"I'll speak with Harry now," Amaelia Thistlethorne said. "He really should have been informed of this in advance, you realize."
Snape nodded, a sweep of long, black hair brushing his face. "No doubt."
Harry woke up thrashing, his hair sticking up wildly, his eyes haunted from what he had seen.
Wizard Family Services, here again. The situation "unfortunate" and "regrettable," so it couldn't possibly mean that Draco was being adopted as the casewitch had once wanted. In fact, she had seemed to be arguing against whatever was up for discussion. But what could that have been?
Snape had talked of pressure, of someone pulling strings to stop them... well, who else could that be but Dumbledore? He had so much influence with Wizard Family Services that he'd gotten them to rush Harry's adoption through in the first place. Snape didn't call the headmaster the chessmaster for nothing. And now both Snape and Thistlethorne were prepared to do something that Dumbledore didn't want... something that would have Harry and Snape moving past the "regrettable position" they found themselves in...
And then there was the vault key... and the fact that the room had been so strangely bare. In fact, everything he'd been leaving out had been gone. Nothing of his remained in the room, except his trunk and that key...
Somebody had packed his things, without even telling him he was going to leave!
But that made sense, didn't it? If Snape was going to sign those papers, if they meant what they seemed, then of course Harry would have to be packed to go. Of course he would need his key.
His first panicked thought was that maybe it wasn't true. He had plenty of dreams that weren't seer dreams, after all. But the pattern was all there: something from the past, a whirling, then something from the future. And the future part always came true.
Always.
He'd tried his very best not to hit Ron, but that had come true.
It had been completely absurd to think that Draco Malfoy would ever call him a brother, but that had come true, too.
And now, another seer dream. Something else that was going to come true.
Something Harry should have known even without the dream. Why else would Snape leave him to sit in his room all day and brood? When he'd been upset before, the man had insisted he come out and play Wizard Scrabble! Not this time, though. This time, Snape just didn't care.
But that made sense. It was all there, in the dream.
Snape wasn't going to forgive Harry, ever. He was going to give him back his key, instead. He was going to call Wizard Family Services, and say it hadn't worked out, and defy Dumbledore who would no doubt say to give Harry more time.
But Snape wasn't going to give Harry more time; the dream made that much clear enough.
He was going to unadopt him, instead.
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Coming Soon in A Year Like None Other:
Chapter Fifty-Five: Wisdom
Comments very welcome,
Aspen in the Sunlight
Chapter 55: Wisdom
http://archive.skyehawke.com/story.php?no=5036&chapter=55
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A Year Like None Other
by Aspen in the Sunlight
m
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Chapter Fifty-Five: Wisdom
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Harry all but cringed. Unadopt? Was that even a word?
He shook his head to clear it of irrelevant thoughts, and tried to get his mind back onto what mattered. The dream.
All right, so he'd had a seer dream about Snape unadopting him. Pretty scary, considering all his seer dreams to date had come true. Of course, there had been that time Snape had woken him up claiming that Harry had been screaming in Parseltongue. Harry had counted that as a seer dream for a while, but later he'd really wondered if it had been. In the first place, he didn't remember dreaming it so couldn't know if it had followed the past-spinning-into-future pattern. And in the second place, he wasn't sure Snape knew what he was talking about. He still didn't see how anybody could scream in Parseltongue, anyway!
So, that one probably didn't count, which left Harry with a horrible fact to face: his seer dreams always came true, and he'd just seer dreamed that by the beginning of spring, Snape wasn't going to want Harry Potter for a son any longer.
Of course, for all Harry knew, the man felt that way already. Yesterday's events would certainly seem to bear that out.
But the dream had very strange implications, considering Harry's entire situation. In the dream, he'd been all packed to leave the dungeons, so clearly he was going to go back to the Tower. But Snape would never make him leave the protection of the wards, not unless Harry's magic was back in full. But an unadoption would undo the wards anyway, wouldn't it? Even hating him, Snape wouldn't take a step like that... unless, again, Harry didn't need those wards any longer.
Harry took a breath. All right, all right. So what did the dream mean? If it was true, it just had to mean that by early spring, his magic would be back.
But what if the dream wasn't a seer dream at all? He'd woken up sort of assuming that was the case, but panic had a way of choking off rational thought. Now that he was more awake, and calmer, it occurred to Harry that in one important sense, he'd never had a seer dream like that one.
Because in that one, he'd dreamed about a real concern, a real problem, something already on his mind.
He hadn't gone to sleep back in Sirius' house worrying about the house on Privet Drive being destroyed or fretting that he'd punch Ron or that Draco Malfoy, of all people, might start declaring them brothers. Those dreams, and all the others, had come from absolutely nowhere. Whereas this one...
Well, he had gone to sleep last night worried and upset and pretty much wondering if Snape was ever going to forgive him. It hadn't just been the fight causing him to feel that way. It was all day with a locked door, and the fact that Snape hadn't answered Harry's knock in the night. Though for all he knew, there might be a good reason for that. Still, he'd been worried. Horribly worried.
And then he'd dreamed.
He remembered what the Muggle psychology book had had to say about dreams. They reveal our deepest fears...
Well, that certainly fit. He'd never felt exactly secure as Snape's son. It had always struck him as... well, fantastical. After all, this was Severus Snape. There was too much past history between them for the adoption to seem completely natural so soon. And then that awful fight, and the way Snape had taken points, and the horrible thing he'd said, so of course Harry ended up filled with jitters about whether he was really wanted or not.
Anyway, he was used to being unwanted. The other feeling was the one that was hard to believe, and even harder to get used to. So maybe the dream hadn't been prophetic. He'd just been living out one of his worst fears. When he thought about it that way, everything made perfect sense. Even the key. To Harry, Snape having his vault key really sort of cemented their new relationship. So what else would his mind dredge up to scare him, except a return of the key?