slowly up the

chicken wire on the side of the cage to the canopy at the top and
suspended itself head down, folding its wings around it like a cloak.

Harry grinned as Spartacus looked at him, upside down, from

impassive black eyes. Then he reached for the blue canvas he used
as a cover for the cage.

"You get some sleep, Spartacus," Harry said encouragingly as the

bat folded its wings over its head. He covered the cage. "I'll see you
tonight."

Grabbing some fresh clothes and his toothbrush, Harry headed to

the bathroom, shutting the bedroom door behind him. He'd have to
hurry - he was already behind on his chores.
Chapter 6
It was strange, Snape mused, how a position that could be so
uncomfortable and unpleasant when one was in the form of a man
could be so comfortable and restful when one had assumed the
shape of a bat. But that was part of being an animagus - while the
clarity of thinking that was uniquely human remained (albeit in a
slightly different, less complex form), the physical needs, instincts,
weaknesses and strengths of the animal held forth. Thus, Snape
was completely comfortable and at rest while swinging upside-down
with his hind claws hooked securely in the chicken wire canopy that
Potter had installed in the owl cage.

Snape had fully expected Potter to strike him, or perhaps seize him
and toss him out of the bedroom window when Snape bit him. In
retrospect, he supposed that biting the boy had not been… civilized.
Had Potter reacted the way Snape had expected him to, he might
have hurt Snape worse, or even killed him. Snape's emotions were
much quicker and closer to the surface as a bat, and he vowed to
himself to be more cautious in guarding them from now on.

Still, it had turned out all right. The boy had exhibited a remarkable
level of restraint - Snape had to admit that he himself would not have
been nearly so patient. He wondered with grim amusement how
Potter's reaction might have differed had he known precisely who it
was that had bitten him. As it was, Snape was slightly ashamed of
himself for his childish show of temper, both in biting the boy and
destroying the bed Potter had so carefully made for him.

The canvas covering Potter used to cover his owl's cage did not fit
properly; the top fastening around the tapered top of the cage met
with no difficulty, but the bottom snap did not quite reach, leaving a
slight gap of about an inch in the front of the lower portion of the
cage - enough to block out most of the light, but still allow him to see
out. Judging by the sunlight filtering in, Snape guessed it to be about
mid-morning. The boy had returned once, his hair wet from the
shower. He had not addressed Snape at all, obviously thinking his
new pet was asleep, but simply dressed himself and left the room
again.

Swinging gently in the drowsy warmth and quiet of the forsaken

room, enjoying the relief from pain the boy's ministrations had given
him, Snape found his mind dwelling over the circumstances in which
he had found Potter - so different from what he had expected.

Was this how normal families interacted?

Snape wouldn't know. His own family had been far from normal.

Settling his wings more comfortably around himself, he felt only a

slight twinge in the shoulder Potter had bathed in essence of
murtlap. The boy had been gentle, and done a good job, Snape had
to admit. And picking up a wounded animal in order to try to heal it…
that was something Lily would have done.

Snape had felt animosity towards Harry Potter long before he had
ever laid eyes on the boy. Like Snape himself, Harry was one more
unwitting instrument in his mother's death. If it weren't for him, Lily
would still be alive.

If it weren't for me, Lily would still be alive, Snape thought. He said it
to himself periodically as a sort of self-torture. The pain of it was as
fresh all these years after the fact as it had been on the night it had
happened. In some ways it was worse, as he had been numb in the
days immediately following Lily's murder.

Harry Potter was a constant reminder to Snape of his own betrayal.

He protected the boy for Lily's sake and resented him for James's.
Perhaps if he had resembled Lily more closely… but then, looking
into the boy's green eyes brought Snape so much pain it was hard to
tell. Looking at Harry confused him, there was no doubt about it - on
the one hand, he craved the pain and yearning those eyes always
evoked even as he shrank from it; on the other hand, he hated that
the boy so closely resembled his father in so many other ways, his
untidy black hair, skinny build and glasses a constant reminder of the
bully who'd made his school days a living hell.

Lily used to tell him that he could avoid a lot of trouble by not taking
things so seriously, by being less thin-skinned. It was true he had
been a very defensive, sullen boy - was, in fact, a defensive man,
skeptical of most people's sincerity. But as a boy he had regarded
every new face as a potential enemy's; every laugh as a possible
joke at his expense. Except for Lily, everyone, from Dumbledore
down to the youngest first-year, he had regarded with suspicion and
distrust. Lily was the only one who could lightheartedly tease him
and get away with it, like a friend.

Even his fellow Death Eaters had not been friends.

There were only three people in the world whom Snape had ever
loved, and two of them were dead: Lily Evans and his mother. His
father he had not loved. He had hated Tobias Snape for his
drunkenness, shiftlessness, and cruelty. He had been ashamed of
him for his crassness, intolerance and ignorance. He had feared the
man's ugly temper that revealed itself again and again to both his
mother and himself in cruel words and savage blows. His father,
Tobias Snape, had been the first bully Severus had ever known.

Throughout his time at Hogwarts, Snape had done everything he

could to distance himself from his father. In his fear that he would
grow to be like him, he threw himself into becoming the man's
opposite. Tobias Snape was ignorant and roughly spoken; his son
dedicated himself to his studies, spoke softly if at all, and worked to
refine his speech and expand his vocabulary. Tobias Snape was
crude in his manners and sloppy in his dress; his son behaved with
careful correctness and kept his clothes somber and impeccable.
Tobias Snape was a brutish man who took pride in his physical
prowess; his son scorned athleticism, instead perfecting his dueling
techniques, broadening his mind through books, and disdaining
blows (though he had no compunctions against cutting his victims to
ribbons verbally).
Snape learned early to associate all that was ugly in his father with
muggles. His Sorting into Slytherin House was perhaps inevitable:
his father was a muggle, his mother a pureblood witch. He had hated
the one and loved the other; therefore, it was better to be a
pureblood wizard than a muggle. He'd grown up, poor and abused,
in a muggle neighborhood where the muggle children tormented and
despised him; as a defense mechanism he had learned to rely on his
magic as proof that he was special, better, set apart not for being the
son of a drunken wastrel, but because he was the son of a
pureblooded witch.

By the time young Snape had entered muggle primary school, he

had the demeanor of a kicked cur that expects nothing but cruel
tricks and blows, and reacts to every kindness with suspicion. Except
with Lily, of course. Lily, with her beauty, fire, bravery and
compassion, had always seemed like an angel to Snape, an
idealized being above and apart from other mortals. His feelings for
her were a mix between reverent and obsessive, tender and jealous.
It was love, certainly, but not a boyish love, or even a love shared by
many adults. Snape's love was channeled into very few outlets, and
where he allowed it to flow, it flooded.

In the end, however, not even his love for Lily had the power over
him that his desire to be strong and powerful - a desire born of the
weakness he felt before his overbearing father - had had. Lily could
make him do many things, but she could not make him give up the
Death Eaters, and despite her forgiving nature, the day came when
she could no longer condone his association with them, either. Their
friendship had ended, and Snape knew that this was his fault.
Whether or not she could or would have returned his love in the way
he had wanted her to had he followed a different path, he would
never know, and this, too, tormented him… the thought that he might
have unwittingly driven her into James Potter's arms.

And being a Death Eater had not given Snape the sense of
belonging he had always longed for. They were different than he was
from the very beginning: while he did enjoy taking revenge on his
tormentors (Potter and Black, for instance), he never enjoyed hurting
others in the sadistic way his cohorts did. The cries of the victims
reminded him too much of the cries of the abused boy he had been
for his comfort, and while he did not exactly pity them, he took part in
such dark sport as little as he dared. Nor did he crave power for
power's sake: his desire for power ended with his desire to have no
one dominate him, as his father once had.

The ironic thing was that someone did hold power over him now -
and it was not Voldemort, for all Snape posed as his ally. Even when
he had truly been a Death Eater, Snape had never really belonged to
Voldemort. He had admired the dark lord, looked up to him as a
symbol of freedom and strength, feared him, but never fawned over
him as the others had. Had never loved him.

No, the one person who truly held power over Snape was Albus
Dumbledore, and Dumbledore only held that position because he
was the third person Snape loved. In his early youth, he had admired
and feared the older wizard even as he had admired and feared
Voldemort. After he had returned to the light, he had been grateful
for the man's acceptance and his intervention that had kept him out
of Azkaban, but had not credited it to more than Dumbledore's need
of him. As the years went on, however, he came to realize that, in
truth, Dumbledore's integrity would not have allowed the great
wizard to give Snape a job, protect him and rely on him, if he had
hated and despised him. He had come to realize that the old man
loved him, Snape, as a son, just as he was, with all his failures and
frailties. This knowledge ignited Snape's regard into the fierce love of
a son for a father he adores and idolizes, a father he knows he can
never measure up to. No one could hurt Snape or make him feel
ashamed or rebuke him and get away with it apart from Albus
Dumbledore, and the old wizard knew it.

Dumbledore had the power to make people love him, and the fact
that the old man would use that love to make others do what he
wanted them to do, in the manner of a benign dictator, did not
change the fact that he returned the love to those who gave it with
utmost sincerity and even enthusiasm. Snape knew Dumbledore
used him, and while he vaguely resented it at times, he also knew
that the man truly loved him and worried over him as a son, and this
was enough to make Snape want to do everything the old man
asked and more.

This was, perhaps one more reason - though he would never admit it
even to himself - that Snape disliked Potter: jealousy. Dumbledore
loved Potter, too, with a reverence that resembled an Old World
Italian sailor's reverence for his image of the infant Messiah, and
Snape knew that, however deeply the old man cared for him, he
would never love Snape with that same, tender intensity. It was for
this reason that Snape could not keep himself from cataloging the
boy's flaws to Dumbledore every chance he had. He could not seem
to refrain from doing it even when he knew the older wizard could
see it for what it was - the sneering, sibling rivalry of a jealous older
brother toward a new member of the family. And it was so easy for
him to believe the worst of Potter - from the first day he laid eyes on
him back in the boy's first year, he had seen what he believed to be
a reincarnation of James: a boy who looked just like his bullying
father and was already hailed as a hero by his classmates for
something he couldn't even remember.

In truth, though, Draco Malfoy in his behaviorisms reminded him

more of the elder Potter than his former tormentor's own son ever
did, apart from the pureblood mania. Harry himself, Gryffindor as he
was, still retained a hesitancy in his demeanor, a kind of wistful
longing for approval and eagerness to please that his father had
never had. Snape refused to see these traits as coming from Lily and
instead chose to believe that the boy was a consummate actor.
Indeed, his classroom persecutions were in part the result of an
almost desperate need in himself to corner Potter into living up to
Snape's expectations, to force him to assume the role Snape
thought he should be playing.

This house, though… was hard to ignore. The Spartan room, the
sharp-tongued aunt, the surly uncle, the bullying cousin… no, none
of it was what he had expected at all. None of it bore out his beliefs
in the slightest.

Snape brooded over this. The answer was there before him, as
simple as two and two make four… but he didn't want two and two to
make four in this case. Was there no alternative answer?

Still brooding, he fell asleep.

He was startled out of a deep slumber by the sound of loud voices,

muffled by the door and distance.

Twisting his head up, Snape hesitated, then climbed down his
chicken wire ladder to the floor of the cage and peered out through
the gap in the cover.

Dusk had fallen; the room was shrouded in a half-light. He could

smell cooking from the lower floor - pork chops, he thought.

There was a sudden clatter, it might have been a chair falling over on
a tiled floor, then Dursley's rough voice rose in an angry shout:

"Useless… worthless… abnormal… freak -!"

Snape winced involuntarily at a sudden crashing sound, as though

something heavy had hit the kitchen table; he could hear the plates
rattling.

There was a moment of silence, then the sudden pounding of feet

coming up the stairs. From below stairs, Dursley's voice, sounding
closer now:

"And stay up there! No meals for you tomorrow, or the next day
either!"

The door flew open and Potter burst into the room, his color high. In
his left hand he held his glasses. His right hand was over his nose,
blood seeping through his fingers. Breathing hard, the boy furiously
kicked his desk chair out of the way and flung himself down on the
foot of the bed. His green eyes snapped with anger.

Before Snape could properly take it in, there were more footsteps
coming up the stairs - lighter ones this time. Potter got to his feet as
the door opened and his aunt came in, carrying a rag filled with
something - ice, it looked like.

Petunia handed the ice pack over to her nephew, who put down his
glasses in order to take it.

"Here. Use that to stop the bleeding. Don't get any blood on the
floor," she said, her voice clipped and hard, but shaking a little
nonetheless.

"Thanks," Potter said tonelessly, somewhat indistinctly behind his

hand.

Petunia hesitated, her hand on the door, then turned back to face her
nephew.

" Why must you set him off?" She demanded in a harsh whisper that
was somehow pleading as well. Her grey eyes looked miserable,
angry and upset all at once.

Potter protested at this. "I didn't say anything, not a word!"

She cut him off. "It was that look, you know it was! You can't leave
well enough alone-"

Potter's voice rose, too. "He started in on me, slamming my parents,

criticizing the way I do my chores and you know I don't slack off, and
I'm supposed to just stay quiet and-"

"That's enough!" Petunia cried. She bit her lip, then said a little more
calmly, "Just do as you're told, no backtalk and no defiance, and for
God's sake, try to stay out of Vernon's way!"
She turned back to the bedroom door, paused again, then added
without heat, her back still to the boy:

"It's the least you can do, isn't it, after all we've done for you? It's not
like we were even given a choice about taking you in."

She left, pulling the door shut behind her. Snape heard the sound of
a lock clicking home.

Potter stood still for a moment, then went back to the bed. He sat
down, leaned forward, and gingerly pressed the ice pack to the
bridge of his nose. He laid his other hand along the back of his neck
- an obvious expert at stopping nosebleeds, Snape thought.

For maybe twenty minutes, the only sound in the room was Potter's
breathing, gradually becoming calmer.

Finally, the boy stood up. The bleeding had stopped. He dumped the
ice into a plastic bucket he pulled from under his desk, wiped his
face and hands clean with the damp cloth, and laid it over the edge
of the bucket. When he turned to face the window, Snape saw that
his nose was swollen, and there was a hand-shaped bruise forming
along one cheekbone.

After a moment of pensive silence, Potter suddenly seemed to notice

the cage. He came over and removed the cover.

"Hey, Spartacus," he said softly.

For a long time, Snape and the boy gazed at each other. Finally,
Potter spoke.

"I'm sorry, Spartacus… I'm afraid I don't have anything for you to eat
tonight. I hope you got enough earlier."

He paused a moment, then added, "Tomorrow… I'll feed you

tomorrow, somehow."

Then he went to the bed and laid down, facing the wall.
He made no sound at all.
Chapter 7
Now, finally, the truth.

Petunia's words had put a definitive end to any hope Snape might
have held that the bloody nose could have been a result of a boyish
altercation between Potter and the oversized cousin

He could deceive himself no longer.

Indeed, with the evidence right in front of his eyes, Snape wondered
how he had managed to avoid seeing it for so long. True, there had
never been any evidence of brutality like this. Dumbledore had
implied that the Sorting Hat had considered Potter for Slytherin ( how
James would have turned over in this grave had that happened! ),
and in true Slytherin fashion, Potter obviously knew how to keep his
mouth shut where it counted… or where the misguided boy thought it
counted, at any rate.

Snape had seen the tight, disapproving expression on Molly

Weasley's face at Headquarters when the subject of Potter's family,
however briefly, came up. He had heard Minerva McGonagall
describe them as the "worst sort of muggles imaginable." He had
noted the fact that Potter never returned to Little Whinging at all
between September and June. He had even registered Potter's
scarcity of owls in the Great Hall during breakfast. With a troubled
expression on his face, Dumbledore had said once, in Snape's
hearing, that he regretted that the boy was neither "as well nor as
happy as I had hoped he would be in the care of Lily's sister."

And then there had been that nasty, drawling comment from Draco in
the boys' first-year potions class:

" I do feel so sorry for all those people who have to stay at Hogwarts
for Christmas because they're not wanted at home!"
The eleven-year-old Potter had not seemed in the least perturbed by
this barb, and Snape had dismissed it from his mind without a
second thought.

Neglect, certainly… that was what the other wizarding adults in

Potter's life had seemed to think. Fear, perhaps even resentment.
Too many chores and too little food. Too little love. Snape had
dismissed all these somber comments from staff and Order
members alike, chalking it up to an unfathomable desire on the parts
of hope-hungry wizards to coddle and protect the Boy-Who-Lived.

And now he knew that, even with the way they watched the boy,
indulged him and revered him and fussed over him by turns, none of
them had suspected physical abuse: not Molly with her
overabundance of maternal solicitude, not Minerva, his head of
house, not Filius with his sharp and penetrating mind, not even
Poppy Pomfrey, who had to patch Potter up in the infirmary at least
once a term.

No, not even Dumbledore, who had so much on his plate, and who
so badly wanted things to be all right that sometimes he missed the
obvious.

Snape thought he might have been able to spot it had he been

looking - his own experiences as a child and a teacher make him a
good candidate - and the fact that he had not disturbed and upset
him.

The thought of what Lily would feel if she could have seen her son
an hour ago - stoically nursing a bloody nose with a calm, weary
indifference that was frightening in its implications, felt like blunt
claws drawn quickly over his heart, leaving blood-welling grooves in
their wake.

Why had he never seen anything like this in the boy's memories over
the previous year?
There was, of course, the possibility that such violence was a recent
development. Neglect and harshness, yes, but if Potter had been
abused all along, surely he would have been Sorted into Snape's
own house, or perhaps Filius's or Pomona's? Of the four houses,
Snape's was the most likely to receive battered children who had
early learned the art of self-preservation. Flitwick and Sprout were
about even in being home to the rest - those that tended to escape
reality in books gravitated toward Ravenclaw, while the broken-
spirited ones wound up in Hufflepuff. Very rarely was a battered child
placed in Gryffindor.

But this is Potter, after all, Snape thought sourly, the boy who lives to
be the exception to every rule.

Even this internal jibe at the boy was half-hearted, so shaken was he
by what he had witnessed.

He looked toward the bed. Potter appeared to be asleep, his eyes

closed, his breathing deep and even. Without his glasses, his
resemblance to Lily was more pronounced, the high cheekbones
offsetting James's thin face. The good blood in his heritage showed,
emphasized somehow by the ugly black bruise that marred his
cheek like a raven's wing.

Snape desperately wanted to believe that Dursley's rough treatment

was something new - the Dementor attack on his son last summer
might have pushed him over the edge, perhaps. Possibly he had
taken to drink like Snape's own father. Or maybe his business had
slowed, and here was Potter, a ready scapegoat on which to vent his
frustrations.

But as much as he wanted to believe it, there was the boy's own
demeanor to give the lie to this theory. He had been upset, certainly,
but not as upset as he should have been had this been new, Snape
thought. And instead of fear, he had exhibited only anger and
frustration. There was no shock or surprise in his face when he went
about cleaning himself up; only a methodical care in stopping the
bleeding and removing all traces of blood without dripping any on the
floor or bed.

In short, he had behaved exactly as Snape himself had behaved at

his age after a dose of his father's fists: as if this was all a part of the
routine of being at home.

As for the disastrous Occlumency lessons of last year - there was an

answer there, too, albeit not a happy one: even a natural
Occlumens, if he has enough intense experiences, cannot hide
everything. Snape himself, as powerful an Occlumens as one could
find apart from Dumbledore and Voldemort himself, had been unable
to prevent Potter from glimpsing some of his memories on that one
memorable occasion (this was why he had removed the more painful
ones he wished to keep guarded to the Pensieve). Could it be that
Potter had managed to bury memories of physical abuse beneath
the intensity of his memories of Black being attacked by Dementors,
of Diggory being slaughtered without mercy in the graveyard?

A sudden, intense, and totally unexpected wave of pity for the boy
suddenly took Snape by surprise. He looked toward the bed again.
There was something heartbreaking in Potter's face just then. Often
he looked much younger than his fifteen years, but in this terrible
moment he seemed older, and there was something in his
expression that made him look every inch the grave, serious man he
would become, bearing burdens greater than most men carry - than
most men ever have to carry, let alone most boys - burdens on his
narrow shoulders that made a smack from his uncle, Snape
guessed, seem like the least of his worries.

If Potter had had to endure years of abuse, then he'd done it without
a single complaint and without giving any of it away. Weasley, Snape
knew, would never have been able to keep it from Granger, and
Granger would have felt it her bounden duty (as indeed it would have
been) to inform a teacher. Potter weak? There was greater strength
here than Snape had ever guessed.
He settled down on the floor of the cage, feeling bruised and broken
inside as well as out - his preconceived notions about Harry Potter
shattering one by one.

