Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Author's Chapter Notes:
Disclaimer: I own none of the Harry Potter ideas or characters or plots, or anything else thought up by the amazing author of the series. I’m making no profit of any kind from this story.
Chapter Eight

We did the appating thing again and were suddenly outside a huge castle by a lake. It was just like a storybook kingdom! Perhaps faeries and pixies danced about the moors surrounding the expansive lake. Did mermaids flit through the dark depths?

A huge, black wrought-iron gate swung open for us, and I hurried to keep up with the Snape man. Why were we here? He’d said I was getting “checked over.” Was it a sort of test to see if I was good enough to live among sorcerers? What if I didn’t pass?

My stomach fell to my toes; if I wasn’t good enough to live with Mr. Professor Snape, I’d have to go back to Privet Drive, wouldn’t I? I desperately wanted to stay away from there, away from my cupboard, away from Uncle Vernon! I stumbled on the great stone steps, hauling myself back up quick as lightning. But the man had seen me.

“Can you not go a day without falling, boy?” he said derisively.

“Sorry, sir.” I answered sadly; what if the test had begun already?

“Yes, well, come along then.” He seemed exasperated.

We entered the castle; it was decorated lushly and felt very comfortable. It felt like . . . home. I felt like this was a place I could belong! What caused this inclination, I know not, but it was a heavenly feeling. It seemed as if eyes were upon me, wishing me well. There were lots of pictures on the walls, but I was concentrating on the stone floor, trying to keep my footing.

I got dizzier and more out-of-breath as we climbed endless, tall stairs. Finally, we arrived on a landing and entered a bright, white room filled with beds.

“Poppy!” the man yelled. I took a step back; I hated when there was yelling. I fought the urge to run right back out of the room.

“Severus? What are you –” A woman in a strange white veil and starched apron hurried out. As soon as she set eyes on me, she stopped dead in her pursuit.

“Is this . . . This can’t be . . . Why, Severus, he’s so small!” I was quite small, I knew that. I’d always been teased and shoved about at school because of it.

“Obviously, Poppy. That is part of the reason we’re here. Would you examine him for me?” The Snape man looked concerned. I felt a bit of relief; it seemed he’d meant a medical check up; not a test.

She handed me a big shirt with strings where buttons should have been.

“It’s the smallest I’ve got, dear.” Dear? That’s what Aunt Petunia had called me . . . but this lady seemed genuinely nice. Or was that just wishful thinking? She pulled the curtain round one of the beds and left me there to change in private. I could clearly hear the hushed conversation the Snape man and the Poppy lady were having.

“Do you think he’s ill, Severus?” She sounded worried.

“No, I think he’s been half starved since Lily passed. The muggles treated him horribly, Poppy.”

“No! Albus assured me he’d checked them out!” She paused for a moment, then went on, “Why is he so shaky at the moment?”

“Well, he sicked up his breakfast. He also frightens easily. The child really is quite difficult, I must say.”

“You know better than about anybody the repercussions of ill treatment, Severus.” The Poppy lady sounded as if she were speaking to a little child.

“I do not appreciate you dredging up old, personal matters of mine, Madame.”

She huffed, but changed the subject. “So he couldn’t keep breakfast down. What did you feed him?”

“Eggs, toast, sausage, pumpkin juice.”

“Well, there’s your problem. Why in Merlin’s name would you give a sickly child all that grease?”

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Why Pomfrey felt the need to point out another of my shortcomings as a guardian, I do not know. I added nutritional idiocy to the long list of transgressions. There was more she needed to know in order to check Harry satisfactorily, so I delayed laying into her for the moment.

“He also came to me with several wounds and abrasions. The child was beaten, Poppy.”

“No! How bad was it, Severus?”

“Do you recall my third year? How I looked when I arrived from summer holiday?”

“Of course. It couldn’t have been as bad as that! Please tell me it wasn’t, Severus.”

“It was a bit worse.” By second year I’d kept a large stash of healing potions in my school bag whenever a trip home was required. That summer I’d used nearly all of them on mum.

“I’d have liked to’ve seen the wounds for myself. I assume they’ve been satisfactorily healed by now?”

“Of course, Madame.” Did she think I was cruel as well as inept?

“Fetch your pensieve, then.” She turned away, moving toward the curtained area with tears brimming on puffy, lower lids.

“Harry, dear? Are you dressed?”

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I was as dressed as I could be. This thing was even bigger than my hand-me-downs!

“Yes, er . . .” What had he called her? “Madam.”

She picked me up and set me on the tall bed, pointing her stick at different parts of my body and frowning. Whatever she was finding out, she didn’t like it. I sat up as straight and tall as I could, and took deep breaths, hoping to be as good as she wanted. Then the questions started.

“How old are you, Harry?”

“Eight, madam.”

“What are you used to eating every day?” she asked. Would I be scolded for not eating all my breakfast?

“At my aunt’s I had bread and water sometimes. With Mr. Professor Snape I get cheese, milk, and butter too.” She chuckled at the last bit. ‘Uh oh; will she tell him not to feed me so much?’

