"The Gryffindors'll look out for me," Harry insisted, grinding his teeth. "And I am not helpless, Professor. I have that wild magic. Anybody tries to mess with me and they'll just end up dead."
Snape fluidly cursed, or at least Harry thought he had. It was hard to tell, since it had been in Latin or something. "Listen for once, Potter!" he grated when he switched into English. "Our goal is not to have Hogwarts students end up dead, even if they are Slytherins and in your estimation worthless! Moreover, if you are placed in a situation in which your wild magic is let loose, you are just as likely to kill friends as enemies! You may well even kill yourself if your magic crumples the castle walls and brings the roof down on your head! The whole essence of your dark powers is that at present, they are entirely uncontrolled!"
"Well, I have to keep up with my studies somehow," Harry shouted.
"We are working on it," Dumbledore assured him.
"Why can't you just expel them all?"
"Expel the entire House of Slytherin," Snape scoffed. "I don't think you have the faintest conception of the uproar that would ensue. Pureblood families deluging the Board of Governors with Howlers, the Ministry taking the most politically expedient stance--"
"All right, so it wasn't such a practical idea," Harry admitted.
"There's another matter," the headmaster gravely informed him. "Quite a problematical one. We've intercepted some magical communications indicating plans to attack the hospital wing."
"Oh, that explains all the hovering," Harry muttered. "And all but two of my friends going missing. I bet you spelled the corridor to keep everyone but Ron and Hermione out."
The headmaster merely inclined his head, and continued, "We haven't been able to determine if the communications originated in Slytherin, or from outside the castle, but in either case, we need to ward you with the strongest magic possible."
Harry clenched his eyes shut, seeing again his vision of that house he'd hated crumpling to nothing. "Well, thank goodness you can't send me back to Privet Drive any longer! And as for warding anyplace new, Aunt Petunia's dead, along with all my mother's blood.... oh, not quite all. You're going to use Dudley, aren't you?"
"In so far as he shares the maternal bloodline, there is some connection to exploit, yes," the headmaster murmured.
"So I have to leave Hogwarts and go live wherever he is?" Harry gasped. "Oh, wonderful. You know, Mrs. Figg's a really nice lady, but she's a squib, so I'm hardly going to keep up my studies under her tutelage!"
"Potter," Snape snapped, "would you please stop obsessing over your studies and allow the headmaster and myself to explain?" Only after Harry nodded did he go on. "We don't want your education disrupted any more than do you. Nor do we want to monopolize the old crowd with guard duty once again. Everyone has a great many vital matters to attend to, besides babysitting--"
"I thought you were going to explain!" Harry erupted.
"We propose to ward your living spaces here. You'll be perfectly safe as long as you remain in them, just as on Privet Drive you were in no danger until you ventured outside the walls."
"No danger?" Harry mocked.
"No danger from Voldemort, at least," Dumbledore clarified.
Harry saw red. "You knew! You knew how bad it got there! You've always known! Addressing my Hogwarts letter to the cupboard under the stairs. Don't you have a clue how sick those people were? What they did to me, year after year? I've never been wanted! I've never been loved! How dare you sit there on my bed like some kindly old grandfather figure when you're nothing but an interfering crackpot old coot!"
"Harry!" Snape gasped. "Apologize to the headmaster!"
Harry was hardly repentant. He looked straight at Dumbledore's blurry visage and distinctly announced, "I'm very sorry that you're an interfering crackpot old coot."
"It's all right, Severus," the headmaster wheezed, unsteadily pushing himself to stand. "I did what I had to, but as Harry's the one who suffered for it, I don't expect him to understand." If Harry didn't know better, he'd have said there were tears in the old man's voice. But that was probably just one more of his ploys, on a level with the constant offers he made of candy. "If you could explain the rest to him, Severus..." His voice drifted off, and then he did as well.
Snape watched him go, his breathing ragged, then stalked to the doors to re-establish the silencing charms. When he strode back to Harry, his expression alone spoke volumes: anger, disappointment, impatience, rage. Funny how clear all that was, even if the image of his face was blurry...
Snape's voice was low, cold, and methodical when he spoke.
"The sacrificial magic used to extend the power of your mother's love to you can potentially be applied to many things. Unfortunately for you, the only blood left in her line belongs to your cousin, who has lived almost all his life in a house imbued with one particular kind of warding. Her blood that lives on in him is therefore most appropriately applied to the same kind of warding."
Harry didn't follow that at all, although Snape's stress on the word love wasn't lost on him. He'd been wrong to say he'd never been loved; his parents had loved him enough to die protecting him. There was no stronger love, Harry knew that. It just didn't help to know it, when he'd lost it before he'd really learned to remember, or feel love himself.
"I don't understand, Professor," he admitted in a small voice.
"Well, allow me to explain in simpler words," Snape snarled. "Your cousin cannot ward the entire castle. He can only ward a personal residence."
"The Tower, then," Harry nodded. "So I'd be safe when I'm there, at least, though I still don't know what I'll do about getting to classes..."
"Who do you think the Tower recognizes as its owner, Potter?"
Harry frowned. "Uh, I don't know. There's dozens and dozens of us rooming there."
"Your own room, then," Snape smoothly inserted, though he didn't sound too far off from the snarl of the minute before. "Who do you think your room believes is its owner?"
"Well, there's a bunch of us--"
"And though your age mates and you stay together, you change rooms each year as in Slytherin?" Snape pressed. "Not to mention vacating the Tower entirely for a full fourth of each year. So, think about this carefully. Wouldn't the room you're in now be rather confused as to who owns it?"
"I suppose so..."
"Then it's not a personal residence, not in the sense the warding spells will require," Snape abruptly announced. "The Tower cannot be warded by Dudley Dursley, nor even your own room in it. To keep you safe from the students out for your blood, not to mention from the Dark Lord himself and Lucius Malfoy, who not incidentally, blames you for his son's treachery, you will need to live in a place the spells will recognize as the longstanding domain of a consistent resident."
Something about the way Snape was looking at him made Harry's hair almost stand on end. Well, more than it usually did all by itself. "Longstanding?" he echoed, starting to catch on. "Just how longstanding are we talking here? Like, about twenty years?"
"I see you've deduced the plan," Snape announced, his voice cold. "You shall come to live in my own quarters until the worst of the danger has passed. At that point we can re-evaluate."
"The Headmaster actually okayed this?"
"It was his idea, Potter," Snape sourly informed him. "So you might as well just save your protests. You know what he's like when he takes a notion into his head."