Thanks!

Harry has been feeling for a while already like everyone has been taken away from him, but he's not exactly ready to admit that if Snape dies there really isn't anyone who can take him in. He definitely wants to cling to the hope that Lupin or the Weasleys could take care of him until he is of age, but he's starting to come to terms with the possibility that they just can't. Also, he finally recognizes that Snape is important to other people (people Harry cares about). That's a step forward, considering that not long ago he saw Snape only as an obstacle or a source of irritation.

Well, Snape is not sure what will happen, which would, of course, drive him crazy. Since he can't find the reason Harry is having problems in the first place, he feels like anything could happen. That's stressful. He is relatively sure it will happen on Harry's birthday (like Lupin explained to Harry, birthdays are magical milestones), so his way of trying to prepare for whatever might happen is to keep a close eye on Harry. He can't be TOO concerned, though, since he's still splitting his attention between Harry and a potion that's in another room (he could have put the cauldron in his quarters instead of in his office, if he really thought Harry was in any danger). He probably just wants to make sure "Hadrian" doesn't go walking around the castle with eyes that are suddenly bright green, or something.

Aww, sorry your review got erased! I hate when I type something and then it just vanished on me. I can never remember exactly what I wrote the first time!

Harry just lets the important things whoosh over his head and latches on to some minor thing, and then gets so preoccupied with the minor thing that even standing in front of him with a megaphone wouldn't wake him up to the fact that there's something else that desperately needs his attention. In his defense, he can't be expected to know how everything in the magical world works, so he can sort of be excused for taking the word of adults when they claim that something is a certain way. Until given another reason to think about it, he has dismissed it as not important. If it ever occurs to him to suspect that he might be Snape's real son, he will probably remember the potion and hatch some idiotic plot to brew it in a filthy, haunted bathroom, even if it takes ten months to brew and even if the readers can think of at least twenty better and faster ways he could have achieved the same goal. And then, after all that, it will probably turn out to be the wrong potion, too.

Well, we're just sort of slogging through the multiple birthdays right now. It's really slow going for some reason, and I'm impatient too, because there are a lot of interesting things that will happen later (action! danger! betrayal! death!) and I want to get to them. I want the pace to pick up, but the birthdays are really important to the plot.

I'm glad you're enjoying it! My beta is truly awesome and we are getting so much done. She doesn't mind if I send her chapters in chunks or if I send them out of order, she has better ideas that me most of the time, and she isn't afraid to disagree with me. I think the next chapter will be out either on the weekend or early next week.

Ooh, great guess! Harry will be afraid that's what they're up to, too. He's getting really paranoid, not knowing what they're up to.

The jinx on DADA always had the quality of a runaway rumor. Everyone knows about it, but no one is exactly sure what it does, other than make it impossible for anyone to teach longer than a year. Malfoy doesn't have the whole story either, of course, he's just retelling the version of the rumor that he knows. The jinx is real, but if even Dumbledore couldn't remove it, how can anyone (who isn't Voldemort) say they know the truth? Harry's guess is as good as anyone else's when it comes to Lupin being in danger or not.

I've been interested in the jinx for a long time. It's one of those things that are kind of slippery. Just when you think you have an idea about how it would work, you remember something else and it wrecks your theory. I wrote an little essay about it once, but ended up not posting it because it was incomplete. I think I'll dust it off and post it on my lj now that I remember it.