Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Slytherin

The hospital wing wasn't a terribly fun place to be. Harry had known that ever since first year, but of course he'd never been laid up for quite this long before. At least at first he'd had plenty of company, people dropping by at odd hours, catching him between classes; visitors from every house but Slytherin.

Well, every house including Slytherin, if you counted Draco Malfoy. At least his newfound affinity for Harry's company hadn't lasted past Harry's stunt with the letter. Draco had made himself absolutely scarce in the two days that had passed since then.

But then again, so had nearly everyone. Ron and Hermione still came by three times each day, but nobody else, not even from Gryffindor. His only other visitors were staff members. McGonagall came by just once, Harry noted. He couldn't help but think dark thoughts at that. In contrast, Snape, who wasn't even his Head of House, was a surprisingly frequent presence despite his heavy work schedule. They talked more about magic, and ate together more than once, and whenever it was time, Snape would salve just his back and let Harry take care of the rest of it. He also told the Medi-Witch to stop worrying whenever Harry wanted to get out of bed. Blessed relief -- Harry could finally make his own way over to the loo.

He still hadn't had a chance to carefully examine the letter Draco had drafted. He knew from squinting at his textbooks that his eyes weren't up to reading yet, so he'd have to use the talking quill, and he never had a moment alone! Well, unless he wanted to take the letter to the loo, but he wasn't that desperate to hear it. Actually, the thought of hearing it made him feel faintly ill; he had really said some terrible things . . . but then again, Draco had deserved to hear them, so Harry wasn't going to feel that bad about it.

Still, he couldn't quite help remembering the things Snape had said. Indulging his anger like that was probably pretty Gryffindor of him, but it certainly hadn't been cunning in the least. What if Draco had really been trying to turn, and Harry's complete contempt for him really did end up pushing him back toward Voldemort's camp?

Of course that was ridiculous -- Draco wasn't really turning toward the light. He couldn't be. He had no real reason, and that vapid rationale of his . . . It was just so awful what my father did to you . . . well, that wasn't going to wash, it really wasn't. The Draco Harry knew wouldn't give a shrivelfig about the Boy Who Lived being tortured and killed, so that was no real reason to switch loyalties.

Which meant, of course, that Snape was wrong. Draco had some trick up his sleeve, some evil plot, something positively diabolical, and it was anybody's guess what part the wand played in all of it. Harry sighed thinking about it all. He really, really wished that Snape hadn't got drawn into this Draco-is-good-after-all fantasy. Still, maybe it wasn't so surprising that the normally wily Potions Master had been taken in. It must get awfully lonely being the only good Slytherin in the history of the house.

No, no, Draco simply wasn't to be trusted; Harry was sure of that much.

He was sure of something else, too: there was something odd going on at Hogwarts. Why had his floods of well-wishers suddenly disappeared just at the time when, paradoxically, he was never left by himself in the ward? It was very strange. Before, there'd been times when nobody was around . . . Or at least he thought so; he had been blind, after all. Now though, there was always an adult present. Always. Usually, there was more than one about, and they were never too far away from his bed, either. Like . . . they were expecting something.

Harry had had just about enough of it, and enough of the hospital wing, for that matter, "When can I start going back to classes?" he abruptly demanded one day.

He didn't think he could have caused a bigger ripple of shock if he'd asked instead when he could go visit Voldemort. The room fell silent, absolutely silent, which was really saying something, as the moment before Ron had been telling Hermione a joke, Professor Snape had been debating some Latin incantation with the headmaster, and Madam Pomfrey had been fooling around with the enchanted quill. She said she was examining its usefulness for the hospital wing, but Harry thought she just plain liked to hear it blathering on and on as she made it read from mediwizard texts.

"What?" Harry pressed after a second or two of that dead silence. "I can see for about six hours at a stretch, now. Stuff's awful blurry . . ." Now that was an understatement . . . "but even if all I could do was listen, I'd still want to attend lessons."

Still, dead silence, until in exasperation Harry finally exclaimed, "Hermione, what's the matter? I can't believe you want me to fall further behind!"

