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.