“Uh, Professor, er, sir,” Harry stumbled over the seldom-used honorifics in his bafflement. “Uh, on your mouth…?”
“Lipstick, Potter,” Snape sneered, the expression all the more pronounced with the cosmetic assistance.
“Oh, uh, it’s, um, it’s black?” Harry hadn’t known lipstick came in anything other than his aunt’s subdued pinks or the vivid shades of red that Petunia considered sinful and salacious (and intolerably reminiscent of Lily to ever be permitted back into the precariously normal life of Number Four, Privet Drive).
“Very good, Potter,” Snape said sarcastically. “Twelve years old and you’ve learned your colors.”
That was pure nastiness and entirely unfair.
“I’m fifteen!” Harry protested, which earned him a merely sardonic eyebrow. “Almost fifteen,” he amended. “I’ll be fifteen on Monday.”
Harry longed to surpass Snape in sheer churlishness and considered pointing out that muggle men generally didn’t wear skirts. Certainly not in Little Whinging. Definitely not when Dudley and his gang were roaming the streets.
He’d seen plenty of oblivious wizards sporting spiffy new dresses as their muggle disguises at the Quidditch World Cup the previous summer (a lifetime ago, before Cedric was murdered and he hadn’t been able to stop it from happening). But there was something peculiarly well-tailored and suspiciously well-worn about the Potions Master’s garb that suggested less “disguise” and more “daily wear”. He found that his brain was oddly unwilling to acknowledge the existence of Snape’s psychedelic cardigan. His mind kept trying desperately to wallpaper something sensible over the bizarre image his eyes insisted on perceiving.
“…nice skirt,” he mumbled.
“Thanks,” Snape drawled the false gratitude out with a smirk. “It has pockets. Dipshit and Dumbass there were too excited to get on the road this morning and didn’t give me any time to do laundry.”
“Am I ‘Dipshit’ or am I ‘Dumbass’?” Sirius whispered loudly, grin gone well past manic.
“I believe Severus called me a ‘dipshit’ among other things for forgetting to take my Wolfsbane last year,” Remus replied thoughtfully, “So, Sirius, that probably makes you the dumbass.”
“I’m more of a hot piece of ass, but okay,” Sirius said with a wink. “Hi, Harry!”
“Hi, Sirius,” Harry said weakly, glad for the excuse to sidle past Snape. “Uh, what are you doing here?” The Daily Prophet hadn’t said anything about Sirius being pardoned and news like that, while less of an urgent headline than Voldemort’s return, wouldn’t lurk about in the society pages or behind an advice column.
“Dumbledore told me to lie low at Lupin’s place,” Sirius beamed with an innocence so intense it could only be artificial.
“And, er, well, what with one thing and another, it really hadn’t seemed like a good time really to mention that I’d been, ah, evicted,” Lupin added, “…again.”
“Renting really seems like such a bother,” Sirius opined. “So I bought a house for Remus here.”
“Oh,” said Harry, who had witnessed Aunt Petunia compulsively twitching the curtains as she tried to discover how Mrs. Number Seven had eluded neighborly surveillance and, somehow, managed to sell her house to a person or persons unknown to the remaining residents of Privet Drive. “Isn’t that supposed to take a long time?”
“Building a home takes a lifetime,” Sirius said sagely. “Buying a house just takes money.”
Snape’s scornful snort brought Harry’s attention back to the least welcome visitor to Little Whinging.
“So, uh, why did you bring,” Harry gestured vaguely, unsure if the word ‘him’ could accurately encompass the snidest professor present, “Snape?” He’d rather noticed that Snape hadn’t lifted a finger to help Sirius and Lupin move any of the large boxes from the lorry into Number Seven.
“Severus knows how to drive,” Lupin explained gently. Sirius’ mouth opened, prepared to protest.
“Severus,” Lupin repeated, louder this time, “Has a valid muggle license to drive.” Sirius’ subsided.
“And I know how to hot-wire cars and lorries,” Severus added smoothly. “And,” Lupin echoed wearily, “ Severus knows how to ‘hot-wire’ muggle vehicles.”
“I’m learning to do that,” Sirius said helpfully, “I’m going to figure it out too. I’ve nearly got it.”
“Talk is cheap, Black,” Snape scoffed starting to stroll in the last direction Harry wanted him to go, “I’ll believe you when I see some tangible results.”
“Wait! Stop!” Harry wondered if he’d get in trouble for tackling a professor outside of Hogwarts. It would be worth it, to try to alter Snape’s trajectory towards the front door of Number Four. “Stop, stop, stop!”
For all Harry’s desperate scrambling, Snape maintained his lead.
“Please stop!” Harry begged as the professor hitched up his skirt slightly, “Use the bell! You don’t have to kick the door in!” Aunt Petunia was probably at the door, surely she’d spied them across the street at Number Seven.
Snape kicked the door, already unlatched in Petunia’s nosy anticipation, open.
Aunt Petunia let out a shrill little scream.
“Hello, Piss-Tuna,” said Severus Snape, far more gleeful than he’d been even when Harry and Ron were facing the threat of expulsion after flying a car into the Whomping Willow. “You look as awful as ever.”
Piss-Tuna, Harry thought as his world tilted on its axis, Snape, Professor Snape, just called my aunt Piss-Tuna. This can’t be happening.