If he squinted hard, he could just make out a fuzzy image of her sort of drooping. "Nobody wants you to fall behind, Harry," she quietly asserted. "But . . . ah . . . I don't think you really realise what's been going on while you've been laid up."

"Perhaps Mr Weasley and Miss Granger should leave," the headmaster gently suggested.

"Why should we?" Ron erupted. "We already know what you're going to tell Harry! Everybody knows!"

It was very disheartening, Harry thought, to once more know less about himself than everyone else seemed to. "Yeah, well why don't I know?" he waspishly demanded.

"We didn't want to upset you while you were recovering," Hermione delicately began.

Ron scoffed out loud. "Oh sure, like finding out Draco Malfoy's in deep shite is going to upset Harry!"

"It's stress," Hermione hissed, "because Malfoy's problems are the same as Harry's! And he doesn't need more stress, Ron! Don't you remember yesterday? The juice?"

Harry scowled. She would make a big deal of it. So what if he'd yelped and flung pumpkin juice all over the bed when Ron had handed him the glass? He'd just been startled, that was all. Ron's fingers had brushed his when he wasn't braced for it . . .

"It is so nice to be mental enough that my friends are afraid to talk to me about anything real!" Harry suddenly shouted. "There's more news than just Dennis and Colin dating the same girl without knowing it, I take it? And you didn't tell me!"

Ron cleared his throat, and put in, "The headmaster said it would be better---"

"Oh, the headmaster keeping me out of the loop. Big effing surprise, there!"

"Gryffindors, out!" Snape announced, advancing on Harry's friends, who bid him a rather alarmed goodbye before the Potions Master practically swept them from the room. Harry heard the door being slammed, then thoroughly warded, and wondered over that.

"Mr Weasley's asinine convictions aside," Snape sneered as he stalked back, "everybody does not know all we must reveal to you."

Harry sighed, pushing away from his pillows to sit up straight. He reached awkwardly out to grasp the water on his night-table, and took a drink. Good thing he hadn't given into the urge to throw it. He was just sick of secrets, even though he knew he was just as guilty as his friends of not coming completely clean about everything. Since waking up at Hogwarts, he'd told them about his aunt, and the operation, and he'd even admitted he was afraid of needles . . .

He hadn't told them, though, much about Samhain. Or Devon, or about Snape not hating him at all. Or about how he really needed Snape sometimes, now. They wouldn't understand . . . well, Hermione might understand some of it, he supposed. She wasn't quite so irrational about Snape as Ron was, but the way she liked to play amateur psychiatrist was so annoying that he didn't want to get into details about his stress and how he was dealing with it. She'd probably agree with Madam Pomfrey that he was nutters to want Snape touching him, after all that. And of course Ron would blow a gasket if the word touch came up in the same conversation as the name Snape.

Well, his friends were gone now, he told himself, so it was time to calm down. Way down. "All right," he prompted when he felt able to speak politely. It was a little bit of a trick, but he did it. "What do I need to know?"

"Several things," the headmaster quietly answered, moving forward to sit lightly on the end of Harry's bed. Harry couldn't help it; he bent his legs to pull them back. He could see Dumbledore shaking his head at that, though he didn't say anything.

"First," he began, rhythmically stroking his beard, "and this is the part your friends realise, the entire house of Slytherin, with one exception, is united against you. They've sworn to accomplish your death."

Snape moved to stare out the windows, his back to the boy in the bed.

"Just because I survived Voldemort again?" Harry scoffed. "You'd think they'd know how to get over it. That only happens almost every year!"

"Ah, but this time you've done something that doesn't happen every year. You've stolen away, so to speak, one of their own. He's loyal to you now, and not to the cause their families support, and as he's the only son of Voldemort's most important supporter, well . . . they find the whole thing an extreme offence."

"Malfoy," Harry realised. "Um, the whole house of Slytherin? You mean he's told everyone about his . . . er, supposed change of heart?"

"It isn't supposed, Harry," the headmaster chided. "And yes, he's told everyone."