“Now, Harry, you said you had bread and water sometimes. What did you have the other times?”

“Scraps or nothing, madam.” If I’d eaten once a day I counted myself lucky, even if it was only a crust or two. I used to make it seem like I’d more by pretending I was a mouse. Just a little, tiny, white mouse that had found a piece of bread ten times bigger than his head! I’d take in big bites of air with a little crumb, and chew like my mouth was overflowing. I always burped a lot after, owing to swallowing so much air, but that made it seem even more like I’d had a hearty meal.

“Scraps or nothing,” she muttered, writing notes with a big feather on a burnt piece of paper.

“How often did you eat?” She sounded hesitant to even ask.

“Mostly every day, as long as I wasn’t being punished.”

“And if you were being punished, dear?” She held her breath. I’d never had anyone listen so attentively to me!

“It might be a few days, perhaps a week.”

“Have you ever broken a bone, dear?” She looked up, giving me a tight smile.

“Yes, madam.” I’d had several. When Dudley got one, Aunt Petunia took him to hospital and he came back with a thick, white cast everybody signed. I never had one of those.

“Lie back and hold still, now.”

She waved her wand slowly down my whole body, and it kept jerking over old hurts I’d had. As she reached my feet, tears began pouring down her cheeks. What had I done to upset her so?

“I’m sorry, ma’am! I’ll be good, I promise!” If the Snape man came back and saw I’d made her cry, I was sure to catch it!

She did the strangest thing then. She choked out, “Oh, child,” and picked me up, cuddling me like a teddy bear. She touched her wand to the places that’d made it jump and whispered nonsense words. Sometimes my body shifted a bit as she did this, and it was quite a disconcerting feeling. She gave me several little bottles of liquid to drink; one tasted of grass and pipe smoke. She let me have pumpkin juice to rid the taste. She was so kind! I felt very guilty I’d made her so sad.

After all this was done, she sat me on her lap in a rocker and hummed gently. ‘So this is what it feels like to be held!’ The blanket and cloak were wonderful, but this . . . this was indescribable. My heart felt like it was surrounded by sunlight, and it beat stronger than ever before. The good feeling didn’t last, though, when I realized tears were beginning to spill over my cheeks. I tensed and wiped them away, pulling myself into a ball. I prayed she hadn’t seen!

But she whispered wonderful words! “Harry, dear, it’s all right to cry. Did those blasted muggles deny you that, too? You have plenty to cry about, child. Let it out.”

And I did. Once I started I just got louder and louder. She kept telling me it was okay, so I refrained from reigning it in. That is, until I heard the door open again. I bit my lips, held my breath, and as hard as I could I dug my fingernails into my palms. The Poppy lady had tolerated my fussing, but I knew the Snape man wouldn’t.

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I’d taken the last few steps by threes. The boy was wailing; some children were such brats at a medic’s. I always dreaded seeing a healer due to the insufferable little horrors moaning all over. Soon as I walked in, he stopped, thank Merlin! But I beheld a curious sight. Poppy was rocking him, singing a bit. Is this how mothers were supposed to act? I watched her, cradling him seemed so natural, so loving. This was what the child needed. Could I ever give it? I tried to remember a moment in my life someone’d cared for me like that . . . Poppy had! How could I have forgotten. When I first arrived at Hogwarts, I was a bloody mess. A prefect had brought me to her straight off the train, and she cried over me. After I was sorted into Slytherin, however, she’d kept more distance. Perhaps that was why the memory had been buried; I got so sick of my house getting slighted!

I cleared my throat. “The pensieve, madam.” Selecting the pertinent memory, I pried it from my brain and thrust it into the silvery depths.

She spoke very quietly to the child. “Harry, I’m going to tuck you in one of those beds now for a bit of a nap.” After she laid him down, she pulled up the covers and wrapped them round his shoulders, fluffing his pillow and kissing his forehead. Should I be doing that? It seemed exceedingly sentimental . . .

She took a deep breath, then watched as I discovered Harry’s wounds and doused them with Subtusum.

A grim expression on her face, she didn’t look up after it finished. “I’d say your comparison was accurate.” Her eyes snapped at me, then. “But where did the fresh welt come from?”

Shit!’ I’d forgotten about that. I waded my way through the truth, watching her become angrier by the moment.

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The Poppy lady was getting mad at my Snape about hitting me. But he hadn’t hit me nearly enough, couldn’t she understand that? After he told her all about that day, I understood it like never before. He thought I’d brought his father’s belt? That must mean his father had beat him like Uncle Vernon did me! Was he a freak like me, too? He sounded like he felt badly about hitting me; that was puzzling. He’d been ever so lenient since the day I arrived; why would he feel sorry for the little bit of discipline he’d given?

As soon as he finished telling Madam Poppy about it, she hauled off and slapped him, right across the face. He seemed like he knew the rules, too, because he didn’t move or flinch.

“I’m certain you can do better than that, Poppy,” he drawled sarcastically. Her eyes bugged and she got some powder and threw it in the fireplace.

“Dumbledore!” she screamed into the green flames engulfing the floo.


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