Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Chapter 15: Potions and Ponderings

Harry was yawning at breakfast as Neville shovelled eggs onto both his and Harry’s plates. Parvati Patil had gotten a bewitched gramaphone for her birthday, and Seamus, Ron, and Lavendar had spent the whole night blasting music in the Common Room and laughing.

Everyone was bleary-eyed and exhausted and was glaring at Parvati, the only one not particularly affected. Harry, Hermione, and Neville had been the first to bed, and Harry took a certain smug delight in glaring down Seamus and tapping his plate loudly with his fork before eating. Seamus winced and transferred his glare to his plate.

“It’s the first day,” Neville said as he dug into a mound of eggs on his own plate. “We need strength, especially with Potions first.”

Seamus groaned from across the table. “As if we needed the reminder, Lard-bottom.”

“How could anyone eat after the thought of Double Potions?” Lavender said, then giggled with Parvati. Ron shot a look at her, then pushed his plate away.

“I can’t.”

Dean Thomas, who had abstained from the music as well, grinned wryly at the group. “You know, it’s your own fault, all of you. If you’d been sensible like Harry and Neville and me—“

“If we’d been sensible, Dean, we wouldn’t have any fun,” Seamus shot back.

“Yeah, well, look how much good that fun’ll do you in Double Potions with Snape and the Slytherins.”

Harry was playing with his eggs.

“Not really hungry,” he said to Neville. Neville gave him his own type of look, one that he now saw Augusta Longbottom in, and Harry put a forkful of eggs by his mouth, then into his mouth, then immediately took another. The eggs were quite good.

As the Gryffindor’s trooped down to Double Potions, they were ambushed by a tall man with ridiculously white teeth in an impossibly wide smile.

“Harry Potter!” he called out, and when Harry turned he felt himself being pulled into a fierce handshake. He stiffened and pulled his broken arm in toward his body. “Ah, my boy, no need to reign it in! It must be astonishingly refreshing to have someone who knows how to deal with a student of your caliber.”

“Err—what?” Harry said as he pulled away. Neville and Hermione suddenly flanked him.

“Come, come, Harry—no need to be shy! I know the burden that power can be. I have to shoulder it quite frequently myself.” Here he paused and flashed the Gryffindors a dashing smile.

“I’m—who are you?” Harry asked, confused and slightly nervous of this strange man.

The man threw back his head in a laugh, then reached forward and forcefully tousled Harry’s hair. Harry leaned his head away and tried to put his hair back into some semblence of order.

“Little scamp!” the man said, laughingly.

Harry narrowed his eyes in a passable impression of Professor Snape. He wasn’t little, he was twelve.

“Why, I’m your professor, of course! Hard to give up a life of adventure, but, well, Dumbledore came to me and I couldn’t refuse the dear.”

Harry stared. He didn’t think that anyone could really refer to Dumbledore as a ‘dear’. “Professor?”

“Yes, yes! You must have missed my big announcement yesterday, at Flourish and Blotts!” Seeing the clueless look on most of the Gryffindor’s faces, he shook his head, still smiling. “ I am Gilderoy Lockhart, my boy! Order of Merlin, third class, honorary member of the Dark Force Defense League, and of course—“

“Five time winner of Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award!” squealed Parvati, and Lavender began to squeal with her. Ron looked enlightened, Seamus looked irritated, Dean looked amused and Neville merely looked confused.

“I see my reputation precedes me!” Lockhart beamed, and Harry took an instant dislike to the man.

“Oh,” Hermione said, and she poked Harry hard in the side. “Harry, he wrote all our books!”

Harry blinked and looked at the man. He found it doubtful that the man could even read.

“Well, you little scamps better get off to your classes!” The boys all glared at Lockhart in unison. They weren’t scamps, they were second years. “I’ll be seeing you soon enough, never fear!” He boomed a laugh and ruffled Harrys hair again, either ignoring or not noticing the glower Harry was send his way. “And Harry, if you ever feel the need for a mentor—well, seeing how tragic it is, with your parentss dead, no one to instruct you in your power—you may always come to me, lad.”

With that he walked away, stopping to harass some first years who looked terrified to be addressed by such a teacher.

“Barking,” Ron said, and the rest of the boys fervently agreed. It was probably the first time since they had all known each other that they had completely agreed on something.

“Fresh meat,” said Seamus, and there was a slow grin that overtook all of them, even Harry and Neville. Sure, Gryffindors were good, but they were also twelve year old boys. The girls seemed caught up in Lockhart’s good looks and didn’t pay much mind.

It was a good thing that Neville hadn’t expected preferential treatment from Snape due to the events of last year, because Snape had decided that, to ‘ascertain their miniscule abilities’ he would divide them up into mixed house groups. Neville spent nearly the whole lesson jumping while Goyle grunted.

Their potion, which was meant to be green, was puce.

Harry worked quietly with Blaise Zabini, a graceful black boy with aristocratic features and airs, though he seemed to put them aside as he and Harry worked on the potion. Their potion turned out only a shade or so lighter than Hermione’s.