The question was… what would he do about it? What now?

For now he could do nothing but watch, wait and heal.

Speaking of healing… he wondered if Dursley was serious about

depriving the boy of food for two days. If Potter couldn't feed him,
Snape's health would suffer. He was bound by the physical laws of
the body he was in, and bats require a great deal of food to fuel their
lightning-fast metabolisms. His would not be quite so fast at the
moment, seeing as how he wasn't burning enormous amounts of
energy through flying, but it was still fast enough… particularly while
his body was knitting from his injuries.

Potter had promised he would get him food, and from what Snape
had experienced at the boy's hands thus far, he believed he would
try.

He only hoped Potter would not suffer for the attempt.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

Snape was pulled out of his reverie by a persistent tapping on the

window pane. Awakened by the sound, Potter sat up and looked
toward its source. A miniscule, fluffy ball of gray feathers was
peering in at him, hooting excitedly.

Potter leaped to his feet, his face lighting up and chasing the
shadows from his face so swiftly that the illusion of early, somber
manhood was broken, and Snape saw an eager boy in his place.

"It's from Ron!" Potter exclaimed, and hurried to the window. He

threw wide the sash, and the feathery little gray owl zoomed into the
room, chirping delightedly at having completed its mission. A thick
envelope was tied to its feet, throwing it off balance as it flew.

"Look, Spartacus… Errol's here, too!" Potter reached into the

branches of the tree just outside his window and drew in a large,
very elderly owl that looked exhausted, and no wonder - a bulky
parcel was tied to its feet. Potter set the owl down on his bed and
began liberating it of its package. It hooted feebly at him in
appreciation.

Meanwhile, the tiny, hyperactive owl collided with Snape's cage with
a loud clang and began bobbing around it like a bee on a flower,
hooting nonstop. Snape glared at it in disgust, his lip curled.

"Here! C'mon, Pig, cut that out. Don't upset Spartacus; he's had a
rough time. Let me see what Ron sent with you." Potter caught the
small owl in his hand and untied the letter from its feet.

Pig? Snape thought incredulously. Why would that dunderheaded

Weasley name an owl like that "Pig?"

Potter tore open the letter and began to read. Snape could not have
said why the joyous look on the boy's bruised face should have
made his heart hurt so, but it did.

Still smiling, Potter set the letter down on his desk and turned to the
package, using a short pocketknife with multiple blades to slit it
open.

"Whoa, thanks, Mrs. Weasley!" He grinned and turned to Snape.

"Spartacus, we've got a reprieve… Mrs. Weasley sent food. The
meat pies you won't have any use for, I know, but there are some
fruit tarts here with your name on 'em!"

There was a note card in the box, too, Snape noticed - the kind that
was blank inside with flowers on the front that witches liked to dash
quick notes off on. Potter opened it, and as he read, his smile stayed
steady, but turned somehow sad and wistful. Without a word he set it
aside.

"OK, Pig, I have a letter here ready for you to take to Ron. Do you
want to stay over and rest or do you want to get started back?"
Potter asked, pulling an envelope out of his desk drawer.

"Pig" immediately fluttered onto Potter's arm, and the boy tied the
letter to its feet. With a quick, affectionate nip to the boy's wrist, it
soared out of the window.

"Errol, I'm not even going to ask you if you want to stay over,
because I think you should," the boy said, lifting the older owl to his
desk. He poured the remainder of his habitual nighttime glass of
water into one of Hedwig's bowls, which he'd removed from the cage
to give Snape more room. To the other bowl he added a few owl
treats. The owl hooted gratefully and ate and drank deeply.

When it had finished, Potter asked it, "Do you think you could sleep
in the tree outside? Spartacus is using Hedwig's cage right now, and
somehow I don't think he'd appreciate the company!" The boy looked
toward the cage with a grin.

Too right! Snape thought irritably.

Carefully, the boy lifted the frail bird out through the window,
depositing it gently on a thick branch. It hooted again and
immediately put its head under its wing. Snape was sure he could
hear the feathery mess snoring almost immediately.

Potter took up the letter from Ron Weasley, flung himself down on
the bed in the manner of a teenager ready to relax, and read it
through again twice. Then he folded it and set it on the nightstand
within easy reach and leaned back with his arms folded behind his
head, eyes on the ceiling. Snape was surprised by how pleased he
looked.

After a moment, Potter lowered his eyes to Snape again.

"A three-page letter… that's pretty good for Ron, Spartacus," the boy
admitted with a slight smile. "He'd be the first to tell you he's not
much of a letter-writer. I hear from him maybe once a week over the
summers, though. He makes an effort to write because he knows
it's… well, not exactly fun for me here. Hermione writes even more,
like every other day. I'll probably hear from her tomorrow."

He paused for a few minutes, thinking hard, his brow furrowed in a

way that reminded Snape distinctly of Lily concentrating over a
particularly tricky transfiguration essay.

"I've got great friends," Potter said finally. "I can really count on them,
you know?"

He rolled over onto his side, still facing Snape.

"And Ron's mum… she's been brilliant, too. When Dudley started
dieting the summer before last, she started sending me food. She's
kept it up, too. I'm really grateful, because I know they haven't much
money and all that. She knows, I think… I've never told her, but I
think she knows that making me miss meals is one of my aunt and
uncle's favorite ways of punishing me."

He was quiet a moment, then sat up suddenly, feet on the bed and
knees drawn up. He wrapped his arms around his folded legs and
rested his chin on his knees. His restless eyes moved to Snape's
steady ones again.

"You know, Spartacus… Ron's a really great friend, in a lot of ways.

They only time anything really comes between us is when… well, he
feels… jealous of me sometimes."

Potter paused, thinking hard.

"I wish he wouldn't," he went on slowly. "He shouldn't, I mean… I

have money, for all the good it does me." His eyes flickered around
the room, taking in the battered furniture and bare walls. "Ron hates
feeling… poor. And he hates being the youngest of so many
brothers."

He was silent again, then in a whisper: "I'd trade with him, though. In
a minute."

Potter leaned back against the headboard again, letting out a long
breath. The lamplight threw his bruises into greater relief.

"It's funny, Spartacus," he said thoughtfully, his voice quiet, tentative.

"There are a lot of people who like me… think I'm something
special… without having ever met me, and for no reason at all. I
think Ron was a little like that, at first."

His lips quirked into a humorless smile.

"There's also plenty of people who can't stand me without every

having met me and for no reason at all! Snape was like that, I think."

In the owl cage, Snape shifted restlessly.

"For the longest time that first year, I didn't even know why he hated
me so much," Potter mused. "No one would ever tell me, except
Dumbledore at the end of the year when I was in the hospital wing.
And that wasn't the whole truth."

The boy sighed. "Dumbledore's good about telling the truth, but not
all the truth. That… worries me sometimes."

It worried Snape, too.

"Anyway," Potter continued after another long pause, "I did get to
know more about why Snape didn't like me… but it was still never
just for me, you know? He hates me for whose son I am, and how he
thinks I am." Potter pondered a moment. "It made me feel… not too
great about him, either, know what I mean?"

Snape thought he might.

Turning onto his side again, Potter clutched his pillow against his
chest and looked at the wall.

"Last year," he began, and Snape thought he might not even be

aware that he was speaking aloud, "I went into Dumbledore's
Pensieve while it had Snape's memories in it. I thought… I thought
he was up to something, something bad. He used to be a Death
Eater, you know. I couldn't get how Dumbledore could trust him! He
wouldn't tell me why… he never told me anything, last year. Until the
night of the fight at the ministry, that is. The night… Sirius died."

Potter raked his fingers through his untidy black hair.

"I thought it was because he was angry with me," he said in a low
voice. "Dumbledore, I mean. For… you know, getting him kicked out
of the Wizengamot and all that… and all that stuff in the Prophet . He
wouldn't look at me or talk to me or anything." The boy closed his
eyes, looking pained.

Snape sighed to himself. It had been a foolish, childish thing to think

- but then, Potter was a child still. Albus, for such a brilliant man you
can be capable of some extreme lapses in judgment.

"Anyway," Potter continued, "I figured he was right about Snape and
I was wrong all along, because Snape checked on Sirius after I told
him what I'd seen in my vision, and he sent the Order after me at the
ministry… and he hates both Sirius and me, so he was doing the
right thing whether he wanted to or not. That's something, I guess."

Well, thank you for that dubious recommendation, Snape thought

sourly.

This time, the silence lasted so long that Snape thought Potter had
fallen asleep again. He was just getting lost in his own thoughts
when the boy spoke once more - indeed, almost missed what he had
said:

"That was the night I found out about the Prophecy."

A shiver when down Snape's spine at this and he pricked up his
sharp ears. He had never heard the complete Prophecy, but it
seemed that Potter had… from Dumbledore, no doubt.

The boy tensed visibly, then passed his hand impatiently in front of
his eyes.

"I don't want to think about that now, though," he said tersely.

Abruptly he stood up and went to his wardrobe, retrieving a pair of

pajamas. When he removed his t-shirt, Snape was dismayed to see
blue finger marks on his left shoulder: he could picture Dursley
roughly seizing the boy and steering him toward the stairs after
hitting him earlier this evening.

We have to get out of here, Snape thought, and he never noticed

that he was now thinking we and not I .
Chapter 8
Almost fifteen years ago, Severus Snape set himself a task to which
he fully intended to devote the rest of his life to the best of his ability
- protecting Harry Potter. It was, he felt, the last, best and only
service left he could do now for Lily Evans, who had been - and
remained - the love of his life.

That he loathed the boy for his paternity and resented him for the
painful memories he evoked made no difference. Snape was a
single-minded man who lived by his own moral code, come what
may. This was why he had followed up on Potter's vision of the
"capture" of Sirius Black. Snape had seen enough death in his
lifetime not to wish to experience anymore on the side of the light,
and he would never desert a fellow Order member whether he liked
him or not.

With the exception of Albus Dumbledore, Snape cared not at all what
others thought of him. He knew that certain of his colleagues, fellow
Order members, students and much of the wizarding world in
general viewed him with distrust, dislike and suspicion. This suited
him well enough. He did not seek to ingratiate himself with anyone:
no accolades he might earn could make up for what he had done to
Lily. He felt no need of friends: life had taught him that love often
ended in loss; nor did he want to be distracted in his work as a spy.
He was proud of his Slytherins and did not bother to hide his
preferential treatment of them, but this was not so much for their
sakes' as it was because he needed to stay on the good side of their
Death Eater relatives. Also, when he could support a Slytherin,
especially against a Gryffindor, it eased a sore spot in him left over
from his unhappy experiences with the Marauders.

Snape knew that Dumbledore had hoped that he, Snape, would
come to care for Lily's child. The potions master was sure this could
never happen. Despite his private vow to protect the boy at all costs,
he still would have preferred him to be expelled so he would not be
so constantly under Snape's eyes. Apart from detentions (during
which the potions master delighted in tormenting Potter), Snape
spent as little time in the brat's presence as he dared. And even the
detentions left him with a deflated, frustrated feeling.

Snape had no desire to learn about the boy's life apart from what he
observed in school, and he purposely observed as little as he could
(excepting, of course, what he could use to get Potter into trouble).
He allowed Potter to speak in his presence as little as possible;
would brook none of his explanations or excuses for his conduct.
When other adults spoke of the boy, Snape removed himself from
the conversation as quickly as possible.

Thus, the current situation was, perhaps, the only way possible in
which Snape could learn more about the real Harry Potter, the one
he refused to see… and even learn to feel differently about him.

The next three weeks had assumed a sort of routine: every morning
at about 6:30 (an hour later at weekends), Petunia Dursley would rap
on her nephew's door. The boy would scramble into the nearest
clothes and disappear quickly down the stairs to prepare breakfast
for his family. About an hour later he would return to see to the
needs of his "pet." Each day, faithfully, he removed Snape from the
cage and carefully tended his wounded shoulder. He would then
clean the cage, refresh the food and water bowls, and cover the
cage before seeing to his own morning ablutions.

Snape's wound was healing slowly; he thought Bellatrix might have

built her twirling, fiery blade using fiendfyre. If she had, her control
was admirable. At any rate, the cursed wound would have continued
to eat into the muscle, perhaps damaging it permanently - maybe
even killing him. A healer would have been able to help Snape make
faster progress, but Potter was no slouch at healing, either… and the
fact that he had magical potions to help him deal with the injury was
the shoulder's salvation, for muggle remedies would not have had
little effect.
Each day, Snape would perch on Potter's knee and force himself to
hold still while the boy cleaned, treated and re-bandaged the painful
area. Potter seemed to know how much Snape was hurting despite
the gentle touch, and he attempted to soothe the bat using his voice
by reading aloud from the Daily Prophet while he worked. Thus it
was that Snape learned how much public opinion had changed
towards "the Chosen One;" he was amused to find that Potter
seemed even more disgusted by this than Snape was himself.

If the boy tired of reading the Prophet, he would sometimes sing to

his new pet instead. Though clearly not destined for a career in
music, Potter sang fairly tunefully (admitting cheerfully that he would
never have the courage to share this ability "where that lot in the
Gryffindor common room could send me up"), and Snape had to
admit that he found the boy's simple renditions rather… relaxing.

Once Snape was taken care of and the room tidied, Potter would
ready himself for the day, then disappear until evening. Snape knew
he was kept busy from morning 'til night with chores - the bat's keen
sense of smell easily detected the sweat of physical labor on the boy
when he returned, along with the scent of grass clippings, or
furniture polish, or cleaning solution, or garden fertilizer, or silver
polish, or paint and turpentine. Very often he smelled of cooking, as
well.

Potter would clean himself up a bit, then remove the cover from the
cage, greeting Snape with his usual, soft-spoken, "Hey, Spartacus."
Then he would sit at his desk and spend an hour or two over his
schoolwork. When he finished, he would push his books away,
stretch, and move over to his bed.

Then he would talk to Snape - sometimes for as long as two hours -

before going to sleep. If a nightmare woke him during the small
hours of the morning (which happened two or three times a week),
the boy would talk to the transformed potions master for another half
an hour or longer.
The irony of the situation, of course, was that Potter would have
infinitely preferred confiding in Argus Filch than he would in Snape.
And Snape, for his part, would never have chosen to listen at length
to any student's teenaged angst and adolescent unburdenings, let
alone Potter's - the mere thought of doing so would ordinarily cause
his eyes to glaze over with sheer boredom in the space of five
minutes. But the boy thought he was talking to a dumb animal, and
the brooding potions master was a captive audience that could not
speak - so he was forced to listen, for once, and by listening, learned
more about what went on inside Harry Potter's mind and heart than
any living creature in the world - except, perhaps, for Potter's owl,
which was still at Hogwarts with Hagrid.

All the worries, anxieties and fears that Potter could not bring himself
to share even with his friends, he now related to Snape. Thus it was
that Snape learned about the Prophecy in all its dreadful
implications, about the activities of Dumbledore's Army, about
Dolores Umbridge's blood quill which Potter had been too proud to
complain about to McGonagall, about his love for Dumbledore and
fear of letting the old man down. He learned about Potter's
disappointment in the way his brief romance had turned out with
Miss Chang, his growing attraction to Miss Weasley and worries over
her brother's reactions to them should he learn of it, and his doubts
as to whether he could ever hope for a normal life with normal
relationships. He learned about the boy's ambitions to become an
Auror, and his anxiety over the results of his O.W.L.s. He came to
understand Potter's intense fear of loss, a fear born of losing those
he loved to death or that they would turn away from him. He had
even come to realize the boy's regret for sneaking into Snape's
memories last term - and not only because of what he'd learned
about his father, either, but because he'd violated an Order
member's privacy out of suspicion.

As the situation had put the boy in the unusual position of confiding
in Snape, of all people, so had it also put Snape in the unusual
position of preparing his heart to listen - really listen - to Potter.
Unable to speak, to move at will, or to act, Snape had his own
anxieties to cope with along with pain and boredom. His
disappearance was being kept quiet, apparently, or Potter would no
doubt have mentioned it - probably with a clarion trumpet, Snape
thought sourly. And the fact that he had not yet been found meant
that Dumbledore had another, distracting worry to add to his list of
burdens.

Then, there was the constant tension caused by dread that the Dark
Lord would send for him and he would be unable to respond. He had
been lucky thus far - Voldemort avoided sending for him too often for
fear Dumbledore would become suspicious - but his luck couldn't
hold out forever, Snape knew. And he was deeply concerned as to
what McNair and Bellatrix Lestrange had been up to on the day she
attacked him. He was well aware that Voldemort did not confide
every plan to his followers, but this omission troubled him
nonetheless.

As for the boredom… beyond reading the pages of the Daily Prophet
that Potter used to line the cage and listening avidly when the boy
read to him from the paper or from his personal letters (particularly
those from Order members), Snape had nothing to divert him in his
solitude. He slept most of the day (as bats will), meditated a great
deal of the time, reviewed potions in his head, recited passages of
poetry from his days of reading and studying with Lily, and worried.

Increasingly, though, he found that his main source of diversion was

becoming Potter himself - the spoiled, conceited brat who thought he
was too good to follow the rules. Or so he had once thought.

Snape had always prided himself on his solitariness and comfort with
his own company. But even that fool Pettigrew, posing as the
Weasley boys' pet for over a decade, had had more society than
Snape did now. The only voice he heard now (with any clarity, at
least) was Potter's, and Snape began to look forward to the boy's
return each evening with an eagerness and relief he would not have
dared to admit even to himself.
Through Potter's musings on his friends, his enemies, his ideas and
ambitions, Snape began to discern, reluctantly at first, eagerly as
time went on, what Dumbledore had tried to make him aware of all
along - that along with James Potter's recklessness, bull-
headedness, lack of subtlety and penchant for rule-breaking, this boy
possessed also Lily's compassion, loyalty, forgiving nature and
overwhelming capacity to love in the face of ill-treatment.

Snape also suspected something that even Dumbledore wouldn't

have guessed, perhaps… that the boy's tendency toward
secretiveness and rule-breaking came, not from conceit or a superior
attitude as he had thought, but from a deep-seeded mistrust of
adults - who, indeed, had never given him much reason to trust.

As transparent as he seemed, Harry Potter would never have made

it in Slytherin.

Weakness? Perhaps. When Snape heard Potter's thoughts on

Draco, how he despised his school nemesis but sympathized with
him at the same time, he knew the Malfoy boy would never be so
generous to an enemy. But he also knew that Potter shared, without
knowing it, Dumbledore's ability to make people love him - a power
that, if he chose, he could use to direct their lives. And yet it was also
clear that the boy had too much humility to do such a thing even if he
did know about it. This made him vulnerable, might even be foolish
overall - but also displayed an integrity far above even
Dumbledore's.

No wonder the old wizard loved this boy so tenderly. Snape realized
that he himself had learned as an abused boy to hold his cards
close, to guard his heart jealously. Potter either could not or would
not learn to do this. Instead of being evidence of weakness, as
Snape had originally thought, was this the power that, in the end,
would destroy Voldemort?

But of all the things Potter talked to "Spartacus" about, Snape

noticed, he never spoke of the Durlseys beyond a few timely
remarks: "I'd better hurry and cook the breakfast or I'll have Aunt
Petunia up here;" "I need to finish trimming the hedges by the time
he gets home or Uncle Vernon will come down on me;" "I'm glad
Mrs. Weasley sent these meat pies - I didn't get enough at dinner
tonight because Dudley took extra helpings."

Snape found these omissions particularly disturbing because the boy

continued to appear with minor injuries: a bruise around his wrist one
day, a cut lip the next. Once he showed up with a red handprint on
his face. The mark did not darken into a bruise, but Snape thought
that Petunia's long, slim fingers might have made it. On these days,
Potter was not nearly so talkative in the evenings, though he usually
would have a nightmare the same night. His conversation following
these dreams was invariably morose.

His own lack of insight into this harsh treatment (along with the boy's
apparent acceptance of it) made Snape wonder if Vernon and
Petunia Dursley were as hard on their son as they were on their
nephew… it was possible that Potter wasn't the only minor in this
household whose home life needed to be examined more closely. It
wasn't until he'd begun his third week in Potter's care that Snape got
definitive proof of the disparity between Potter and his cousin, so far
as the Dursley parents were concerned.

It was Sunday - Snape knew this both because Potter had been
allowed to sleep a little longer than usual and from seeing the date
on the Daily Prophet Potter had pored over in between tending his
pet's injuries and preparing for the day. Dursley, off from work,
apparently was watching some muggle sporting event on the
television (Snape thought he could make out the sounds of a game
in progress when Potter opened the door to leave the room).

