“Protego!”

Snape staggered – his wand flew upwards, away from Harry – and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his: a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner… a greasy-haired teenager sat alone in a dark bedroom, pointing his wand at the ceiling, shooting down flies… a girl was laughing as a scrawny boy tried to mount a bucking broomstick –

“ENOUGH!”

Harry felt as though he had been pushed hard in the chest; he staggered several steps backwards, hit some of the shelves covering Snape’s walls and heard something crack. Snape was shaking slightly, and was very white in the face.

Harry was silent. He knew what he had just seen. But he knew, also, what he’d felt. He hadn’t just seen into Snape’s memories, he had felt all of Snape’s emotions. Fear, frustration and anger were just to name a few. It was astonishing that just those three memories could contain so many negative feelings. Harry remembered enough of his own childhood to be able to relate to this; he stared at the teacher in front of him, feeling, for the first time, something other than hatred for him – a drop of pity mingled in with Harry’s loathing. He realised that, of course, even though Ron would say otherwise, Snape was human, just like him.

Then he saw the mutual loathing in Snape’s eyes before him, and Harry forgot his sympathy.

“Well, Potter… that was certainly an improvement…” Panting slightly, Snape straightened the Pensieve in which he again had stored some of his thoughts before starting the lesson, almost as though he was checking they were still there. “I don’t remember telling you to use a Shield Charm… but there is no doubt that it was effective…”

Snape was having difficulty pulling himself together. For the past four years he had thought of Potter as nothing but an interfering, nosy, arrogant brat, like Potter Senior. Snape had found it so easy to think of Potter as his father, that he had no difficulty in disbelieving any thought or sign that Potter might be more human than Snape gave him credit for. Yet his last attempt at entering Potter’s memory had shaken him. For the first time, he had really experienced the fear and determination Snape had never given Potter credit for; it was disconcerting, to say the least, that the teenager Snape had loathed and bullied for years had ever been anything but conceited. But maybe that was not the case.

Snape looked straight into the boy’s eyes, and remembered the way he’d snapped and glared at him. Memories flashed before his eyes. Snape forgot any less than negative feelings he may have had a second ago, and increased the grip on his wand.

“Let’s try again, shall we?”