"You made it another condition," Harry accused.

"Not precisely. Mr Malfoy was told to do what he could sway elements in his house away from loyalty to Voldemort. He also had to be seen to be publicly, overtly loyal to you. We told him we wanted no more intrigues. Unfortunately, Mr Malfoy synthesized all these objectives--"

"The fool," Snape harshly broke in.

"Yes," Dumbledore simply agreed.

"Making grand proclamations like an idiot Gryffindor--"

"That's enough, Severus."

"What did he do?" Harry asked.

It was Snape who answered, stalking away from the windows in a haze of swirling black. "Directly after speaking with us, he came here and sat with you until an hour after curfew. The state you were in evidently influenced Draco for the worse. When he left your side, he went straight away to the Slytherin dungeons and went from room to room, banging his way in and making loud pronouncements about Voldemort being weak and demanding weakness from his minions!"

"That's why you said you had talked to him about impulse control?"

"Of course! I expected more subtlety from the idiot child!"

Idiot child. That was even worse than Draco calling the Potions Master Severus. More to distract himself than for any other reason, Harry asked, "How'd he get to the girls' rooms? Aren't they warded against boys like in Gryffindor?"

"For all I know, he used his broom!" Snape snarled. "What matters is that before his little theatrical, we had thwarted Lucius from getting him home to be killed. Once word of Draco's fit of idiocy spread, Lucius arranged for his student plants to announce a reward. Five thousand Galleons for his son's head."

Harry swallowed. Five thousands Galleons was an awful lot of money, but what struck him harder was the thought of a father doing that to his son. "Uh, have there been any attempts?"

"What do you think?" roared Snape. "They're Slytherins!"

All right, all right, so Malfoy had some problems. It wasn't like Harry cared all that much. And besides . . . "I still don't see what this has to do with me attending class," Harry entreated.

Snape threw up his hands in disgust, while the headmaster made a calming gesture and said, "Harry, we haven't even been letting Mr Malfoy attend his classes, and you're in more danger than he is. You've lost access to your magic, not to mention . . . the price on your life is . . . far higher."

"And I'm far more hated," Harry acknowledged, before frowning. "But Malfoy's been going to Potions, I thought?"

"Not since the day I came up here to find him reading you the text," Snape clarified. "There was an . . . incident."

Severus let me out, Harry remembered Malfoy saying. The comment had been tossed out with such studied casualness that it had rung false at the time, but Harry had been so angry to have Malfoy near that he'd overlooked that. Now he realised that he shouldn't have. Since when did Snape just let students out of Potions class? You had to blow up your cauldron, or get yourself coated in something horribly caustic, at least. You never got to leave just because a fellow student was laid up in the hospital.

"Incident?" Harry questioned.

Snape sighed, his brows drawing together. "I knew the Slytherins were growing restless. That was another reason why I had Draco helping me brew Potions, Harry. I thought if I kept him close during class, no one in my house would dare make an attempt, not there. But that day someone incanted Serpensortia prior to class and released a viper spelled to attack only Draco."

Sounds about right to me, Harry thought, remembering how Malfoy had used the same curse on him, once. Then of course he had to remember that Snape, even hating Harry then, had got rid of the snake for him. So . . . no doubt he'd do at least as much for Draco. "You used an evanesco spell, then?"

"Draco can take care of himself," Snape said, running a hand through his hair. "That's not our main concern. The failed attempt, though, will encourage the Slytherins to take more chances next time. Students will end up hurt or worse if we let him attend classes."

"But isn't he in just as much danger in his own common room?"

"The other Slytherins are the ones in danger if they cross him," Snape scoffed. "Nevertheless, we have made arrangements to keep him . . . rather isolated."

"So who conjured the snake?" No answer. "Oh, come on! All you have to do is check their wands. Priori Incantatem?"

"Someone at Hogwarts, most likely more than one someone, has access to additional wands, Harry," Dumbledore explained.

"No doubt the wand was destroyed as soon as it was used," Snape added. "We've begun closely monitoring the post." He grimaced. "Much as Umbridge did, I'm afraid. Though Lucius most likely has other means of getting wands to his cohorts here."