Potter had evidently done something to upset his uncle sometime in

the afternoon, because Snape was suddenly jerked out of a sound
sleep by the muggle man's voice, raised in furious accents.

So startled he nearly lost his grip on the wire mesh from which he
hung suspended, Snape pulled himself up by his good foreleg and
listened intently. Through the canvas cover, a shut door, and an
entire floor he caught the words Dursley had used the night he'd
bloodied his nephew's nose: abnormal. Freak.

Snape wondered uneasily what Potter had done to set the man off.
He waited apprehensively for the sound of a crash, like last time -
but this time he heard only the boy's feet pounding up the stairs
again.

He dropped to the floor of the cage as the boy burst into the room.
Potter came directly to the cage, pushed the cover aside and opened
the cage door.

Snape was too astounded to pull back or protest when Potter seized
him, carried him quickly across the room, and dumped him
unceremoniously in a long-abandoned hamster cage that sat empty
on a shelf of broken toys, models and electronics next to the
wardrobe.

Snape stared up at Potter in astonishment as the boy closed the

door to the cage. It was much smaller than the owl cage, giving his
fruit bat's body barely enough room to turn around.

"I'm sorry, Spartacus," the boy said grimly. He was quite pale, and
the look on his face spoke of fear, anger and grim resignation all at
once. He lifted the cage by the handle on top. "My uncle is coming
up here to… to talk to me. I don't want you here for it, and I don't
want to risk him seeing you. I'm not sure how he'd react, or how
you'd react, and I don't want to chance it."

Before Snape had an opportunity to react, Potter moved on quick,

noiseless feet out of the room and into the hallway. Snape had a
brief, dizzily moving impression of a wide, carpeted hall with closed
doors on either side, dimly lit by a skylight at the far end. Potter
moved swiftly to the far end of the hall, silently opened a door and
crossed a bright room full of sunshine in which Snape squinted
painfully.

Potter set the cage down.

"You'll be safe here, Spartacus," the boy whispered. "This is my
cousin's room, and he's spending the day with his gang. I'll come
back for you later."

He crossed the room and slipped through the door, shutting it behind
him and leaving silence in his wake.

For a moment, Snape just sat perfectly still in the silence of the
room, his heartbeat thundering in his ears. He had been jerked out of
a sound sleep and hustled from the room where he had spent the
last two weeks and more. He felt completely bewildered.

A few moments of deep breathing and calming techniques, and

Snape's brain cleared enough to let him take stock of his new
surroundings.

He was in a large, airy room, at least twice the size of Potter's. The
walls were painted a deep but cheerful blue. They looked fresh-
painted, and Snape suddenly wondered if Potter himself had painted
them… he had detected a smell of turpentine and paint on the boy's
hands earlier in the month, and seen flecks of that same color paint
on his faded, baggy blue jeans.

A full-sized bed with a thick mattress dominated one wall, covered

with a fluffy, blue-and-grey striped comforter. Curtains of the same
material fluttered at the three large windows, two of which looked out
onto the backyard, the other to the side of the house. A thick, grey-
flecked carpet covered most of the hardwood floor. In the corner
between the windows was a large, leather-upholstered easy chair.

On a heavy, tall walnut dresser across from the head of the bed was
a huge television, complete with media player and game console.
Shelves immediately to the left of the dresser were crammed with
movie and game disks.

To the right of the desk, between the two sets of windows, was the
large, walnut desk on which Potter had placed his cage. A padded,
office-style chair with an expensive-looking leather jacket hung on
the back stood in front of it. On the wall to the left and below the third
window was a second dresser; this one longer than it was tall. A
mirror was affixed to it. To the right of the dresser, a series of five
shelves reached up to the ceiling. The shelves, two bedside tables,
desk and dressers were overflowing with things: a large stereo,
music CDs, handheld electronic games, a portable CD player,
watches, framed pictures, magazines and other trinkets spilled
everywhere. Piled around Snape's small cage on the desk were text
books and other books, none of which looked touched. A good desk
lamp, tall floor lamp, and lamps on each of the nightstands ensured
the room would be as well-lit as its owner liked come nightfall.

On the far wall to the right of the bed, a door leading into a large,
walk-in closet stood ajar. It appeared to be crammed with clothes.
One look at the sizes of them told Snape immediately whose cast-
offs Potter was forced to wear.

Almost every available inch of wall space was covered with muggle
posters, pictures and school pennants that spelled out "Smeltings."

Letting his breath out slowly, Snape lowered himself to the floor of
the cage. Well, he had his answer about whether or not the two boys
were treated the same.

Potter's voice, pitched low and soft, woke him just after sunset.

"Hey, Spartacus."

Slowly, Snape rose to his feet. The room was shrouded in a half-
light. He was surprised he'd managed to doze off - he felt very
uncomfortable in this luxurious, opulent room, as though something
might come in at any moment and snatch him up.

But it was only Potter, looking ghostly pale in the twilight.

"I'm sorry I didn't come for you sooner, Spartacus," the boy
murmured. "C'mon… let's get back to my room." He lifted the cage
and moved carefully and quietly out of the room and up the hallway
to his own bedroom at the top of the stairs.

Snape, fastidious as he naturally was in his adulthood, felt a strange

sense of profound relief to be back in the cramped, shabby little
room.

Potter set the hamster cage on his small, rickety desk, then reached
in to lift Snape out. The boy smiled a little when the bat came to him
instead waiting to be picked up.

"Yeah, I'm glad this afternoon's over, too," he told the bat. His voice
sounded slightly hoarse, the potions master noticed.

Back in the larger cage, Snape turned to take a good look at Potter.

Except for two high, flushed spots on each cheek, the boy's face was
chalky white. There were dark circles under his red-rimmed, watery
eyes, but no tear-tracks on his cheeks. His lower lip looked raw, as
though he had been worrying it between his teeth.

With a long sigh, Potter sank down on the chair at his desk and
leaned back. He stiffened suddenly, sucking his breath between his
teeth and quickly sitting forward with a wince. Shifting position so
that he was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, he dropped his
face in his hands.

After perhaps five minutes, the boy rose again. He smiled crookedly
at the bat.

"You have some food and water, Spartacus, and do whatever it is

you do when I'm asleep," Potter said gently. "I've had enough for one
day myself.'

As he moved toward the bed, the oversized t-shirt he wore slid down
slightly over one shoulder, and Snape saw a wide, dark red welt
marring the pale skin.
Chapter 9
Harry sat in the backyard, taking a much-needed break from cutting
the grass. It was a dull, cool, cloudy day, and the drying sweat on his
body had chilled him through. Suddenly, the sun burst through the
clouds and felt so wonderfully warm that he stripped off his shirt to
expose his clammy skin more fully to its soothing rays. At first it felt
brilliant… he warmed up quickly. Too quickly… suddenly his back
was on fire, as though red-hot iron was being pressed against his
flesh. He looked down and, to his astonishment, saw snow on the
ground at his feet. He thought how good the snow would feel against
his burnt skin and immediately lowered himself to the snowy grass
and rolled over onto it -

- only to awaken with a yelp as the scratchy sheets on his bed made
contact with his abused flesh.

Fully awake at once, Harry sat up quickly. He had fallen asleep in his
clothes on top of the covers. Glancing at the repaired clock on the
shelf, he saw that it was 2:24 in the morning. He spared one longing
glance at the water glass on his bedside table, but it was empty - he
had drained it hours ago. He did not want to risk waking his uncle in
going to get more, and so opted to be thirsty, instead.

Sighing, Harry stood up. His back was on fire, and the skin felt too
tight, as though it had shrunk on his body as he slept. Moving slowly
so as not to aggravate his stiff muscles and tortured flesh, he went
over to his wardrobe, carefully removed his jeans, and pulled on a
pair of faded blue pajama bottoms. Then, very, very gingerly indeed,
he peeled off his t-shirt. He did not reach for the pajama jacket, for
even the thought of that light layer of threadbare cotton weighing on
his back was intolerable.

There was a slightly warped mirror on the inside of one of the

wardrobe's doors, but Harry did not bother to twist around to inspect
the damage Uncle Vernon had inflicted. He could see part of a wide
red stripe extending over his left shoulder and over his collarbone,
while several more welts curled around his torso over his ribs. He
knew from experience that, from the nape of his neck to his waist,
these marks crisscrossed his back, leaving bruises in a few places,
but mostly dark red welts that would cast shadows in the dim light of
his bedside lamp, so swollen were they. He had seen it before. He
had no wish to view it again.

Behind him, he heard an almost frantic scrabbling.

Harry turned. Spartacus seemed very agitated, climbing around on

the wire mesh Harry had fixed to Hedwig's cage.

"What's with you?" Harry asked the bat curiously.

He approached the cage. To his surprise, the bat dropped to the

newspaper lining and looked up at him with a strangely questioning
look -

What can I do for you? Is there anything at all? it seemed to say.

Harry watched the creature for a long moment, considering. Then,

without realizing he was going to do it, he suddenly opened the door
to the cage, reached in, and lifted Spartacus out. He carried the bat
over to the bed and set him down near the pillow. Then he gingerly
lay down on his side, facing it.

For one moment, the bat seemed frozen with shock, and Harry was
sure it was going to leap away. Then some instinct seemed to tell it
to relax, and it settled down on the sheets and returned Harry's look
without blinking.

After a few moments, Harry spoke.

"I think sometimes," he began slowly, "about what people would think
of me if they knew about… this." He waved an encompassing hand
toward the room, the house as a whole. "What my life here is really
like, I mean. I could never tell them."
He was quiet a moment.

"I think Hermione suspects sometimes," he went on finally. "She saw

my potions kit going home year before last and asked some
questions… looked pretty suspicious, too."

Harry smiled, but there was pain in both his heart and the smile.
"Ron's pretty clueless. Doesn't suspect a thing."

He turned his eyes back to the wall again, and was silent for a long
time, almost seeming to forget about the bat. When he spoke again,
it was more to himself than to Spartacus, and his quiet voice
dropped a notch.

"I wonder if Dumbledore suspects. He knows it's hard for me here.

He said so, end of last year."

Another long pause.

"I'm sure he doesn't know my uncle hits me, though," Harry went on.
He swallowed hard. "Except… he knows so much."

Another pause, the longest yet. Then,

"Maybe… maybe he thinks I need it." His voice was a whisper now,
and he looked at the wall, feeling he couldn't even face the bat while
he made this admission. He swallowed again. "Or maybe… maybe
he thinks I… I deserve it. Sometimes… sometimes I think I deserve
it."

Long habit enabled Harry to force the pain of these thoughts down
and cap a mental lid over them. He turned his thoughts to his
guardian instead.

"He… my uncle, I mean… gets angry because I don't yell or cry," he

told Spartacus hollowly. His eyes hardened, and so did his voice. "I
wouldn't give him the satisfaction."
He sighed then, and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
"But I couldn't even if I wanted to, Spartacus. It's funny, really…
when I was small, I got punished for crying…'whinging and whining,'
they called it. Said they'd give me something to cry about. Now he
gets mad when I don't cry."

Taking his hands away from this face, Harry looked into the bat's
eyes.

"I don't cry at all anymore, Spartacus. Not since I was really little. I
stopped long before I came to Hogwarts. I can't cry." The green eyes
closed for a moment, then opened again. "I came close… twice, I
think. The first time was when Dumbledore told me how my mum
died to save me. Then, when Cedric died… well, Mrs. Weasley was
holding me, and… no one ever held me like that before." His voice
had dropped to a whisper.

"Anyway," Harry continued, "I thought I might cry then. I felt like it,
anyway. But something… Hermione, I guess… distracted me. I was
sort of glad. Ron was watching, and… well, I didn't want to cry in
front of him. Or that Skeeter woman, who was pretending to be a
beetle so she could eavesdrop. Wish Hermione had squashed her,
the sneak… at least she stopped her from putting it in the Prophet !"

Harry sighed, fell silent again, then said, "I never even cried for
Sirius."

Without thinking about it, he did something he often did with Hedwig:
he reached out and began to gently scratch the back of the bat's
head and stroke it along its back. It stiffened at first, and for one
moment Harry thought he might have gone too far with this wild
creature - that it would bite him again, or try to escape, or at least
move away. Then it seemed to make up its mind to endure the
touch, for it slowly relaxed. Harry was glad. Giving comfort to the
beast gave him comfort, made him feel more… more proactive,
somehow, in this horrible, out-of-control situation. Surely he couldn't
be as helpless as he felt if he could give some small, positive
attention to another living creature, even if it was only an owl… or, in
this case, a wounded bat?

For a long time, Harry gently stroked Spartacus.

"I wish I could," he whispered finally. "Cry, I mean. I have a knot…

here." He touched his stomach.

The bat was silent.

After a few more minutes, Harry sighed, got up, and carried the bat
back to the cage.

"Anyway," he said, as he went back to his bed and eased himself,

facedown, onto the mattress, "I only have one more summer after
this one, then I'll be of age and can leave Privet Drive for good. If I
live that long."

When Snape had seen the damage the bastard of a muggle had
inflicted on his own nephew, he could not keep from growing
agitated. There was barely an inch of unmarked skin on the boy's
back - some of the lashes had even landed on his upper arms. In a
few places, the belt had drawn blood.

Snape had wanted to do… something… but he was caged, mute

and helpless. Even if he had not been, he was unsure of what he
could have done, beyond destroying that muggle and healing the
boy. He had been astonished when the boy had removed him from
the cage and deposited him onto the bed, and had briefly considered
transforming then and there. His lifelong habit of caution, of not
allowing emotion to dictate his actions, had kicked in, however…
instinct told him to remain still, and that was what he did.

When Potter had begun to stroke him, Snape had almost scrambled
away. He did not like to be touched. His mother had been the only
one to touch him with love as a small boy, and he was
unaccustomed to kind touches from anyone else. Even Lily's hugs,
as much as he cherished them and had looked forward to them as a
schoolboy, had left him feeling uncertain and confused. And as much
as he loved Dumbledore, he could not keep himself from stiffening a
bit when the old wizard occasionally put a hand on his arm or
shoulder. It was for this reason, he knew, that the discerning old
wizard rarely did such things.

In the end, though, he forced himself to hold still, seeing that the boy
seemed soothed by the repetitive motion. And Snape had to admit
that it had not been exactly… abhorrent as he had thought it would
be.

His heart had been wrenched more than he liked to admit by Potter's
admission of never having been held or comforted. Snape's own
mother, after all, had held him when he was small. She had died
during his second year at Hogwarts, but he had known comforting
arms around him at one point, and it seemed that Potter never had.
Snape knew he could never comfort the boy as his own mother had
comforted him after one of his father's punishments, so perhaps
allowing the boy derive comfort from stroking a bat was best he
could manage.

After Potter had dropped off to sleep, Snape had carefully stretched
his shoulder and wing. They were healing, slowly, but well. If he
transformed now, he could function well enough to get the two of
them back to Hogwarts. He would prefer to wait if he could for Potter
to declare him well enough to release him; then he could transform
away from the house and return to fetch the boy without Potter
finding out about Snape's animagis abilities.

It was no longer mistrust that made Snape want to hid his dual
identity from Potter, though certainly Potter's knowledge of the fact
would put him at risk of discovery by Voldemort should the dark
wizard again attempt to enter the boy's mind. Now, Snape felt…
almost guilty of his newfound knowledge of the boy's life. He shrank
from the thought of Potter finding out that his new pet, the one to
which he confided his most secret thoughts, had been his hated
potions master. He imagined, with pain, how great the boy's unease
would be that Snape would never hold them sacred.

The potions master knew he might not have a choice, though. If that
muggle went to hurt the boy again, Snape would surely have to take
his very next opportunity of freedom to transform.

The next morning was a Monday. Despite the thrashing Potter had
received the day before, he got up quickly as usual to provide
breakfast for his aunt and uncle. Afterwards he brought Snape a dish
of kiwi, so the potions master assumed he had not been deprived of
food again.

The boy had no sooner covered the owl cage when Petunia entered
the room without knocking. Snape saw her through the gap in the
cover as she handed a list to Potter.

"I have to do some shopping," she told the boy. "I need you to go to
the market and pick up some things. We're having Duddy's birthday
dinner tonight, and I want everything to be perfect."

"Yes, Aunt Petunia," the boy said tonelessly, taking the list.

"I want you to trim the hedges alongside the house today, too,"
Petunia went on. "Duddy's friend Piers is coming over to spend the
afternoon and will stay for dinner. You do your chores and stay out of
their way, do you hear me?"

Snape heard the boy snort and smiled grimly to himself. Yes, I'm
sure Potter is very disappointed not to be part of that little confab, he
thought, smirking.

Petunia apparently decided to ignore this, and with a parting warning

to the boy to have his chores completed by the time she got home at
around five, she left. A few moments later, Potter left as well, and
Snape, suspending himself from the mesh canopy at the top of the
cage, prepared to sleep the day away, as bats will.
It was around one o'clock in the afternoon when he was again jerked
out of a sound sleep by loud noises, this time in the hallway.

Curling into a somewhat upright position, he thought nervously,

Merlin, what now?!

He heard a boy's voice - not the Durlsey boy's voice or Potter's:

"C'mon, Big D, finish your lunch already, are we playing video games
or what?!"

It was close, right outside Potter's door. From downstairs, the voice
of Potter's cousin drifted up:

"Hang on, Piers, would ya? Just let me finish my cake!"

The other boy - Piers - groaned outside the door. "Fat lump," he
muttered under his breath. Snape heard him lean against the door.
Apparently, Potter had not latched it tightly, for it swung open
suddenly and the boy stumbled in.

Snape froze where he was, not wanting to attract attention by the

slightest sound or movement.

"Whoa… Dudley. Hey, Big D!" the boy yelled.

A moment later, Snape heard the Durlsey boy coming up the stairs.
He halted in the hallway outside Potter's room, apparently reluctant
to enter.

"Piers, that's my cousin's room… come out of there!"

"Your freak cousin sleeps in here ?" the second boy snorted. "What a
dive!"

"C'mon, Piers, get out of there!" Dudley Dursley definitely sounded

nervous.
"What's with you, Big D, you act like you're scared of that skinny little
shrimp!" Piers demanded. "Have you forgotten our 'Harry Hunting'
days or what?"

Now Dudley sounded sullen.

"I'm not scared of that freak, I just want to get to our games. C'mon!"

But Piers did not leave, and Snape stiffened as he heard footsteps
approach the cage.

"Dud… what's this? Does Harry have a parrot or something?"

Dudley sounded more reluctant than ever.

"No… it's an owl. C'mon, Piers, I wanna play some Megadeath IV ."

"No, wait… this is so cool; I wanna get a look at this!" The boy
sounded excited. "An owl, really? Where'd he get it?"

Now Dudley was in the room, too.

"No, leave it alone; I don't know. At that freak school of his, OK? It's
probably not even there; he uses it to send messages to his freaky
friends and stuff."

"Like a carrier pigeon? Why would that St. Brutus's or whatever let
him keep an owl ?"

And then, with a sudden yank that set the cage swinging, Piers tore
off the canvas cover.

Snape, horrified, started in shock as the two boys, one fat and
nervous-looking, the other skinny, pimply, and fascinated, stared
back at him, their mouths agape.

The skinny one chortled suddenly.

"Hey Dud… hate to tell you, mate, but that's not an owl. That's a bat
!"
Chapter 10
Essence of murtlap, Harry thought. Got to make more essence of
murtlap to bring home next summer. I wonder how long before I can
get out of here?

The bags in his arms were heavy, filled to bursting with last-minute
items for Dudley's birthday dinner that Aunt Petunia had forgotten.

Everything must be perfect for Duddy's birthday, Harry thought

sardonically.

In truth, though, he didn't mind being sent on errands. Such tasks

provided him opportunity to get away from the Dursleys for a bit, to
see other people, and to get a break from the endless chores around
a house that did not welcome him.

Getting out today was extra enjoyable for two reasons: first, it
provided less time in which Harry would have to contend with Dudley
and Piers; second, the walk to the store and back gave him a chance
to clear his head after the altercation with Uncle Vernon yesterday -
something that was harder to do when he was stuck at the house,
doing chores.

He was relieved his uncle had not marked him anywhere that
couldn't be covered with clothing. If he'd hit him in the face or on the
lower arms, for instance, Harry would not have been allowed out of
the house until the blemishes faded. As it was, the early afternoon
sun was unpleasantly warm on back, making the skin prickle and
reminding him of his dream last night, but the t-shirt did an adequate
job of concealing the damage.

