Sunday, 10th of February, 1996, 3:17 pm

SEVERUS SNAPE

I stared at the boy for a whole minute before I was able to shake away my disturbed thoughts and try to compose an appropriate response. Meanwhile the boy seemed to be trying to sink further and further into the bed. I stepped back and gave the child his space.

Pieces of the mystery that had been growing in the back for my mind finally started making sense. The boy’s visions. If he had truly seen the meeting with the Dark Lord last night, there was a chance he recognized me. It would also explain the skittishness.

“I’m not sure I know what you speak of, Mr. Potter.” I said lightly.

The boy’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. I wanted to curse at someone, maybe Albus for making me be responsible for this boy, if only for a few hours and maybe at Poppy too for having the gall to leave the boy with me.

“You had a dream, that’s all. Dreams are not real.”

Potter’s eyebrows quirked in doubt, but he loosened up and pushed himself into a seating position. He continued to watch me with wariness but there was no longer a constant undercurrent of fear evident in his eyes or body language.

“All that I can tell you, Mr. Potter, is that I will not hurt you, intentionally. Legilimency is a dangerous art. It can hurt.” Perhaps it would have been prudent to warn the boy beforehand that it might hurt.

“You could have warned me,” the boy muttered under his breath, the statement obviously not meant to be heard. I ignored it but found myself somewhat relieved to recognize some familiar belligerence in his attitude. I felt no need to explain myself to the child, so I did not elaborate anymore.

“Now, I have sufficiently gained and idea of where you stand.” I ran a finger across my lips in thought. “Do you know what meditation is, Mr. Potter?”

He eyed me for a moment more before nodding his head hesitantly. “My Uncle Vernon always said that’s what New Age weirdoes did when they couldn’t find a job.”

“Indeed.” That went a long way to explaining much of the boy’s approach towards things. “While you are more than welcome to believe what your Uncle tells you, meditation is the first step in learning Occlumency. If you do not learn this properly then those dreams of yours will continue. However, if you join us “jobless New Age weirdoes,” then they will stop and you won’t have your precious beauty sleep interrupted.”

The boy visibly cringed, but I wasn’t so sure as to what.

“I do believe that is enough for now.” I said gruffly. I was getting tired of playing these games with the boy.

Accio-ing a chair I sat in that instead of on the bed and pulled a Potions journal from inside my robes. I knew the boy was watching my every move, but I didn’t acknowledge him any further.

If I was going to have to spend my time down here babysitting the teen-turned-baby, then I would use my time how I pleased. If the boy ended up wanting to play, then that was his loss.

Eventually, however, I noticed him pull a teddy bear from the tangled mess of blankets. He began talking to the bear, almost inaudibly. If I hadn’t spent years training myself to listen to subtle sounds then I never would have realized he was speaking in Parseltongue to the toy.

It wasn’t so much that the boy was talking in Parseltongue that shocked me—it was the fact that he did it with such ease. Parseltongue is a magical ability. It requires from the speaker a small amount of magic in order for the speaker to cross-translate between the speaker’s primary language and the snake language.

Small magic, being taken from the boy by way of speaking to the stuffed bear should be wearing him out. I took out a piece of paper and a small quill and jotted down a few notes about what I was observing. The boy saw me writing and stopped talking. I finished my thoughts on paper and went back to the potions journal. I didn’t read the words, but instead I watched the boy from the corner of my eye. He fidgeted on the bed and looked at the window every few seconds.

“Can I go outside?” he asked quietly.

“No.” I said and finally looked at what I was reading.

The boy didn’t protest and didn’t say anything for the rest of the day until Poppy returned some hours later.

Sunday, 10th of February, 1996, 7:12 pm

“Headmaster, I cannot teach the boy--”

“Severus, are you backing out?” Dumbledore looked over his glasses at me. His eyes did not twinkle and for some reason the age around his eyes stood out ever more.

“No, Headmaster. I can teach him basic meditations and similar mental trainings, but beyond that, if I proceed any further I will potentially become a danger. The Dark Lord still has access to Potter’s mind.”

“Yes, Poppy mentioned a vision he had.”

“It’s not only that. Soon the Dark Lord may come to learn of and use this connection. He could manipulate the boy. If I proceed with true tutor style then I will have to meet mind-to-mind with the boy and open up more than I am comfortable with.” I didn’t like admitting such things, even to one as trusted as the Headmaster, but I had a bad feeling about this and the boy’s mind link with Voldemort.

“Understandable, Severus. But I trust your ability to keep certain things deeply hidden.”

