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The cupboard is a rather cold and lonely place, he thinks; it does not have the warmth of Dudley's room, nor does it have the constant presence of Aunt Petunia.

At four, Harry had come upon the concept of a “mother”—the word felt soft and inviting on his tongue.

A mother was someone who kissed you, held you close, cared for you—someone who did not put you in cupboards—someone who came to your parent-teacher meetings, beaming over your grades—someone for whom you’d make cards and sloppy gifts and, regardless, be loved.

Harry does not have a mother; it’s a fact Aunt Petunia both loves to remind him of and hates him for.

Dudley has a mother; it’s another thing that he is once more privileged by, in contrast to Harry, and perhaps the only thing Harry minds about.

Aunt Petunia reserves her motherhood like a well-guarded trove, in the way she lets Dudley have the bigger plate, how she hugs him goodbye as she drops him off at school, while Harry is left behind alone again. It’s how Dudley’s achievements are displayed for all, in shiny plastic coating, set nicely over the shelves, while Harry’s are left forgotten in a corner—competitions, games, and quizzes—any kind of reward an eight-year-old Harry could win. It doesn't matter; they all find their way back in the cupboard, neatly arranged for a mother to come and appreciate them.

By ten, Harry had realized no mother would come, at least voluntarily.

Whatever hope he had for Aunt Petunia opening her gates to let Harry in, to be something—something soft and loving, was dwindling by eleven.

“Yer a wizard, Harry,” the large bearded man says, and Harry’s dark green eyes look and look, look over Dudley squealing in horror, look as Aunt Petunia frets herself, holding him close, reassuring him. And Harry can only look from outside the trove where mothers like to guard their children.

He was quiet as the large man—Hagrid, as he is told—talks, filling up the gaps of Harry’s life.

Harry’s mother did not die in some car accident as Aunt Petunia liked to claim. No, she died in a tryst against a dark lord, shielding Harry, saving Harry, and by doing such: the wizarding world too.

Hagrid looked over Harry when they descended into the vault, hoping to see any sort of remark from him. “Lovely woman, your mother. You have her eyes,” he says, patting him on the head between bouts of crying—“she saved us all from the likes of You-Know-Who.”

Harry does not say anything, and Hagrid does not notice. He does not notice how Harry’s eyes peer over the mountains of galleons.

Green eyes stare back at him—his mother’s eyes, he was told. The eyes do not have warmth as they scan over his dirty shoes, his skinny frame drowned by Dudley’s second hand.

His mother had saved the wizarding world—that might be true, Harry thinks—but not him. Her sacrifice did not cradle him, did not make a place for him to sleep, did not feed him. His mother truly is her sister’s blood—their love a gate Harry is left outside. The only difference is that his mother’s door is long closed,closed by her own hands.

He stiffens as he is measured. Dark grey eyes sweep back, and the words Malfoy and Draco are uttered. Harry remains quiet as the blond boy goes on and on about family legacies and houses.

The boy has a mother, too—the only thing that can bring him superiority over Harry. A mother who loves him. A mother who would probably hug him goodbye as he’s sent off to the station. A mother who loves. Harry does not have that. He only has his green eyes and a sacrifice—poor proxies for motherhood.

He was alone at the station. Alone again. Petunia simply pointed at his luggage as she left—she did not scold him. Not anymore, not after Dudley fell off the window, tailbone broken, and Harry watched only from above.

He just wanted to test, wanted to see how his magic worked.

He keeps his head low as he walks to the train, walking past the red-headed woman with her many children. He does not stop even when his name is whispered.

He sits behind the Malfoy boy, clutching his bag as the boy tells him of the school, of everything.

Hogwarts is a lonely place too—children divided by houses, the adults high above—but the food is plentiful and warm. That’s when he sees her; she stands out, the only one at the high table with hair not gray, young, dark-cropped, and with dark eyes—Professor Severina Snape.

Her gaze falls onto his, green eyes over dark, and just as fast, it shifts away.

The hat is dusty; it sifts through his memories. “Ah... how peculiar, how morbid,a taste for cunning indeed. But a mind that feels no fear—or simply doesn’t feel at all. Gryffindor would do you good, my boy, pacify you.”

The hall holds its breath. “She’s the Slytherin head—Professor Snape. Father and she are good acquaintances,” Malfoy’s voice rings in his mind.

