H.P.

Breakfast on the first day back after Christmas break had come around quickly. Snape was insisting on walking with Harry to the Great Hall until he could gauge the Slytherins' reaction to his sudden change of heart. News of Harry’s kidnapping and claims of Voldemort’s return had begun to spread as students returned to Hogwarts, but for the Slytherins it was Snape’s application to adopt Harry that was the real shock. What could be more of a betrayal for the Head of Slytherin?

'Sort your robes out. You aren't leaving these quarters looking like that.'

Harry looked down at his uniform and huffed aloud. Trust Snape to take offence at a few lousy creases. He wandered into his room in a half-hearted attempt to look as though he was going to do what he was told. Snape was agitated, that was what it was. The Prophet had gotten wind of the adoption application and, from the look on Snape's face when he'd set the paper alight, it wasn't saying great things about it. That was just a newspaper; it would be nothing compared to the reaction of the students. He didn't know whose reaction would be worse, the Gryffindors' or the Slytherins'.

'Harry!' Snape shouted impatiently.

'I'm not even hungry,' Harry groused as he trudged into the living room. 'I don't see why we both have to go to breakfast.'

Snape stood waiting by the front door with his usual scowl fixed firmly in place. 'Teachers take their meals in the Great Hall. If it wasn't part of my duties, I wouldn't do it. If you want to eat a meal during term, you'll eat with every other student here. We are to behave normally, and you aren't going to hide in my quarters.'

Harry bit his tongue. Snape was goading him deliberately with that 'hiding' line, he knew that well enough. He wanted to say that behaving normally wasn't the same as showing up at breakfast with your new dad. Anyway, he wasn't being a coward; he wasn't afraid.

Harry's suggestion of wearing his invisibility cloak had been shot down immediately. He wasn't annoyed that he was still staying in Snape's quarters for now; partly because he'd started having pretty vivid nightmares of the night he was taken, and it turned out that he was quite vocal about it, and also because they had no idea if he could occlude well enough to keep Voldemort out now that he was back in his body. Harry wasn't keen on finding out how much it would hurt if Voldemort broke through his defences.

'Take your hands out of your pockets, for Merlin's sake,' Snape hissed when they reached the doors to the Great Hall. He’d procrastinated long enough that almost everyone would be at breakfast already. They'd only passed the odd few stragglers on their way from the dungeons, all of them gawping stupidly at Snape and him.

'It'll give them less to stare at,' Harry replied, refusing to remove his hands. It was bad enough that they were all going to go mad about the adoption, he didn't want people staring at him because he couldn't hold his wand steady anymore. Madam Pomfrey had regrown his bones, Fawkes had healed him when he was bitten by a basilisk, but somehow magic couldn’t fix the tremors caused by multiple bouts of the Cruciatus curse. It could be months before he was back to normal.

'If you behave as if you're ashamed of your condition, they will see it as weakness. You were tortured and it has effects that you are more than coping with.'

'You might as well just say they're going to notice eventually and they're going to have a right laugh about it whatever I do.' He pulled his hands out of his pockets just to stop Snape going on about it. 'See you after dinner.'

Snape pushed open the doors to the Great Hall and strode towards the teacher's table. Something about the look on his face conveyed more clearly than usual that he was in a far from tolerant mood. The noise level dropped steadily as more students noticed them.

Harry made a beeline for the Gryffindor table, scanning the benches for Ron and Hermione and trying not to listen to the whispers as he walked past. He almost hurled himself into his seat as Ron made space beside him. There were a few muffled laughs and then the chatter rose to a normal level, although a few necks craned to get a look at him and there was quite a lot of finger-pointing in the hall.

'He – er – doesn't look too happy,' Ron said, nodding towards the teachers’ table.

'Have you got a copy of the Prophet?' Harry asked quickly. 'Snape burned the paper before I could get a look at it.'

'You call him that then?' Ron asked.

'Not to his face. Sir's all right with him.'

'Are you sure you want to look?' Hermione said, holding the newspaper back.