“You do not understand the Dark Lord’s abilities, Headmaster. While I may be able to keep our secrets while I am at the gatherings, I doubt I will be able to put as much effort into my barriers while I am also trying to lead the mind of a child. Such multitasking is almost unheard of. Even the best masters of Occlumency must drop their barriers while teaching their protégés.”

The headmaster crisscrossed his fingers and looked into one of the glass baubles on his desk. Pink mist swirled within and the headmaster seemed to read something in them.

“Give me some time, Severus. I must look into something. In the mean time, continue teaching the boy as you can. I will find you an answer to this.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eye. Something was bothering him.

“Headmaster--”

“You are dismissed, Professor Snape. I will see you at breakfast tomorrow.” Dumbledore stood and retreated to his quarters. I stood as well but stayed alone in his suddenly constricting office for a few minutes to consider the things I needed to accomplish.

The headmaster had little need of me at this moment. His only demand, was one of the hardest yet, but for once was one of the few times that I wasn’t tasked with multiple items. Teach the boy Occlumency.

The Dark Lord wanted me to get close to the boy to secure his allegiance to Voldemort.

I had no potions in the work for either of my masters.

I had read most of the pertinent information from my new journals, everything else was unimportant to my line of work.

I had used last night to grade all the papers for the students.

Other than teaching Potter I had nothing to do at the moment that truly needed my attention. Oh, sure there were always potions to be made and always orders to fill; always more assignments to create and always more books to read. But right now none of that seemed important. Even though I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong with this whole situation, I felt that teaching the boy was becoming more important.

Briefly, I wondered if the headmaster had something to do with this odd feeling of urgency. But I brushed that thought away as soon as it entered my mind. He was too busy at the moment dealing with Umbridge to be manipulative in his grandfatherly way.

I found myself walking the halls towards the hospital wing and let myself sit next to the sleeping boy. A few of the overnight healers in the Wing were working on other things so I was left alone. I touched the scar on Potter’s forehead and let myself fall into a trance. Deeper and deeper into the trance I fell until I felt a glimmer of a connection to Potter’s childlike mind.

His mind was drifting slowly towards the deepest of sleeps where in which everyone dreams. The first glimpses of a dream I saw were only of vague images shifting in the dark. Voices that had no coherency lilted out, meaning from any of it escaping me.

“Harry…” The first voice I heard wasn’t one I thought I would ever hear again. Lily’s voice. I instinctively pushed for the source of that voice and broke through the fog of Potter’s dream. But what I found myself in wasn’t a dream, but a memory. The shapes, sounds and smell were still fuzzy but I could at least decipher them.

Lily stood in the middle of a nursery gently rocking me. No, not me. Harry Potter. She smiled down at us and gently kissed our forehead.

“Lily?” Another phantom. James Potter. He walked into the nursery and looked down at the child in Lily’s arm. “What’s wrong?”

“Can’t you feel it James?” Lily looked up at Potter and smiled sadly. “He’s getting closer.”

“Yeah,” Potter touched the back of Lily’s neck and looked out the window where only darkness glowed. “Lily, Sirius and Peter… they have a plan…”

The dream swirled and mutated until I found myself not in Lily’s arms but in Potter’s. He was nodding off but held the child close. I could see the ceiling of a sitting room around us.

The dream swirled again and this time I was standing in a caged off crib looking out at three adults standing in the middle of the nursery.

“See, James, they’d never expect it!” Sirius Black grinned. “We’ll dupe them all!”

Peter Pettigrew chuckled, “Yeah, dupe…”

Potter crossed his arms. “Okay… let’s do it.”

Swirling, swimming the world shifted, but this time, I felt emotions. Sadness, fear. Young Potter.

The world took shape. I was still in the nursery, but it was blackened. The walls were charred and I could smell death, fire was licking at the walls, threatening to take everything. I looked down and saw Lily on the ground her face contorted in death. The door to the nursery burst open and Black opened the door. His face was pale and became even more pale upon seeing Lily on the floor. “No. No. No. No. No. No. No. NO. ” He started sobbing incoherently and fell to the ground in front of Lily. “NO!”

I heard the body of young Potter start to cry and Black looked up. “Oh, Harry.” He pulled the child out of the crib and held him close. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him! I promise you Harry, I’ll kill that bastard Peter. I’ll avenge your parents.”

The dream abruptly ended and I was thrown back out into reality. I opened my eyes and saw the eyes of a seven-year-old brimming with tears. Quietly, he cried and I sat in silence, thinking of Lily. He fell asleep an hour later and I left without ever having said a word.