“Slytherin,” Harry whispers. “I want Slytherin.”

“Of course you do. Well, off you go. History surely does repeat.”The hat sighs, as if Harry has already been dammned.

“SLYTHERIN!”

There are cheers from the green table, and some from the blue, too.

The headmaster’s eyes pierce him. Malfoy and he join the other Slytherins, who have already taken a liking to the Boy Who Lived.

Professor Snape leaves early. Harry watches her closely. He had expected some kind of recognition, something at least.

It’s fine, he thinks. Harry has already learned how most of them were; he will be a good student, brilliant in any subject she wants him to be.

Or, he had decided,he simply would pry open the gates himself if he was left outside.

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She was not cruel, he had found out, and he was adept at finding cruelty—Petunia had seen to that. She was firm, strict, and perhaps favoring towards her Slytherins, favor which somehow never fell upon Harry, although he wished for it; she was in all ways efficient, she wanted results, and Harry was willing to give her that too—but not cruel, never that.

She did not pay any attention to him in the first class, did not even look him in the eyes, while all the other professors and students had already identified him as the Boy Who Lived, Harry, or worse, Lily’s boy—she had only graced him with a final “Mr. Potter.”

He had found that acceptable too; he was good at adapting—he would adapt for her, for whatever attention he wanted from her. It was a strange feeling that made him want her eyes on him only.

And so he did what she needed most: efficiency.

He did not dare free his wand in her presence, did not chatter, nor did he ever let his eyes off her. He would do his work first in class, his potions clean and sharp, essays formulated and factual in such a way that made even the mudblo—Granger girl envy.

His first year was followed by a sense of sorting: sorting who he found agreeable, favorable, or untrustworthy. Professor McGonagall would find her way into the latter—he did not trust her, with her trying to grapple Harry into whatever mold his father had left for him, and she was far, far too Gryffindorish for his taste.

Above all, he disliked the headmaster most; he was kind, yes—too kind.

He found most of his fellow house members agreeable. They were acceptable in their sharp little words, far too complex for their soft mouths, with their creative spells and their shiny hexes. Their worlds were different. Unlike him, they all, before bed, wrote letters to their parents—to their mothers—wrote about their days, how many points they won, how many Muggles they wished death upon, and how they loved their dear mums and dads.

Harry would watch Draco too, writing, hands eager and soft, telling his musings to a mother somewhere. And once again, just like with Dudley, Harry could only look.

Graves don’t accept letters—Lily should have thought of this.

And neither does Professor Snape, but that could be fixed, he thought.

She was the one he found most favorable; he liked her. He wanted her attention.

And finally it came, in the form of the most forgettable professor in Hogwarts: Quirrell.

Voldemort was back; it was a fact—he had tried to kill Harry. Again.

And once again, his mother’s protection helped—helped in a way it should have earlier. He was safe again, alive again.

The Mirror of Erised did not show what the headmaster had wanted Harry to see. Harry simply saw in his desire....certain things that should be his, but he could not tell the headmaster that.

“I see my parents,” he lied, and for once, it seemed both he and the headmaster wanted to believe it was what he saw.

But what mattered most was that he was not a fool. The professor did care—she cared for him, she was saving him from Voldemort, from Quirrell. When he thought he did not matter to her, he was wrong. He was the one who mattered most—she had cared for him most.

And isn’t that what love is? To care, care, and care.

And when the hall glittered with green, and Slytherin had acquired its winnings from the final points Harry had brought from his “heroism,” she looked at him from the infirmary bed, eyes not meeting his.

“Good job, Mr. Potter.”

But he did not want that,it was pale in comparison to what he wanted, what he deserved.

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He dreaded going back—back to the place where no magic lived, no Professor Snape to follow around, no freedom whatsoever. And so he tried every excuse—homework, extra classes, anything—to stay back for the holidays. And yet, he was once again denied, once again by her, in the sharp, precise signature of hers, which gave him no excuse to stay at Hogwarts for home.

He wonders what it is about him that allows her to forsake him so easily, to close the gates of her cold heart. One day, he thinks, he might slither in, and the day he does will be grand enough.

And once again, he was back here, in the clean equation of the place he calls home—Cruel Aunt Petunia, Rough Uncle Vernon, and Bully Dudley—where Harry was a non-essential variable, left alone mostly—mostly.