'Yeah, I'm sure.' He rolled his eyes and grabbed the paper. He didn't need to flick through the pages; it must have been a slow news day because they'd made the front page.

'Is it true, Harry? Is it true you were kidnapped over Christmas? Someone said you were tortured–'

'Shut up, Colin,' said Ron.

'Here Harry, you're not really living with Snape, are you?' Dean asked, glancing uncertainly up at the teacher's table. It was obvious that quite a few Gryffindors wanted to hear the answer. Harry was mid-way through the article though and he ignored the question in favour of reading on. His mouth dropped open in disgust. The Skeeter woman was making out as if he was some traumatised child and she referred to Snape as an ex-Death Eater the whole way through.

'This is saying I've lost it,' he said, tossing the paper down. It made him sound like some sort of nutter and Snape wasn't coming off too well by the way Skeeter kept bringing up his questionable past. No wonder Snape had been annoyed at the article. No one reading this would sign off on the adoption.

'You must've if you want to be adopted by Snape,' someone further up the table murmured to barely muffled sniggers.

'Oi, what do you lot know about it?' Ron glared at all the Gryffindors around them.

'It's not really true, though, is it?' Seamus asked.

'Not that crap, but Snape has applied to adopt me.'

The faces that looked back at him were aghast. 'Why?' Seamus asked.

'Because he wants to,' Harry replied simply, but with an edge to his voice that said the topic was closed.

No one said anything but if that article didn't convince them all that he was mad, those words seemed to do the trick. He shoved his hands back into his pockets and glowered.

S.S.

The staff hurriedly tucked their copies of the Prophet away as he swept up to the teachers' table, as though he wouldn't notice that they'd all been reading that blasted article.

'I hear congratulations are in order,' Professor Sinistra said as he took his seat.

He took a moment to send his most withering glare her way. He preferred this seat because she wasn't one to prattle on in the mornings; the last thing he wanted was for her to suddenly become a conversationalist. 'You can keep them to yourself,' he snarled as he poured himself tea.

His colleagues were not so dim that they couldn't take a hint and he was left to eat in relative peace. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the headmaster watching him and he clenched his teeth in anger. They hadn't spoken save for the staff meetings that Severus couldn't avoid. Just being in the same room with the man was enough to make him lose his temper. The headmaster had known about the horcrux in Harry's scar and had no intention of telling Severus until he forced it out of him the night Harry was taken. Albus had decided his son would have to die and he hadn't lifted a finger to stop it.

Severus wasn't blind to what the headmaster had been moulding Harry to be: he awarded him a ridiculous number of house points as a reward for risking his life, he insisted he take part in a tournament that he was far too young to compete in, he let him get to that infernal stone and fight a basilisk. The headmaster wanted to manipulate Harry into sacrificing himself willingly, happily even.

Severus looked about at the curious faces in the hall as he drank, at the students who nudged each other in the sides, who pointed and whispered behind their hands. He was not going to tolerate this in his classroom. This would stop.

Some of his Slytherins had mutinous expressions, but it was the Gryffindor table that kept drawing his gaze. Harry wasn't eating. He sat at the table with a grim expression on his face, his hands buried in his pockets. It wasn't long before he persuaded his friends to leave with him. He caught Severus' eye as he made to leave and, at his challenging look, he swiped up a slice of toast to eat on his way out. Blasted child.

 'Silence,' he intoned as he swept into his first class of the day.

The students were restless; whispers bounced back and forth across his classroom, and it was more than start of term excitement. This wasn't the reaction he usually received when he gave his class an instruction, especially not when he used that tone. He accepted that he would be the subject of gossip and rumour among the wizarding community, but not in his classroom.

'Five points from Ravenclaw, Thorpe,' he said, effectively wiping the smirk from the boy's face. 'It will be five points for every word I hear out of turn.' A fraction of a second later, 'I make that twenty, Lowe.' The room fell silent at once as every single student held their breath.

'But sir–' the Slytherin prefect complained, shock clear on her face.

'Thirty and detention.'