All too soon, Number 4 appeared in view. Harry sighed, but did not
slow his pace - he still had a lot to do before precious Diddykin's
birthday dinner, and it wouldn't pay to upset his aunt and uncle
again. Besides, he shouldn't have any trouble going on with his work
- now that they were older and Dudley knew what he had for a
cousin, "Harry Hunting" had become pretty much a thing of the past.

And anyway, the two idiots would no doubt be holed up in Dudley's

room, spending this lovely day indoors, playing violent video games.
Which was fine with Harry, seeing as how that meant they would not
be watching Harry work, eating ice cream and ruminating on what a
shame it was to get overheated on such a warm summer's day.

As Harry crossed the parameters of the blood wards, a man strolling

past on the opposite side of the street studied him a moment, then
vanished into thin air after Harry disappeared from view.

Clinging to the inverted mesh Potter had affixed to the top of the
cage with the claws of three of his paws, Snape, frozen with shock,
stared upside-down at the two astonished teen-aged boys standing
in front of him. Their identical expressions of bemusement did
nothing to improve their gormless features.

Dudley recovered first, glaring at his friend.

"I know it's a bat, Piers! I'm not an idiot you know!"

"I thought you said Harry had an owl?" Piers demanded, never
taking his eyes off Snape.

"He does. I don't know where it is, probably off sending messages or
something. I don't know where this thing came from."

Piers walked slowly around the cage. "Look - it's got a bandage on
it."

Dudley looked, then snorted. "That explains it - it was probably hurt

or something, and that freaky cousin of mine found it and decided to
try to play doctor. He was always doing that when we were younger."
The fat boy chuckled. "Half the time I put his little pets out of their
misery while his back was turned; he never figured out why they
didn't get better!"

Piers, meanwhile, kept walking around the cage, back and forth,
inspecting the bat from all sides. Snape kept twisting his body
around to keep him in view.

"This is so cool," Piers breathed, his eyes eager. "Will you just look
at the size of it! I'd swear there aren't any bats this size native to the
UK."

Dudley was uneasy. "Do you… do you think it's a vampire bat, or
something?"

Trust his witchy cousin to have a dangerous animal like that. Dad
would kill him.

"Nah, I don't think so," Piers said, moving quite close to the cage and
taking hold of the bars above the door, poking his fingers - just
slightly - past the mesh. "Look at its teeth - they don't look big
enough for that."

Dudley eyed the clearly uneasy bat, which had dropped to the floor
of the cage and backed away, baring its teeth as Piers threatened to
invade its space. "I don't know… they look big enough to me."

Ask Potter, he'll tell you about my teeth! Snape thought irritably. He
backed up as far as he could, until this back came in contact with the
bars at the back of the cage and prevented him from going any
further.

"Look, Big D - it's got a dish of fruit there. It's a fruit bat!" Piers
pointed to the food bowl on the bottom of the cage. Dudley looked
closer.

"Hey, that's my breakfast kiwi! My mum got that for me for my diet!"
Dudley glared at the bat. "That freak wasn't even supposed to have
any food today 'cause he's being punished!"
"Dudley, we've just got to show this to the guys! C'mon, let's take him
out of there!"

Snape's heartbeat kicked up another notch.

Not good… not good at all.

What would he do if these boys tried to handle him? They both

looked far rougher, much more ham-handed and much less gentle
and considerate than Potter. If he was forced to transform to save
himself, the boys would have to be obliviated, both for their own
sakes and for his. Yet this house was under the scrutiny of the
ministry for any magic performed onsite - even now, with popular
opinion for Potter running high, the minister would use any excuse to
pounce on the boy. The chances of Snape's cover being irrevocably
blown, to the point of it getting back to the Dark Lord, would be very
high indeed.

The tightrope-walk that had been his adult life had compelled Snape
to become an expert at thinking on his feet, making drastic decisions
on the spur of the moment in life-and-death situations without
faltering, time and time again - but now, to his disgust and
consternation, the question of how to deal with two bullying,
teenaged muggle boys had him at a loss. Whether it was the
unfathomably bizarre situation or the fact that they were teenaged
bullies, with all the bad memories such beings forced him to relive,
that had him freezing, didn't make much difference.

Snape tried to make himself appear as large as he possibly could,

bristled the fur around his neck, bared his teeth, hissed menacingly
and glared daggers at the two boys.

Dudley Durlsey, at least, seemed somewhat cowed.

"C'mon, Piers… it doesn't look too friendly."

"Don't be a prat, Dud… it must be tame if your cousin was able to

get a bandage on it." Piers opened the cage door and reached
towards Snape.

Snape snapped at the approaching fingers and dodged to the right,

but the muggle boy was too quick, avoiding the flashing teeth and
seizing Snape by the scruff of his neck. His graceless fingers dug
thoughtlessly into the wounded shoulder, and he dragged Snape
roughly through the door of the cage and immediately flattened the
potions master-turned-bat against his chest.

Snape squirmed to get free.

"There there, little batty bat," the boy crooned in a sing-song voice,
snorting with laughter. He thumped Snape's skull with his fingers,
making him see stars.

"Too cool!" Piers exclaimed. "C'mon, Dud… let's show it to the guys.
We should keep him, seriously… use him to freak people out!"

Dudley, emboldened by Piers's success in subduing the creature,

now wanted to prove he wasn't scared, either.

"Here, let me take him!" he said eagerly.

In retrospect, Snape thought perhaps he could have timed the whole

thing better. The great lump of a boy was far faster than he'd
expected - no doubt from his boxer's training at school.

As Piers passed Snape over, Snape sank his sharp little teeth into
the Dursley boy's meaty forefinger - his hope was that the boy would
drop him, giving him time to scurry under the bed and into a position
of defense. The fat boy howled with pain, but instead of dropping
Snape, he grabbed him roughly by the scruff of the neck with one
hand, tight enough to pull on Snape's skin and put pressure on his
windpipe. Then the hand with the wounded finger came up to grab
Snape around the middle, tightening around the ribcage and
squeezing the breath out of him.

Piers was laughing, but Dudley was furious.

"Filthy little thing probably gave me rabies!" he snarled.

The hand around the bat's furry middle tightened, and Snape's head
began to swim.

As his vision began to grey, his last thought was an ironic one.

Instead of dying at the hand of Voldemort, which he more than half

suspected was how he'd finish his life, he was going to be crushed
by a spoiled, obese, petulant muggle boy.

He had a sudden, mad vision of Potter burying him in the garden in a

shoebox, perhaps having a little funeral service over him, and felt a
wild desire to laugh.

Probably no one would ever realize what had become of Severus

Snape.

The boy's fingers clamped down. His ribs creaked and he squealed
in pain, front claws raking at empty air.

Harry entered the kitchen through the back door, set the grocery
bags down on the kitchen table, and began putting the food away.
Okay, put away the food, see if Dudley and Piers want lunch, then
get started on the hedge-

He heard a shrill, animal-squeal from upstairs, then Piers' voice:

"Dudley, c'mon, don't kill him!"

Spartacus!

Harry dropped the package of chops he was holding and bolted up

the stairs.

He skidded to a halt as he flew into his room, staring with horror at

the bat in his cousin's meaty hands. Its eyes were bulging and there
was froth on its snout.
"Dudley, don't ! Dudley, put him down !"

Dudley turned to glare at him.

"It bit me!" he ground out. "You're keeping dangerous animals up

here now? Wait 'til I tell Dad!"

His hand clamped down harder and Spartacus squealed again.

Going on pure instinct, Harry did something he hadn't done in years:

he launched himself at the larger boy, aiming low to upset his center
of gravity.

Harry's head rammed into Dudley's vast stomach. The larger boy's
breath left him in a whoosh and he stumbled backwards, dropping
the bat to the floor. Harry had just enough time to seize Spartacus
and sweep his inert form under the bed and out of harm's way. Then
Dudley and Piers were both on him.

His glasses went flying to join Spartacus under the bed as Dudley
punched him in the eye, then followed it up with a right cross to the
mouth. Harry kicked Dudley hard in both shins, punched him in the
stomach and, as he leaned over, winded, on the nose. Piers kicked
Harry's legs out from under him, Dudley landed hard on top of him,
and there was a brief, blinding flare of agony as two of his ribs
cracked.

The three boys fell away from each other then, and Harry sat up,
breathing hard. He could already feel his eye puffing up, and his
mouth was bleeding. But when he looked at Dudley, his heart almost
stopped. His cousin's nose was also bleeding, and already beginning
to swell.

"Piers, go down and get me some ice, would you?" Dudey said
coldly, glaring at Harry. "I'll be right down."

Piers recognized trouble when he saw it, and was not keen to bring
any down on his own head. There was no way the evidence here
could be kept from the adults in the house, and he decided it would
be best to get out of it before the Dursley parents got home.

"Sure, Dud," he said. Then he went downstairs, out the door, and
walked home.

Meanwhile, Dudley continued to glare at Harry.

"Dad'll whip the skin off you," he told the smaller boy flatly.

Harry knew it all too well. The worst beating he'd ever gotten in his
life - and, incidentally, the last time his uncle had been able to make
him cry - was when, at age seven, he had dared to raise a hand
against Dudley. Never mind the fact that never a day had gone by
since he'd first arrived on the Dursleys' doorstep that Dudley hadn't
hurt him physically in some way, be it a pinch, poke, squeeze, slap,
punch or kick - or any and all of the above. One day, when Dudley
had had Harry down on this back and was straddling him,
pummeling him enthusiastically, Harry had swung wildly and caught
Dudley in the face, giving him a fine black eye. Uncle Vernon had
thrashed Harry mercilessly; he had been almost unconscious before
Aunt Petunia had intervened - the one and only time she had ever
done so.

Having just gotten a dose of the belt the day before, Harry felt his
stomach turn cold. It was rare that he got another beating before
he'd healed up from a previous one, but he had no doubt this would
be one of those times.

Dudley spoke again.

" And he'll wring that thing's neck."

Spartacus !

"Don't tell him, then." Harry rapped the words out strongly before he
knew he was speaking them. There was jut a slight quaver in his
voice.
Dudley was incredulous. "Are you kidding me? I can't wait to tell him!
I hope he lets me watch him half-kill you, you little freak!"

"I mean about the bat," Harry said quickly. "I know he has to know
about… about the bloody nose. Tell him you were in my room and
that's why I jumped on you. But don't tell him about the bat. You may
have already killed him," Harry had to swallow hard at this thought
and forced himself not to look under the bed, "but if you didn't I'll let
him go."

Dudley seemed to consider it.

"What will you give me if I don't tell Dad?" he asked finally.

Harry was surprised despite himself. What could he possibly have

that Dudley would want?

"What do you want?"

"That cloak of yours," Dudley said. "The one that makes you
invisible."

Harry's blood froze.

"How did you know about that?" he whispered.

Dudley smirked. "Never mind that. How about it? Give me that cloak
and I won't tell Dad about your little pet."

Harry's heart pounded. His father had left him that cloak. It had
helped him in numerous ways, even saved his life. Dumbledore had
told him to keep it near at all times now that Voldemort was back.

Then he thought of Spartacus, Spartacus who had never hurt

anybody, but had been hurt himself. Spartacus who'd been his
companion during these long, lonely weeks without Hedwig.

Harry couldn't stand the idea of losing someone else, not when he
could do something to stop it. Not even if that someone was just a
bat.

"Deal. But you can't have it until after I've let the bat go."

"OK." Dudley grinned. He got up, then, and left the room, shutting
the door behind him.

Harry waited until he heard his cousin's footsteps retreating, then

scrambled to the bed. He pulled the battery-less torch Remus had
given him for Christmas last year from under the mattress and
pointed the beam under the bed.

Please, please don't be dead!

Perhaps it was his recent loss of Sirius, but Harry felt panic brushing
against his mind like a caged bird frantic to get free. His heart
thundered in his chest, and he couldn't have been more frightened
had it been Hedwig that Dudley and his cruel friend had brutalized.

C'mon, where are you?!

His sweeping fingers made contact with fur, and, his heart in his
mouth, he swiftly but carefully pulled the inert bat out from under the
bed.

For a moment, Harry cradled the motionless creature to his chest in

his shaking hands, certain it was dead. Then he felt the fluttering
heartbeat through its breast.

Alive then, but the bat's eyes were mere slits, the pupils rolled back
into the skull. It was panting rapidly, tongue between its teeth.

Harry had no idea what to do for it. External wounds were one thing,
but if Dudley had squashed any of its internal organs or splintered its
ribs (his own side flared painfully at the thought), Harry did not know
what he could do. If he were at Hogwarts, he would take Spartacus
directly to Hagrid, but Hogwarts was a world away and without
Hedwig, Harry had no way of contacting the grounds keeper for
advice.

Briefly, he thought of grabbing his stuff and making a run for it with
Spartacus, taking the Knight Bus to Grimmauld Place. He
abandoned this plan almost as soon as he considered it - a similar
endeavor had not worked out well when he'd attempted it before
third year, and now, with Voldemort back and Death Eaters on the
loose, the stakes were much higher. Uncle Vernon would thrash him,
but that was nothing to what Voldemort and his minions would do,
and infinitely preferable to getting other people involved and risking
their safety.

All right. No Hagrid to fall back on and nowhere to go. He was on his
own.

Harry set Spartacus gently on the bed, then pried up the loose
floorboard in search of his potion stores. He had a pretty potent
painkiller, an anti-inflammatory and a bruise salve. He would do for
Spartacus what he could and hope for the best. He would also make
him a new bed to lie in, since he wasn't sure the bat would be able to
hang on to the wire mesh to sleep.

Harry moved carefully but quickly, wanting to finish with Spartacus

before anyone returned to Number 4. He did not even bother
planning to finish the list of chores Aunt Petunia had given him. This
was more important, and there was no point, anyway. Chores
finished or not, Uncle Vernon would have his head when he got
home.

Harry just wanted to make sure Spartacus was out of the way, first.

Snape came to slowly, a fearful headache pounding at his temples.

He tried to stretch and felt pain knife through his midsection, cutting
his breath short. He forced his eyes open, then had to wait until his
vision cleared.
When he saw that he was lying on the bottom of the cage in a cotton
wool-lined box, Snape almost thought it was still his first day with
Potter and that he had dreamed everything that came after. Then he
remembered the two muggle boys.

He took a quick self-assessment of his injuries. The wounded

shoulder had been sadly wrenched, and his ribcage throbbed
painfully. He did not appear to have any broken bones, however, but
he did have a significant number of bruises. No doubt he had lost
consciousness from his air supply being cut off when the huge boy
had squeezed him - that would also explain the headache.

Potter!

He vaguely remembered Potter confronting the two boys, the scuffle,

and… did Potter really offer his invisibility cloak in exchange for
keeping him, Snape, safe?

Not me. Spartacus. The thought made him feel strangely sad and
wistful.

"How are you doing, Spartacus?"

Snape looked up. Potter was leaning toward him, his pale, thin face
worried. He had a split lip and a puffy black eye.

What time is it? How long have I been out? Snape tried to sit up to
get a better view of the clock on the shelf, but his legs had turned
into water.

"Spartacus."

Snape looked back at Potter. The boy was very pale indeed.

"Listen, Spartacus," Potter said urgently. "I can't take you out of here
like I did before… Dudley's home, and there's no time." He
swallowed hard.
"I… I need you to be quiet and still Spartacus, OK?" Even with his
exceptional hearing, Snape almost had to strain to hear the boy, so
soft was his whisper. "Don't get upset like Hedwig… there's nothing
to get upset about. Everything's going to be OK."

Far from reassuring Snape, the potions master was becoming more
and more alarmed - because he sensed that Potter, while genuinely
trying to soothe the bat in his care, was trying to reassure himself, as
well.

Snape tensed as he heard a door slam, then a voice bellow from

below stairs:

" Boy ! Get down here NOW !"

Potter tensed and looked up, a hunted expression in his eyes. He

took a deep breath and stood up, squaring his shoulders. He looked
back at Snape again.

"Everything's going to be all right, Spartacus," the boy whispered.

"Just keep still and quiet, OK?" He swept the cover over the cage
and hurriedly fastened the top snap. Then, without another word, he
left the room in answer to Dursley's summons, pulling the door shut
behind him.

A sudden adrenalin rush forced Snape to his feet despite his many
hurts. He frantically circled the perimeter of the cage, trying to find a
weak place to push against. He gnashed his teeth furiously with
frustration.

Merlin! Why couldn't I have come to before Potter put me back in

here? I could have transformed and apparated us away, put an end
to this nonsense and to hell with Potter finding out I'm an animagus!

He stilled for a moment. The house was ominously quiet. That

couldn't last, he knew. Dursley would be infuriated that his nephew
had taken a swing at his son.
That muggle will half kill him.

The thought spurred him into action again, and he resumed circling
desperately, fruitlessly trying to find a way out.
Chapter 11
Trying to calm his racing heart, Snape made an effort to slow down
and carefully assess the situation. It was difficult - he could not
remember the last time he felt this helpless and frustrated.

Yes, he could… the last time was when he realized the Dark Lord
was targeting Lily.

Now Lily's child was in trouble, the child who had been caring for
him, Snape, for weeks, and all his thoughts of bitterness and
animosity toward James's son had fled, at least temporarily, in the
immediacy of the situation.

All at once his eye caught something different. The door to the cage
looked a little… off, somehow. He peered closer. Yes… the latch was
bent. It had definitely not been that way before. That heavy-handed
muggle boy, the friend of the cousin, must have damaged it when he
was reaching in to snatch Snape up. Perhaps, with just a bit of
pressure-

His furiously working mind was jarred by a sound of jumbled

footsteps pounding up the stairs. It sounded like a herd of charging
hippogriffs.

Peering through the gap in the cover over the owl cage, Snape saw
the bedroom door burst open with a bang, and then Potter was flying
across the room and landing hard against the bed.

Vernon Dursley strode into the bedroom after his nephew, slammed
the door shut behind him, and turned to face the boy, who was
scrambling to his feet. The big man took no notice of the cage at all,
instead focusing his complete attention on the fifteen-year-old in
front of him.
Seeing them close together, Snape was struck anew by the
differences between the muggle and his nephew. Dursley towered
over Potter by at least seven inches and outweighed him by a good
eighty pounds or better. With his purple face and bristling mustache,
the man looked almost demented. Potter, on the other hand, was
white but composed, his smaller, slight figure straight and silent by
his bed, watching his uncle with an expression that was somehow
both grave and fatalistic.

For an endless moment, the two regarded each other silently. Then
Dursley's hands went to his waist and he began to unbuckle his belt.

Snape's stomach turned over at this and his heartbeat kicked up a

notch. Surely not again, not so soon, he thought, appalled, as
memories of his own father crowded unbidden into his mind. He
looked quickly at Potter, but the boy's eyes were following the motion
of his uncle's hands as the older man slid the strip of thick leather
through the belt loops, brought the two ends together and wound
them once around his right hand. To Snape's consternation, the boy
seemed neither panicked nor even surprised. His look was one of
calm but weary acceptance.

"Well?" the muggle man barked suddenly, startling Snape and

drawing both his and Potter's eyes to his seething face. "You know
the drill, boy… get to it!"

Potter regarded his uncle warily, then seemed to decide to make one
bid for a reprieve.

"I've never said anything, ever," the boy began in a quiet voice.

Snape thought he might be deliberately pitching his voice low to

keep it from trembling.

"But that doesn't mean I never will," Potter went on, speaking a little
more strongly. "If my headmaster knew about th-"
The belt flashed out suddenly, causing Snape to flinch violently and
Potter to give a yell of surprise as the strip of leather hit him across
the face, sending his glasses spinning through the air.

Dursley stepped forward, looking positively demented.

"You dare to threaten me, boy!" he ground out. Then he seemed to

make an effort to calm himself.

"You listen to me, boy, and listen well," Dursley went on in a slightly
calmer tone, a cunning look in his eye that Snape did not like at all.
"You think that crackpot old fool who teaches you magic tricks would
step in to stop me disciplining you, do you? Who do you think left
you here in the first place?"

Potter stared up at his uncle, transfixed.

"That headmaster of yours left you on our doorstep, as you ruddy

well know," Dursley continued coldly. "Why do you think that was? I'll
tell you why - he didn't want to give us a chance to refuse you. He
knew damn well no one wanted to deal with you, and he knew that I
had a better chance than anyone else of getting you to toe the mark,
not that I was raising my hand for the job!"

Potter was so white Snape thought he might actually sway on his

feet.

