Harry abruptly dropped back into his chair and stared at his teacher with wide eyes.
Sighing, Snape walked from behind his desk and took the chair facing Harry, pulling it so close that their knees almost touched. "Harry. You cannot tell me you didn't realize this. Do you think it my practice to invite Gryffindors to live with me?"
"No, but that was circumstance," Harry murmured. "And duty too, considering that stuff Trelawney blathered out about me."
"The prophecy makes you significant," Snape levelly agreed. "It is not, however, what makes you important to me. I was not thinking of duty when I opened my home to you."
"No?" Harry knew it was bad of him to fish for more, but he felt scrubbed raw inside. He needed more, needed to hear it.
"I am pleased to help you," Snape elaborated, tilting his head to study the boy. "You look... distressed that I would say as much."
More silence, Harry hanging his head again, rubbing his temples even though the splendid potion had erased all trace of pain. Snape drew in a deep breath and reached for Harry's hands, pulling them away from his skull to clasp them loosely. "Harry, talk. I still don't even know why you came in tonight. You trusted me at Samhain, can you not trust me with this, too? Whatever it is?"
"I don't know what it is," Harry groaned, clenching his eyes. "I just... wanted to see you, without Draco listening to my every word."
"I have wanted that too," Snape returned. "And now we have it. So what is troubling you?"
Harry just shrugged.
"Then I will tell you what begins to trouble me," Snape pronounced, squeezing his hands lightly and then letting go. "You, looking so... upset, ever since I mentioned caring."
Harry realized then that just as when he hadn't jumped at the chance to live here, he was in danger of hurting Snape. And Harry didn't want that, even if he didn't really understand how he felt inside himself. "I'm not upset, I don't think," he tried to explain, biting his lips in agitation. "It's more... I don't trust it. Oh, not because I don't trust you," he rushed to say. "I don't trust adults, that's more what I meant. I mean, adults who are supposed to care for you. Because... well, too many times they just don't."
"Your relatives would certainly bear that out," Snape said, his tones disgusted. Then his voice became more meditative. "But Harry. Black loved you dearly, through all those years of Azkaban, and right up until his death."
"He was never around very much," Harry sighed. "I don't blame him, but the fact remains. And Remus was even worse, in a way. He wasn't on the run, forced to hide. I thought he really cared about me, you know, really cared, not just like I was some promising student or his best friend's son, but cared about me. But I never heard from him, not once through that whole horrid year when I had to compete in that awful tournament."
Snape's dark eyes went even darker than usual. "Lupin really does care about you, idiot though he is, running off for ice cream like that."
Harry had a feeling it had cost Snape something to say that. "I know he cares, but he's not as dependable as..." He looked away, changing what he had been going to say. "As I'd like."
"You've never had an adult be dependable for you," Snape murmured. "Or, at least you don't believe you've ever had that. The headmaster cares about you too, you know. Last year he had his reasons for pulling away--"
"Well, that's just it then, isn't it?" Harry crossly erupted. "There are always reasons! Either you're a little freak nobody could love, or your godfather's in Azkaban, or there's Order business that just has to be seen to, or Voldemort might surge up inside you and hurt somebody! All that means is I've learned the hard way not to depend on anybody!" He didn't say the rest, though it was fairly clear by then.
Even you.
Harry waved a hand, wanting to get away from that. "Anyway, I guess I'm so used to having to take care of myself that it's a little unnerving living here like this, with you in charge. And... well, I know you don't appreciate my attitude with Draco, and I guess I wonder if sooner or later you'll get fed up with me and decide you can't stand me, after all. Not that I think you'd make me go live in the Tower if it wasn't safe, but... listen, I didn't set that snake on Dudley on purpose, okay? And I didn't know that Sals bothered Draco all that much."
Aware that he was rambling, Harry shut his mouth.
"You seem to be under the misapprehension that I merely tolerate your presence here and am eager to be rid of it," Snape quietly said. "Perhaps I gave you that impression when I said Albus had insisted you live with me. But Harry, it was my suggestion in the first place. He was insisting on the plan to Minerva, who did not approve."
"What's her problem?" Harry had to ask.
"Apart from her fear that you and Draco would kill each other inside of a day," Snape explained, "and her mistaken conviction that I still viewed you as another James, she took offense at the idea that House Gryffindor could not take care of its own. I told her the Sorting Hat had wanted you in Slytherin," he added conversationally.
Harry laughed. "Oh, no. Maybe that's why she was so snooty to Ron and Hermione." Another thought chased his smile away. "You don't think she'll tell my friends about that, do you?"
Snape narrowed his eyes. "You are ashamed?"
"No, I just don't think they'd understand." Shaking his head to clear it, Harry went back to their earlier topic. "Um, well I didn't know what I wanted to talk about when I came in; I just felt like I wanted to talk to you. But now I'm wondering if I wasn't realizing I ought to tell you that, um, even with Draco here and all, living here hasn't been er... half-bad, though I am starting to go a little stir crazy, I think. Isn't there any way you could let me outside for a while? Oh, but that's not what I wanted to tell you. I just wanted you to know that I really appreciate how you've been."
"Ah, your thanking-people thing," Snape mused. He didn't seem offended, though he did remind Harry, "I don't need to be thanked, or desire it."
"I know, but you've been good about everything, and you've been taking really good care of me--"
"By feeding you and not locking you in a cupboard, I presume you mean?" Snape softly snarled, though the anger wasn't directed at Harry. "I don't know what Albus thought he was doing, leaving you to grow up like that."
"Well, I might have had it bad in a wizarding family too," Harry tried to pass it off. "Like Draco, his father punishing him that way."
Snape gave him a sharp look, as though he suspected sarcasm, but relaxed when he found none. "In some ways," he revealed, "Draco has had worse to deal with than even you. Your relatives expected virtually nothing of you, I suspect, which is wounding in its own way, but he has always been expected to excel beyond what is possible. Serpensortia, not taught here until the upper levels, and for good reason, but he was forced to learn it years before he came. His great animosity for Granger isn't so much because she is a Muggleborn--"
"Oh, yes it is!" Harry hotly disputed.
"He has Muggleborn friends in Slytherin, Harry. Or did, until they feared for their lives if they associated with him. But let me finish. His great animosity for Granger is primarily rooted in the way she outperforms him on test after test. Draco has gone home at the end of each term only to be reviled when his marks weren't first in his year. I believe Lucius has had rather a lot to say on the subject of his son and heir not even measuring up to a Muggleborn, and a girl at that."
"That's just some story he made up," Harry disagreed. "It's ridiculous. How would Lucius Malfoy even know what marks Hermione got?"
"Sitting on the Board of Governors does have its perquisites."
"Doesn't mean it's not a lie."
Snape gave him a hard look. "Draco never has been able to lie well. Disappearing ink, Harry? I don't know what the truth about that letter is, nor do I wish to know, but I am positive Draco did not do something as idiotic as use disappearing ink!"