“Not bad, Potter,” Zabini had said as they waited for the professor to come and grade it.

Hermione’s perfect potion had been achieved by simply giving Pansy Parkinson a bottle of nail polish. She did her nails the whole time and happily accepted the grade.

Ron Weasley, however, was not so lucky. He was paired with Draco Malfoy, and the two seemed to spend more time cursing each other or trying to stare each other to death than actually make their potion. When it finally exploded, Ron had been blown back full force.

Draco simply grinned. “Oh, Weasley, I’m sorry. Here, let me get your things,” he said, and for a moment Harry had thought he’d seen three books in Rons bag where there had previously been two, but Ron had snatched the bag away from Malfoy and snarled at him to get off before Harry could get a proper look.

Potions was not a success that day.

Snape called them all dunderheads and sent them all out with a grand loss of thirty points to Gryffindor. Neville, Harry, and Hermione quietly made their way to the front of the greenhouse for Herbology.

“Ah,” Neville said happily as he plopped onto a stool. “Herbology.”

Harry noticed then that Neville was different then he had been at school last year. Maybe it was because he was with Harry and Hermione constantly that summer, or because he had actually gotten the hang of the castle lay out and didn’t get so lost, or because Seamus rarely picked on him, but Neville seemed happier. His eyes looked less like a kicked dog and more like a happy puppy. He smiled more, and his round face shone at times, and Harry wondered if he was the same way.

Then he looked down at his arm, where you could see the cast poking out from underneath his robe.

Harry tugged on his sleeve and sighed. He had changed, he supposed. He had friends and had food regularly and had a place to call home. But he would never change enough that the Dursleys would accept him, and even though Harry didn’t think that was what he really wanted, it would be a nice thing to happen.

He thought about the Mirror of Erised, then, and he sighed again. He’d never change enough for that.

Neville turned and looked at Harry’s face. “Harry, what’s wrong?” he asked, concern etched over his pudgy features. His eyes darted down to the sleeve he was tugging on. “Does your arm hurt?”

“My arm’s fine, don’t worry. Madam Pomfrey says she can take the cast off first week of October.”

That made Hermione sit up and take notice. “You never did tell us, Harry, what happened to your arm.”

Harry looked at the classsroom doors. “Yes I did. I told you that first night at Neville’s, remember? I fell out of a tree.”

Neville bit his lip. “Harry,” he said softly, “You told us once though, remember? The only tree on your block was that big old oak tree at the very end of it, and it got sick and they took it down and you made a little burial for it with some sticks.”

Harry froze, then stared down at the table. “I never said the tree was on my block. It was near the school yard.”

Professor Sprout entered after that, and Harry spent the rest of the period repotting Mandrakes with his ear muffs firmly on.

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Hermione Granger frowned as she read a sentence in her Charms book for the fifth time without really absorbing any of the knowledge.

She was too busy looking at Harry Potter as he sat with Neville encouraging Chocolate Frogs to jump into little cups. As she watched, Neville let out a victorious ‘Got one!’ and Harry immediately snatched the cup and pushed it closer to the fire.

“Hot chocolate, Mr. Potter?” Neville said as he retrieved the cup, filling with slightly animate chocolate.

“Don’t mind if I do, Mr. Longbottom.” The two immediately started to laugh, and Nevile accidentally knocked over the cup, which only made the two laugh harder.

Hermione smiled and looked back at the book, reading the sentence the sixth time and still not comprehending it.

Harry was happy a lot of the time, Hermione knew, and he hadn’t always been last year. In the summer it had never seemed to matter, because Harry was always happy except that first night, but back at school she could see the difference.

He was quieter, she could tell, more restrained in his actions. His wand, which he had kept carelessly shoved in his rucksack the whole time, was often in his hand or within easy distance. During meals he ate less (though he still ate more than he had last year, and he no longer looked as pinched and frightened) and he kept darting looks at the head table. She didn’t even think he realized he was doing it.

Hermione wasn’t blind. She knew that, even if Harry had fallen from a tree, it probably wouldn’t have broken his arm and blackened his eye. She saw, every time she looked at Harry’s arm, the fat man with the terrifying moustache pulling him away on the very same arm Harry now had the cast. She could tell how skilled Harry was at changing the subject, how shy his smile was, and she could see how vulnerable he seemed, sometimes. The only place she ever saw him completely relax, aside from the common room with her and Neville, was in Potions. I mean, he always seemed a little nervous, but it was less so there than almost anywhere, and she didn’t know why. She didn’t know why they had gone to Snape last year, she didn’t know who Snape was, what his alliance was.

She didn’t know a great many things, and Hermione hated not knowing.

Hermione Granger scowled and re-read the sentence again.

Something was going on with her friend, and she was going to find out what it was. And she felt like the first step in her discovery would be to talk to Professor Snape.

Well, maybe not the first step. Maybe the second. She would go to McGonagall first. No—she would go to Harry.

And, her decision made, Hermione read the sentence one last time and read on.


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