Severus Evans and the Impudent Brat: Chapter Seven
Year One: Severus Evans and the Impudent Brat

Chapter 7: The Eye of the Beholder



They had settled into a routine, he and his boy. Two nights a week Harry would follow Severus after dinner to study at the little desk while Severus sat at his table marking assignments. Conversation became an important part of these evenings together, though if it seemed to degenerate into mere distraction Severus would gently but very firmly direct the boy back to his textbooks.


"You should get your hair cut."

On the assignment he was marking, Severus crossed out root and wrote in leaf. "You should grow yours long," he countered.

Harry snorted. "And look like a girl?"

"Do I look like a girl?" snapped Severus, glaring at the boy.

"You're different."

"Q.E.D."

The boy stared blankly at him.

"How's the Transfiguration assignment coming along?"

"Um." Harry turned back to his desk, leaning his head on his hands.

Severus smirked.


It struck him, one evening, that the boy was leaning awfully close to the page he was reading.

"Harry."

"Mm."

"Have you made plans for Saturday?"

The boy shook his head.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear your answer."

"No, sir."

"Good. You have plans, now. I'm taking you into town to have your eyes examined."

Harry looked up sharply. "What for?"

"What for? If your face were any closer to your book, you could Braille it with the tip of your nose."

"Look who's talking."

"Young man, I will not--"

"You've got ink on yours."

"I do not." But he fetched a mirror, all the same. "Well. A smudge. Probably brushed my quill against it by accident."

"Uh-huh."

"I swear, Harry, if you don't wipe that damned smirk off your face--"

"How'd you get to be so old and never get glasses?"

"For your information, brat, I am only thirty-one. That, by any reasonable definition of the word, is not old."

"Older than I am."

Severus cast a sardonic glance at the boy. "I don't see how it could be otherwise."

"So we both get our eyes examined, come Saturday."

"Come Saturday," Severus firmly answered, "we will both eat breakfast in the Great Hall. As soon as we are done with breakfast, you will go back to your dormitory, change into Muggle clothing, and meet me outside your common room so that I may take you to get your eyes examined."

"Muggle clothing?" cried Harry. "Can't we just go to Hogsmeade?"

"We could," answered Severus. "But we will not. You know fully well that first years are not allowed to go to Hogsmeade. As it is, I'm making an exception by taking you off the school grounds at all. The last thing I need is to give Lucius Malfoy another reason to cry nepotism."

"Cry what?"

"Never mind. We are going into a Muggle town, where we will need to be dressed in Muggle clothing. Further argument from you will result in ensuring that you will be standing at tomorrow's breakfast."

Nice, Severus. Very nice.

Fortunately the boy shut up, sparing Severus the dilemma of finding a graceful way out of enforcing his threat. Sighing, he turned back to his work.

"Sir?"

The tone was quiet, and very, very respectful.

"Yes, Harry?"

"I don't have any Muggle clothing, really. Sir."

He was about to explode, but one look at Harry quelled the impulse.

"What do you mean, you don't have any Muggle clothing? What have you been wearing for the last ten years?"

"Dudley's old things, sir. They don't really fit me. Sir."

"All right, Harry, that's enough sirs for one evening." Severus frowned. "You know," he added, trying to sound light, "the restriction of addressing me as 'sir'--or 'Professor'--does not apply in private."

"Yes, sir."

He held back a sigh.

"Do you have something reasonably presentable," he asked, "apart from the size?"

"Yes. I suppose."

"Well, let me have a look when we go back to your rooms. I'll adjust the fit."

Harry looked at him, astonished. "You're a tailor?"

"No," Severus rejoined, "I'm a wizard. As you may recall."

"Oh. Yeah." Harry laughed a little. "I did that once, by accident. Shrank an ugly old sweater Aunt Petunia wanted to make me wear."

"Well, I won't make you wear anything ugly. I promise that. And I promise that we will shop for clothing after we've done with your eyes."

"Oh!"

"Don't get too excited, boy. I'm not a wealthy man. But I can at least see to it you're decently clothed."


One week after the trip to the eye doctor--and to a shop that sold clothing that wouldn't embarrass Harry at prices that wouldn't deplete his father's savings--Severus took Harry into town again to pick up the eyeglasses: gold wire frames for Harry, silver for Severus.

"Told you you needed glasses."

"I didn't need them."

"Yes, Professor."

"They merely make an easier job of reading, especially given the piles of rubbish I am required to inflict upon my eyes, night after night."

"You look very smart."

"Nonsense." But he couldn't help smiling, just a little.


Severus was sitting, one evening, trying to decipher a decidedly indecipherable mess, purportedly a comparison of potions used for mental acuity. It was tempting, very tempting, to scrawl across the top: I suggest you imbibe one of the following before attempting to write another essay. But then he realized he could not be sure if the student in question had got the ingredients right. "God help us all," he sighed, holding his quill poised above the page.

