After the Storm.

Harry awoke in a familiar room. It felt late in the morning and curiously peaceful. He washed and dressed and wandered downstairs where he was surprised to find no sign of Jane or Tonks.

'Good Morning Mr. Potter.'

Oh . . . bother, thought Harry as he turned to face the Potions Master vaguely wondering if Snape had to try hard in order to achieve that degree of insincerity.

'Good morning sir. Where are . . ?'

'Jane and Tonks? They have gone shopping: Diagon Ally and other places, so they will not be back for some time. Which just leaves you and me, Mr. Potter. Time to make yourself useful, I believe.'

A loud noise, not entirely unlike a chainsaw in action interrupted him. Harry looked down to find Hedwig weaving between Snape's legs, leaving white hairs on his trousers. Snape made a disgusted sound through his teeth and stepped away. 'I am currently working on a new version of the Draught of Living Death,' he remarked glaring at Hedwig who had stopped weaving and stared balefully back, 'and have reached the experimental stage. Alternatively,' he turned to Harry, 'you might remember to feed her.' There were white hairs on his shirt and Harry wondered if he too had been subjected to Hedwig's demands.

A faceful of cat could be persuasive.

Harry found some mince in the fridge, warmed it in the microwave, and put it on a plate for Hedwig. He also refilled the water dish. He made tea and toast for himself and, having taken his time over breakfast, went in search of Snape. He didn't have far to look. Snape was sitting on a sofa with a book open on his lap.

'Professor?'

Snape stood up. 'As a muggleborn, I expect that you know all about motor vehicles?'

Harry didn't like the way he stressed the word 'muggleborn'. 'No sir. I'm sorry. I don't.'

'Then you should regard this as an educational opportunity. Come with me.'

Beyond the garden gate was another stone built construction that Harry had noticed the day before. Garage, he thought, and so it proved. Snape swung open one of the doors and Harry could see a large, old fashioned car within, maroon in colour.'

'Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?' murmured Snape. ' Reconstruct it, get it out of the garage and clean it. Then call me.' He handed Harry some keys along with the book, which turned out to be an old car maintenance manual, before heading back towards the house leaving Harry face to face with a beautiful but shabby automobile. Most of it was covered in cobwebs and its chassis rested upon bricks. This, he decided, was going to take a while.

When some hours later he had finally finished, the car was finally clean but Harry was filthy and his knuckles were skinned. He was also decidedly hungry. Having emptied the bucket he went back into the house where a soft thump and an odd scuttering sound drew him towards the library. As he watched, a roll of parchment hit the wall and fell to the pile below it, where it bounced and rolled away accompanied by the peculiar sounds that he had heard and soft obscenities from his nemesis. It had never occurred to Harry that Snape might hate marking exams. The idea cheered him up immensely.

'Professor?' Snape looked up from the red-spattered parchment before him. 'I've put the wheels back on and inflated the tyres. The battery's back in but it's flat. The car's out of the garage and I've washed it.'

Unspeaking, Snape rose to his feet. Harry followed him out.

Harry's cleaning of Vernon Dursley's car had been a weekly event for as long as he was able to remember and he had been careful to do a thorough job. Snape could find nothing to complain about, even when he had lifted the bonnet and inspected the engine compartment - the source of much of the damage to Harry's knuckles.

'Well well, it would appear that you perform adequately in the capacity of a house elf.' Snape turned to observe the effect of his words. When Harry said nothing, he sneered. 'Clean the windows.' Harry watched him stride back indoors, took a deep breath and reminded himself about the exams.

Having made himself a sandwich, he sat down on the terrace to watch Hedwig stalking butterflies though the garden's overgrown flowerbeds. Beyond the wall the sea sparkled calmly in the sunlight. He could hear stones moving on the beach, birdsong and, from the library window, the occasional thump and scutter. Seize the moment, thought Harry, puzzled at finding himself feeling so at peace and simultaneously so alive.

Home. A shame that it wasn't his.

There were extending ladders in the garage. These he used to reach the upstairs windows. After a while Snape came out to stand watching him work. Harry could feel resentment building and tried to suppress it, then to concentrate on the windows and ignore it. Then, breathing deeply, Harry tried to accept that he was angry with Snape and let it go.

