MEASURE OF A MAN
Why do you ask him move to heaven and earth
Severus Snape sneered as he viewed Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey. He had Apparated to his current location to pick up Harry Potter from his relatives house and take him to Grimmauld Place for some extra training and security. The Order was also a bit concerned about not having heard more from Harry than a terse 'I'm fine.' via owl every three days. Lupin had insisted that something was wrong. Dumbledore, not wanting to lose the only hope the Wizarding World had of defeating Voldemort, had sent the one person guaranteed to get to the bottom of things.
Collecting his robes around him, Snape walked down the street in the gathering dusk, sighing in disgust at the rows of houses, all nearly identical, and the similarly small-minded people that lived in them.
He had just located his target, Number Four, when he heard muffled screaming coming from the house, accompanied by the barking of a dog and, surprisingly, laughter. Not the jovial kind of laughter that one would expect in such a place, but the cold, heartless laughter that came at the expense of someone else's pain. The kind of soulless sound the Snape had heard countless times at Death Eater meetings while some hapless muggle was being tortured; the kind of din that came out of Voldemort on such occasions.
Snape strode quickly up the walkway, determined to stop what was going on, even if it meant ending his days as a spy. Somewhere in there was a child he, as a member of the Hogwarts staff, was bound to protect.
As he reached the door, the muffled screams became recognizable as being Harry Potter's.
Now enraged, he nearly blasted the door off of its hinges and strode into the main room of the house, and the source of the sound.
Sitting in four stuffed chairs were a man who looked as if he had spent his whole life doing nothing but eating, a younger male who was somehow even larger and bore a familial resemblance, a woman who rivaled the man for size, and an almost painfully thin woman. They were all laughing at the spectacle in front of them.
In front of the fireplace was Harry Potter and a rather large bulldog. Potter was trying to fight the dog off with little success. His ragged, ill-fitting clothing was pulled half off of him, and blood reddened several places, mute testimony to the sharpness of the animal's teeth and the power of its jaws.
Without thought of possible consequences, Snape aimed his wand at the beast.
"Stupefy!"
Five sets of eyes turned to him. Four of them narrowed with suspicion, and one widened with a desperate hope.
"What are you doing in my house, you freak?" the man rose from his chair, his face purpling both with the effort and with his rising temper.
"Freak?!" Snape did not remember when he had been so angry before. This rivaled the fits of temper that James Potter had evoked in him.
"It is people like you, you miserable excuse for a human being, that are freaks." Snape managed to speak instead of cursing the man into imbecility. "It is people like you who make it easy for those like the Dark Lord to convince others that your kind should be wiped out. I am here for the boy. Do not get in my way."
"Ripper!" the overlarge woman shrieked, which only made Snape point his wand at her and mutter a silencing charm. He then turned his wand on the other three to find them huddled together in abject terror. Normally such a display would have only disgusted him, but this time it gave him a grim feeling of satisfaction that they were feeling the fear and helplessness that they had made a wizard feel. The large woman had toppled to the floor and was cradling the still form of the beast, trying to wake it. Her bloated face was blotchy and tears cascaded down her cheeks. Snape found it almost amusing that she was showing the animal a compassion she had never shown the child that cowered nearby.
"Can you walk, Potter?" he asked, using a tone much softer than he ever used at school.
"Yes, sir," Harry replied. "It's only shallow bites. He didn't get any deeper."
"Get your things, or do you require assistance?"
"My trunk and my wand," was the quiet reply. "They locked them in the cupboard under the stairs."
"I will retrieve those," Snape said, moving towards the aforementioned stairs. "Retrieve anything else you want."
The lock on the cupboard yielded easily to a simple 'Alohamora' and Snape could easily see the trunk that the boy habitually brought to Hogwarts every year. Atop the trunk was a cage with Potter's snowy owl in it, feathers puffed out, rocking from one foot to the other. She blinked at him, and then hooted imperiously to be released.