"That's not true," the boy declared, and now his voice was shaking a
little.

"Don't believe me, do you?" The muggle man's sneer was worthy of
Snape himself. "I'll tell you what then… send that headmaster of
yours a letter, tell him I'm planning to take my belt to you, but I'll wait
until I hear what he has to say. If you hear back from him that he
doesn't find that acceptable, I'll let you off. But you won't, I can
guarantee it. And you know it, too."
The bluff was well-played, Snape had to admit. The muggle sounded
brusque, confident, even magnanimous. Somewhere, deep inside
him, Potter had to know his uncle's words weren't true, but he simply
continued to stare at the man, his green eyes huge and solemn as a
much younger child's.

"Well, go on boy, do it! Get that ruddy bird of yours out and send it.
I'm waiting," said Dursley, upping the stakes still more. "Do it, if
you're so sure that Dumble-whatsis will take your side. If you're not,
then get that shirt I put on your ungrateful back off and take what's
coming to you!"

Snape looked back at Potter again. The boy's eyes were fastened on
his uncle's as he hesitated. He swallowed once. Then, without
pleading or protesting, he slowly pulled his t-shirt over his head,
folded it carefully, and laid it on the bed. Without waiting to be told,
he crossed the room to the bare wall and stood in front of it. He was
now about five feet in front of the cage in which, unbeknownst to
him, his potions professor was imprisoned and watching everything
that transpired.

Potter faced the wall for a moment, arms at his sides. He took a
deep breath, then lifted both hands until they were shoulder height
and about a shoulder's width apart, and, leaning forward slightly,
placed his palms flat against the wall in front of him. He set his jaw
and stared straight ahead of him as though it were not a wall before
him, but a window to a faraway place only he could perceive.

Dursley stepped forward and raised the belt high - and still, not until
the big man actually brought the leather strap down hard across
Potter's shoulders did Snape truly believe that the man would do it.

The sharp crack splintered the stillness of the room. Potter bit his lip
and braced himself more firmly in place. The lash was followed by
two more in quick succession, then more - but while his fingers
jerked convulsively once or twice, the boy's palms never once
moved from the wall, and apart from a single, sharp intake of breath,
he never made a sound.
It didn't take Snape long to lose count of the blows. The muggle was
hitting his nephew fast and hard, wielding the belt with greater force,
it seemed to Snape, than his own father had ever done. But then,
Tobias had usually been drunk as a lord when he took after his son
with his strap, and Dursley was quite obviously stone-cold sober.
Snape could not decide if this was better or worse.

The potions master backed away from the gap in the cover;
scrambled up the side of the cage to the door, and began applying
pressure to the bent latch with his teeth. But even though he could
no longer see what was happening, there was nothing he could do to
shut out the sounds: Dursley's grunts of effort, Potter's quick, light
breathing and occasional hiss of pain, the awful sound of leather
biting into flesh. It seemed to go on endlessly, much longer than the
punishments Snape had endured as a boy at Spinner's End…
though they had seemed endless to him, of course. His own
"discipline" usually ended with his mother running into the room,
putting herself between him and his father, wrapping her arms
around him from behind and protecting him from further blows. More
often than not, this action brought Tobias Snape to his senses, and
he would drop the belt and stagger away, sometimes sobbing
drunkenly with a remorse that, regrettably, never lasted to sobriety.
But Petunia Dursley did not come to intervene between her husband
and her sister's son, nor did the boy seem to expect any such
intervention. He simply gritted his teeth and endured the punishment
in near-silence.

Stupid young fool! Snape thought angrily, tearing so hard at the

metal latch that he thought his teeth might break off. His sense of
helplessness made him feel furious with both the bullying muggle
and with Potter himself. Idiotic, pointless Gryffindor pride… he could
end this sooner if he'd allow himself to cry out! Such stoicism will
only aggravate the brute… Merlin, just yell out once!

Truly, Durlsey seemed livid at his failure to evoke a reaction from his
nephew. His frustration fueled his anger - and the strength of his
arm. But, overweight and out of shape as he was, his strength had to
give out soon, Snape thought. He was already panting and
becoming winded, sweat trickling down the sides of his pudgy face.

There was a pause. Snape hesitated, wondering if it was finally over.

Then he heard a jingle, a sudden swish that was somehow heavier
than before, a meaty thunk, and this time Potter did cry out, a sound
that was both pain and surprise.

Snape peered through the gap in the cover again. Potter had twisted
his upper body around to stare with wide, shocked eyes at his uncle.
Snape noticed with a pang that the boy was careful to remain in
place. This submission from the unquenchable Gryffindor made him
wonder what methods Dursley had used to enforce this training…
and what the boy knew he could expect if he broke position.

Dursley was grinning sadistically at his nephew. He held up the belt

for the boys' scrutiny, and Snape realized the bastard had struck
Potter with the buckle end.

For a moment, the man and the boy stared at one another. Then
Potter's eyes hardened, his jaw set and he defiantly jerked himself
back around to face the wall again, his expression angry and
contemptuous. Snape winced, guessing that this would incense the
muggle, and sure enough Dursley's grin dropped off his face
instantly, to be replaced with a look of fury. He raised the belt again,
the buckle end dangling free.

As the man continued beating the boy, this time with the buckle end
of the belt, Snape gripped the cage door firmly in his hand-like front
paws, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, and held it steady as he
frantically worked to bend the latch with his teeth.

Potter was still not crying out, but he couldn't keep from sucking his
breath in with each heavy blow. Snape thought about the bruises
and cuts the heavy, steel belt buckle would leave and gave an
almighty wrench with his teeth. He felt something give .

Got it!
As Potter dropped hard to his knees, still somehow keeping his
hands on the wall, Snape rammed his good shoulder forcefully
against the cage door. It sprang open so suddenly that he tumbled
out with a squeak, plummeting toward the floor. He twisted his furry
little body so that he was right side up, concentrated hard-

And instead of paws, black leather boots made contact with the
hardwood floor.

Ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder and ribs, Snape whirled
around, plunging his hand into his cloak and retrieving his wand in a
move so fluid it would have drawn the full admiration of Flitwick, who
had once won the all-Britain freestyle dueling championship. His
fingers closed over the wand, bringing it up and pointing at Dursley
as part of the same motion, and without uttering the spell aloud he
blasted the muggle across the room, through the door with a force
that reduced it to splinters, and on down the stairs.

There was a shrill scream, and Petunia came hurtling down the
hallway, hysterically crying out, " Vernon !"

Another swish of Snape's wand and her mouth vanished, leaving

blank, smooth skin behind that was somehow more horrible-looking
than a deformity would have been. Behind that mouthless face, her
tongue squirmed and she made muffled cries of horror, backing
away from the top of the stairs and waving her arms helplessly.

The Dursley boy came rushing after his parents. Dudley paused at
the door to Potter's bedroom, staring in at the chaos within in shock:
his cousin, back streaked with blood, leaning against the wall like he
was about to lose consciousness, and the very tall and frightening
stranger in black brandishing a wand. Before he could scream or
run, he got to see something few had ever seen - and those who had
witnessed it in the past had not wanted to see it again.

Snape grinned.
"Well met by moonlight, my young friend," the wizard whispered his
first words in weeks in a silk-and-granite voice that was chilling in its
careful refinement, and with a flick of his wand, a fat, blonde guinea
pig stood where Dudley had been a moment before.

Snape gave his wand a lazy swish, and the squealing guinea pig
sailed into the room, toward the hamster cage on the shelf. The door
flew open, then snapped shut again as Dudley flew through it.

"Don't worry, boy," Snape crooned icily. "I'm sure your friend will be
so good as to come and play with you, as he so kindly did with me."

The muggles dealt with adequately ( for now, anyway, Snape thought
vindictively), the wizard turned back to Potter.

From his new height, the shabby little room seemed smaller than
ever. And Potter, too, seemed… so much smaller . Deadly pale, he
had risen to his feet and was staring at Snape in utter shock.

Snape felt strangely awkward. Everything had changed for him, and
he did not know what to say or do.

The boy's lips moved.

"Am I dreaming?" he whispered finally.

"No," Snape said quietly.

Potter lifted a hand to his forehead, trying to take it all in. Snape saw,
with a pang, that blood was tricking over his shoulders. He felt afraid
to look at the boy's back.

"Spartacus," the boy said suddenly. He looked up. "You were…

him… all the time?"

The green eyes were strangely pleading.

Snape wished desperately that he had the right words to say.

But all he could manage was, "Yes."

Snape had expected a look of horror to accompany this realization -

even of embarrassment. If he were completely honest with himself,
he would admit that a small, mean-spirited part of him was looking
forward to seeing that look on James's face.

What Snape had not been prepared to see was the look of profound
loss, of wounded betrayal and intense sorrow in the green eyes that
transported him back to that awful day by the lake, when he had lost
Lily for good. It lasted for a heartbeat, then two… then the eyes lost
the depth Snape had grown to expect as Potter's expression closed
off.
Chapter 12
It was like being transported back to fourth year.

Harry remembered the sense of complete disbelief that had

enveloped him when he'd finally understood that the man he had
come to trust and lean on was not Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody, but a
cruel imposter who had used and manipulated him every step of the
way. The almost-ten months he had spent learning to respect, revere
and even look on the man as an older, wiser uncle meant nothing.
The shock and betrayal had been sickening.

In some ways, this was worse.

If someone had asked him, Harry probably would have said that he
couldn't imagine caring for any pet more than he cared for Hedwig.
She was the second real friend he'd ever had (Hagrid was the first),
and his only companion during the lonely, weary months at the
Durlseys.

Spartacus, however, had become a very close second.

Unlike Hedwig who, while affectionate, could also be temperamental,

Spartacus had always been cool, reserved and calm. Harry had
found the bat's quiet demeanor reassuring, even soothing. He had
come to appreciate its serene presence at the end of a hard day of
chores, nagging and abuse. It had become a part of the refuge that
was his shabby little room. Its stoic acceptance of his clumsy
medical care had touched and inspired him. Talking to the bat had
felt natural, and had lifted a great burden of tension from Harry. The
bat's presence had given Harry a feeling of stability.

Now he learned that none of it had been real. Spartacus had not
been real - had, in fact, actually been someone who hated him, who
did not care if he, Harry, was hurting. Harry felt as though solid
ground he had been standing on had suddenly begun to shift.
He wondered if Ron had felt this way when he'd learned that
Scabbers was really Peter Pettigrew.

A wave of intense nausea suddenly swept through Harry, and he

swayed on his feet. The awful scene with Dudley and Piers, the
intense fear for the bat in his care, the dreadful anticipation of
Vernon's wrath, the punishment itself and the jangle it made of his
nerves, followed by the horrible truth about Spartacus hit him all at
once.

"I'm… I'm going to be sick!" he gasped, and Snape, looking tall and
huge and somehow wrong in Harry's small room, swiftly conjured a
bucket and placed it front of him - not a moment too soon, as Harry
dropped to his knees and retched violently, straining his broken ribs.

He felt vaguely ashamed that Snape should see him like this, then
felt an hysterical urge to laugh - what difference did it make if Snape
saw him being sick? Was that any more humiliating than knowing the
man had heard all his deepest thoughts and been witness to his
darkest secrets?

The urge to laugh was suddenly replaced by an urge to cry. He

remembered telling Spartacus ( Merlin! was it just last night? ) that
he wished he could cry, flushed painfully, and brutally forced the
traitorous feeling down. The same fierce pride that had kept Harry
from crying out when Vernon had been beating him, that kept him
from turning to McGonagall about Umbridge's sadistic detentions,
came to aid him now.

It was hard, though… the horrible sting in his back was nothing to
the ache in his heart.

" Accio calming draughts," he heard Snape say somewhere above

his head, and the loose floorboard flipped over as a pair of potions
bottles flew out of the space below and into the older wizard's hand.

"I don't need it," Harry heard himself say coldly, and he jerked away
when Snape tried to put a steadying hand on his elbow.
"Take it, Potter," Snape said calmly. "I'm taking some myself. I have
performed magic, and the ministry will no doubt be sending someone
to investigate shortly. We will need to be gone from here, and it is
essential that we keep our heads and act quickly."

Harry hesitated; then, seeing the sense in this, grudgingly accepted

one of the bottles. He downed it quickly, and almost immediately his
hammering heartbeat slowed, the blood rushing in his eardrums
cleared, and his breathing deepened (he had been closer to
hyperventilating than he had realized). It became easier to cram his
churning emotions into a mental box to be hidden in a dark corner of
his mind. As his feelings receded from his mind and heart like waves
on a shore, so did his senses somewhat, and he felt as though he
were seeing and hearing everything around him from a distance.

Glancing up at Snape, Harry saw the man's black eyes fixed on him.
His expression was strangely unreadable, devoid of its usual
contempt and animosity.

Great, Harry thought bitterly, now he pities me. He thought that might
almost be worse than the contempt… or perhaps he despised him
now more than ever. The savior of the wizarding world, at the mercy
of a bullying muggle.

Snape, meanwhile, likewise drank his potion. Tossing the bottle

aside, he pulled out his wand and conjured what Harry immediately
recognized as a patronus. The younger wizard was dimly amazed to
see that his dour potions master's patronus was an exquisite, silvery
doe.

Snape seemed to commune silently with the doe for a moment, then
with a flick of his wand, it bounded through the window and
disappeared.

Snape then turned toward Harry's trunk. With another flick of his
wand, the lid sprang open. He moved the wand in a circular motion,
and the air was suddenly filled with Harry's belongings, clothes flying
out of the wardrobe, books sailing off the desk, wand, photo album
and potions rising out from the space under the loose floorboard, all
of them arranging themselves neatly inside the trunk. Even the
Firebolt and the owl cage, shrinking as they came, fit into the trunk.

Once everything was packed, Snape closed the trunk and used a
shrinking spell to reduce it to the size of a matchbox. He picked it up
and stowed it away in his robes. He raised his wand again.

" Accio glasses," he said, and Harry's glasses flew into his hand. He
held them out to Harry; the boy took them in his numb fingers and
put them on, fumbling a bit as he did so.

For a long moment, Snape regarded Harry silently. Harry got the
feeling the man wanted to say something to him.

"Come, Potter," Snape said finally.

Harry suddenly shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. It

was a warm day, but he felt cold all over. The pain from the beating
and his fight with Dudley had ebbed somewhat, but he felt weak and
ill, as though he were coming down with, or just recovering from, a
high fever. Clad only in Dudley's baggy jeans, the waist cinched in
with a belt, and battered trainers, Harry felt naked and vulnerable.
The reasonable part of him, the part that had been fostered by his
years at Hogwarts, by his friends and by the caring adults in his life,
acknowledged that what had happened to him was unacceptable;
the part that had been shaped by the Dursleys during his formative
years made him feel ashamed to have others see the marks of his
punishment - marks he couldn't help feeling he'd somehow earned,
though he would have done nothing differently.

Something shifted briefly in the onyx gaze of the tall professor, and
Snape suddenly removed his summer travel cloak. He shook it out
once, like a housewife shaking out a rug, and it shortened magically.
Carefully, he eased the lightweight material over Harry's shoulders
and drew it around the thin body, covering the boy to his ankles.
Harry looked up in surprise, a lump forming in his throat - could
Snape have guessed, somehow, how he was feeling?

He retreated from the thought at once. The man probably just didn't
want Harry's injuries drawing attention.

"Come," Snape repeated, and Harry followed him numbly from the
room.

I wonder where he's taking me, Harry thought dully. Probably

Grimmauld Place.

He couldn't bring himself to care much. In fact, the thought of going

to his room there and shutting the door on everyone and everything
was strangely attractive.

He hoped no one would be there. Knowing that he had spent the

past month with Snape, he didn't even want Hedwig nearby. He
wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to bring himself to talk to her again
with any feeling of security. How could he know she was what she
appeared to be?

The sudden deflation of his spirit afforded him a welcome relief from
the pain of losing Spartacus, which felt like the two ends of a broken
bone grinding together as he walked.

Uncle Vernon lay on his back at the foot of the stairs, groaning.
Snape's mouth tightened, and he jerked his wand. Instantly, the belt
Vernon still clutched in his right hand vanished in a puff of smoke,
crumbling into a pile of ashes on the floor.

Aunt Petunia was kneeling next to her husband. Her face was
streaked with tears, her eyes huge and frightened. Pathetic mewling
noises emitted from behind her mouthless face.

Harry looked at her for a moment. Unwillingly, a small dart of

compassion flickered within his bruised heart.
"Professor."

Snape looked back at him over his shoulder. "Potter?"

"Could you put my aunt right, please, before we go." Harry marveled
at how dull his voice sounded even to his own ears.

There was that strange flicker of emotion again in Snape's eyes,

there and gone like insects flashing across black water.

"Why?"

Harry thought a moment, then said, "I don't like to see her like that."

Harry could sense Snape surveying him, but he didn't look up. After
a moment, the potions master waved his wand and Aunt Petunia's
mouth reappeared. She uttered a great gasp, put her hands over her
face, and began to cry helplessly.

Snape walked on without looking back. Harry followed him

wordlessly, his eyes on the floor.

He led Potter through the front door of Number 4 and paused on the
sidewalk.

"Potter."

The boy looked up. The lifeless expression in the green eyes
unnerved the potions master more than he cared to admit.

"Come here to me." Snape held out his left arm.

To his astonishment and consternation, Potter obeyed immediately

and without question. Snape knew the boy had never apparated
before, and this ready compliance with the invitation to come closer
to his most hated professor for an unknown purpose worried Snape.
Had the indomitable Gryffindor spirit finally been broken?
He studied the boy through narrowed eyes. Potter looked like he had
been through a war zone, and Snape suspected he was teetering on
the edge of shock.

Nothing he could do about that here. Best get the boy away as
quickly as possible.

"Potter."

The boy raised his weary, apathetic gaze to Snape's once again.

"Grip my arm as tightly as you can with both of your own, and stay
close to me."

Again, Potter obeyed without a word. Snape turned on the spot,

concentrating hard-

- and then they were standing in an old forest, tall trees and
overgrown brush all around. Darkness was falling.

Potter had stumbled slightly and caught his breath when they
landed, and for a moment Snape was rewarded by returning life in
the boy's face, even if it was alarm - after all, fear is better than
nothing - but then Potter looked up at him, the closed expression
crept back, and his eyes returned to the ground. Again he asked no
questions, and Snape found this lack of curiosity on the part of the
normally inquisitive Gryffindor disquieting.

He took a moment to study his charge.

At almost-sixteen, Potter was at that age when the lines between the
boy and the man have become blurred. While his uncle was beating
him, he had seemed like a man to Snape, holding himself straight,
his chin high, scorning to cry out. Now, wrapped in Snape's summer
cloak, which was still too large for him despite the shrinking charm
the potions master had used to keep it from dragging along the
ground, he looked like a young boy, in spite of the disturbingly dead
expression on his bruised face.
In dire need of cutting, Potter's untidy shock of hair did not hide the
sprawling black eye, or the wide, red welt on his cheek, jaw and part
of his nose from where his uncle had hit him in the face with the belt.
The split lip was swollen and crusted with dried blood.

Snape wished he had time to clean the boy up. What he really
wanted to do was heal his hurts - the physical ones, anyway - but
that would have to wait until they were settled in a safe place.

He watched the boy, feeling an unfamiliar yearning in his heart.

Everything had changed for him, but nothing had changed for Potter.
He, Snape, had had weeks to learn about this boy's heart, mind and
soul. Potter, on the other hand, knew nothing more about Snape
than what he already believed at the end of the term, except that
Snape had been listening to his private thoughts and been a witness
during what he thought were his weakest moments. This would
hardly endear Snape to him, and perhaps the damage that Snape
himself had fostered since the boy first arrived at school, on top of
this latest betrayal, would be permanent.

Snape realized now that he wanted to be more than a protector to

Lily's child. It had hurt him when Harry had recoiled from his touch
back at Privet Drive, though he understood why the boy had done
so. But he did not want Lily's child to hate and fear him.

The practical, Slytherin part of Snape's mind took over. You can do
nothing about that now, in this place. Do your duty and get the boy to
a safe location. What comes after will come.

"Follow me now, Potter."

Snape walked on without looking back. After a moment, he heard the

boy's soft footfalls behind him.

They walked for about half an hour. Full dark was almost upon them
now, and Snape brought out his wand to cast lumos, gently prodding
Potter to do the same.
They rounded a final copse of trees and stepped out into the open
once more. Now a wide expanse opened in front of them, revealing
the towering edifice with lit windows about a quarter of a mile away.

"No!"