Quite abruptly, almost as if a switch had been thrown, his anger appeared to become somehow distanced from him, almost like water flowing around and underneath him. It would still be easy to tip his fragile equanimity but he found himself giving Snape a wave and a pleasant smile. Snape's smirk disappeared as quickly. Instead he appeared calculating. 'Free yourself of emotion', thought Harry wonderingly, so that's how it's done. Snape drew his wand. 'Ready, Mr. Potter?'

Twelve feet up a ladder, above the stone of the terrace; Harry didn't even have time to panic. He sat himself into the rungs of the ladder and concentrated on breathing, the brightness of the sea and the feel of sun and wind.

'Legilimens!'

For a moment his memory insisted that he was in the chamber of mysteries, but it was just that, a memory. Bright water still stretched to the horizon before his eyes. Harry brought his gaze down, across the beach and into the garden. He turned and, slowly, seeing and feeling the raised metal of the ladder's treads, descended. Then he met Snape's eyes.

Expressionlessly, Snape lowered his wand. 'Better. A pity that you could not have done that before' When Harry didn't react, he turned and went indoors.

Resisting Legilimency was similar to, but also very different from, resisting 'Imperius', and now he had done it. Harry went over it again in his mind - not so much pushing away as a sort of mental side step, allowing the assault to slip past him. He sat down heavily on the terrace steps and began to shake. He allowed himself a few minutes and then he returned to the windows.

Just as he was finishing work the skies opened. Harry put away the ladder and the bucket and came indoors utterly sodden. A hot shower and a change of clothes improved his sense of wellbeing. Snape was still marking exams and did not look happy.

'Professor.' Snape looked up and Harry wondered if anyone would be passing their exams this year. 'I . . . Did you want me to cook dinner?'

'You can cook?'

'Yes.'

Snape continued marking the exam and then flung it into the wall. As it scuttered away he rose to his feet. 'Potter, do you imagine my existence so dull that I would willingly swallow anything that you had prepared

'Fine. I was just trying to help.'

'Trying to curry favour with me?' His lip curled. 'You must think me very stupid.'

Anger surged through Harry and he tried desperately to control it as he watched Snape slowly bent over, his hands on the desk, struggling to remain upright. The wards hide the use of magic but they're drawing energy from Snape he remembered, and Snape appeared to be half conscious and in pain.

Aunt Marge thought Harry, remembering his inadvertently blowing her up. He could not afford another incident like that. None of them could. 'No! I . . .' He turned away. Once again he could see the runes flowing through the walls and, in his memory or perhaps not, he could hear high pitched laughter.

Harry closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing. He imagined the bright water beyond the beach and his anger drained to leave what felt like an aching hollow space within him. 'Why? Why do you hate me so much? What have I done? You had reason to hate my father but I'm not him.' He swallowed painfully.

'No. Your father never put three of his class mates into Saint Mungo's.'

Malfoy? Harry stared at Snape in horror. They hadn't been pretty but . . . He thought about the last time he had seen Malfoy with his cronies Crabbe and Goyle, slung into a luggage rack on the Hogwarts Express, no longer looking human.

'So you couldn't decide which spell to use?' Snape whispered. 'How long did it take you and your friends to achieve quite that result? It took four days to undo it. Did you notice that Goyle wasn't breathing? Or didn't it matter?' Snape had not let go of the desk. Some remote part of Harry's mind wondered if this was to restrain his hands, if Snape was afraid that he might strangle him.

'I didn't . . .' he began, 'I didn't know we'd hurt them, not like that, we didn't mean to. They tried to attack me, right in front a carriage-full of DA members. Every bloody year,' a small, bitter laugh broke from him, 'every year they try to attack me and they get it wrong. I wish they'd give it a rest.' The ache within him had become unbearable. It was hard to speak. 'I'm not like that. I tried to use Cruciatus on Bellatrix and she laughed at me, said you had to want to hurt people. I don't even want to kill Voldemort and it's that or die.'

'What are you talking about Potter?'