That ensured utter silence and defiant glares from the Slytherin sixth years. Good. He waved his wand and a long roll of parchment landed on every student's desk.

'Did I ask any of you to set up your cauldrons?' he asked smoothly, watching as the students battled with themselves over whether to immediately pack their equipment away or stay frozen in place and wait for him to give the next instruction.

'The last one to have a clear desk will be in an all-night detention with Filch.' There was a scramble as every student hurried to put away their equipment as fast as possible. 'Detention, Cauldwell. Report to Filch after dinner. I believe the owlery floor is in need of a thorough clean.' The look on Cauldwell's face was nothing short of appalled.

'I want to see how much of your first term at N.E.W.T level penetrated your thick skulls. I hope none of you were so utterly foolish as to neglect to do the assigned reading and revision over your Christmas break. You have exactly 55 minutes to complete your tests.'

The Ravenclaws exchanged sympathetic looks and the Slytherins scowled, but not a single word was uttered for the rest of the hour. Only the faint scratching of quills could be heard as the sixth-year students attempted to answer questions that a potion master's apprentice would struggle to answer.

Severus paced slowly up and down the rows of students, daring them to step out of line. None even dared to look up from their parchment as he passed them by, and he felt a flicker of satisfaction. If a single sixth or seventh year spoke out of turn, N.E.W.T level wasn't obligatory. It was the younger years that would prove to be the most difficult, and there was one fourth-year class he was dreading.

H.P.

'They haven't even reported that Voldemort's back, not even that there's a rumour of it,' Harry murmured at the back of the transfiguration classroom before McGonagall showed up. 'They're too busy writing rubbish about me.'

The rest of the class were keeping a distance from Harry. It was as though they couldn't decide whether they were angry at him for agreeing to be adopted by Snape or whether they thought he'd really lost it. He could feel their eyes on him, staring. He'd pulled Ron and Hermione to the very back of the classroom so no one would see how bad his wand work was if McGonagall made them try out a new spell, but it had the additional bonus of allowing them to speak without being overheard.

'They won't say anything about You-Know-Who,' Ron replied. 'My dad says that Fudge is convinced you're just traumatised or whatever. He doesn't want to admit he could be back and he's not happy that Dumbledore's been putting it about that you're telling the truth.'

'You-Know-Who is making it easy to believe that you're lying. Why do you think he hasn't shown himself?' Hermione asked.

'He must be planning something.'

'What does – er, Snape think?' Ron asked. He wasn't any good at hiding his feelings, but Harry figured that if he was making an effort to pretend that he was all right with the adoption then that'd have to do for now. At least until he proved to them that Snape made a good dad.

'He gets annoyed if I bring it up,’ Harry replied. ‘He reckons I'm just bursting to go after him myself when I’m like this.'

Professor McGonagall entered the room and they fell silent. He fiddled self-consciously with his wand, secretly hoping they weren’t going to do spells. It was the first time he’d ever wished to just sit and do book work. He could write well enough to jot down notes but if it came to learning a new spell, he wasn't looking forward to failing in front of the whole class.

He couldn't take his potion until lunchtime, which meant all his morning classes were going to be the hardest of the day. He'd been practising defending himself with Snape in the evenings and it wasn't as though he couldn't cast all spells, just not complicated ones with specific hand movements… Exactly the sort of thing that tended to come up in transfiguration.

‘We’ll be practicing organic to mineral transfiguration today. If you’ve completed the required reading, I should expect to see a pebble on each of your desks by the end of the lesson.’ McGonagall walked up and down the aisles, placing a small plant pot on each desk. Harry poked unenthusiastically at the three leaves that curled over the damp soil.

At the front of the class McGonagall demonstrated the spell. Her wand arced through the air, flicked and then came to rest decisively on the pink petalled rose. An instant later and a perfectly flat stone appeared in its place, just like the ones Harry had skipped in the summer when Snape had taken him to the beach.

‘Begin.’

