"If you'd seen your face, whiter than Mr Malfoy's as you stumbled off the lawn, you wouldn't have tried to stay on your feet. But you look fine, now, so by all means play the house-elf if you like."
"I don't like, but food doesn't just make itself, not here."
"Pity," Snape replied.
Harry shuffled through the bedclothes for his shoes and socks. Funny, he didn't remember taking them off. Must have kicked them off in the night . . . except that they were laid out neatly on the floor, socks folded, laces tucked away inside the gaping shoes. Irritated, Harry shot Snape a nasty glance. "Don't touch me, all right? Especially not when I'm asleep."
"You were thrashing," Snape explained, "and it looked all too likely that those huge . . . things would fly off your feet and hit something. What was in your dream?"
"Nothing."
"The Dark Lord? Death Eaters?"
"Nothing!"
"Cedric? Crouch?" Snape drew in a breath. "Black, Harry?"
"Aunt Petunia and Dudley, if you must know!" He rapidly pulled on his shoes and socks, and without another word, stomped out the door, down the hall and stairs, and into the kitchen. There wasn't much to eat, really, and the milk in the fridge had gone sour. Harry found some tinned milk and dry cereal --god awful sugary stuff that Dudley had demanded ages ago-- and had a simple breakfast on the table in under three minutes.
Snape didn't comment on the cuisine, though he didn't eat much, either. Harry had three helpings, washed down with some orange juice he'd mixed up from frozen, and afterwards, he felt a lot less grouchy.
"All right, let's have it. What did you find out from that book?"
"You're in the range of relatives who might be bone marrow compatible."
Harry scratched his head. "Yeah, all right, I guess that makes sense. Uncle Vernon said he and Dudley had tried to donate, and been refused. You think I could donate, then?"
"It's within the realm of possibility," Snape answered. "And this book is well-thumbed; I'm sure your uncle knows that you should be tested, at least. But he didn't mention that. All he asked for was your magic."
"Weird," Harry had to say. He poured himself another glass of juice. "It's not like he's come around to thinking that magic is all right, so why wouldn't he rather have my marrow than . . . oh, so that's it."
"Come again?"
Harry flashed the sort of grim smile that always accompanied epiphanies about his relatives' regard for him. "Bet you anything they think my bone marrow would taint her, or something. You know, with magic."
"Interesting notion," Snape murmured. "Wizard blood is in fact a highly magical substance, and Muggle theory insists that blood cells themselves are born in the marrow. Though that may not hold true for us, you understand. Still . . ."
Harry laughed. "Oh, please. Petunia as a witch." Suddenly it wasn't funny, not at all. "You know, I think she would rather die. No wonder they didn't ask me to donate. The way they figure it, magic to heal her would be safer. Controlled. Though it's anybody's guess why Uncle Vernon would associate magical control with me. He's never seen me do a real spell, just . . . accidental magic."
"All wizard children do that," Snape lightly observed. "It only means that you are in fact normal."
"For a wizard."
"Yes. For a wizard."
Harry piled the dishes in the sink, then turned back towards the table where Snape still sat. "So, what do we do about Aunt Petunia, then?"
"It's your choice," Snape replied, fingers tapping on mahogany. "You can pretend to do some sort of spell, and hope they believe it worked. I could even place a glamour over your aunt to make matters look authentic, though that wouldn't change her true state of health."
"Can you glamour the machines, too?" Harry pressed. "There's one for blood pressure, I think, and they probably track her temperature. And . . . well, I don't know what else, but you could just make all the equipment show normal readings."
"I wouldn't know what constitutes normal for a Muggle," Snape pointed out. "Although research could remedy that problem. Still, magic is highly organic. It's wedded to the natural world, to be used by living beings for living beings. Altering complex machines with it could have . . . unforeseen consequences."
Harry remembered Hermione's many lectures on how Muggle technology didn't even work in the presence of excess magic. "Yeah, better scratch that idea," Harry conceded. "Okay, so we can fake a spell, but not very well. Well, Uncle Vernon's like you; he doesn't trust me farther than he can throw me, either--"
Snape sat up straighter. "What did you just say?"
"I think you heard me." Leaning on a counter, Harry reiterated, "You actually are a lot like Vernon Dursley, you know. You both enjoy cutting people down to size, especially relatively helpless people, like students who can't fight back. You both just love to threaten people and watch them squirm. And it's more than threats, too. One after another yesterday, you both grabbed my arm and held onto it until it pleased you to let go, no matter what I had to say about it."
"I was keeping you from falling, you stupid boy!"
"I'd rather fall than be manhandled. Just like I'd rather sleep in my shoes if I want! If I need help, I'll ask, all right?"
Snape shoved back his chair so hard it clattered to its side on the linoleum. "That's just the problem, you don't ask!"
"Yeah, well I sure as shite asked for help with Sirius, didn't I? And all you did was look down your supercilious nose at me and tell me to sod off, because you wanted him dead! You knew he was blameless in my parents' deaths, but he wasn't innocent, not in your books, and you couldn't look past the fact that twelve years in Azkaban was punishment enough for-- for--" Harry abruptly stopped talking, because it was either shut up or burst into tears. Turning away slightly, he blinked to dispel the feeling.
"All right," he finally said when he felt more in control, though he didn't actually know if Snape was still in the room. It felt almost as though he had lost a span of time, as though he hadn't been conscious of anything for a few minutes. What had happened to his resolve to be mature? Sirius was dead, and Snape was glad about it, and no amount of blubbering would change a thing. Harry's hands had been gripping the counter until he felt like his bones would snap, but then he deliberately let go, and tried to wall his anger. "All right, so it seems like pretending to spell her is out. If the price of the wards is returning her to health, that leaves me donating bone marrow, I think. What else is there?"
"Is that rhetorical, or are you asking for help?" Snape stiffly replied.
Feeling suddenly drained, Harry moved toward a chair and waved for Snape to sit down, too. "I'm asking what you know, what you got from the book."
Snape didn't sit down, but he did answer, pacing back and forth as he reasoned, talking his way through the problem. Harry just watched and listened, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown. It didn't sound like bone marrow donation was a big deal for Muggles, but Snape was all too aware that Harry was a wizard, and an unusually powerful one, at that. Was Harry aware, he asked --without waiting for an answer-- that fewer than half of fully-trained wizards could produce any Patronus at all, let alone a corporeal one? And Harry had done it at the absurdly young age of thirteen. Preposterous, really, but Snape reasoned aloud that it shouldn't have surprised him overly much, given that Harry's own father had developed Animagus powers, without any training, while still at school.
It was well known, Snape continued after a short pause, that wizards and Muggle medicine didn't mix well, and the effect tended to be magnified for more powerful wizards, though very little was really known about the phenomenon; most wizards had enough sense to call a healer when they were ill. Still, children, the younger the better, were thought to tolerate Muggle interference better than adults, though this again was based on the occasional anecdote, which was hardly a basis for belief. And then there was the whole issue of wizard blood itself carrying the magical signature of an individual. It might make Petunia worse instead of better, especially as she had a strong aversion to magic in general and Harry in particular. On the other hand, Snape reasoned, it could instead serve as a catalyst to change Petunia's own core. Her sister Lily had been a powerful witch even when Snape had known her at school, and then later she had actually managed to save her child from the Dark Lord, so there had to be highly significant wizarding bloodlines in the Evans family tree, even if they'd lain dormant for long enough that the family had forgotten all about it . . . and on and on it went, Snape pacing and talking the matter through.