'The Prophesy. One of us has to die at the hand of the other. Neither can live while the other survives.' Harry glanced up to find Snape watching him with narrowed eyes. 'The recording was destroyed but it was Trelawney, and Professor Dumbledore who heard it. He showed it to me in his penseive.'

'Trelawney?' Snape stared at him in disbelief. Harry nodded. 'Trelawney is a myopic, fraudulent, old baggage without the wit to keep her mouth shut concerning the lamentable depths of her own ignorance. You are a distraction for the Dark lord! Nothing more.'

'She was right before, when she foretold Wormtail going back to . . . the Dark Lord.' Harry looked into the dark tunnels of Snape's black eyes. 'I wish you were right,' he concluded bleakly. 'I really do.'

'Go to your room, Potter. Do not come down until I call you.' Harry turned away and went quietly to his room.

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Face down on his bed, Harry heard the car draw up outside. After a while there was a tapping on the door. He got up and opened it to find Jane looking concerned. 'Are you alright?'

'Fine'

'Come and have some dinner.'

'Professor Snape said to stay here until he called me.'

'He's not here. He's gone to see Dumbledore.'

'I'm not hungry.' Actually he felt sick. 'I'm ok Jane. I'm just a bit tired.'

Jane pushed past him into the bedroom. She went to the window, turned and allowed her back to slide down the wall until she reached the floor, where she sat looking up at him. 'Tell me about the prophesy.'

Harry sat down on the floor with his shoulders resting against the bed and started to talk.

He talked for hours. As it grew darker he could no longer see her clearly. She was simply a quiet presence, occasionally asking questions but mostly just listening. If Snape threw him out, as Harry feared he would, he would probably never see her again. And he had to tell someone.

Finally they sat in silence for so long that Harry wondered if Jane had fallen asleep, but as he started to stand up she did the same. He moved towards the window and she turned until he could see her face in the dim light from the sky outside. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'You probably didn't need to hear all that.'

'Harry,' Jane ran her hands over her face, 'social skills aren't my thing. In fact "the social grace of pondweed" probably just about covers it.' She took a deep breath. 'If you were to, oh, take your broom and fly out over the ocean until you fell in, do you think people would be better off?'

Harry thought about that and tried to crush the feeling rising within him 'Maybe.' But maybe not, he thought. He did not dare to hope. 'If he's right and I'm just a distraction,'

'And if not?' She paused and then continued more softly. 'And even if he is right, you can choose to be more. You fought Voldemort a year ago and he didn't win. And you don't have to do it alone. You have friends.'

'Who get hurt.'

'Who would still get hurt if you had never been born.' She placed a hand on his arm. 'You're a good person Harry, and as long as you continue to care about that you will be.' Her hand dropped and she shook her head. 'Sorry, I think that came out wrong. Goodnight Harry.'

'Goodnight Jane.'

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Harry awoke to the rattle of rain on the windows and the awareness that he would have to face Snape. He dressed in the clothes that he had arrived in and then took out his broomstick maintenance kit and started work.

Eventually there came a knock and then the door swung open. 'Potter, downstairs.' Harry got up and followed him downstairs to the library where Snape shut the door behind them. 'Show me your hand.' Harry held out his right hand, palm upward. His wrist was seized and twisted until the words 'I must not tell lies' inscribed into the back of his hand were visible. 'Potter, you are an idiot. Why did you not tell anyone?'

'I didn't think it would do any good,' said Harry tiredly. I didn't want her to think she was getting to me. How did you find out?' He hadn't mentioned it to Jane.

'Molly Weasley found out. And then she had a little chat with Professor Dumbledore. Sit.' Snape sat in the chair behind the desk. There was another chair in front of the shelves. Harry put the pile of books on top of it onto the floor, placed it in front of the desk and sat down. 'Why did you not think that it would do any good?'

'Professor Dumbledore was avoiding me. Professor McGonagall said it was between me and Umbridge.'

Snape was staring at him. 'You did not tell her about that.'

'No, just about the Quiddich ban. But if she couldn't do anything without getting into trouble, there was no point in telling her.'

'It did not occur to you that the fact that Umbridge cutting up the "boy who lived" was something that we could use against them?'

