The mysterious Professor
Harry grunts a little in his sleep and his face slides down the window he's been using as a pillow an inch or so, making his glasses even more lopsided than they already were and yet he still doesn't wake up. On the window sill, an old alarm clock is facing him, ticking loudly and showing a minute to eleven. Beside it, held in place by Harry's relaxed hand, is a piece of parchment covered in thin, slanted writing:
Dear Harry,
If it is convenient to you, I shall send someone to call at number four Privet Drive this coming Friday at eleven p.m. to collect you and escort you to a safe house where, if you are agreeable, you will spend the remainder of your school holidays.
I would have come myself, but I'm afraid a matter has arisen that shall need my full attention for the time being, so I will see you at Hogwarts at the end of the summer. The professor who will come to pick you up will explain more fully on Friday.
Kindly send your answer by return of this owl.
I am, yours sincerely,
Albus Dumbledore
Though he already knows it by heart, Harry has been stealing glances at this missive every few minutes since seven o'clock, when he'd first taken up position at the window from which he can see both ends of Privet Drive.
Harry had sent back his yes immediately, not stopping to worry about this mysterious Professor until afterwards, wondering if Dumbledore would send McGonagall or maybe their new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, in other words a complete stranger... Harry had for a very brief, hopeful moment thought of Remus Lupin, until he'd remembered that the werewolf was no longer teaching.
Harry haven’t finished packing. It had just seemed too good to be true, when he’d read Dumbledore’s letter, the prospect of leaving Privet Drive again after merely a fortnight!
Of course, he didn’t know what this safe house would be like, and with whom he’d share it, if anyone, maybe it would turn out to be even worse than staying with the Dursleys, although he’d sincerely doubted it. Still, he hadn’t been able to entirely shrug off the feeling that something was going to go wrong – whether it’d be that his reply to Dumbledore’s letter would somehow go astray, or this Professor be held up and unable to come, or worse still: the whole thing might even be a trap.
The minute hand on the alarm clock reaches number twelve and at that precise moment the streetlamp outside the window goes out. As if the sudden darkness were an alarm in itself, Harry wakes up. Hastily straightening his glasses and unsticking his cheek from the glass, he presses his nose to the window instead and peers down at the street below. He catches sight of a moving shadow, or it could have been the tail end of a dark robe or cloak, but he has no chance of spotting the person’s face before they’ve moved out of sight.
The next moment, the doorbell rings and Harry jumps up as though having received an electric shock and knocks the chair over in the process. His Uncle Vernon shouts from downstairs (Who in the blazes is calling at this time of night?) as Harry starts to snatch anything and everything within reach from the floor and throws it into the trunk.
“Good evening”, a dark, silky voice says and Harry freezes.
Clutching a brass telescope in one hand and a pair of trainers in the other, Harry feels his pulse pick up a steady, fast rhythm, as he holds his breath, listening to that all-too-familiar voice, but it’s can’t be…
“You must be Mr. Dursley…”the unmistakable voice of Professor Severus Snape continues. “I daresay Mr. Potter has informed you that I would be coming?”
Ah shit, Harry thinks desperately and clambers over the trunk, still clutching the telescope and trainers awkwardly in one arm, he wrenches open his bedroom door and starts lumbering down the stairs two at a time, feeling both panicky and close to laughter.
He comes to a halt halfway down the stairs, as long experience growing up with Uncle Vernon has taught him to stay out of arm’s reach as often as is possible, and come to think of it, so has recent experience with Snape…
The Potions Master is standing framed in the doorway, his black robes billowing around him and his pale face, curtained by long, dark and rain damp hair, is marred with a subtle scowl. He and Uncle Vernon both turn to glare at Harry.
“Judging by your look of disbelief and Potter’s imitation of someone who has just been stunned, he did not inform you I was coming”, Snape continues and Uncle Vernon whips his head around to face him again. “However… shall we assume you have invited me in, all the same? It is unwise to linger on doorsteps in these troubled times… plus, it’s raining.”
