It was the year Harriet Potter started Hogwarts.
Dumbledore had taken care to remind him of it.

Severus found it hard to focus on the Sorting and applaud for the Slytherins. Potter. He hated the name, and was determined to hate the girl as well.

She was, after all, the spawn of James Potter.

Even though she allegedly had the eyes of her mother. Dumbledore had made sure to mention it. Severus knew not what the old coot hoped to achieve by it. Did he want to get Severus to see her as replacement for Lily?

That would be all sorts of creepy, and hating the girl really was the morally superior alternative in that case.

Really, what did Dumbledore think? While Severus’ feelings towards Lily were innocent enough – he had always had enough self-control to keep his thoughts from straying to fantasies that were too far from reality and would only make said reality hurt more – they were decidedly of a romantic nature, and …

No, he could not fathom what Dumbledore intended to achieve.


„Potter, Harriet.“

Severus could not help but look.

Blonde hair. Short blonde hair.

For some reason he had expected to see either a black mop like Potter’s or Lily’s long, red hair.

This …

Well, genetics were not something he knew a lot about, having had to teach himself using muggle books, but he figured it was possible. Lily’s sister did have blonde hair, after all.

The girl did have glasses, thankfully, making the eyes less visible.

She was sorted Gryffindor, no surprise there, and shuffled over to her house table, shoulders hunched.

No, she didn’t have much of her mother. If anything, she reminded Severus of himself.

He shuddered.

Certainly he had nothing in common with Potter’s spawn.

No, the girl would grow bold and sure of herself once she’d gotten used to school, and then she’d be like Potter and he could hate her in peace.




Only that didn’t happen.

Severus asked her some questions in her first lesson of potions, and she couldn’t answer them, just as he had expected – Potter had always been lazy.

But …

Her answers just weren’t as cocky and cheeky as he would have expected from Potter’s spawn.


Severus continued to watch her, trying to find fault. And fault, he did find.

She befriended the annoying Granger girl – a teacher’s pet, just like Lupin, the logical thing for a lazy Potter to do.

She was sloppy with her brewing, and whenever a lesson ended, her desk was covered in blonde hair.

It was a few days before Halloween that Severus found himself glaring at the hair-covered desk again. Stupid child shouldn’t be so careless with her hair. If someone wanted to brew polyjuice potion, they would only have to collect it.

Severus wasn’t sure why, but he collected a couple of hairs.

Perhaps they might be useful at some point in time, later. It wasn’t like he had creepy motives or anything. He would never have dreamt of stealing a lock of Lily’s hair … not that Lily’s hair had been strewn all over her desk …

Wait.

Should children lose this many hairs? Hair loss was an affliction of middle-aged men, and some unlucky younger ones, but surely a child, a female child at that …

There was something wrong here.


He started watching Potter, even following her around inconspiciously.

She didn’t move much. Not because she was bookish, though. Granger always had a book with her, but Potter didn’t. Potter just sat around, doing nothing much at all, except listening to Granger’s lectures.

Still, none of that was the solid proof Severus wanted.

Alerting Madam Pomfrey that the child was possibly sick when that wasn’t the case … that would just make Dumbledore think he had succeeded with … whatever he was trying to achieve by emphasizing how much the girl looked like Lily.

So he continued watching.

The child did not seem to have much energy for anything at all. She was a passable flyer, but went back to the ground the moment the task Madam Hooch had assigned was done.

Her brewing … a small part of him suspected the fact she let Granger do most the work and only shoddily cut the ingredients was related to some illness.
Though of course, being lazy was perfectly in character for a Potter.


At last, one day before Halloween, Severus caught Potter in an empty hallway, drinking something, and then hastily hiding the phial in her pocket.

Severus used a summoning charm to retrieve it. Thick, green glass, the very cheapest … something about it reminded him of Knockturn Alley.

„Follow me, Potter.“

The girl looked up at him, green eyes large with fear. „I didn’t do anything!“, she protested.

Severus held up the phial. „What is this, then? Pumpkin juice?“

„Yes!“

Damn his sarcasm. Perhaps, if he hadn’t given her such a handy excuse … well, nothing to be done about that now.

„Regardless, you will follow me to the hospital wing.“ He looked at her mop of blonde hair. It wasn’t really a mop anymore at this point. The hair was thinning so rapidly … it looked like one of Filch’s old brooms.

Something inside him twisted.

He wasn’t pitying a Potter. Surely not. It was just so … wrong, to see a child with thinning hair.

„I’m not sick.“

„You will do as you are told, or you will be in detention for far longer than it will take for Madam Pomfrey to look you over“, Severus snapped irritably.

Finally, she followed him, shuffling, hunched over … was she trying to hide something? Or just … unconsciously trying to protect her vital organs, as he had done while at school?

No one bullied Potter, though. Draco could not be counted, he frequently taunted Potter when the two met, but could hardly be said to follow her around.


Madam Pomfrey hurried to meet him when he opened the door of the hospital wing. With good reason – if he went to the lengths of personally taking a student there, things were usually dire.

„Severus? Is something …?“

„Wrong. Yes. Potter here ingested an unknown, potentially illegal substance – I will analyze the remains – and seems to be suffering from an extreme case of hair loss. Her hair is all over the desks of my classroom.“

The matron met his gaze and nodded.

Then she turned to Potter. „Sit down, dear. It’s nothing to be worried about, I am sure, but your hair is rather thin. Let me have a look …“


Severus retreated to his office and began analyzing the substance in the green phial.