The classroom filled with the sounds of dozens of fourth years incanting all at once. He felt McGonagall’s eyes on him as he copied her wand movements, but his limbs weren’t co-operating. The slightest twitch disturbed the path of the arc or sent his spell skittering in the wrong direction.

By the end of class, Hermione’s ivy had turned into a smooth green stone, the pattern of the leaves still visible on its surface. Ron hadn’t fared as well, with a rough mud-covered rock on his desk, sprouting leaves from various cracks and crevices. Harry’s pot remained stubbornly unchanged, the leaves twitching as he cast.

McGonagall paused at his desk as she cleared away their attempts. She looked at him not unkindly over her spectacles. ‘More determination in your incantation wouldn’t go amiss, Mr Potter. You have to believe it will work.’

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ he answered tightly.

‘It’ll get better,’ Hermione murmured encouragingly as they packed up.

‘I know, I know. It’s temporary,’ he shrugged, feigning indifference at the curious glances from his housemates. Only he and Neville hadn’t succeeded in making any change to their plants and the other boy gave him a look that was half smile and half grimace as he hefted his bag over his shoulder.

‘Care of Magical Creatures next. What’s the worst Hagrid can have come up with?’ Ron asked, clapping him on the shoulder as they headed out.

Harry mustered up a grin. This was a class he could still do, no matter how bad the shaking got. No tricky wand movements, just dangerous magical creatures and mild peril. It was just a shame about the Slytherins. The other Houses thought he'd lost his mind; the Slytherins were glaring at him like he'd stolen something from them.

''Arry! It's good ter see yeh,' Hagrid called out as they arrived in the clearing.

'Hi, Hagrid.' he smiled.

''Ave yeh three bin lookin' forward ter class?'

'Of course,' Hermione squeaked apprehensively, trying to get a look in the boxes behind Hagrid. There was a muffled thumping and the occasional worrisome fizz that made them wary of getting too close.

'Best class of the day for me, so long as I don't have to actually cast anything.'

'Professor Snape did 'ave a word with all o’ us about yer spells. Not ter worry, today I'll just be showin' 'em to yeh. Skrewts!' he announced happily.

'Whats?' Ron asked nervously, craning his neck to see but not daring to inch any closer.

The Slytherins began to arrive, derisive laughter ringing out ahead of them. When Harry turned around, he saw Malfoy miming dropping his wand to raucous laughter. His face burned with embarrassment and he turned back to Hagrid's boxes, plunging his hands deep into his pockets.

'Quieten down, all o' yeh. Yeh don' want ter make 'em nervous.'

Beside Harry, Hermione made a worried noise of her own. She didn’t look any less concerned by the time class ended and Hagrid let them back away from the boxes of baby skrewts.

On their way back up to the castle she wrung her hands nervously. ‘Do you think they’re even legal?’ she asked quietly.

‘Probably. It’s not like Norbert, is it? He’s not keeping them secret,’ Ron shrugged.

Before they could reach the castle steps, Malfoy appeared, blocking his path up to the door. As usual, he wasn’t alone, but it looked like more Slytherins than were taking an interest now.

'How long do you think you'll last next time, Potter?' he laughed quietly. Harry curled his fist tightly around his wand.

'Long enough to make sure your father gets caught. I know he was there.'

'And I know you screamed, and you cried. You were so scared you haven't stopped shaking,' Draco sneered. 'He's going to kill you, Potter. It's a matter of time.'

'Shove off, Malfoy,' Ron said, stepping up to Malfoy and putting himself between the Slytherins and Harry.

'You want to talk about fear?' Harry returned angrily, stepping around Ron. 'Your father took off running, all your fathers did.' He looked at Crabbe and Goyle who stood cracking their knuckles and trying to look menacing. After facing Voldemort and a bunch of real Death Eaters, those two didn’t faze him. 'Since when did it take twenty witches and wizards to murder one teenager? Your Death Eater father is pathetic and so are you.'

Malfoy's eyes narrowed into vicious slits. 'Pathetic, Potter, is believing that Snape wants to adopt you. He's told my father all about how much he hated having you in his quarters.'