Without waiting for any type of reply, Snape slides over the threshold and swings the door shut behind him.
“I don’t mean to be rude—“ Uncle Vernon splutters indignantly.
Snape’s eyes flicker over to Harry for a split second, but it is impossible to decipher his mood since he is even more stone-faced than Harry is used to seeing him in school and he wonders how much Dumbledore has told him about his last meeting with Harry, if he’s told him about Harry throwing a tantrum and smashing most of Dumbledore’s possessions, if he’s told him that Harry holds Snape responsible for Sirius’s death, I hope so, he thinks mulishly, because it was his fault, if that git hadn’t taunted Sirius like that then he might not have left Grimmauld Place and gone to the Department of Mysteries with the rest of the Order…
“Yet”, Snape interrupts both Uncle Vernon and Harry’s train of thoughts. “Sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often. Best not to say anything at all… Potter.”
Harry startles slightly and almost drops his telescope, but manages to catch it again.
“Y-yeah—?“
Snape glares slightly at him, and it’s oddly comforting, Harry realises. He looks more like himself like that.
“There are a few matters that I have been asked to discuss with you before we go—“
“Where are we going—?“ Harry cuts in hopefully, but Snape ignores him.
“—And I would prefer it if we didn’t do so out in the open…”
He turns back to Uncle Vernon and raises an eyebrow expectantly, but Uncle Vernon says nothing. The vein pulsing in his temple is nearing danger point though, Harry can tell.
“Shall we assume you have invited me into your sitting room?” Snape says and, again without waiting for a reply, strides past Uncle Vernon and into the next room, his robes billowing in his wake.
Harry cautiously side-steps first his uncle and then Aunt Petunia whose head is sticking out from the kitchen suspiciously, and follows the Professor quickly.
Snape hasn’t bothered to sit down, but he immediately gestures for Harry to take a seat in the armchair nearest the fire and Harry gingerly perches on the edge of the seat and watches the Potion Master warily.
“Potter, I’ll get straight to the point”, he says matter-of-factly whilst gazing at a point just above Harry’s right shoulder. “They have discovered Sirius Black’s last will and testament and he left you everything.”
Harry senses some movement in his peripheral and realises that his aunt and uncle, and maybe Dudley too by this point, is lurking in the doorway and eavesdropping on the conversation, but he won’t turn his head to look; he won’t , can’t look at them right now.
“Right”, he says numbly.
He’d have expected to feel more angry with Snape, especially hearing him talk about Sirius like this, but he feels nothing.
“It’s quite straight-forward”, Snape continues. “A reasonable amount of gold will be added to your vault at Gringott’s and you also inherit all of Black’s personal possessions. The problematic part of the legacy—“
“His godfather’s dead?” Uncle Vernon speaks up and there’s no mistaking the hopeful tone in his voice. “He’s dead, his godfather? Definitely gone?”
“Yes”, Snape hisses, without looking in the man’s direction, instead his eyes flick up to meet Harry’s for the first time, but he quickly looks away again. “Our problem… is that Sirius also left you number twelve Grimmauld Place.”
“The Order can keep using it as Headquarters, I don’t care”, Harry says immediately, wondering if maybe that’s the safehouse he’s meant to spend the rest of the summer in – and if he’d actually be able to stand setting foot in the place again, and so soon after Sirius…
“How generous”, Snape murmurs. “Unfortunately, we’ve had to vacate the building for now… Since the Black family tradition decreed that the house be handed down in a direct line to the next male with the name Black. Sirius Black, however, was the very last of his line, his brother Regulus having predeceased him as you may know, and both… childless… and while his will makes it perfectly plain that he wants you to have the house, it is nevertheless possible that some spell or enchantment has been placed upon it to ensure that it cannot be owned by anyone other than a pureblood… in which case, the ownership of the house is most likely to pass to the eldest of Black’s living relatives, which would mean his cousin—“
“Bellatrix Lestrange!” Harry finishes for him and feels a sinking feeling in his gut; Sirius murderer inherit his house, no fucking way…“No! She can’t have it!”
