When the painted potions master leaves the headmistress’s office for Grimauld Place, it is half past 127 according to the unorthodox time piece on Minerva’s desk. The sunlight falling across the sleeping Mr. Potter’s brow, however, suggests an hour closer to 11 am.

Severus Snape stares from his frame at his no-longer-quite-so-young charge a few minutes before roughly shaking himself out of something too akin to sentimentality for this early in the morning sans scotch. “I find it truly perplexing, Mr. Potter, that you are somehow managing to waste my time yet again, given the fact that I have,” Severus pauses, “the good fortune to no longer be thrall to its passage.”

“Grrh” is the succinct reply of the bane of all Slytherins’ existence.

“Quite. Let’s begin, then, with something simpler. Good morning, Mr. Potter.” By now, the potions master’s usual sarcasm has slipped into unnecessarily virulent seething, but, truth be told, and it won’t be if Severus has anything to say about it, the painting is taking an unsportsmanlike pleasure in one-upping the manchild before him no matter how vacant and empty a challenge Potter has become.

“Professor,” Harry cries in alarm.  “I am late for Occlumency?” The last is addressed not to the painting but disturbingly to some seemingly invisible conversant. Severus is quiet a moment, watching as the shell of a man before him makes its way to a splattering of silver in the well of an empty candelabra.

Before Harry has time to drag Severus down whatever unpleasant wormhole from the boy’s fifth year at Hogwarts is swirling around in the candlestick, the professor interrupts. “No, Mr. Potter. Not yet I should think. I can’t imagine you will be mentally ready for anything quite that taxing for some time. However, the idea in principle does, surprisingly, have merit. Given your state, we should perhaps take that for a happy accident rather than evidence of any latent aptitude for coherent thought on your part.”

“Detention, then,” Harry sighs, making his way to a worn pair of brown dragonhide gloves, marinating in the former contents of Potter’s brain. The potions master should, of course, stop the boy. There are innumerable dangers in entering an improperly stored memory—inability to exit, physical injury, transfigured fusion to the container itself, and whatever it is precisely that has happened to the young savior wallowing in the shredded remains of his own consciousness. However, at this moment, the spy’s curiosity, as it has done in the past to spectacularly ill effect, gets the better of him.  Severus watches with a hard eye as Potter disappears into the memory. Instantly, the professor’s world goes black.

Severus’s first thought upon returning to consciousness is confusion over the leathery brown moss that seems to have taken over the walls of the potions classroom. “Who is responsible for this travesty?” Severus intends to say, but instead, the words that come from his lips are a similarly harsh “What are you waiting for? Get to work.” The potions master wonders silently to which students he is speaking. The dungeons are poorly lit at the best of times, but for some unaccountable reason, they are especially dark and dank today, and the professor cannot quite make out the visages of the trembling twelve-year-old before him, his calmer compatriot of the same age, and the smattering of taller students—seventh years, for sure—surrounding the two young boys. The professor strains to move in the direction of the wayward students in a vain attempt to identify them, but for some unknown reason, is unable to move forward.

Severus remembers vaguely experiencing this peculiar sensation all before in a classroom fifteen years ago or was it just yesterday or one year ago or, perhaps, a lifetime ago. Something is very wrong, Severus observes, as he continues to find himself at odds with a body that moves entirely independent of his will. Rather than examining the students he has set to the messy task of disemboweling frogs, the professor returns to his desk to grade papers that, in the unusually dim light of the dungeons, he cannot actually see. 

“You brought him,” says a childish voice encouragingly—belonging certainly to one of the two second years.

“He came on his own.” The voice that replies is too old to be a seventh year’s. This is a man’s voice although uncertain and strangely at odds with the confidence of the child who spoke before.

“It doesn’t matter. As long as he is here, we will both be fine.”

The man’s response is a mix of wariness and exhaustion. “How can you be so sure?”

“Have I ever been wrong before?”

“No, I don’t suppose you have.” The man chuckles good naturedly.

Severus listens intently to the conversation although outwardly focused on the impossible task before him and wonders briefly why he isn’t more disturbed by the presence of an unknown man in detention, the insubordination of a child who should be silently tending to his frogs, or the professor’s powerlessness to control his own movements.

“Sir,” the child in question says, approaching Severus’s desk. “What did mother teach you about the difference between the past and the present?” From the angle of his head, inclined as it is towards the stack of half graded essays, Severus can just barely make out the lank midnight black hair of the boy before him. Although the professor doesn’t remember the student, the features are oddly familiar as is the question. The impertinence of small children! Another detention is warranted, especially considering the boy’s inattentiveness to the punishment underway. The constraints of the present reality, however, leave the man with little else to do besides consider the boy’s words. “What did mother teach you about the difference between the past and the present?” How on earth did this unnatural child know anything about the dying words of Eileen Prince?

“Remember, she said ‘You are a good boy for wanting to help your mother, but all the timeturners in the world can’t change the past.’” Everything about the child speaking to him is uncanny—the boy’s unaccountable knowledge of Severus’s personal past, his odd confidence, even his strangely familiar features. The potions master grows increasingly uneasy, truly comprehending for an instant the overwhelming fear of the unknown that fueled Tobias Snape’s and Petunia Evans’s hatred of wizards. “’What’s done is done,’” the boy continues to quote Eileen. “’You can only change the present. What you can’t change is the past. If my time here on earth could be changed, it would already be changed. Go back if you like, darling, to replay happier memories, but I would rather you make new ones instead.’” The boy’s voice waivers and he pauses briefly. “Sir, if you can only focus on the truth that you can only change the present, I think everything will become clear.”