'He was playing a part.'

'You're the only one who thinks so. Even your precious Gryffindor friends know he doesn't really want you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'If you're right, he's going to get killed and it'll be your fault. If you're wrong, he'll take you to the Dark Lord himself. Either way you're not going to last long when you're so weak, are you, Potter?'

'I'm not weak. I can still take you, Malfoy,' he said, raising his wand. He was shaking now, but it was with anger more than anything else. He might not be able to transfigure so much as a beetle into a button, but he'd been practising offensive spells more than ever.

'Don't. Harry, put your wand down. Someone's coming,' Hermione murmured, pushing his hand down when he didn't move himself.

Malfoy laughed, gesturing for Crabbe and Goyle to follow him. 'Watch your back, Potter.' The other Slytherins began to disperse, seeing that nothing was going to happen with teachers around.

'He's wrong,' Harry said, turning back to Ron and Hermione as Professor Flitwick passed them by.

''Course he's wrong. We know you're not weak,' Ron replied.

'And we know your difficulties will only be temporary,' Hermione added.

'No. He's wrong about Snape.'

'I– well, I don't think he actually knows anything,' Hermione finally managed after a lengthy pause. Ron looked like he was physically stopping himself from saying anything by clamping his lips shut and staring down at his shoes.

Harry made a noise of frustration and heaved the door open, striding ahead of Ron and Hermione towards the Great Hall for dinner.

'Did you hear? Snape's taken hundreds of points. I've got a friend in Hufflepuff, and she said he took sixty points just in her lesson,' one girl said to another as Harry passed by a group of older Gryffindors on the stairs. He stopped short, his stomach sinking.

'Points and detention if you even breathe wrong,' a Ravenclaw boy was complaining at the bottom of the grand staircase. He shot Harry an irritated look as though it were his fault. Hermione and Ron caught up with him, looking a lot like they’d heard something similar. Ron was doing his best not to catch Harry’s eye at all and was making an intense study of his fingernails.

'Shall we look at the hourglasses?' Hermione suggested quietly. When they headed down to the entrance hall, there was a crowd of complaining students milling around.

'They're all empty,' Harry said. It was the start of term, so the hourglasses were never going to have that much in them, but this was just weird.

'I heard someone swear he's taken them from Slytherin,' Dean said appearing suddenly beside them.

'Snape? As if,' Ron scoffed.

'They are all empty, Ron. It looks like any points anyone won today have been taken away already,' Hermione replied, sending a worried glance Harry’s way.

What the hell was Snape playing at? Why was he trying to be an even bigger git than usual?

Harry tossed his bag onto the couch but resisted the urge to throw himself down beside it. The first day back always seemed long but he’d never felt so drained. He carried on into the kitchen hearing cupboards being opened and closed, figuring that Snape was probably making something to drink in the kitchen. Caught somewhere between irritation and curiosity, he sat himself down at the kitchen table and watched Snape make a cup of tea. 

'I thought we were supposed to be acting normal. Everyone's talking about you; they're all saying you're taking points from anyone the second they open their mouths.'

Snape paused mid-action, stopping the flow of boiling water from the tip of his wand and into his cup, to give Harry a hard glare. 'I didn't invite anyone to open their mouths in my classroom.'

'People thought you were evil before and they think you're worse now.'

'I haven't asked for your opinion on how I should control my classes.'

Harry heaved a huge sigh and kicked out half-heartedly at the table leg. 'Yeah, well, that's just great, isn't it? Everyone finds out that you're applying to adopt me and then you decide to be an even bigger–'

Snape's cup hit the kitchen counter with a thud and Harry clamped his jaw shut. Snape eyes narrowed with anger. 'I have ten students cleaning cauldrons in detention tomorrow evening. Would you like to be the eleventh?'

'No.'

'How were your classes?' Snape asked, changing the subject.

'Fine.'

Snape raised his eyebrows as if he found that hard to believe. 'You had no problem casting spells?'