“Naturally, the Order isn’t very keen on its Headquarters for the past year to move into the hands of a Death Eater either… Also, we don’t know whether the enchantments that we ourselves have put on it, for example making it unplottable, will still hold now that ownership has passed from Black’s hands… it might be that Bellatrix will arrive on the doorstep at any moment, so naturally we had to move out until such time as we have clarified the position… Fortunately, there is a simple test to find out if you yourself is now the rightful owner of number twelve Grimmauld Place, because if you are, then you are also the owner of…”
Snape flicks his wand and with a loud crack a distraught-looking house elf appears out of thin air; Aunt Petunia lets out a piercing shriek.
“Kreacher won’t, Kreacher won’t, Kreacher won’t!“ croaks the miserable house elf, stamping his feet and pulling on his huge, bat-like ears. “Kreacher belongs to miss Bellatrix, oh, yes, Kreacher belongs to the Blacks, not the Potter brat—!“
“Give him an order”, Snape instructs Harry loudly to be heard over Kreacher’s continued wailing (“Won’t, won’t, won’t, WON’T!”) and Harry, unable to think of anything else to say to the elf, yells at him to Shut up, will you! and for a second it looks like the elf is about to choke, grabbing his throat desperately, his huge eyes bulging in panic and rage and mouth still working furiously although no sound can be heard escaping from it.
“Well, that simplifies matters…” Snape mutters.
Harry eyes the house elf as he starts to roll around on the floor, much to Aunt Petunia’s horror, and punch her meticulously scrubbed carpet with his tiny fists, and asks Snape if he’ll have to keep him, understanding of course that it would be a very bad idea to set him free, but also hoping that he won’t have to keep him with him.
“Certainly not”, Snape says quickly. “I suggest you put him to work in the kitchens at Hogwarts, where the other elves can keep an eye on him for us…”
“That’s… actually a good idea”, Harry says, relieved. “Kreacher! Er… I want you to go to Hogwarts and work in the kitchens there, okay?”
Kreache,r who is now lying flat on his back with his arms and legs in the air, gives Harry an upside-down look of deep loathing, then disappears again with another crack.
“There is also the matter of the hippogriff”, Snape says in an almost bored tone. “Hagrid has been looking after it, but since it is now yours, you may want to make different arrangements…”
He seems entirely unsurprised when Harry says Hagid can keep Buckbeak, so far he’s been almost on auto-pilot, except for when he’d had to address Uncle Vernon, having anticipated Harry’s reactions and answers, but now suddenly he seems to draw himself up and his gaze becomes more focused, hardened even, fixed as it is on the doorway behind Harry where the Dursleys are huddled together.
“Now”, he says in a tone of voice that suggests he’s finally got to the good part, and flicks his wand for a second time, causing the large sofa to scoop the Dursleys up and transport them further into the room. “As you will no doubt be aware, Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, Mr. Potter comes of age in a year’s time…”
“No”, Aunt Petunia pipes up. “No, he doesn’t. He’s a month younger than Dudley, and Dudders doesn’t turn eighteen until the year after next—“
“Yes”, Snape agrees silkily. “But in the wizarding world, we come of age at seventeen.”
Completely disregarding Uncle Vernon’s preposterous, Snape continues: “Now, as you already must know by now, the wizard called Lord Voldemort has returned to this country, and the wizarding community is currently in a state of open warfare… Harry, whom the Dark Lord has already attempted to kill on a number of occasions, is in even greater danger now than he was when you found him on your doorstep fifteen years ago…”
Harry feels a jolt of some unfamiliar feeling at hearing Snape talk about him like this with the Dursleys, and even refer to him as Harry as opposed to the disgusted way he normally spits out his last name. It’s also thrilling to watch him swoop down on the Dursleys and stare down his crooked nose at them in his most intimidated fashion, although it hasn’t worked on me since first year, Harry thinks, but looking over at the Dursleys he can tell it works on them at least.
