Harry twisted his hands together, thinking uh-oh....
"Harry?" the headmaster queried.
"Um... do they interview anybody else? Because... um, if they start asking around, my friends or... well, pretty much anybody really, I don't think the word compatible is so likely to come up. You know, Professor Snape and I have a reputation for not getting along so well."
Dumbledore nodded sagely, though he said, "Not to worry, my boy. Wizard Family Services has a fair number of Order members on staff, many of them from the old crowd assembled the last time we had trouble with Voldemort. They're familiar with the service Severus here has rendered the cause of Light. They know that he's had to play a double role here at school. I foresee no problems in that regard save..."
"Save what, Headmaster?" Snape crisply inquired.
"Ah. Well, Harry... I strongly feel we can't proceed unless I understand why you would agree to this."
All at once, Harry felt his Slytherin side rise to the surface of his mind. The headmaster's query wasn't rooted in any true concern for his well-being; it was nothing but strategy. Dumbledore was angling for information, trying to figure out the best way to forge Harry into the warrior they all needed, trying to figure out if this adoption would serve that end, or not.
Dumbledore didn't give a hoot if it served any of Harry's own needs. Given that, Harry felt singularly uninterested in answering.
"Harry?" Dumbledore prompted again.
"My reasons are personal," Harry told him, raising tired green eyes. All of a sudden, he just wanted to go to sleep, and wake up when it was all over, the paperwork, the interview, the whatever. Or better yet, he wanted to sleep until Voldemort was buried sixty feet deep, until somebody else, somebody who might actually be capable, saved the Wizarding world.
"I was afraid of this," Dumbledore sighed. "Severus has convinced you it's for the best, hasn't he? I can see it in your eyes--"
"I'm Occluding," Harry broke in, though without much spirit.
"Oh, Harry... I wouldn't Legilimize you without saying so..."
Harry believed that about as much as he believed that Ron would sing for joy when he heard Harry's big news.
"I warned Severus not to browbeat you into agreeing to this," the headmaster went on.
"Professor Snape hasn't done any such thing," Harry thought to say, though he felt like he really didn't know how to explain. Anything. At this rate, he was going to make an idiot of himself in any interview. A bitter smile ghosted across his lips. "I think we all know I'm not so swift at following his instructions, all right? If I were, I'd still have a godfather and I wouldn't need anybody else. So you can take it as read that I'd only agree to this because I want to."
Dumbledore leaned both arms on his desk, stacks of paper automatically moving aside for him, and peered more closely at Harry, those ludicrous half-moon spectacles practically falling off his nose. "But why do you want to agree?" he softly inquired, then waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Harry kept expecting Snape to break in. To press him as the headmaster was. To prompt him. Something. But Snape was apparently content to watch Harry founder about like a snitch with one wing.
"It's between the professor and myself, nobody else," Harry finally offered. What did the headmaster want, Harry's emotions out on a chopping block where they could be sliced and diced and sorted?
Dumbledore firmed his lips. "Harry..."
"No," Harry insisted. "This is my life. If I choose to have him in it, it's nothing to do with you. Why do you even care what my motives are?"
Dumbledore sighed, his bushy white eyebrows drawing together. "I have only your best interests at heart, you know that."
No, Harry didn't know that. What was worse, he frankly doubted it. Dumbledore's primary interest was what it had always been.
Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort.
"Severus," the headmaster appealed.
"What do you wish me to do?" the Potions Master questioned, his stance as composed as a statue's. "Pretend he's not old enough to choose his own confidants? I fail to see how that will help matters."
Harry breathed a deep breath, feeling it flow through him and edge out a little bit of his tension. He began to see Snape's earlier silence in a different light. The Potions Master hadn't been letting him founder; he'd been letting him make up his own mind.
And now, he was respecting Harry's decision.
"I cannot in good conscience approve this without knowing how Harry feels about it," the headmaster objected. He bit down on his sherbet lemon and cracked it in half.
"But you could in good conscience send Hermione and me back into the Forbidden Forest even though a werewolf was on the loose?" Harry scoffed. The gall of the man was unbelievable!
"This scheme--"
"It's not a scheme, Headmaster," Snape cut the man off, that time. "I was quite clear with you on that point."
"Does he know that, though?" Dumbledore questioned, glancing at Harry.
"What I know," Harry stated, sitting up straight, "is that I told you already that the professor had done nothing wrong, and that I'm agreeable to the idea. You can believe me or not; that's up to you."
"Harry--"
"That really is quite enough, Albus," Snape announced, standing up and taking hold of the stack of papers Dumbledore had shuffled earlier. "Harry will not confide where he feels no confidence. Is that not clear by now?"
Dumbledore sighed, and rose unsteadily to his feet. "Very clear. I'll leave you to your forms, then." He glanced down at Harry, who was still seated. "My door is always open to you. I do hope you know that."
Harry wordlessly nodded, but what he was thinking was that he'd rather go knock on Snape's office door, than stand before the gargoyles in the hall downstairs and call out random candies until he hit the password. Snape had made him welcome. But Dumbledore said he was welcome even when he clearly wasn't.
Harry knew which of the two he trusted most.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Name, birthday, natural parents. Date of birth, place of birth, all residence addresses from up to the present. Family still living. Godparents.
Reason for request.
Harry had been writing steadily for a while, but that one stalled him. Reason for request... he somehow didn't think it was such a good idea to write, Warding spells require legal right to reside in adoptive father's quarters...
Father? Somehow, that was every bit as daunting as dad.
Harry mentally hemmed and hawed for a good while longer, then finally cleared his throat and quietly said, "Sir? I think I need help with this one."
Snape looked up, his black eyes distant, his mind still clearly on whatever question he'd been answering. Harry started to wonder then, what Snape's form asked. It seemed a lot longer than his own: sheet after sheet of thick cream parchment.
Harry pointed to the question at issue, and said with some desperation, "What kind of answer am I supposed to give? An honest Gryffindor one that'll have them hexing the whole request to oblivion, or a big fat Slytherin lie that'll come unraveled if they use truth serum during the interview?"
Snape set his quill down and surprisingly, began to eat his licorice. Harry thought he'd never seen anything so absolutely bizarre as the Potions Master nibbling on candy. "Where to start," he mused, then detailed, "A need to feel secure, Harry, even physically secure, is hardly going to doom your application. Though granted, for a sole motive it isn't ideal. Now, as for Slytherin lies, by which I presume you mean cunning, you need have no fear of Veritaserum. No-one from Wizard Family Services would use it; the serum is highly controlled by the Ministry."