Snape spun around. Potter was standing stock-still, staring up at

Hogwarts castle with a look of pure horror on his face.

"Potter. What-?"

"Why are we here? I thought - I thought you were taking me to

Grimmauld Place!"

The boy's tone was accusing, and nearly shrill with panic. After
almost an hour of his silent apathy, Snape was caught wrong-footed.

"Grimmauld Place?" he said slowly. "Perhaps, at a later time… but

now we need to see the headmast- "

" No!"

So startled was Snape when Potter spun around and bolted back the
way they had come that he almost lost the boy in the trees before he
was able to stop him.

" Protego!" Snape cried, and Potter ran up so hard against his shield
charm that he was knocked down.

Snape hated to do it to him when the boy was already in so much

pain, but he didn't dare let Potter get away… not in this state.

" Potter!" As always, Snape's fear expressed itself as anger, and his
tone came out much more harshly than he had intended. "What on
earth is the matter with y-"

"I won't see him, I can't! Professor, please, please don't do this… I
don't want him to know! I don't want anyone to know!"
Snape stared at the boy. His face was so pale it shone in the
darkness, his green eyes huge and fearful in his thin, battered face.
He looked far more frightened at the thought of Dumbledore knowing
what had happened to him than he had when his uncle, belt in hand,
had stood towering over him, and the potions master felt his heart
rip.

He made an effort to keep his voice calm.

"Potter… surely you must realize that the headmaster has to know
about this."

" Why?" Potter yelled. Snape could feel him trying to get himself
under control. And failing.

"I've been at Privet Drive long enough, the wards should be in place
now," the boy went on, trying to force himself to keep his voice
steady. "I can spend the rest of the summer at the Burrow, or
Grimmauld Place, if that's safer for the Weasleys. Next year I'm of
age, so I'll only have to go back once m-"

" Go back!" Now it was Snape who had to fight to keep himself under
control. "Do you truly imagine that you'll be going back there for one
moment, let alone an entire summer? If you live that long? " he
added with a sneer, throwing the boy's own words back at him.

Potter flushed up to the roots of his hair, then his shoulders slumped.

"What else is there to do," he said wearily, passing a hand under his
glasses to give his eyes a rub. "I have to go back. I know it.
Dumbledore knows it, too… and he probably knows about all of this,
anyway," the boy added, his eyes hardening. He waved his hand
vaguely over his face, indicating the black eye and all it signified.

Snape stilled. For a moment there was no sound but the wind
blowing through the trees in the Forbidden Forest.

"Do you really believe that, Harry?" Snape asked quietly.

For the first time, he had called Potter by his name. In response, the
boy's eyes grew moist for a moment before he resolutely forced the
tears back. Snape grudgingly admired his control.

Potter swallowed hard and turned away. When he spoke, his voice
was steady.

"I think… he knows most everything that goes on around here. I

know he wouldn't have left me there, if there'd been another way. He
has to… do what's best in the long run, I guess. It's not easy for
him."

Snape was speechless. Potter had expressed his fears that

Dumbledore knew or suspected the abuse… even feared that
Dumbledore felt he "needed" or "deserved" it. But Snape had
chalked these fears up to the nighttime uncertainties of a frightened,
angry, abused boy. Surely he didn't truly believe it.

But looking at the young wizard staring off into the distance under
the darkening sky, a borrowed cloak fluttering around his
malnourished body, Snape realized suddenly that this was exactly
what Potter believed… he felt an odd, sinking sensation in his
stomach, and compassion welled up in him for this boy.

He waited a moment before speaking, then said slowly and clearly,

"Albus Dumbledore would never allow any student of his to be hurt if
he could do something to stop it. That especially goes for you,
Potter. I would know, having observed his herculean efforts to keep
you safe. And, loath as I am to shatter your illusions on the subject,
the man is not all-powerful and all-knowing. I wish that he were."

He sighed, but before he could continue, Potter interrupted him, a

look of desperate hope on his face.

"Then don't tell him if he doesn't know, sir. He has enough on his
mind-"
"Potter. You will cease these arguments at once. I've already
informed him we were on our way with my patronus."

This was not precisely true. Snape had actually spelled his patronus
to let Dumbledore know that he, Snape, was alive, uncompromised
so far as he knew, and on his way to make a report.

The truth was that Snape was dreading having to tell Albus about
what had been going on at Potter's home in Surrey. He knew it would
hurt the old wizard terribly, that he would blame himself for what
Potter had suffered. But it couldn't be helped. Snape had a duty as
Potter's teacher to inform the headmaster what was going on with a
student, and no amount of pleading from this boy, however much
Snape owed him, would swerve him from that course.

Potter must have sensed Snape's resolve because he looked ready -

foolishly, Snape thought, with a curl of his lip - to bolt again.

" Potter ." His tone was low and dangerous. "We are going to the
headmaster now. You cannot avoid this," he added sharply, cutting
the boy off before he could utter the plea that was forming on his
lips. "I will be obeyed."

"Why do you even care?" the boy yelled. "Haven't you done enough
already, spying on me for weeks, making me think you were
something you weren't? You probably can't wait to tell all your
Slytherins how famous Harry Pot-"

" Enough!" Snape's shout caused the boy to wince. "I'm not above
stunning you, Potter, and levitating you to the castle if that's what is
required! And I hardly think you want to appear even more helpless
than you already have today."

As soon as those last words left his mouth, Snape wished he could
recall them - particularly when Potter recoiled as though Snape had
slapped him, his face draining of color.

Enough.
Snape motioned with his wand toward the castle. "Walk ahead of
me, where I can keep an eye on you."

For a long moment, Potter stared at him. Then his expression again
closed off, and without another word he lifted his head high and
started up to the castle. He looked like a man heading for the
gallows, but determined to be brave about it since there was no
escape.

That walk seemed to take an eternity.

As they crossed the entrance hall, Snape found himself wondering

briefly what it must be like for Potter, being at the nearly deserted
castle during the summer.

At the gargoyle outside of the entrance to the headmaster's office,

Snape gave the password: "Canary cream."

The gargoyle leaped aside, and Snape motioned for Potter to stand
on the revolving stairs in front of him - he was taking no chances on
the boy bolting even now. At the top of the stairs, he knocked once.

"Enter," came Albus's voice through the door.

Snape opened the door, then stood back, motioning the boy to go
through first. Though it was far too late now, Potter gave him one
last, pleading look. At Snape's unrelenting expression, he took a
deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked ahead of the
potions master into the office, his chin high.

At that brave and somehow poignant gesture, Snape's heart went

out to him more than the boy would ever know.
Chapter 13
Dumbledore's office was ablaze with candlelight, and the great
wizard himself, resplendent in spangled silver robes, was standing in
front of his desk. He had apparently been pacing, as he so often did,
waiting for Snape's arrival with obvious eagerness. He turned as the
door opened.

"Severus!" the old man said cheerfully, glad relief in his face and
voice. "At last! My boy, I've been so worried -"

He broke off suddenly, having spotted Harry. The silvery-grey

eyebrows went up.

Snape could well imagine how this looked to Dumbledore. His

resident spy missing for a month, vanished from guard duty without a
hint of what had happened from either the Order or the Death
Eaters, while all went on apparently as usual at Potter's house.
Then, out of nowhere, Snape's patronus appears, heralding his
arrival and warning him about possible ministry involvement at Privet
Drive. Then the resident spy himself shows up - not alone, as
Dumbledore might have expected, but with the golden boy himself in
tow, wearing an ill-fitting cloak and sporting a black eye, split lip and
an angry weal across one cheek.

"Severus," Dumbledore began. "What -"

He stopped, at a loss for words ( for perhaps the first time in living
memory, Snape thought sardonically). There was no time to reflect
on the anomaly, though.

"Headmaster, we have a great deal to discuss," Snape said swiftly.

"But first I must warn you that I performed magic at Privet Drive -
magic that Potter will likely be blamed for by the ministry."

Dumbledore became alert at once. "How long ago?"

"Perhaps an hour," Snape replied. "Maybe closer to two."

At once, Dumbledore strode over to the fireplace and grabbed a

handful of floo powder from a pot on the mantel. Then he turned
back to Potter and Snape, conjured two squashy, flowered
armchairs, and waved at the wizards to sit.

"Wait here, both of you," he ordered. He tossed the floo powder into
the fireplace and stepped in as emerald green flames blazed up.

"Ministry of Magic," he called, and vanished.

Snape moved to one of the armchairs and smoothly seated himself,

leaning back with his elbows on the arms of the chair, steepling his
fingers before him. After a moment, Potter also sat down, sitting well
forward to avoid having his ravaged back make contact with the
cushion. His hands were balled in tight fists on his thighs, and he
stared unseeingly at the floor. Though his face betrayed no trace of
emotion, he was pale and visibly trembling.

More troubled by this evidence of Potter's fragility than he liked to

admit, Snape glanced around the room. Fawkes the phoenix was
cuddled down in a nest of ashes in the tray beneath his golden
perch. He had endured an early Burning in order to protect
Dumbledore at the ministry a month before, and was in no fit state to
heal anyone. Snape thought this was just as well - he wanted to wait
to heal Potter until Dumbledore had seen the injuries for himself.
This would be hard on his mentor, but Snape cringed at the thought
of having to say the words to him and was guiltily glad to let the
boy's state speak for itself.

Dumbledore's office looked as it always had. The delicate silver

instruments whirred softly, and the portraits of Hogwarts
headmasters and headmistresses past all appeared to be sleeping
peacefully… save one.

Armando Dippet surveyed Potter with interest from behind

Dumbledore's desk.
"Ah, Mr. Potter!" the corpulent wizard called cheerfully. "Back again!
But what happened to your face, my boy?"

Potter glanced up, then down again. "Nothing, sir," he muttered.

Dippet frowned, then brightened.

"Well, never mind, dear boy. Whatever it is, Dumbledore will set it to
rights! Very fond of you he is, I hope you know!"

Potter shrugged - a habit Snape abhorred in all the students.

I'll have that bloody shrug out of him before he leaves school, or I'll
know the reason why not! He thought irritably.

Dippet said, a little sternly, "I hope you're not planning on a repeat of
last month's rampage, Mr. Potter… you're really too old for such
nonsense."

Narrowing his eyes at this, Snape glanced over at Potter. The boy
gave him a sidewise look, flushed, and looked down again.

"No, sir."

"Well, that's all right then!" Dippet said brightly. "No need to look so
downhearted, my boy… Dumbledore put everything right in a
moment, and was very unhappy that you were so distressed… very
upset indeed."

Before Potter could reply to this, green flames burst up in the

fireplace again and Dumbledore stepped through, brushing ash from
his robes.

Snape automatically stood up as the old wizard stepped off the

hearth, and Potter did the same.

"Well," Dumbledore began. "I have spoken with Rufus Scrimgeour,

and it appears that aurors were sent to Privet Drive to investigate the
magic that was performed there. Vernon Dursley informed them that
his family was attacked by a grown wizard, who then left the
premises with Mr. Potter. The assumption was that Death Eaters had
attempted to abscond with Harry, and I did not disabuse the minister
of this notion."

Snape raised his eyebrows at this. Dumbledore looked at him

keenly.

"Had there indeed been a Death Eater attack at Privet Drive, I would
have been notified immediately," Dumbledore went on, glancing at
one of the silver instruments near his desk. "In the interest of
smoothing things over until I could learn more about what really did
happen, I informed Rufus that you, Severus, were able to retrieve
Mr. Potter, and that you were both safe at Hogwarts."

He paused here, waiting, perhaps, for Snape or Potter to speak.

When neither of them did, he continued.

"I'm relieved, Severus, to see you relatively unhurt, though I imagine

you have a great deal to report. I must ask you to proceed in bringing
me up to speed."

Snape hesitated a moment, not sure how to begin. He did not want
to discuss the Death Eaters in Little Whinging in front of Potter, nor
was he sure Dumbledore would want him to do so.

Finally, he began.

"As per your orders, Headmaster, I was taking my turn keeping an

eye on Mr. Potter when I was… injured." Here Snape looked
significantly at Dumbledore, who eyed him keenly, then nodded
slightly. He gets it, Snape thought, relieved. He took a deep breath
and continued a little more easily.

"I was transformed at the time, and when I regained consciousness,"

here Snape flushed slightly and curled his lip, "I found myself in
Potter's bedroom, ensconced in his owl's cage. Apparently he found
me in his backyard."
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled at this. "Dear me," he murmured, his
mustache twitching. But when he glanced at Harry and saw the dark
red flush that had spread over the boy's face, his look sobered
again. "Pray continue."

"Potter did an… admirable… job in caring for my injuries while I was
in bat form," Snape said reluctantly. "Whilst caged, I could not, of
course, transform, and on those occasions when I was not caged I
elected not to transform, deeming it more prudent to keep my
animagus abilities hidden if I could." He added unnecessarily, "I am,
of course, an unregistered animagus."

He looked sidewise at Potter, but if the boy was at all softened by his
praise or his explanations, he did not show it.

Snape sighed to himself and pressed on.

"It became necessary for me to reveal myself so that I could…

perform the duty for which I was sent to Privet Drive in the first
place," he finished lamely. A cop-out if ever there was one.

Dumbledore stared at him for a moment, then a look of alarm slowly

dawned over his face as he realized what Snape was saying. Snape
would not have transformed in front of Potter unless he had been
forced to do so in order to protect Potter. Since Potter had clearly not
been in immediate danger from Death Eaters, that left…

The old wizard turned toward the boy, taking in the marks on his face
with growing trepidation.

"Harry," the headmaster said quietly, "what has happened to you?"

Potter hesitated. "I got in a fight with my cousin, sir."

" Potter ." Snape was angry. That the boy would dare to prevaricate
with Snape standing right there! He gave Potter a glare that the boy
returned in full measure - but with a mute plea mixed in that caused
Snape's anger to evaporate, leaving only a weary sadness.
"Albus," Snape said gently, turning back to the headmaster, "there's
more to it than that."

Dumbledore stared at him, dread growing in his blue eyes. It was

rare that Snape gave him his first name.

The tension suddenly became too much for the potions master.

Enough, Snape thought furiously. He pulled out his wand, pointed it

at Potter, and made a short, jerking motion reminiscent of a fly
fisherman using a rod to play a fish. Potter's borrowed cloak flew at
once from the boy's shoulders to Snape's outstretched hand. Potter
gasped as it went - drying blood had caused the cloak to adhere to
his wounds, and the newly formed scabs tore away as the cloak was
roughly pulled off.

Snape winced inwardly. He had not meant to hurt the boy.

Potter took a step back and wrapped his arms around himself as he
had back at Privet Drive after Snape had first revealed himself, but
he could not hide the bruises on his side, the clear outline of his ribs,
or the black-and-blue finger marks on his upper arm from when
Dursley had marched him up the stairs just hours ago. White and
frozen, Albus stared at the dejected figure, but Snape knew this was
not the extent of it, and though his heart ached for his old teacher
and the boy both, he knew it had to be done.

"Turn around, Potter," Snape said quietly.

Again the boy looked up, but there was no defiance in his face this
time - only a desperate appeal. Snape hardened his heart against
the sight of Lily's eyes looking at him with that desperate, pleading
expression. He took one step toward Potter, deliberately looming
over him, and spoke in his most menacing tone.

" Turn around, Potter… or I will turn you around."

Potter shrank back a step, his face paper-white, his eyes never
leaving Snape's. Then, shoulders hunched, he stared down at the
floor. Snape saw him swallow hard as he turned on the spot, almost
as if he were apparating away.

Snape had no doubt that, in that moment, the boy would have given
everything he owned if only he could apparate away from that place.

He did not look at the boy's back or at Dumbledore's reaction,

instead watching Potter's face. Potter squeezed his eyes shut and
flinched when he heard his headmaster's sharp intake of breath.

There was a long, awful pause. Then Dumbledore said quietly, his
voice shaking a little, "How did you come to have that, Harry?"

Potter swallowed again, raising his head to look at the wall.

"I… I fell-"

Before Snape could angrily refute this, Dumbledore spoke first, and
immediately.

" Harry ." At the anguish in his mentor's voice, Snape turned to look
at him. Dumbledore was standing behind his chair, gripping the back
of it with both hands so tightly his knuckles were white. There was so
much grief, and guilt, and anger in his white face, that Snape was
glad Potter was facing away from him and could not see it.

When the old man spoke again, though, his voice was calmer, even
gentle.

"Harry. It is all-too-obvious that those marks were made by… by a

belt." His voice broke a little over the last word.

Potter whirled around all at once, his mouth working and his eyes
flashing.

"Why don't you ask him what happened!' he cried furiously, flinging
out his arm to indicate Snape. He stared around wildly, his eyes
everywhere but, Snape noticed, on the two men in the room with
him.

"This is all his fault," Potter went on fiercely. "If he hadn't been
hanging about, spying on me, pretending to be a bat, this would
never have happened… I was defending him from my gormless
cousin!"

Snape knew the boy's nerves were overwrought, but he still couldn't
keep from feeling hurt at this. And, as so often happened, his
emotions expressed themselves in derision.

"Is that right?" he drawled with his most contemptuous sneer. "Well,
assuming I would need protection from an unqualified wizard, I grant
that I may have been the inadvertent cause of today's episode of
Dursley family bliss, but what of yesterday's thrashing, Potter? Your
dear uncle was not even aware of my presence in the house then!
And that doesn't even begin to take into account the many bumps
and bruises I've seen on your person over the past few weeks, or the
daily insults and endless chores."

Albus went from white to grey.

" Yesterday 's thrasing?" he whispered, and Snape suddenly wished

he had held his tongue.

The fight seemed to have gone out of Potter all at once, and he
stared at the floor again.

"That was different," the boy mumbled. "I deserved that one."

Now both Dumbledore and Snape stilled.

"What did you say?" Dumbledore whispered hoarsely.

Potter raised his face, then, but still would not look Dumbledore in
the eyes.
"I… I cheeked him," the boy tried to explain. He paused. Swallowed
tightly. "I had it coming."

"Do you really believe that, Harry?" Dumbledore's voice was so sad
that Snape felt his own throat catch.

Potter's eyes filled with tears, but he fiercely blinked them back.

"It's not that big a deal," he muttered sullenly, eyes dropping to the
floor again.

"Not a 'big deal?'" Dumbledore repeated. He came from behind the

desk and approached Potter, but stopped, hands hanging helplessly
at his sides, when the boy flinched back.

"No, it's not! I mean - Uncle Vernon's got nothing on Voldemort,

right? And his belt's got nothing on the cruciatus curse. That's why
you thought it was better for me there, isn't it? That it's bad, but
worth it, if I'm safe? Isn't it?"

Snape thought of his own father and closed his eyes.

"Oh, Harry," Dumbledore, retreated behind his desk again to give the
boy space. Or perhaps to take a moment to gather himself. "No. I
never would have made such a decision as that. I'd have raised you
myself if I thought that-"

Potter raised angry, despairing eyes to Dumbledore's aged face.

"What are trying to say, Professor? That you didn't know? Of course
you know! You must have known!" His voice was bitter, but Snape
thought there was something desperate there, too… as though
Potter could not bear the idea that Dumbledore, his idol, who was
supposed to be all-knowing, had indeed not known about this.

With a wrench, Snape suddenly realized that for Potter, if life at the
Dursleys was hard, still it must be the right thing because
Dumbledore himself had put him there and said it was.
If, on the other hand, Dumbledore did not know about the abuse…
then anything Potter had suffered at his uncle's hands meant
nothing.

Potter himself now confirmed this realization.

"You told me yourself, Professor," the boy said appealingly, taking a

step toward the old man, "at the end of last year. You said you knew
things were hard for me there, but that I'd at least be safe. You said it
hurt you, but you were glad to know I was safe, and glad I wasn't a
spoiled prince."

Dumbledore, suddenly seeming older than he ever had to Snape

before, dropped into his chair as though his legs could no longer
hold him.

"Harry… Harry, you must know that I would never, never allow
anyone to hurt you if I could prevent it," he told the boy earnestly. His
blue eyes were wet. "I knew, to my pain and regret, that your
relatives were ungracious towards you, unloving, even hard when it
came to chores and, I assumed from looking at you each September,
food… but that they would ever, in their fear of magic and of me,
dare to raise a hand to you…" he shook his head. "At the very
least… the very least, Harry, I could have placed a spell on our uncle
that would render him incapable of acting violently towards you. If
you had only come to me-"

"Albus," Snape said warningly, but Potter was already rushing

ahead.