“Of course you have never treated this boy as your own, as was Professor Dumbledore’s request”, Snape’s words filter in through Harry’s thoughts. “From what I’ve been informed, he’s known nothing but neglect and often even cruelty at your worthless hands…”
Harry experiences another jolt and feels his heart start to properly hammer away in his chest.
“…The best that can be said is that he at least escaped the appalling damage you have inflicted upon the lump of a boy sitting between you.”
Both Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon look around instinctively, as though expecting to see someone other than Dudley squeezed in-between them.
“Us? – mistreat Dudders? – whatever d’you –?“ Uncle Vernon begins to splutter indignantly, but Snape flicks his wand again and he falls silent immediately, just like Kreacher had when Harry had ordered him to shut up, and just like Kreacher, Uncle Vernon grabs at his own throat in panic.
Aunt Petunia lets out another shriek, “Vernon! Vernon, what’s wrong!?”
Snape sighs, but it’s more of a put upon huff than anything else, and despite everything, despite this being Snape, Harry finds himself grinning.
“The magic Dumbledore evoked here fifteen years ago”, he continues in a loud voice to be heard above Aunt Petunia’s sobs and Dudley’s whimpers. “Means that Harry has powerful protection while he can still call this house… home. However miserable he’s been here”, Snape flicks another glance at Harry’s face, then ploughs on with an air of somebody who wants to move things along. “However unwelcome and mistreated, you have at least allowed him house room. This magic will cease to operate the moment Harry turns seventeen, however, Dumbledore has asked me to implore you, if you can see it in… your hearts…” Snape sneers. “To allow the boy to return once more to this house next summer, until his seventeenth birthday, so that the protection will at least hold until that time… I take it by your silence that we are in agreement.”
Harry bites back a snort, seeing the look of incredulity on his aunt and uncle’s faces.
“Potter…” Snape says, and Harry tears his eyes away from the Dursleys again. “Is there any point in even asking whether or not you have finished packing?”
“Er…” Harry looks down at the telescope and trainers hugged to his chest and feels his face heat up.
“Of course not”, Snape mutters.
“I’ll be five minutes—!“ Harry shouts over his shoulder as he’s bolted out of the room.
“You’ll be two, or you’re staying here!” Snape shouts after him half-heartedly as he takes the stairs, again two at a time, and hurls himself inside his room.
*
Harry feels more than a little awkward as he struggles to keep up with the Potions Master as they leave number four Privet Drive, lugging his trunk and Hedwig in her cage.
Snape suddenly comes to an abrupt halt at the end of the street, causing Harry to accidentally walk into him and he feels himself flush again. Snape says nothing, just takes out his wand and then, almost as an afterthought, he glances uncertainly at Harry.
“I-I can’t Apparate”, Harry says.
“And you haven’t Side-Apparated with anyone before?”
Harry doesn’t bother asking what Side-Apparating means, figuring it’s probably just what it sounds like and just shakes his head no. Snape nods.
“It’s fairly simple”, he says bracingly and flicking another glance in Harry’s direction, a glance that Harry is sure to mean Even a dolt like you should be able to manage it, Potter. “But you’ll need to, er… hold onto me… quite tightly.”
Harry isn’t sure who is the most uncomfortable right now, him or Snape, but he nods and tries to appear cool about it, and probably failing spectacularly.
Snape shrinks Harry’s trunk so that he can just put it in his pocket. I like how he waited to do that until we’d walked all the way down the street, Harry thinks bitterly, but doesn’t say anything about it out loud. Snape also shrinks Hedwig’s cage after he’s let her out and told her to go on ahead. Harry tries to hear what address he mutters to her before releasing her into the crisp night air, but he speaks too softly for Harry to be able to make out the words.
“All right… Ready then?” Snape says.
“Are we going to Grimmauld Place, then? Is that the safehouse Dumbledore mentioned?”
“What? No. No, we’re not going to Grimmauld Place… nor The Burrow”, he adds before Harry has a chance to ask.
“So where—?“
“Well, you’ll see in a minute, Potter. Come on, now. I haven’t got all night… Just…” he holds out his arm stiffly and gives Harry an impatient look.