“You—!” Her face was white, her eyes were wide, and Petunia Dursley, née Evans, practically growled in her outrage.
Harry found himself thinking that Brazil might be a very nice place to live. It was far away from Privet Drive, for a start. He wondered what it would take to get there.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in, Tuney?” Snape’s foot had blocked the door from closing. “I’m more than happy to have this confrontation on your front step if you’d prefer.”
“We, ah, brought some biscuits,” Lupin added. “Store bought. Assorted. With chocolate. Er, I’m, ah, we’re the new neighbors. So nice to meet you again.”
Petunia goggled at the lot of them.
She also stumbled back, which Snape seemed to take as an unspoken invitation. Harry found himself dragged along in the professor’s wake, with only Sirius’ hand on his shoulder to steady him in the swift tide of strangeness.
“I can’t believe your taste in interior decoration deteriorated into this level of disgusting kitsch and doilies, Tuna,” said the man who decorated with floating dead things in jars. Severus surveyed the photos on the wall, on the mantle, on the little side table. So many perfectly posed pictures of a happy family of three- mother, father, son- and a lock on the cupboard under the stairs. Narcissa had been absolutely right.
“Is that my jumper?” Harry jumped. Petunia’s voice was high and thin and quite peculiar.
“You’ve really done a terrible job of raising Potter,” said Snape, and Harry bristled. Of course Snape wanted to criticize him, Harry had been expecting the criticism, but he loathed the thought of his two biggest critics were now sharing notes and combining forces.
“Not only is he, like the majority of students, a careless menace in the laboratory, but I have also wasted entirely too much of my already limited time deciphering his atrocious penmanship to correct insipid essay after insipid essay only to see the same flawed reasonings repeated week after week.” It was news to Harry that he was supposed to read the sea of spidery red notes Snape deposited on every essay. It seemed rather unfair, given that Snape could fit five lines of text for every one line Harry wrote. The single “P”, or the occasional and welcome “A”, was more than sufficient in Harry’s view.
“That’s my jumper.” There was a touch of hysteria in Petunia’s tone now.
“He will be taking his O.W.L.s this year, his O-levels if you prefer,” Snape continued, demonstrating more confidence in Harry’s continued survival than Harry typically expected to hear from the Potions Master. “Unfortunately, his current record of scholastic mediocrity, his stubborn refusal to revise, and a peculiar incuriosity about magical theory does not bode well for his continued academic career.”
“You little bastard! That’s my goddamn jumper!” Petunia’s shriek derailed Snape’s momentum. The unexpected profanity from his aunt made Harry’s brain stutter to a halt.
“Tuna,” Snape frowned, “We’re not here to discuss my sartorial decisions and I will never take wardrobe critique from you. I only deigned to enter this suburban hellscape to discuss your horrendous failure to raise and parent Mr. Potter.”
“Biscuit, Harry?” Sirius offered, retrieving the tin from Remus.
“You stole my jumper!” Shockingly, Petunia’s epiphany failed to shatter glass. Yet.
“Didn’t,” sniffed Snape.
“I thought it was Lily who stole my jumper!”
“She did. I just hid it for her.”
“I bought that jumper myself! I’d saved up!”
“Yes, I know.”
“It was for an interview!”
“We wanted to spare you the humiliation of being seen in public wearing such a hideous thing. You even got that position, even if you didn’t keep it for very long.”
The biscuit was rather good, even without tea, and it was beginning to dawn on Harry that Snape and Aunt Petunia were more inclined to tear into one another than join forces against him. He felt oddly inclined to cheer for Professor Snape, despite the ranting about Harry’s scholastic shortcomings. Perhaps it was because Harry knew so little about his mother that every glimpse was a pearl he treasured.
“I want my jumper!” Did she learn that tone from her little Diddykins or had Dudley inherited that petulant demanding pitch from Petunia?
“And I want you to understand how your failure to nourish any academic inclinations Mr. Potter may have shown before the age of eleven may have rather dire consequences for futures beyond his own, but I fear we can’t all get what we want.” Remus handed Harry another biscuit before he could think to protest.
“Give me back my jumper!”
“Fine!” Snape finally snapped, fingers tearing at the buttons in wrathful haste. “Fine, here!”
Petunia caught the cardigan with her face and a squeak.
Severus Snape looked like a stranger again, in the ratty, oversized band shirt, hair disheveled from the jumper’s passage. Harry hadn’t seen the Dark Mark his professor had shoved under Minister Fudge’s nose in the Hospital Wing those few weeks ago, and he found himself oddly glad that the mark was concealed under a peculiar leather bracelet with metal studding. A wand holster, perhaps.
“Are you prepared to face your shortcomings now, Tuney?” That dangerously silky tone was entirely familiar, and Harry took another biscuit before he was told to go serve detention during summer vacation.
“It smells like Cokeworth,” Petunia’s complaint was bitter, for she dreaded the day her neighbors discovered the lingering taint of the Cokeworth streets sullying their Surrey security.
“Hey,” said Sirius, who had gone oddly still.
“I wasn’t going to take it to Hogwarts, was I?” Snape said. “It’s acrylic, you know that sort of stuff doesn’t hold up around magic.”
“Hey,” said Sirius. “Hey.” His face was a rictus of delight, as pleased as Petunia had been put out. “Snape. Isn’t that, isn’t that my shirt you’ve got on?”
“Oh, oh,” snarled Severus. “Not you too!”