The silent, green-eyed observers are always as disturbing to Severus as the deja vu but never as disturbing as the seventh Potter was proving himself today.

It wasn't exactly like being alive, Severus decided. It wasn't like being dead either. He thought, felt, and experienced, but he had lived through most of these thoughts, feelings, and experiences before--twelve times before. In fact, this present was, as far as Severus knew, the thirteenth time he would introduce the Slytherin and Gryffindor students in the class of '98 to potions for the very--well, not very--first time.

His entrance is as dramatic as ever--dramatic to a fault. The potions master's robes billow perfectly as he turns. The children's eyes widen in appropriate awe, admiration, and fear even though they have seen this act a dozen times before. This crowd never tires, but repetition has made the performer too aware of the performance. It has, Severus feels, morphed into caricature although nothing, of course, has changed... except for Potter.

Today, there are seven of him: The youngest, wide-eyed next to Ron Weasley; three men in their twenties, each with the same lightening-bolt scar, scrutinizing a fourth who is intently examining Draco Malfoy's class notes; one perched precariously on Severus's desk; and the seventh and most ragged Potter smelling strongly of cheep liquor and standing uncomfortably close to Severus Snape.

Potter is using some sort of modified instrument. Mixed magics--a disacknowledgement spell and a... To be perfectly honest, Severus has no earthly idea how the boy has managed to inflict this particular brand of temporal punishment on his professor and classmates. However, a yet-to-be-developed variation of the time-turner does seem the least unlikely of the twenty-three possibilities floating through Severus's head.

"... I can teach you how to bottle fame," the professor purrs halfway through his standard first-year speech. He has given it twice every year since he first started teaching and now, thirteen times in September of '91. Severus remembers finding a perverse pleasure in the profound effect of a lecture that, for him, had become mundane on students that, for him, had always seemed like penance. But now, the speech is its own kind of penance. Severus speaks without thinking--the words forming in his mouth on their own volition, his legs moving through the classroom without his leave. His body is entirely faithful to the performance even if his mind no longer is.

At "stopper death," the seventh Potter smirks and then looks incredibly sad. Out of the corner of his eye, Severus notices a man reflected in the glass of the store cupboard in the back of the classroom, and the potions master has the strangest suspicion that the man is bleeding even though the image refuses to come into focus. The sight is alarmingly new, and the freshness of something unexpected is far more intriguing than the suspected morbid strangeness of the scene. Severus, of course, is curious, but neither his head nor eyes turn to oblige his curiosity as the speech continues.

"Well, let's try again. Where, Mr Potter, would you look if I asked you to find me a bezoar?" Severus brings his face inches from the youngest Potter's for added effect or maybe something else. That first of the thirteen, had he wanted to see the child squirm? Was he drawn to those startling eyes?

As Severus awaits Potter's answer, the Crabbe and Goyal boys, as usual, wear their signature vacant expressions. And Draco, for the thirteenth time, looks on in condescending approval as Severus Snape interrogates the young Gryffindore. Granger, inevitably, almost does herself injury in a desperate plea to be called on, and Neville (characteristically cowering behind his cauldron) seems to have perfected the human embodiment of fear. But Potter, most unusually, answers correctly. "The stomach of a goat, sir." It is not the voice of an eleven-year-old boy but the slurred speech of an inebriated twenty-something. The seventh Potter, now leaning into Severus over the youngest Potter's desk, empties the contents of his stomach into a nearby cauldron seconds before the classroom begins to tear. A black swath rips through the lab, replacing Zabini's right arm, the center isle, one entire Potter, and Longbottom's head with void. But the seventh Potter, with the reflexes and grace he inherited from his father, rolls away from the chasm, unharmed and still wiping kippers marinated in whiskey and stomach acid from the corners of his mouth. Zabini continues to take notes, his arm moving eerily in and out of the emptiness, and the professor continues to question the youngest Potter as if it is entirely normal for Longbottom to function not only brainless but headless as well. The potions master would smirk if he could.

"Not a time-turner, then." The thought barely has time to flit across Severus's mind before the seventh Potter disappears, and the scene dissolves into insentience and blackness.