“Right”, Harry says in a rasp, mouth suddenly gone a little dry, and he tentatively touches his hand to the older man’s robe-clad elbow.
Snape makes an impatient noise at the back of his throat and gives his arm a little shake. With a deep, steeling breath Harry links his arm with Snape’s and steps closer to him. Snape then makes a soft grunt, as if to encourage, but it only makes Harry feel more awkward.
Luckily, the moment passes quickly and before he’s had time to completely die of embarrassment, Harry is distracted by a sudden, nauseating sensation of being hauled through space while everything goes dark around him; he can feel Snape’s arm slipping in his grip and start to twist away from him and instinctively hugs him closer, clutching his arm desperately as he feels himself being pressed very hard from all directions; he can’t breathe, there are iron bands tightening around his chest; his eyeballs are being forced back into his head and his eardrums pushed deeper into his skull and then –
He gulps down great lungfuls of cold night air and opens his streaming eyes to an unfamiliar field split in two by a narrow river hugged by overgrown banks.
Still gasping for breath, Harry blinks some of the blurriness away and vaguely registers the chill on his cheeks as the warm tears quickly cool. He spots an immense chimney in the near distance, a relic of a disused mill by the looks of it, shadowy and ominous in the gloomy dark dispersed only slightly by a couple of streetlamps.
“Are you all right?”
Harry startles and whips his head around to meet the Professor’s gaze and feels his face flush again when he realises that he’s still clutching the man’s arm as though his life depends on it, and he quickly lets go and takes a step back, mumbling something about preferring brooms and flushes even more when Snape’s lips quirk a little with involuntary amusement.
“What is this place?” he asks quickly, hoping to distract the other man before he starts teasing and taunting him, but Snape doesn’t answer him, just sets off towards the chimney and Harry hurries to keep up with him.
Entering into a seemingly deserted labyrinth of brick houses, Harry finds himself moving a little closer to the older man, but decides not to look to closely at the reason behind this, and if Snape notices he doesn’t let on, just continues to walk briskly onto a street called Spinner’s End, according to a weather-worn street sign next to one of few functioning streetlamps.
Their footsteps echo on the cobbles, Harry’s in particular for some reason, and he wonders anxiously whether the neighbourhood really is deserted or if he’ll wake up half the street when he suddenly stumbles over his own feet and nearly falls face first to the ground. Snape’s arm shoots out instinctively to catch him and Harry mumbles a thanks that goes completely ignored, however Snape does slow down his pace slightly.
They reach the very last house on Spinner’s End and Snape stops and mutters something under his breath, flicking his wand in a decisive manner back and forth a couple of times, and when nothing at all happens, he continues to walk up to the front door and unlocks it.
“What is this place?” Harry asks again as he follows the other man inside the house, looking around curiously.
Snape walks into what appears to be the sitting room and lights a couple of candles and a big fire in the old fireplace.
“My house”, he replies curtly and strides out of sight into an adjoining room.
Snape’s house, Harry thinks incredulously. Dumbledore wants me to stay with Snape all summer?
He can hear tinkering from what he assumes must be the kitchen and follows the other man cautiously, but stays hovering uncertainly in the doorway.
“I’m making tea”, Snape announces unnecessarily, brandishing a kettle in Harry’s general direction but not looking at him. “I have already prepared a room for you…”
He flicks his wand and Harry can hear a creaking sound from the sitting room behind him and assumes a door has been opened.
“You may retire if you wish”, Snape continues. “It’s rather late. Or, if you would prefer, you can join me for tea before bed… it’s entirely up to you…”
Harry isn’t sure why, but he gets the feeling that Snape is being defensive, and it’s fairly obvious that Harry is the last person he’d want to have stay in his house with him, which should be anything but surprising and yet Harry feels quite irked by this blatant display of displeasure, even though it’s nothing compared to his attitude towards Harry in the classroom, because it’s not like I asked to come here, he thinks. It’s not like I even want to be here!