The past, then, Severus realizes. This is the past. The spy attempts methodically to force himself into the present, using all the mental discipline he spent a lifetime honing. He imagines possible futures, discarding them quickly until one solidifies as immutable. A wispy awareness of the last few days and last fourteen years seeps into Severus’s consciousness—hurried memories of basilisks, of dark lords rising, of boy heroes, of murdering his last earthly friend, of countless students dying, of Severus himself dying, of the state of Potter’s room. Potter’s room. This isn’t just the past. It is a memory. The swiftness of the realization is jarring—so much so that Severus is nauseated, but of course, the professor never once was ill in the potions classroom, so he has no reason to fear being so now.

No sooner does the knowledge of the present come than Severus hears his own disembodied voice flood the classroom, the sound dampened by the dragonhide walls. “It is true, however, that those who have mastered legilimency are able, under certain conditions, to delve into the minds of their victims and interpret their findings correctly.” Severus’s speech is a distant echo but clearly audible above the squelching sounds of school boys drawing and quartering frog carcasses. The speech is familiar despite being from the future because, as Severus is now aware, it is from a future that is already past.

The odd unnamed boy and the man, a man Severus now recognizes as a twenty-six-year-old Potter hear the voice as a calling, disappearing into, no doubt, the candlestick from earlier in the day. Severus’s awareness, however, lingers briefly in the memory. His body rises from the desk to inspect the work of the remaining twelve-year-old boy, whose lightning bolt scar is now just barely visible in the dim light. “Pathetic,” Severus announces. “Unfortunately, I have no more frogs for you to mangle. Dismissed. Get out of my classroom.” In the periphery of his vision, Severus counts seventeen grown Potters disemboweling frogs alongside the twelve-year-old child. “Against all odds, you survived the war, and now, you are spending your victory in detention. Life is wasted on the living, Potter.” Severus muses before the memory fades and he finds himself in another.

“The usual rules do not seem to apply to you, Potter…” Severus is relieved to find that this memory has survived more intact than the last and, thankfully, with sufficient lighting for the professor to be able to make out his interlocutor. Harry is now fifteen, willful, and, the professor remembers, half possessed by the Dark Lord. Outwardly, the professor continues to reenact the conversation marking the start of a series of unfortunate events he would all too happily forget and that Potter, however, seems to be intent on reliving. Standing behind the fifteen-year-old are the strange boy from the previous memory and the twenty-six-year-old Potter.

“Sev,” the older Potter says with a shudder at Severus Snape’s utter disdain for the fifth-year student. “Do you really think he can help?” The hatred Severus felt in life has dulled even if the display is as cold and sneering as ever, and the man finds himself not regretting his demeanor but not triumphing in it either. Only yesterday, Severus would have assumed the muting of his dislike for the boy an aftereffect of death, but now, Severus is not so sure.

Sev nods. “Occlumency is the art of organizing and mastering your thoughts, Harry, and not like you have done--sorting similar memories into tea cups and bowls. If I wasn’t scattered across this room in your memories as much as you are, I could help you, which means, since he is not, he can help you. Trust him, Harry. I know what he has to do.”   

Severus is staring into the eyes of the fifteen-year-old but the young boy’s face, Sev’s face, is close enough to Potter’s for Severus to make out. It is startling to recognize his younger self in Potter’s memories and more startling still to recognize the child’s sentience. This child is no memory of Severus’s youth, or rather if he is memory, he is no mere memory. Sev is more a part of the present in Potter’s memories than Severus is a part of the present in the outside world. The thought is troubling, and the possible explanations—all of them terrifying, some of them tantalizing—leave Severus ambivalent at best about the unexpected comradery between the black haired child and the twenty-six-year-old Boy Who… well “Lived” is surely a bit too generous at present.

Severus ponders the puzzle while making a show of not murdering the fifteen-year-old occlumency student. Just before the memory ends, as the edges begin to fade, and the grown Potter’s attention is on the world outside, Sev runs up to Severus and whispers urgently. “Help him, but sir,” the boy’s voice is no longer confident but laced with fear. “I don’t think we are entirely dead.”

When the painted professor returns from the candlestick, Potter is sprawled across the floor, breathing heavily, muttering something to himself, his wand pointed at his temple. Severus Snape is renowned for his sharp intellect and quick mind, but perhaps because death has dulled his wits or perhaps because he has had more than several shocks in the last twenty-four hours or perhaps because the reality of Potter’s consciousness is entirely at odds with everything reasonable and magically possible, the professor is at a loss. 

“Potter, what do you think you are doing?”

“I have to clear my mind.”

“No. I think you have done quite enough of that for a lifetime. Put your wand down now.” Potter listens, for once, but Severus doubts that will continue should Harry leave his sight.

“Sev says I have to clear my mind.”

The reference to the young boy brings Severus’s attention back to thoughts he would rather ponder in the familiar comfort of Hogwarts. “How, precisely did he tell you to clear your mind?”

“Memories of memories go in the container the memories came from.”

The invective has sense despite its dubious source. “Alright then, but memories of the memories only. Do you hear me? I will know if you let loose more than that. Severus watches closely as Harry empties his recollection of the majority of the last two hours into the dragonhide glove and the candle stick. “That is quite enough.”

Harry yawns, and moves towards the blasted box of Bertie Bott’s. “Potter, the mental gymnastics of the morning are no doubt too much for what remains of a brain in that thick skull of yours. However, should you find yourself in need of a respite now or at any other point in the future, you will avail yourself of the bed. Bed. Now.” Severus emphasizes the last two words in case the meaning of the rest of his diatribe is lost on the young man.

“Ok,” Harry says agreeably before climbing under the covers. He looks expectantly at Severus, who, with a long suffering sigh begins to narrate the story of Harry’s eleventh birthday as best he remembers it from Hagrid’s frequent retelling at staff meetings.