"So it's my own fault, is it?" The disillusioned boy cried. "Like Sirius…
I don't notice that anyone trusts me with stuff, but I'm supposed to
trust them…" He broke off suddenly, pressing his knuckles to his
eyes.

"All that stuff you said," Potter went on in a low voice, "about caring
about me… being proud of me. It doesn't really matter, does it, what
happens to me, so long as I stay in decent enough shape to face
down Voldemort in the end."

"The decisions I made regarding your welfare… were difficult," said

Dumbledore, forcing the words out with a supreme effort. "It seems
as though the harder I try to spare you pain, the more pain I cause
you. I swear to you, I never thought anything like this was
happening. It's true I didn't look as closely as I obviously should have
at your life with your mother's remaining family… perhaps I feared
what I might see…"

"You never even checked up on me? I guess Hermione was wrong,

then," the boy plunged ahead bitterly. "It was never really me you
cared about, after all. All you ever cared about was this !" The last
word came out in a stifled shout, and he struck the scar on his
forehead with the heel of his hand.

If Snape could feel those words like a kick in the stomach, how must
they feel to Dumbledore? The old man's face was ashen, and his
eyes filled with tears.

"That is not true," he said heavily. "No. It isn't true at all. But… I can
see how you would believe it to be so. Yes, I can see. All too well. I
have indeed failed you… most miserably."

With that, the headmaster covered his face with his hands and
turned away. Potter watched him impassively for a moment, his eyes
hard. He shook his head slowly, then spun on his heel and strode
toward the door.

Part of Snape wanted to stop the boy. He was torn between shaking
him roughly and telling him not to be a fool and urging him gently to
be patient and listen to Dumbledore - that the man was tearing
himself apart inside over this far more than the boy could imagine.

But the emotionally charged situation was beyond Severus Snape,

and in the end he did nothing. As it turned out, he didn't need to do
anything.
Potter paused at the door, his raised hand not quite touching the
handle. The hard look on his face changed into something
vulnerable and more suited to his age. Slowly, he turned around and
looked at Dumbledore again. Seemingly unaware of Snape, he
hesitantly crossed the room until he was standing just behind the old
man.

As timidly as he had when he had reached out to Snape in his bat

form for the first time, Potter lightly touched the older wizard's
shoulder. Dumbledore, who hadn't heard him coming, started
abruptly and swiveled around in his chair. The boy whipped his hand
back nervously as though expecting to be struck, and for a moment
the two stared at one another in silence.

When Snape replayed the scene in his mind later that night, he tried
but failed to ascertain who had made the first move. It seemed to
him that Dumbledore's arms came up at the exact moment that
Potter, uttering a small, lost cry, tumbled forward, and then the boy
was on his knees with his face buried in the old man's shoulder and
his fingers tightly gripping his robes, and Albus had lowered his face
to the boy's dark, untidy hair, one wrinkled hand on the back of
Potter's head, the other on his shoulder, careful even in that moment
to avoid touching his injuries.

And now, finally, Potter's shoulders were shaking, and Snape could
tell by the muffled sounds that he was crying at last, for the first time
in Merlin knew how many years. And although there were tears on
Dumbledore's face, he made no sound, just allowed the boy cling
desperately to his robes and cry while he held him.

After a moment, Potter said something. With his face pressed

against Dumbledore's robes, the words came out indistinctly, but
Snape thought they sounded like I'm sorry.

He guessed he had assumed correctly when the old wizard

murmured in response, "That's all right. You've done nothing wrong."
Feeling like an intruder, Snape slipped unnoticed from the office,
pulling the door closed behind him softly.

Moving through the darkened corridors towards his familiar

dungeons, Snape told himself he was merely relieved that Potter
was now in hands far more capable than his own. He refused to
acknowledge the rush of loneliness that had overcome him, the stab
of envy that had pierced his heart as he had looked back at the old
man and the boy huddled together in the room, unaware of anything
but each other.

Snape could not have said who he envied more in that moment:
Dumbledore… or Potter.
Chapter 14
Harry cried for a long time.

It was though, once he'd let go at last, all the tears he'd choked bafck
for years came pouring forth at once: the tears he hadn't cried for
Sirius, for Cedric, for what had happened in the graveyard that awful
night Voldemort returned; even for his parents. Only once did he try
to stem their flow, putting his hands against Dumbledore's arms and
starting to pull back, but the old man simply took his head in his
hands and drew it gently back to his shoulder. This tenderness
completely undid Harry; he gave up fighting and simply wept.

It had been so long since he'd really cried that he had forgotten how
awful it felt… and how much of a relief it was, too. He thought it felt
almost like being nauseated… it felt horrible to feel sick, then horrible
to be sick… but afterwards you began to feel better. Even the
aftermath was similar… he felt weak, washed out and shaky.

For awhile after the tears finally stopped he stayed still, leaning
against Dumbledore and resting the full weight of his head on the old
man's frail but sturdy shoulder. If Dumbledore had begun stroking his
hair with the hand cupping the back of Harry's head or had shifted in
any way, Harry would have moved away at once, but the old man
kept still, not saying anything, just holding him quietly.

It was oddly restful, Harry thought. He strained to remember if his

father had ever supported him like this when he cried, but could not.
Certainly Sirius never had - there had been no time for that. Mrs.
Weasley was the closest he'd ever come to having an adult comfort
him in this way.

After a time, Harry straightened up. He raised his eyes uncertainly to

Dumbledore's. The headmaster gave him a small smile, and Harry
immediately flushed and looked down. He suddenly felt… ashamed.
Weak.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled, then blushed more, remembering he had
blurted those words out while he cried. In fact, he thought he might
have said them several times.

Dumbledore took gentle hold of his chin and raised Harry's face until
his eyes were level with the headmaster's.

"My dear boy," the old man said tenderly. "Please don't be ashamed
of honest emotion. Tears, like laughter, are the soul's way of
releasing our deepest feelings - and if they are a cause for shame,
then I have as much reason to be ashamed as you do." He gave
Harry a rather watery smile. "I take it you had not yet cried for
Sirius."

Harry smiled ruefully and lowered his eyes again with a brief shake
of his head. Dumbledore frowned.

"Nor for Cedric?" he asked, concern in his voice.

Harry again shook his head.

"Harry… do you even remember the last time you cried?"

Dumbledore asked gently.

Harry thought hard.

"I think… a few years before I came to Hogwarts," he said hesitantly.

"My uncle… well… he doesn't have a lot of patience with what he
called 'whining.'" He shivered and looked away.

"Oh, Harry." Dumbledore's voice was filled with regret… and a

disturbing tinge of anger which Harry sensed was not for him. "So
you swallowed it all down, I suppose."

Harry nodded mutely.

Dumbledore sighed, closing his eyes. When he opened them again a

moment later, he gave Harry the sort of piercing look Harry was
accustomed to in the past. When he spoke, however, his tone was
gentle.

"Harry, I'll need to you tell me what happened."

Harry's stomach immediately clenched. He had known this request

was coming - in fact, part of the reason he had almost walked out
was because he didn't feel he could face the questions about what
had happened over the past few weeks… or about his life away from
the wizarding world.

As if he were reading his thoughts Dumbledore said, "I can see you
don't want to talk about it, or you feel you can't. I understand. We're
going to have to discuss your relatives in some depth at some point,
Harry, but at this point, in the interests of getting you taken care of as
quickly as possible, I think we can confine the conversation to what
happened after Professor Snape arrived at your home in Surrey."

Harry sighed and closed his eyes, thinking about how to begin.

"I was working in the garden a few days after I got back to my aunt
and uncle's house, and I found a hurt bat," he began slowly.

And suddenly the whole story came spilling out: the weeks of caring
for the bat's injuries while he waited for someone to fetch him from
the Dursleys', how he'd been lonely without Hedwig to keep him
company… how he'd talked to the bat, telling it all of his secrets in
an effort to distract himself from his grief over Sirius and anxiety over
the Prophecy.

Then there were the things he could not put into words: how he'd felt
comforted by Spartacus's presence in his room; how its being there
gave him a feeling of safety, as though someone was present who
was on his side; how it felt good to be responsible for something,
which made him feel less helpless… less like a pawn in a life-sized
game of wizards' chess between Voldemort and Dumbledore
himself. But when he looked into Dumbledore's face, Harry thought
that perhaps he didn't need to try to express these things… he had
the feeling that Dumbledore already understood.

When he had finished, the headmaster sighed, then sat silent for a
time, staring at the floor between them.

"Thank you, Harry, for being frank with me," Dumbledore said finally,
without looking up. "I know it was difficult for you."

Harry waited, but when the older wizard did not speak, ventured,
"What will happen to me now, sir?" Dumbledore looked up again.

"Well, I think we need to see to your medical needs first, Harry, and
then a good night's sleep is in order," the old man replied more
briskly. "Tomorrow we will talk more… I was actually preparing to
come and fetch you from your relatives' home myself later this
week… but I will explain that further later on."

Harry was filled with curiosity at this, but quelled it for the moment.
He recognized that he was nearing the end of his strength.

With a sigh, the headmaster straightened, and, resting his hands on

his knees, looked closely at Harry.

"And now, Harry, I would like to invite Professor Snape to return and
tend to your injuries," he said briskly.

"What? No! Professor, please, can't we just let it go?" Harry asked
desperately. Didn't Dumbledore realize how the very sight of Snape
made him feel humiliated and angry? And he didn't want anyone
looking at what Uncle Vernon had done to him. "It's not so bad,
really… the marks will go away…"

"No, Harry, I'm afraid we cannot 'let it go,'" Dumbledore said gravely.
"I will not allow you to suffer pain when I can prevent it."

"Madam Pomfrey-" Harry began, but Dumbledore cut him off.

"Madam Pomfrey may well need to be consulted," the older wizard
agreed, "but in the interests of keeping ministry involvement to a
minimum, I think first employing Severus's skills in healing would be
the wisest course, seeing as he is already… involved. And Harry," he
added, "I have… a request to make of you, as well."

Surprised, Harry, who had been looking at the floor, met his
headmaster's gaze questioningly.

"I want you," Dumbledore began carefully, "to try to find it within
yourself to give Severus another chance at earning your trust and
goodwill. I know this will be difficult for you," he went on, seeing
Harry open his mouth to protest. "Severus has been very hard on
you, I do not deny it. I have spoken to him about it in the past."

Dumbledore fell silent, considering. Harry waited.

"Perhaps I do not have a right to ask this of you," Dumbledore said

slowly. "Particularly after I have so abused your trust myself. But I
ask it because I believe it to be important and beneficial. For both
you."

Again the old man fell silent, weighing his next words.

"There is so much I cannot tell you, Harry," he said finally, looking

Harry straight in the eyes. "Things I must keep back for your sake,
for the sake of the strategies I am employing in the war against
Voldemort… for Professor Snape himself. I believe, with your good
heart and generous nature, that were you to know certain things
about Professor Snape, you would be able to trust him. But I cannot
go against his wishes that I keep his confidences, even as I would
not go against your wishes to keep certain things private. Do you
understand me, Harry?"

As much as he hated to admit it, Harry did. He nodded reluctantly.

"You may find this difficult to believe," Dumbledore went on

hesitantly, "but I am certain, from what I have seen tonight and from
what I already know - and my guesses are generally good ones -
that Professor Snape's perceptions of you have changed over these
past weeks. Not because of how your family treats you," he added
quickly as Harry's mouth tightened, "at least, not entirely - but
because of the care you showed to Spartacus. Something new may
have been born here, and it might do well to… encourage its
growth."

Harry could not help help asking, "But why, sir? Why is it so
important to you that we two get along?"

The old man paused for a long moment before answering. When he
spoke again, his voice was more hesitant than ever.

"Harry… I believe, very firmly, that there is… buried treasure within
Professor Snape," the old man said earnestly. "Treasures that can,
perhaps, be unearthed by kind and patient prospectors."

Harry stared at him. He wasn't sure he could believe that - and even
if it were true, surely he wasn't the one for such a job as that.

"I'm hoping, Harry, that you and I together can manage this,"
Dumbledore said reassuringly.

Well, at least he doesn't expect me to make this work by myself.

Harry thought for a long time. He thought about Spartacus's calm,

sympathetic black eyes, watching him while he talked. He thought
about the fact that Snape had not sneered at him after he
transformed at the Dursleys'. He thought about how Snape had
wrecked vengeance on the Dursleys when he really hadn't had to…
lesser measures would have sufficed to stop his uncle from hurting
him.

"All right, sir," he said finally. "I'll try."

Snape stared into the fire, an untouched glass of firewhisky near his
right hand.

He had made only one stop on his way back to his quarters, and that
was to his storeroom to put together a kit of healing potions that he
carried with him back to his rooms in a wooden box. He had then
taken a long shower, making the water as hot as he could stand it.
He had felt a desperate need to purge away the oppressiveness the
Dursley home had imposed upon him.

The shower didn't really help with this.

After cleaning up, Snape tended his bruised ribs and wounded
shoulder. There wasn't much for him to do - Potter really had done
an admirable job caring for him over the past few weeks with what
little he had, and his healing had progressed far enough that it would
serve no purpose to supplement the long-term methods with faster-
acting remedies designed to be applied immediately to injuries still
fresh. Snape contented himself with applying a salve to promote
healing and lessen scarring to the shoulder wound and massaging a
bruise palm with a mild pain reliever over his battered ribs.

It was after ten o'clock by this time, and although he was exhausted
both mentally and physically from the day's events - indeed, from the
month's events - he changed into fresh robes and went to his sitting
room instead of retiring, seating himself in his favorite armchair and
using his wand to kindle a small fire in the fireplace. He briefly
considered summoning a house elf to bring him food, but dismissed
the thought, instead pouring himself the glass of firewhisky which
now sat neglected on the end table next to him.

Finally, back in his own comfortable rooms with his familiar things
around him, cleaned up and injuries tended to, he could let his guard
down.

The potions master felt drained. Contrary to popular believe, he did

have a heart, and just now that particular organ felt bruised and sore
while his mind was full and bewildered by all the things he had seen
and experienced over the past weeks.

It had been so easy… so ridiculously easy to hate the boy. Potter's

extraordinary resemblance to Snape's boyhood nemesis had
conveniently interfered with his connection to Lily, and the glasses
obscuring her emerald eyes had helped to further widen the gap.
The estrangement had been further aided by the fact that Snape had
not seen those eyes directed at him in an expression other than
anger, fear, wariness or defiance since Potter's first day of class,
when they had held only curiosity for a few brief moments. That
curious, uncertain gaze, so ready to trust him, had unnerved Snape
terribly, and he had pounced on the first year quickly, obliterating it
forever so far as he, Snape, was concerned.

At this moment, he would have given worlds to change the past.

Snape tried to muster up the familiar feelings of anger and animosity

- this was Potter, after all, the nosy, arrogant brat who had invaded
his thoughts so shamelessly last term.

But even as those damning words, "nosy" and "arrogant," entered

his thoughts, so did memories so clear they caused his stomach to
twist in knots - the memory of Potter lying on his side in a small bed
with sagging springs, confessing to a furry little creature that he
regretted invading his potions master's privacy in what was meant to
be a search for answers; Potter, screwing up his face and wincing in
pain as a belt burned a fiery trail across his back, but not attempting
to defend himself or even to escape; Potter, whispering that he
deserved his uncle's treatment; Potter, looking at him with Lily's eyes
filled with trust and even tenderness one day - then pleading with
him not to reveal his shameful secret the next.

Snape wished he could purge the memories of the last few weeks
from his mind. It was so much easier believing that the boy he had
sworn to protect for Lily's sake held nothing of her but her eyes. Now
he knew that Lily - a part of her, at any rate - had been there all
along, and he had never taken the time to see it.
The question was: what should he do now?

He really hadn't the faintest idea. There were many things to

consider: his position as a spy, his standing in the eyes of the
children of the Death Eaters, the boy's resemblance to James… he
almost felt inclined to blame Potter for upsetting his long-cherished
belief in his flaws. What right had the boy to worm his way into
Snape's mind and even his heart at this stage of affairs?

After years of brushing away Dumbledore's gentle (and sometimes

not-so-gentle) attempts to correct his misconceptions about the boy,
Snape suddenly craved the old man's guidance more than ever.

The room was very quiet. The ticking of carriage clock on the mantel
made the only sound. There was a potions journal on the end table,
but he did not reach for it - nor did he sip at the whisky.

Lily was very much on his mind tonight.

When the flames in the fireplace suddenly blazed emerald green, he

was not surprised. Dumbledore's voice issued from the fire:
"Severus? Would you be so good as to return to my office, please?"

He had deliberately not thought about what was happening upstairs,

but on some level he must have expected this summons. After all, he
had not changed for bed or touched the whisky.

Snape rose, picked up the potions kit he had put together, and
stepped into the fireplace.

When Snape flooed through to the headmaster's office, Dumbledore

was standing near the desk, looking at him expectantly. Potter, still
shirtless, was again seated on the edge of one of the armchairs, not
looking at either of the two men.

"Severus," Dumbledore began," Harry and I have discussed it, and

we think it might be a good idea if you employed your healing skills
before he goes to see Poppy, in order that we might avoid awkward
questions."

Snape understood immediately: Dumbledore intended to take care of

the situation with Potter's relatives himself, without ministry
involvement. Hardly surprising - the headmaster's trust had been
badly abused; he would not deal gently with the Dursleys. In
addition, there was Potter's privacy to consider - and the even more
important ramifications it would have if the details came to the
attention of the Dark Lord. Madam Pomfrey, of course, would be
obliged to report signs of abuse to the proper authorities. Even if she
was not fooled after seeing an already-healed Potter, she would
have legitimate reasons to take the headmaster at his word and
leave the situation in his hands. It did not hurt that the boy was only
a year away from coming of age.

Snape had no complaints. As difficult as it would be, he wanted to

heal Potter himself, though he would not examine his own
motivations for his wish to do so too closely.

With a slight nod to the Dumbledore, Snape crossed over to stand in

front of Potter. The boy looked up at him reluctantly. Snape was
surprised to find no animosity in his face, only a guarded anxiety.
Without a word, Snape pulled out his wand and performed a simple
diagnostic spell before Potter had time to flinch.

"Potter has two cracked ribs," Snape noted. "It would be best to
leave those to Madam Pomfrey, whose skill at healing bones
surpasses my own. The rest I can take care of if, as I am guessing,
you don't wish her to make a report on… where the injuries came
from?"

"That would, Harry and I have decided, be much the better plan,"
Dumbledore agreed.

Snape nodded and looked down again at Potter. The boy looked up
at him apprehensively.
Snape hesitated, trying to decide how best to proceed. Finally he
said, "Why don't we begin with your face, Potter?"

The boy swallowed and nodded briefly.

Without further ado, Snape pulled the other armchair in front of

Potter, sat down, and rummaged through the potions kit for bruise
balm and essence of murtlap. Potter removed his glasses and held
still while Snape, being as gentle as possible, applied the balm to his
eye and the murtlap to the belt weal and the split lip. When he was
finished, he paused, then said slowly, "It would probably be best,
Potter, if you were to lie down on your stomach while I tended your
back."

Dumbledore stepped forward then, and with a wave of his wand

transformed the chair Snape had risen from into a narrow, padded
table with a large pillow on one end. Potter eyed it unhappily.

"Sir," he began timidly, looking from one man to the other, "couldn't
we just-"

"No, Harry, I'm afraid we most certainly could not," Dumbledore said
kindly but firmly.

When the boy still hesitated, Snape added quietly, "It's the least
Spartacus could do for you, Potter, after your careful attentions to
him over the course of the past few weeks."

He had surprised himself by saying it and flushed almost

immediately, but Dumbledore gave him an approving smile while
Potter stared at him in amazement.

With a deep breath, the boy gingerly climbed onto the table,
grabbing the pillow so that it lay lengthwise under his chest, head
and neck, one arm curled around it. He looked both scared and
miserable, and Snape didn't blame him. He knew how vulnerable the
boy must be feeling… he himself would have been mortified to have
anyone inspect the damage his father had inflicted on him when he
was Potter's age.

Dumbledore seemed to realize this, too, for he moved to the head of

the table and took Potter's right hand in his own. The boy smiled at
him briefly, squeezed his hand, then looked straight ahead again.
Snape picked up the potions kit and stepped over to the table to see
what he was dealing with.

It was the first real look Snape had of the damage Dursley had
inflicted on his nephew. From neck to waist, Potter's back was
covered with deep bruises, puffy welts and gouges left by the steel
belt buckle. Unable to grasp how the boy had managed to keep
silent under this punishment, Snape felt his heart swell with
indignation and pity. He looked over and saw that Dumbledore was
pale and shaking. The two older wizards traded murderous looks
that promised coming retribution on the one who had done this.