“Or…” Snape adds quietly, peering carefully at a point halfway up Harry’s arm by the looks of it. “If you’d rather, you’re also more than welcome to take a cup of tea with you… to your… room.”
“Right”, Harry mutters, feeling a little put-upon at the poorly disguised demand that he get out of the other’s face, but stamps down on the irritation before it can fester and grow into a full-blown rage.
“Actually, I think I just want to go to bed then… I’m a bit tired…” he lies.
Snape abandons the kettle, and Harry realises that he might have started the task purely for Harry’s benefit, in some kind of grudging show of hospitality, and isn’t sure how he feels about it if that’s the case. He merely follows him back out into the sitting room, where indeed a door is now ajar that hadn’t been before. Snape gestures for Harry to walk into the room and he does so cautiously.
An old-fashioned storm lantern is hanging in the window, spreading its dim candle light over the small room and illuminating a carefully made bed, a rickety old desk with accompanying chair and a single bookcase, gaping empty save for a small number of leather bound books with indecipherable titles in peeling gold. Harry makes a mental note to check them out properly in daylight, and then turns to look over at Snape. The other man is standing in the doorway, feet on the other side of the threshold as if to respect the space as Harry’s now, and it makes Harry feel all sorts of weird.
“Well, good night… then…” he says awkwardly.
Snape nods once, and then gently swings the door shut. Harry holds his breath and listens with dread for the sound of a lock clicking into place, but no such sound can be heard. Instead he hears the muffled sound of Snape’s footsteps as he moves away from the door.
Harry releases the breath he’s been holding. He walks over to the bed and sinks down on it, half expecting a cloud of dust to fly up around him, but the sheets feel crisp and clean under his hands and when he’s crawled under the covers buried his face in the pillow the subtle smell of lily-of-the-valley soothes him strangely and he falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.
*
When Harry is awoken by the dim sunlight filtered through the dirty window glass in Snape’s guestroom, Harry’s room, as opposed to the shrill shriek of his aunt’s voice yelling at him to get up and make himself useful, he realises that the events of the previous night hadn’t been a weird dream after all.
He rubs some of the sleep out of his eyes and, pushing his glasses onto his face, squints out into the still unfamiliar room, trying to get his bearings.
He sits up and stretches his arms over his head, feeling a muscle in his lower back pop satisfactorily.
He finds Snape in the kitchen, where he seems to be waiting for Harry to appear, although why he was waiting Harry doesn’t understand because he makes up an excuse and leaves just as soon as Harry crosses the threshold. Harry turns back into the kitchen and eyes the breakfast foods spread out across the rickety table and what he assumes to be a pot of tea under a hideous old tea cozy. He shrugs to himself and takes a seat at the table, stomach rumbling and reminding him that he’d barely eaten anything the day before.
Once Harry has wolfed down enough eggs and toast to start to feel full, he slows down a little, expecting Snape to come back eventually, but he never does. After a while, Harry grows restless and stands up. He eyes the dishes and uneaten food hesitantly, wondering if he should put it away and, thinking better safe than sorry, puts the food in the muggle fridge and the dishes in the sink before he walks out into the sitting room.
Snape is sitting in the solitary armchair, reading a book when Harry joins him. He quickly snaps the book shut however and stands up, still without looking directly at Harry.
“Let’s get started then…” he murmurs and swoops round the rickety table, his wand appearing seemingly from nowhere, steady in his hand.
“No pensieve?” Harry asks carefully.
His muscles tense instinctively as he steels himself, half-expecting Snape to hex him for his insolent question, or simply for reminding him of Harry’s insolence in the past when he’d peered into one of Snape’s embarrassing memories quite without asking and making the Potions Master angrier than Harry had ever seen him before, or since, including in the memory that he’d invaded. Or maybe it just seems worse when the anger is directed right at you, Harry supposes.
Snape doesn’t hex him though, nor does he throw anything at Harry or even raise his voice at him. He merely glares back briefly, before looking away to take a deep, short breath.
“What would be the point?” he says, then looking back at Harry he gives him a tiny nod to encourage him to get his wand out, get this over with…