Yet, it seems the equation has been crossed out; Petunia no longer gives him the trove of her cruelty, and Dudley does not hold out for any attention from Harry. No longer does he run after him like a predator, no longer throwing food, no longer mocking—not after the fall. Harry thinks he won’t be able to run for some good months.

And so all that is left is Rough Uncle Vernon, who has decided to lock Harry and his belongings away. Harry wonders if this is his way of protecting Dudley from him. Just as Aunt Petunia pours her love and care into Dudley only, Uncle Vernon pulls his defenses up only for Dudley. Perhaps he is the knight who protects them both from him.

He thinks of his own father, James, who died trying to protect him. Harry looks up at the narrow, dark ceiling, at the silver cobwebs, and feels the hollowness of hunger. He can only wonder if his father had protected him enough.

And he knows Professor Snape had done so. As he lulls himself to sleep, he dreams not of red hair and green eyes, but rather of dark eyes and black hair, and he dreams of softness within them.

He feels annoyance creep up at the house-elf, blabbering and talking, and so Harry shoos him away, threatening to hex him. How could any harm come to him when he knows his mother's sacrifice will come to shield him, when he knows she—his professor, cold as ever—will save him.

Freedom, he feels, is to be back at Hogwarts, in her class, with her. And although she may be far, he could always look at her.

Their new DADA teacher, Lockhart, was less of a teacher and more of a pompous, glittery chatterbox, whose only redeeming quality was that he had a set of nice blue eyes and a fair face.

What he feels when he falls off the broom is not pain, but rather numbness. He had thought that darkness would come, that finally death had come to collect its debt, and that perhaps he would be alone once again.

And when he is woken up and sees her—alongside Lockhart and Pomfrey—her face is sharp, rigid as ever, like that of a stern mother.

“Be careful,” she says, “you gave your friends quite the fright.”

He looks at only her, not Draco, Parkinson, or Zabini—but only her.

And he is glad that death decided to wait, for that meant he could see her once more. Once more she cared, and once more he would make sure she did.

Then, as quickly, he realizes that his blood and bruises do fret her, from the way he gazes at her with pitiful green eyes, and the scars from whatever new excuse he’s made at the expense of some nameless Gryffindor.

From there, he can see her pupils dilate—she is a rather short woman, and he comes to the satisfying realization that in a few years, he will tower over her, he’s sure—feel the slight hesitation in her hands as she guides him back to the infirmary.

What a wonderful thing it is to see her duel, his eyes not on Lockhart but only on her. Her spells are strict and firm, and he could only think what an honour it would be to duel her—he would do that someday, make her lose not because she is weak but because he had been strong.

Draco calls the Granger girl slurs—Harry does not know why he does that, not keeping his thoughts to himself. Although Harry has not much of a liking for Muggles, he’d like to not spoil his tongue, not let his professor be disappointed.

And soon Harry could feel the Granger girl and the Weasley boy follow him around, suspecting him to be the Heir of Slytherin—and soon the Granger girl too is stoned.

They start treating him like a god or a monster; Harry has found it tiring to be a subject of both. He wondered what she saw in those green eyes of his when he came again and again. He’d like to have her someday, he thinks, once when he grows stronger, taller than her, and when she may not be able to deny him at all.

He is a hero, is he not? Saviour. And do heroes not get what they want?

When he creeps up to Gregory, seeing eyes far too soft and face too odd, he follows him to the place where the ghost of Myrtle lives, until Gregory turns out to not be Gregory at all.

Tom’s eyes are cold blue, and when he tries to kill him again, Harry could only wonder if he felt cold too. Was his mother cold too, distant and far? He liked to think yes; that would explain why he turned out such a way.

And once again safe, Lockhart mad, the halls green and silver and she high above him again, she smiles faintly—it’s a rare thing—and he keeps it forever in his heart.

It was his first birthday in Hogwarts—or post, if you think. The Slytherin dorm adorned with candles, his cake a sweet, sugary favour by Draco—and she comes too. Later, but she comes.

Far away she always is,her eyes usually cold,and posture straight,She keeps her gates to him closed—but,once every bruise or threat,she looses the hinges for him,and he hopes for the day he breaks in.