Face turned to the side on the pillow, Potter shifted apprehensive

green eyes to Snape's face. Snape cleared his throat.

"I'm afraid… this is going to be somewhat painful, Potter." Snape

was surprised to hear a quiver in his own voice.

Potter nodded once, then shifted his eyes back to the wall. Snape
reached for the disinfectant. The broken skin was at risk for infection,
and that had to be attended to first.

The young Gryffindor hissed with pain when Snape began applying
the astringent. Snape saw his fingers tighten over Dumbledore's,
then the boy turned his face into the pillow. He made no sound, but
his tense muscles quivered under Snape's hands.

Snape managed to keep his hands steady, but it was a near thing.
He almost felt as though he were inflicting the fiery sting on himself.
He wished that he could.
Dumbledore looked anguished. After a few moments of just letting
Potter squeeze his hand, the old wizard suddenly leaned forward
and murmured an incantation into the boy's ear in a language
unfamiliar to Snape. To Snape's surprise, the boy's muscles relaxed,
his head rolled to the side, the green eyes slipped closed and
Potter's breathing deepened. Snape paused.

"What spell was that?" he asked curiously.

Dumbledore looked surprised himself. "Merely a simple relaxing

charm… it was not meant to put him to sleep." His face grew sad. "I
imagine he is so worn with pain, fatigue and emotion that it did not
take much to put him out."

"Just as well," Snape remarked, going on with his work. "It would
only have been painful for him, and now when he wakes the worst
will be over."

For a few minutes he worked in silence. Dumbledore remained near,

holding Potter's lax fingers in his own.

"Severus," the old wizard said in a low voice. "Did… this… appear to
be a common occurrence?"

Snape hesitated, then said slowly, "I'm afraid so, headmaster. While I
did not directly witness more than a few occurrences, I did see their
aftermath. And I was present for what you see the evidence of here."
He paused, then added, "Also… the boy's reactions indicated a long
familiarity with this sort of treatment."

Snape did not look up at the soft sound of grief from Dumbledore,
unwilling to see the pain in the old man's face. When the older
wizard spoke again, however, his voice was composed, even
businesslike.

"And you, Severus? How came you to be injured? Harry described

your wounds to me."
As Snape launched into the story of MacNair and Bellatrix in Surrey,
Dumbledore became very grave indeed.

"This is most ominous," the old man said. He looked troubled. "You
say they did not attempt to intercept Harry on his errand?"

"No, headmaster," Snape replied. "Had they done so, or otherwise

showed any other inclination to attack, I would have intervened at
once. As it was, it appeared to be more of a… surveillance
operation."

Dumbledore frowned. "Most… suggestive. We are fortunate indeed

that Voldemort did not attempt to call you while you were in Harry's
home."

"Indeed." Snape was deeply relieved at this himself, though, like

Dumbledore, troubled. Whatever plan the Dark Lord might be
formulating, he had not yet confided in the Order's resident spy.

Dumbledore pondered this information pensively for a few moments,

then gave his head a slight shake.

"It had been a very long day, Severus, and we're best attacking this
with fresh minds tomorrow… particularly you, my boy," he added,
looking keenly at the potions master. "You are recovering quite well, I
hope?"

"Yes. Potter did an admirable job tending to my shoulder, I am forced

to admit."

Dumbledore smiled at this.

"You see, Severus? Have I not told you to try to see Harry as
himself, and not as his father?"

"He did not do it for me, headmaster. He did it for Spartacus." As

soon as the words were out, Snape wished he had held his tongue.
Even he could hear the regret behind the bitterness in his tone.
Dumbledore, however, did not laugh, but instead looked thoughtful.

"Severus," he said after a pause, "I have long known that Harry's is a
rare soul. His capacity to love is equaled only by his capacity to
forgive." The headmaster smiled a little wistfully at this, perhaps
thinking of how fully the boy had forgiven him his shortcomingsearlier
this evening.

It took Severus a moment to realize what Dumbledore was saying.

When he did, he found he was too tired to be indignant. He paused
in his ministrations to Potter's injuries, thinking hard.

"I can't change, Albus," he said finally, "not really."

Dumbledore was still holding Potter's relaxed hand in his right one;
he now reached over to take Snape's wrist in his left hand, so that
the three of them were connected.

"My dear boy," the older wizard said gently, "you've already changed
in the ways that matter."

Snape felt a thickening in this own throat at this, and looked away
quickly.

Dumbledore decided he had planted enough seeds for this night.

"Are you nearly finished?" he asked.

"I am quite finished now," Snape replied, wiping his hands with a
clean flannel. Potter's wounds had closed, the welts were gone and
the bruises now looked several days old. In a few days they would
be gone completely. Snape thought bitterly that it would be well if
only the scars left on the soul could be vanquished so easily.

"Excellent," Dumbledore said briskly. "I suggest then we remove

Harry to Poppy's care and retire. The difficulties ahead of us can wait
until tomorrow afternoon… in the morning I intend to pay a call to
Surrey," he added, his blue eyes becoming like chips of ice.
Snape regarded him with apprehension. Dumbledore angry was a
frightening sight to behold, he knew from experience. But the old
man visibly gathered himself and turned to the boy, reaching for
Potter's shoulder to gently shake him awake.

"Don't bother," Snape said, and sliding an arm under Potter's chest,
he turned the young wizard over and gathered him into his arms.
Potter was so far out of it that he only mumbled a little and let his
head droop sideways off Snape's shoulder.

It had been a natural thing to do, but once Snape realized what he'd
done he froze, holding Potter awkwardly in his arms, and glared at
Dumbledore, daring the old man to say anything.

But Dumbledore merely smiled and commented lightly, "He's a bit

big to be carried."

"He doesn't weigh anything," Snape snarled, then felt a stab of guilt
when the headmaster's smile faded.

"Albus… you didn't know."

"No, I didn't," Dumbledore said wearily. "But I should have."

The headmaster rubbed his eyes under his half-moon spectacles,

sighed and said, "Come… let's alert Poppy that she has a patient."
Chapter 15
A fifteen-year-old boy is no lightweight, even if he is small and
undernourished for his age. Snape's sore shoulder was throbbing in
counterpoint to his heartbeat by the time they reached the infirmary,
but he did not regret his decision to carry Potter himself, without
magic. Over the past several weeks, Potter had put Snape's needs (
well, Spartacus's needs, anyway, he thought ruefully) ahead of his
own, going without food and rest, risking his uncle's wrath by
pilfering fruit for Snape when it was being denied to him, even
earning himself a cruel beating by attacking his larger, stronger
cousin. Snape was glad now to think that, by suffering a little himself,
he might be adding to the boy's comfort.

Still, it was with relief that he carefully eased Potter's limp form onto
the nearest bed in the empty hospital wing. Carefully he settled the
boy on his side while Dumbledore lifted Potter's feet onto the
mattress. Then the older wizard, with a wave of his wand,
transformed Harry's baggy hand-me-down jeans into pajama
bottoms.

"There is no point in putting a jacket on him until Madam Pomfrey

has seen to his ribs," Dumbledore said quietly.

For a moment, both men stood silently beside the bed, looking at the
sleeping boy's back. Despite Snape's careful attentions, it was still
all-too-obvious that the cuts and bruises had been inflicted
deliberately.

Finally Snape said out loud what he guessed they were both
thinking. "Madam Pomfrey will never believe this was the result of a
quidditch accident."

Albus simply stared pensively at Potter's inert form for a moment.

When he spoke, he did not respond to the potions master's
statement but instead murmured, "How could Vernon Dursley dare to
do this to him, after the Order had spoken to him at the train station
just over a month ago, and knowing he'd be risking my anger?"

Without thinking, Snape replied, "Potter did invoke your name in an

attempt to forestall this beating."

He instantly wished he had bitten his tongue. What had he been

thinking? He must be tired indeed to have made such a slip. It was
too late to take it back, though - Dumbledore had turned to him,
eyebrows raised.

"Indeed? And how did Vernon Dursley respond to that?" The old
man's voice merely sounded mildly interested, but Snape was not
fooled. He could feel the buildup of energy in the air in the
headmaster's general vicinity. It made Snape nervous. He could
count on one hand how many times he had ever seen Dumbledore
truly angry - angry enough to lose control - and it was not something
he was eager to experience again. Snape privately thought that
Dumbledore angry made the Dark Lord look like a puffskein.

Snape tried to take a deep, calming breath without being obvious

about it. Keeping his eyes on Potter's sleeping form, he said simply,
"Dursley indicated to the boy that you were fully aware of his
preferred methods of… discipline, for want of a better word." Snape
hesitated, then finished in a quieter tone, "He also implied to Potter
that you chose him as the boy's guardian for this reason, as you felt
he could provide a much-needed… firm hand… in his upbringing."

The silence stretched out so long that Snape finally dared to look up.
Dumbledore was standing straight and still, staring fixedly at him. His
face was set in harsh lines and his normally warm blue eyes were
like frosted steel.

Three of the windows on the north wall of the hospital wing suddenly
exploded outwards.

Potter woke with a startled cry and Snape himself could not keep
from cowering away from his old mentor. A moment later, Madam
Pomfrey came hurrying through the door that led to her office and
private chambers beyond.

"Headmaster!" the mediwitch cried. "What on earth-"

"My apologies, Poppy," Dumbledore interrupted her smoothly. His

voice and demeanor were calm once again. He raised his wand and
waved it at the windows, which repaired themselves instantly. "I had
been about to firecall you at your home… I had not realized you
were in residence."

Madam Pomfrey blinked at them, then obviously decided not to

pursue it. "I just arrived this evening after dinner; I'd planned to
spend the night and go over my supplies list for next term. Orders
will be due soon, you know." Her gaze shifted to the bed behind
Snape and Dumbledore, where Potter was just sitting up.

"How'd I get here?" the boy asked drowsily.

"Never mind that now, Potter," Snape cut in hastily, eyeing

Dumbledore, who was smiling slightly. "Madam Pomfrey is here to
heal your ribs."

"His ribs?" Snapping immediately into medical mode, Madam

Promfrey hurried forward, drawing her wand as she came and
performing a swift diagnostic spell. "Merlin, Mr. Potter, what have you
been doing now?"

She put a hand on Potter's shoulder, then froze as she caught sight
of his back. Now taking both the boy's shoulders, she applied
pressure on them until he turned reluctantly away from her, allowing
the mediwitch a better view. She caught her breath.

"Merlin!" Madam Promfrey gasped. "Harry?" She leaned forward,

trying to gaze searchingly into his face, but the boy stubbornly
avoided her gaze. Bewildered, she turned back to the two older
wizards. "Gentlemen… what-?"
Dumbledore took a step forward and looked her straight in the eye.
"Harry has had… a slight accident with his broom, Poppy."

"But-"

"Severus and I are taking care of it," Dumbledore added firmly.

Snape watched as the mediwitch stared fixedly at Dumbledore for a

moment. A sudden look of understanding came over her face - along
with fierce anger. Her face reddened, and she said coolly, "We'll
discuss this in greater detail later, I trust, Headmaster."

She fixed Snape with a similar glare ( What have I done? the potions
master thought, amused), then turned back to Potter with a more
solicitous air. "Sit tight, Harry… I'll gather together some remedies
and we'll get you fixed up in no time."

As she hurried into her storeroom, muttering distractedly,

Dumbledore stepped over to Potter once more, laying a gentle hand
on the boy's shoulder.

"My apologies for waking you, Harry. Don't worry… we'll get all this
sorted out. In the meantime, allow Madam Pomfrey to look after you,
and we'll talk more tomorrow."

"Yes, sir," Potter said, leaning back in the bed.

He winced as the mattress came in contact with this battered back,

then seemed surprised at the diminishment of pain. Sitting up and
twisting around, he tried to look over his own shoulder at his back,
then turned to face the two men again. He met Snape's eyes.

"Sir," Potter began hesitantly. "I… thank you. Thank you very much."

Despite himself, Snape was touched by the sincerity and simple

gratitude in the boy's voice. Not trusting himself to speak, he merely
inclined his head.
Potter studied him a moment, then sighed a little and looked down at
his hands, which were resting in his lap. Suddenly, he seemed to
notice something.

"Hang on a minute," the boy said slowly. His eyes narrowed as

though he were thinking hard… then he looked up at Snape again,
and the potions master was startled to see a look of incredulous
indignation on his face.

"You bit me!" Potter said loudly in a thoroughly outraged voice.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Potter!" Madam Pomfrey had appeared in the
doorway, a tray loaded with potions and jars in her hands. She
looked both astounded and concerned, as though she feared the boy
might be delirious. "A teacher would never-"

"Actually bit me!" The boy, looking positively indignant, turned to

Dumbledore, whose blue eyes were twinkling again. "Professor-"

Snape, already turning red with embarrassment, cut in heatedly. "It's

not as if I could take points, Potter, and considering you were
pilfering in my potions stores-"

"Professor Snape !" cried Madam Pomfrey, aghast, and Snape

suddenly realized how this must sound to her - after all, she had no
idea he was an animagus. He could only imagine the picture that
was beginning to form in her head.

Apparently Dumbledore could picture it, too, because his mustache

was twitching.

Madam Pomfrey and Potter both stared at Snape, speechless.

Suddenly Potter grinned.

"Yeah, well… I had to clean up your newspaper everyday, anyway,

so I guess we're even."

Dumbledore laughed outright at this.

Glaring around wildly, Snape spun on his heel and strode out of the
hospital wing, trying vainly to clutch the remains of his shattered
dignity around him. He didn't have much to work with.

" Will you enter into my service, Severus Snape? Will you swear
eternal loyalty to me and accept me as your lord and master?"

He bowed before the Dark Lord, drowning in a mixture of terror and

exhilaration.

" My Lord, I seek only to serve you," he whispered, bending low to

kiss the black robes. "I am not worthy… while my mother's blood is
pure, my father…"

He faltered a little, then stopped.

" Ah, young Severus," the Dark Lord hissed. "Your mother paid for
her folly, and caused you to pay for it, too. A great pity. But we will
forget the past, now."

The Dark Lord raised the teen-aged boy to his feet and drew his
wand. "Hold out your arm and look at me, Severus."

Tossing his head to try and push his long, tangled black hair out of
his eyes, Snape obeyed. The scarlet gaze bore into him, but Snape,
a natural occlumens, did not attempt shield himself, instead letting
Voldemort plumb his mind, his very soul. In the space of a moment,
the Dark Lord had sifted through a thousand memories that Snape
never shared with anyone, or even took out to examine for himself if
he could avoid it. Images of an abused and lonely life played out
before Voldemort's hungry, pseudo-sympathetic stare. As he
touched the tip of his wand to Snape's forearm, he lifted one spidery
hand to push back a stray lock of the boy's hair. A fierce, burning
pain ignited in Snape's arm while a thrill of joy at the calculating
caress flitted through his heart.

" Yesssssss," the Dark Lord whispered, watching as Tobias Snape

backhanded his small son in the teenager's mind. "I can be your
father, Severus… I can be your father in a way our own father never
could be."

Snape jerked awake, his heart pounding. Shivering, he sat up,

pushed the hair back from his eyes and reached for his wand.
"Lumos."

In the soft light of the wand, he glanced at the water clock on his
bedroom mantel: 3:38 a.m.

Damn… what made me dream of that? He shuddered, pressing his

thumbs to his eyelids.

The memory of the day he had accepted the Dark Mark always
made him cringe, and not just as a reformed Death Eater. What
made his insides twist was the way Voldemort had played him so
expertly: a potentially powerful wizard, an abused young boy with no
friends, a sullen teen who judged all muggles by his nearest role
model - his own vicious, pathetic father. Oh, what an easy mark he
had been! The Dark Lord, of course, loved no one but himself and
did not relish touching anyone; two facts that in retrospect somehow
made that careful gesture - the two unnaturally long forefingers
lightly brushing the hair away from the young Snape's brow - all the
worse in its cold calculation. No doubt he had laughed inside at this
foolish teen, seeing through all this pitiful motivations: a desire for
power so he would no longer be weak, and a pathetic need for a
surrogate father. The thought that he, Snape, could have possibly
believed, even subconsciously, that Voldemort could fulfill this role-

Snape threw back the covers and moved restlessly into his sitting
room, settling in his customary chair by the fireplace. He supposed it
was his sojourn into Potter's home life that had evoked this
unpleasant dream.

Dreams .

Potter often had bad dreams, as Snape had seen for himself. What if
he experienced one now in the hospital wing, with no one near to
reassure him if he woke in the unfamiliar place?

At that thought, Snape rose and hurried back into his bedroom to put
on his robes.

The hospital wing looked deserted, but Snape smiled slightly when
he saw the squashy purple armchair at Potter's bedside. Obviously,
Dumbledore had been here earlier, doing precisely what Snape
himself had come to do now. Snape availed himself of the chair and
sat regarding the boy before him.

Potter lay on his side facing the chair. Snape was gratified to see
that he appeared to be sleeping deeply and restfully: the blankets
and sheets were not mussed as they would have been had he been
tossing about in the throes of a nightmare. He lay with his head on
his arm, and his face, while still bearing the traces of tears, appeared
more relaxed and youthful than Snape had ever seen it. Obviously
his cry with Albus earlier in the evening had done him a great deal of
good.

Even with the green eyes closed, Snape could see Lily more than
ever in Potter's face. Without his glasses her high cheekbones,
tapered jaw and clear, pale complexion were more obvious.

Where do we go from here? Snape wondered.

He sighed a little and rose. This was too great a question to ponder
just now. The boy was sleeping comfortably and he himself needed
more rest. There would be time to think on these things tomorrow.

Perhaps it was the rustle of robes as he rose from his chair, but as
he turned to go Potter stirred and woke. Without raising his head
from this arm, he blinked up at Snape.

The potions master froze as the boy's green eyes found his black
ones. He did not know how to explain his presence here, at this hour.
But while he was searching frantically for something to say, Potter
suddenly smiled at him - an amazingly sweet and gentle smile that
took Snape's breath away and made the poor excuse he was
formulating die before it reached his lips.

Because it had never before been directed at him, he had not known
that, in addition to her eyes, Harry Potter had also inherited his
mother's smile.

"Hey, Spartacus," Potter whispered, and closed his eyes once more.
He slid back into sleep as easily as a breaching dolphin returns to
the sea.

Snape stared down at him for a long moment, then slowly resumed
his seat.

A little over an hour later, Poppy Pomfrey, who did not allow herself
to sleep deeply when she had a patient, entered the silent hospital
wing to check on her young charge. Satisfied that he was
comfortable, she tucked the blankets more closely around him and
departed again for her own room.

The hospital wing was warded to alert her to intruders - usually

students sneaking in to visit friends after hours. Having received no
such warnings, she did not bother to examine the shadowy corners
of the high-ceiled ward.

She therefore never noticed the sleeping bat hanging, suspended,

from the rafters directly above Harry Potter's bed.

Fin.
Author's Note
Some facts about fruit bats:

I just wanted to enter a few tidbits here about fruit bats to avoid
confusion, since they're not indigenous to the UK.

While I'm aware that fruit bats are tropical in nature, I figured since,
according to JK Rowling, wizards cannot choose what kind of animal
they turn into when they become animagi (she implies that the
personality of the wizard determines the animal type), there is
nothing preventing them from becoming an animal that is not native
to a particular area (after all they should not have to rely on existing
in that environment in order to survive). I figure I can get away with
using a non-native species since Hedwig, a Snowy Owl, is not native
to the UK, either - and she's not even an animagus!

Fruit bats are also known as "megabats" and "flying foxes." About
sixty subspecies make up flying fox fruit bats, and this is what I
picture when I picture Snape as a bat.

Unlike insectivorous bats, flying foxes (which feed on fruit, flowers

and nectar) do not rely on echolocation. So, while their hearing is
very sensitive, they do not form sound "images" like other bat
species. In fact, they generally rely on their excellent vision and keen
sense of smell to seek out the fragrant, colorful foods they prefer (the
term "blind as a bat" is a misnomer).

I haven't really made up my mind as to what subspecies of flying fox

Snape transforms into, but to give you a frame of reference, here are
some characteristics of the Indian Flying Fox:

- At about 12 inches long, a male Indian Flying Fox would be about

half Hedwig's length
-A female Snowy Owl weighs about 5 pounds; a male Indian Flying
Fox weighs 3-4 pounds

-An Indian Flying Fox's wingspan is about 50 inches; Hedwig's would

be anywhere from 56-66 inches

This story is complete, finished, the end. Thank you for reading!