'No.'

'Or that, because you stayed silent, others would?'

Horrified by that thought, Harry found that he could say nothing.

'After your vision of the Department of Mysteries why did you not come and tell me?'

'I had forgotten that you were a member of the order,' said Harry stiffly. 'And anyway I wouldn't have expected you to listen. I didn't trust you.'

There was a long silence and then 'You didn't trust me? Do you now?'

Harry thought about that and then decided that it wasn't something to think about. Did he trust Snape? He didn't like him but . . . 'Yes.'

'Then in future, if you have a problem you will tell someone. If you can tell no one else you will tell me.' Snape got to his feet.

'You're not throwing me out?'

'If that were an option you would not be here now.'

The Potions Master had opened the door and stood waiting for Harry to leave. He remained seated. 'I don't understand.'

'It's really not difficult. Your presence here is the price of my own child's safety.'

'Dumbledore?'

'Professor Dumbledore.' The reply was clearly automatic. 'No. Not entirely.' Snape shut the door and returned to stand with his hands resting on the back of the seat. 'Jane has the talisman known as the "Star of Grace". The name is recent, acquired in the several centuries it spent around the neck of a gilded Madonna somewhere in middle Europe. The article itself is ancient and, while magically less powerful than certain others, effective. Jane, becoming lost, found herself in the right place at the right time to rescue you and in doing so has learned the truth about our world. You will recall what happened when you arrived here?'

'Jane said that Professor Dumbledore wanted to obliviate her.'

'Indeed. Instead she has been promised protection.' Harry asked himself if he should consider this an expression of gratitude from his teacher and then decided that it probably wasn't. Snape sat down at the desk. 'You missed supper last night?'

'Yes.'

'Because I sent you to your room and told you to stay there. You can disobey me but you won't want to.'

Oddly Snape did not appear smug. 'Miranda also used old magic to protect her child. "Ancient Runes" are called so for a reason. You study neither Runes nor Arithmancy so you must simply accept that with three in the household the magic is vastly more powerful than with two. So much so that while you may leave with the agreement of either Jane or myself, attempting to evict you would probably destroy the wards in a manner likely to attract unwelcome attention.'

Harry swallowed. 'If you want me to, I'll leave,' he ventured.

Snape sat back and regarded him thoughtfully. 'Potter, can you see the Runes?'

'The writing in the walls? Yes. But I saw them the first night I was here, before I drank the tea.'

Snape was staring at him again. 'Indeed?' Fingers touching his mouth, he appeared to be thinking deeply. 'Blood magic has been little more than a hobby for an intellectual elite for centuries,' he began. 'You might want to compare it with Meteorology: the Muggle study of the weather. While it is possible to make generalisations as to its effects, it remains extremely difficult, under most circumstances, to make accurate predictions.

Snape leant forward, steepling his fingers on the desk. 'It may be that the loss of your Godfather as well as the protection of your relatives caused the magic to become un-anchored in some way. That being so my life debt to your father, as well as Jane's need for access to the magical world, may have given rise to a new connection.

Harry thought about that.

Harry didn't want to think about that.

'Potter,' Snape continued, you should accept that you are not important and you never were, except inasmuch as that you were the reason for what your mother did. It is her magic that saved you and that continues to protect you and each time that you so gratuitously go gallivanting into danger some part of it is lost.'

There was silence as Snape appeared to restrain his temper. 'You will at least try to stay out of trouble.' Again he got to his feet, went to the door and opened it. 'And now I have things to do.'

Thus dismissed, Harry found that he couldn't resist the temptation. 'Potions exams, sir?'

'Dark Arts.'

Of course Umbridge has gone, thought Harry as he tried to make sense of the rather odd expression on Snape's face. 'How's that funny sir?'

'Professor Dumbledore forbade harm to Umbridge. I believe that that prohibition may have been withdrawn.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Miss Umbridge is a respected senior employee of the Ministry of Magic. I have no intention of doing anything.' He smirked and then the door was closed behind Harry.

Oh, really, thought Harry. As he turned away, he heard laughter from the kitchen and remembered that he was hungry.