Oblivious to the fact that magic had been at play, Vernon was giving a definite nod. "Highly approve," he commended Snape, bobbing his great weight up and down on the balls of his feet. "First time I've heard the boy apologise for what he is. So what's your connection with Potter here? Just have him in class?"
"The headmaster didn't trust the boy to travel down alone," Snape flatly offered, his gaze deliberately seeking out the window. "He's a troublemaker."
Uncle Vernon smiled in an oily, satisfied sort of way. All it took to improve his uncle's mood was for someone else to badmouth Harry, apparently. Well, that figured.
"Troublemaker. Yes, he is that," Vernon echoed, sighing a bit as he went to sit down, again, the padded metal chair straining under his weight. He waved Harry and Snape back to their seats, then glanced at Petunia. When he saw that she was still asleep, he went on talking. "We took him in as a baby, you know. Had to. His wastrel father got himself killed in a car crash. Him and his wife, both. Driving drunk, he was. James Potter never was worth a wad of spit, and that one's even worse. Sure as I'm sitting here, he'll never amount to anything. My sister Marge knew it the first time she saw him, she did. Bad blood will out, she said, and mark my words, truer words were never spoken."
So much for meek. Harry felt anger washing over him in waves. He tried to control it, tried to build walls in his mind to hold the roaring tide back, but it kept seeping through the cracks, demanding an outlet, and the longer his uncle talked, the worse it got.
"Had to teach him a lesson more times than I can count," Vernon went on, convinced that anyone who taught Muggle Studies --at least as Harry had explained it-- would see eye to eye with him on all matters Potter. "Not that the boy ever learned. You'd think a whole month of weeding twelve hours a day would make him think twice about sneaking his books up to his room so he could learn more spells to curse us with, but no. I had to get out the strap before we were through, and he still insisted he needed to do his homework, he did. The nerve. One summer we actually had to burn his books to put an end to it. Can you believe what he said then? Claimed some great ugly twit of a teacher was going to make fun of him in Potions class!"
The vase holding the posies abruptly cracked clean through.
Snape gave him a warning glance. Harry stared stoically back.
Dudley, finally fully awake, had flinched back a yard at the noise. "Dad . . ." he ventured, shaking and pointing at the broken pieces on the nightstand.
Vernon's eyebrows drew together as he rounded on Snape. "Looks to me as though he needs a few more lessons in self-control!"
"He'll get them," Snape promised in a tone Harry recognised even through Remus' voice. It was intent. Cold, merciless intent.
Vernon wasn't through, though. "Now, where'd those damned flowers come from, boy? You'd better tell me the truth, or by God I'll have a thing or two to say about it! Did you--" Vernon halted, and continued the rest of the question in a low, thoroughly revolted tone. "Did you magic them here?"
"No, I bought them in the gift shop downstairs," Harry said, trying to make it sound gracious. It was difficult when what he really wanted to do was pummel somebody. "I thought they might cheer up Aunt Petunia."
"And since when do you have money to cheer up anybody, boy?" Vernon ground out, leaning forward as far as he could over his massive rolls of fat. "It's not like your worthless father had any to leave you, is it? No, you were left to burden us, weren't you, and you've done your best to be a burden--"
"Professor Lupin lent me some money," Harry interrupted, rather desperate to cut off his tirade. He should have known better than to have bothered.
"Oh he lent you some, did he! So how do you think you're going to pay him back, eh? We've fed and clothed you all these infernal years, much against our will, I might add. You think we wanted our sweet Dudley exposed to the likes of you? Well, boy? Where're you going to get two pence to rub together? You're just like your father. He never did a lick of work, either, just sat around boozing. Unemployed, you know," he added to Snape, who made a noise that could be interpreted as concurrence. Vernon turned his attention back to Harry. "You're a waste of space, but you'd damned well better learn to do some work sometime in your life. Money doesn't grow on trees, you know, and we don't just hand it out like sweets!"
"When did you ever give me a sweet?" Harry erupted. Oops, wrong tactic. "Sorry, Uncle Vernon, that was rude. What I meant was, I already promised Professor Lupin that I'd scrub his floors every weekend for a month, to pay him back. He thought it was a fair trade."
"Make it two months," Vernon advised Snape. "He's a slacker, that one."
Mention of sweets had got to Dudley, who said he was going to get something from a vending machine down the corridor. Harry repressed an urge to roll his eyes.
"Wipe that smarmy look right off your face, boy!" Vernon rebuked him. "Dudley's been wasting away with worry for his mother. Didn't you see how his clothes just hang on him, now? He needs to keep his strength up. Hell, he's only eating now because he's relieved you're here. We've been waiting for days and worrying ourselves silly that that stupid owl wouldn't know a letter from a field mouse. Owls, honestly! It's an outrage, and I'll have a thing or two to say about that Figg character when the neighbourhood council meets, just see if I don't!"
Harry knew from long experience how best to reply to rants like that. "Yes, Uncle Vernon."
Snape broke into the conversation again. "Mr Dursley, I'm afraid that Harry didn't explain very well when the headmaster instructed me to come along. May I ask about the situation with your wife? I'll need to notify the school if Harry will be here for an extended time."
"Ach, maybe Harry couldn't have known what to say," Vernon gruffly admitted, seeming to calm again. Snape was having that effect on him, Harry realised. He wondered how much of it might be due to a subtle spell. Or maybe it was the tone of voice he'd used: one of Remus' very softest ones. "This past summer's just one long blur of worry to me. I can't remember telling him. Course, how could I have? The boy made himself scarce, and I wasn't in any mood to seek him out, not after that creep with the bulging eye told me I'd get what-for if I so much as looked at him cross-eyed."
Snape waited patiently for Vernon to get to the point, which was more than the Potions Master had ever done for his students. Except maybe for the Slytherins.
"Anyway, it's leukaemia," Vernon glumly admitted, making it sound as though the word itself was strangling him.
Harry could see Snape trying to decode the word, break it into Latin parts perhaps, to glean some meaning from it. He could also see him failing to truly understand. In that, the professor wasn't alone.
Leaning forward a bit, Harry quietly asked, "Leukaemia? Is that um . . . some sort of cancer?"
"Blood cancer," Vernon sighed, looking suddenly so weary that it was a wonder he stayed awake. "Add that to your course outline, professor. The stupid boy doesn't even know basic facts about how normal people live and die. Anyway, she's on the waiting list for a bone marrow transplant. Dudders and I applied to be donors, but we weren't compatible." His voice caught on the last word. "It's a long list and the doctors say she might not be able to make it until . . ."
Vernon abruptly stopped talking and closed his eyes, his hands clenching on the arms of his chair, his whole body shaking slightly.
"I'm sorry," Harry offered, wishing he had the kind of family relationships where he could at least lay a hand on someone's arm as he said that. But he didn't, and he knew better than to try. The few times when he'd hugged his aunt's or uncle's legs --three-year-olds couldn't reach up much farther than that-- he'd been shoved unceremoniously aside and screamed at. We don't like your kind, so keep your distance. Now, back in your cupboard until you learn to keep your grubby hands to yourself . . . Harry flinched slightly, remembering the awful click of that bolt sliding shut, remembering the stifling air inside.