"Absolutely not," Snape said to her. "Even though I agree that they would deserve whatever you did to them, the Ministry would not, and you would be destroyed as a dangerous creature. Then where would he be without you?"
The owl blinked at him several times as if thinking about his words, then settled down onto her perch, flipping her wings neatly to her sides. She looked decidedly disgruntled, but she did not protest when he carefully moved her cage, shrank the trunk and deposited it in his pocket, then picked up her cage.
"You will be released when we arrive at our destination, and not until," he told the owl, using the same tone he used for demanding Slytherins. The owl settled down further, proving that humans were not the only ones to be susceptible to vocal tones.
Snape returned to the main room, to find that the dog was awake and aware, and the silencing charm had not yet worn off. The thin woman wailed in fear as he pulled out his wand again, disgusting Snape more than he would have thought possible.
"You are a disgrace," he told her, realizing that this must be Harry's aunt Petunia: Lily's sister. "You know what magic is. You had a witch for a sister. You agreed to shelter her son. You had all this, and you still cower like some unknowing muggle in the face of danger. If I were a lesser man, I would show you something to fear. Be glad that I am better than you."
"Professor?" Potter's voice came from upstairs. "May I have a little help, please?"
Snape mounted the stairs so quickly that it almost seemed as if he flew up to the second floor. He found Potter sitting on his bed, trying to bind some of his bloodier wounds. One of them was apparently deeper than either of them had realized. It had completely soaked the crude bandage the boy had put on it, and was rapidly soaking through a second that he had bound over the first.
"I can't get it to stop bleeding," Harry explained. "The rest of them have just stopped, but this one won't." He looked up at Snape, face twisted in anxiety.
Snape hesitated for a moment, mentally sorting through the potions he kept in his pockets at all times. Finally, he put down the owl cage, reached into the inner left breast pocket of his robes and pulled out a phial filled with a greenish fluid.
"Take the bandage off, Potter," he said. He watched calmly as the boy obeyed, and then dribbled a bit of the potion into the open wound.
For a moment, the blood continued to flow. After a moment, though, the torn flesh began to seal itself, closing the blood back into the vein that the dog had torn in its attack. Harry breathed a sigh of relief and pocketed the bloody rags before standing up.
"I'll destroy them when I have time to," he said by way of explanation. Snape smirked despite the situation.
"Amazingly well thought out, Potter," he said. "If you were in school, I might have even given you a point or two for your caution."
"Professor Snape," Harry said, looking up at him in surprise. "Did you just complement me?"
"Don't get used to it," was the snappish reply. "Now, let us deal with your relatives and be gone as quickly as possible."
Harry nodded, picked up a book bag off the floor and the owl cage, and preceded Snape down the stairs.
The fat man was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, and Snape's already abused temper grew even more when he saw Harry Potter do something he had never seen him do: cower.
"Out of the way," Snape growled as Harry hesitated on the stairs.
"I've put up with his freakish behavior for years!" the man yelled. "I'm not putting up with it anymore! Get out of my house, Potter, and don't come back! Do you hear me? Now get out before I forget that Marge is here!"
"Yes Uncle Vernon," Harry said, with real fear in his voice. He rushed down the stairs and attempted to get past his uncle without further incident.
With amazing speed for a man his size, Vernon caught Harry by the back of the head, twisting his fist into Harry's hair.
"You just remember this, boy," he snarled. "If I ever lay eyes on you again, you'll regret the day you were ever born!"
"Release him," Snape said with quiet menace, his wand aimed directly at the fat man. "If you do not, I will make you regret the day YOU were ever born."
Vernon took one look at the wizard looming over him and gulped, his normally ruddy face becoming ashen. He snarled at Snape silently, but he released Harry and stepped back. Snape swept down the rest of the stairs and led the way out of the house.
Once outside, Snape took the cage from Harry, placed a hand on the boy's shoulder, and Apparated both of them to the street in front of 12 Grimmauld Place.
TBC
To prove his love has worth?
Prologue: Surrey