'Not much,' he shrugged, picking at the edge of the table. 'They were only the first lessons of the year; it was mostly theory,' he lied.

'And your friends?'

'Think I'm mental. You're doing the opposite of helping,' Harry complained.

'I will not be the subject of gossip or ridicule from students. I will have silence in my classroom when I ask for it.'

Harry got to his feet and wandered over to the sink, beside Snape. 'To be honest, I thought you might actually have lost it. Someone said you were taking points from Slytherin too and I didn't believe them, but then I saw you didn't have any points either.'

'Have you had any difficulties with the rest of the students?' Snape asked, drinking his tea and refusing to take the bait.

'Nothing major,' Harry shrugged, standing on tiptoes to grab a glass from the cabinet.

'I'd like to be the judge of that,' Snape replied, shifting out of the way so that Harry could open the cupboard fully.

'I'm not going to tell you every little thing. Not that anyone's got any points left for you to take.'

'Believe it or not, Harry, there are students at this school who pose a threat to you.'

'If any of them try to kill me then I'll let you know,' Harry replied sarcastically, his irritation with Snape winning out over his sense of self-preservation.

'Don't you dare,’ Snape hissed, obviously hitting his limit. ‘You think it's amusing, do you?'

'No,' he muttered. 'I've got potions with you tomorrow. You're not going to go mad if I chop something up wrong, are you?' Harry asked, not sure whether he was still trying to pick a fight or if he really wanted to know.

'You won't be touching the knife,’ Snape replied. ‘Stir, read the book, skin something, add ingredients but don't start dicing or chopping, for Merlin's sake.'

Snape retreated to his study, just like he’d started to do every night for hours on end, and Harry sat up alone for another couple of hours before heading to bed himself, more worried about tomorrow’s lesson than he cared to admit.

S.S.

A knock came from the other side of his office door. ‘Enter,’ he called out, regretting it the moment the door swung open.

'Headmaster,' he said by way of greeting. There was nothing inviting about his tone though. The calmness in the headmaster’s expression and the fact that he didn’t take offence only served to make him angrier. He wanted to make him feel a fraction of the fury he felt when he was told that his son had to die.

'Severus,’ Albus said, taking a seat on the other side of his desk and popping a sweet into his mouth. ‘You neglected to come to my office yesterday evening; I thought perhaps today would be a better time for our meeting.'

'We have nothing to discuss that couldn't be said in a staff meeting,' Severus replied dismissively.

'You cannot work at this school and continue to avoid me. Furthermore, you cannot be a member of the Order and persist with this.'

'I will discuss my work if I must, but I will not be forced to make small talk with a man who was deliberately manipulating my son to get himself killed behind my back.'

'I was preparing him for what will come. Voldemort believes the prophecy and Harry will meet him again,' Albus said.

'This is not a matter of preparing him for battle. You've been preparing him to sacrifice himself. You hadn't even considered how to save him.' Severus had begun to raise his voice without realising it.

'The prophecy does not explicitly state that he would have to die,' the headmaster replied softly.

'From what you know about the horcruxes, it's what you believe. With the information we have, it's the only way to kill the Dark Lord.'

Albus had the grace to look sad, but whether that was from shame or just a reaction to Severus’ attitude, he couldn’t be certain. 'In hindsight, the way I handled this was a mistake. The prophecy, the knowledge of the horcruxes... they have been a burden of mine alone for too long and perhaps I should not have kept it that way. Have you told Harry?'

‘Of course not. He was tortured not weeks ago, he has nightmares, he has to adjust to his condition and to the Dark Lord's return. Not to mention the adoption... I would hardly tell him that he has a portion of the Dark Lord's soul in his scar without first coming up with some way to remove it.'

The headmaster stood and made his way to the door. He paused, his hand resting on the handle, and looked back across the room. Severus knew what he was about to say from the pained look on his face. ‘There may not be any way to rid him of it. I have had years to think, and I haven't been able to determine any way to be certain of the outcome.'

'There will be a way,' Severus replied, his tone final.