"I didn't know you had religion."

Severus shrugged. "I don't, really," he answered Harry, correcting the first of many misspelled words. "My father made me go to church when I was young, till the year I left for Hogwarts and he gave me up as lost to the sin of witchcraft."

Harry snorted.

"I never did understand what kind of a God would give me a gift and then damn me for having it." Severus frowned, pondering the parchment before him. How could anybody get to fourth year and not know how to string together two sentences in proper fashion?

"I guess it's all right," said Harry. "As long as you're not a ruddy Papist."

The quill he was holding fell to the table. Severus looked up, staring at Harry.

"If," he said, "you are asking whether I was baptized and brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, then the answer is yes."

"Oh."

"Oh." His mouth twisted as he set the quill back in its stand. "However, as I said, I'm not a ruddy anything, now, in terms of organized religion. I follow my conscience--which, I submit, is considerably more thoughtfully developed than that of the average churchgoer."

Harry averted his eyes, pretending to take great interest in his textbook. Severus reached again for the quill.

"Well, that explains why you dress like a priest."

The quill fell back into the stand. "I do not dress like a priest. I dress like a wizard."

"Wizards wear lots of colors, not just black."

Severus glanced over at the boy, who was now looking directly at him. "I happen to like black," he said.

"You should wear something else, now and then. It won't kill you."

"No, but raising you may yet be the death of me."

Harry laughed.

"I wasn't joking."

Of course the boy didn't believe it.

"Anyway, it wasn't all bad." Severus pushed the mass of misspellings aside to be dealt with later. "I rather enjoyed singing in the choir."

"Choirboy? You?"

"Me."

"What'd you sing?"

"A rather mediocre alto, which has since degenerated into an even more mediocre tenor."

"No, I meant, what songs."

"Oh. Standard church fare. Hymns. Psalms. Please don't cast our miserable arses into eternal hellfire."

That elicited another, hearty laugh from the boy.

"I'm not setting a very good example, am I."

"I don't care."

"Well, I do."

"Why?"

"Because that's what a father's supposed to do."

"No, I mean, why do you care what I think about your religion when you don't believe in it yourself?"

"Because..." Severus thought for a few moments. "Because my criticism is based on reason. Yours is based on prejudice."

Harry looked at him skeptically.

"All organized religion is rubbish," declared Severus. "There's no reason to single out any one for special contempt."

That gave the boy something to think about.

"So what am I?" he eventually asked.

Severus shrugged. "Whatever you want to be."

"You didn't have me baptized?"

"God, no."

"So I don't have any godparents, then."

"Actually, you do. A godfather, anyway. You'll meet him, one of these days."

Harry frowned. "How can I have a godfather without the baptism?"

"You just do."

"Oh." There it was, the smirk. "That's what you call reason, is it."

"How's the homework coming along?"

"Was Mum a Catholic?"

"No, she wasn't."

"Was she anything?"

"Church of England. Sort of. We got married by a wizard, not in either church."

"In the wizard religion?"

Severus rolled his eyes. "There is no wizard religion. Just wizards."

"But they do weddings."

"So do Muggles with no connection to religion. Wizard religion." Severus shook his head and considered the stack of scrolls still awaiting his attention.

"What?" asked Harry. "What's so stupid about it?"

"It's like having a--a religion built on a talent for art. Or for sport. The First Church of Quidditch. There, my boy, we'll build it just for you."


"Wizard religion?" echoed Remus, amused.

"That's Harry for you. Finish the damned potion."

"Yes, sir."

Severus snorted. "God, now you sound like Harry."

"Harry, now you sound like God."

"What?"

Remus drank, pulling faces all the while.

"I told Harry he'd get to meet you soon. What do you think about having Christmas here at the house?"

"Can't." Remus set the empty cup on the table. "I'll be in London."

"Where?"

Remus grinned. "Nowhere you'd want to bring Harry."

Severus shook his head.

"Look, Severus, just because you're content to live like a monk doesn't mean the rest of us have to be. I'll have a Christmas present for Harry when you come by to do next month's potion."

"Something suitable, I trust."

"Of course. Any idea which team he bats for?"

Severus narrowed his eyes. "Gryffindor."

"Come on, Sev, you know what I mean."

"He is eleven years old, Remus."

"So? When I was eleven--"

"I really don't want to hear this." Severus decided it was time to have a Guinness. "Honestly, Remus, had I known the beast that hides behind that mild front you present to the rest of the world--"

"And had I known the mild man that hides behind that beastly presentation of yours, I'd have seduced you ages ago, before you got set in your monastic ways."

"Enough, Remus. By all means, give Harry a gift, but it had better be appropriate if you wish to continue taking advantage of my services--in Potions."

Remus winked. "Absolutely."