"I thought the wand chose the wizard, and all that?"

"Ollivander loves to exaggerate, though it's quite good he sold you the wand he did," Dumbledore sighed.

"Veritaserum, then," Harry pressed. "I remember that Professor Snape here keeps a supply."

"The serum I gave Umbridge to use on you was counterfeit, Potter!"

Harry sighed. Even back then, Snape had, in his own way, been on Harry's side. Harry thought better than to thank him, though. "Hmm, yes. You've got the real stuff on hand, though. Don't you?"

Snape gave a sneering laugh. "Oh, brilliant, Potter. We're to administer doses of illegal truth serum to mass numbers of students? Hogwarts would be shut down within minutes of the first owl out!"

"All right!" Harry shouted. "I'm just trying to help you figure out who the troublemakers are, so I can get back to classes!"

"Are you deaf as well as half-blind?" Snape roared. "Draco Malfoy is not presently allowed in classes, and he's well able to both see, and defend himself with magic. You're helpless as a kitten!"

"The Gryffindors'll look out for me," Harry insisted, grinding his teeth. "And I am not helpless, Professor. I have that wild magic. Anybody tries to mess with me and they'll just end up dead."

Snape fluidly cursed, or at least Harry thought he had. It was hard to tell, since it had been in Latin or something. "Listen for once, Potter!" he grated when he switched into English. "Our goal is not to have Hogwarts students end up dead, even if they are Slytherins and in your estimation worthless! Moreover, if you are placed in a situation in which your wild magic is let loose, you are just as likely to kill friends as enemies! You may well even kill yourself if your magic crumples the castle walls and brings the roof down on your head! The whole essence of your dark powers is that at present, they are entirely uncontrolled!"

"Well, I have to keep up with my studies somehow," Harry shouted.

"We are working on it," Dumbledore assured him.

"Why can't you just expel them all?"

"Expel the entire house of Slytherin," Snape scoffed. "I don't think you have the faintest conception of the uproar that would ensue. Pureblood families deluging the Board of Governors with Howlers, the Ministry taking the most politically expedient stance--"

"All right, so it wasn't such a practical idea," Harry admitted.

"There's another matter," the headmaster gravely informed him. "Quite a problematical one. We've intercepted some magical communications indicating plans to attack the hospital wing."

"Oh, that explains all the hovering," Harry muttered. "And all but two of my friends going missing. I bet you spelled the corridor to keep everyone but Ron and Hermione out."

The headmaster merely inclined his head, and continued, "We haven't been able to determine if the communications originated in Slytherin, or from outside the castle, but in either case, we need to ward you with the strongest magic possible."

Harry clenched his eyes shut, seeing again his vision of that house he'd hated crumpling to nothing. "Well, thank goodness you can't send me back to Privet Drive any longer! And as for warding anyplace new, Aunt Petunia's dead, along with all my mother's blood . . . oh, not quite all. You're going to use Dudley, aren't you?"

"In so far as he shares the maternal bloodline, there is some connection to exploit, yes," the headmaster murmured.

"So I have to leave Hogwarts and go live wherever he is?" Harry gasped. "Oh, wonderful. You know, Mrs. Figg's a really nice lady, but she's a squib, so I'm hardly going to keep up my studies under her tutelage!"

"Potter," Snape snapped, "would you please stop obsessing over your studies and allow the headmaster and myself to explain?" Only after Harry nodded did he go on. "We don't want your education disrupted any more than do you. Nor do we want to monopolize the old crowd with guard duty once again. Everyone has a great many vital matters to attend to, besides child minding--"

"I thought you were going to explain!" Harry erupted.

"We propose to ward your living spaces here. You'll be perfectly safe as long as you remain in them, just as on Privet Drive you were in no danger until you ventured outside the walls."

"No danger?" Harry mocked.

"No danger from Voldemort, at least," Dumbledore clarified.

Harry saw red. "You knew! You knew how bad it got there! You've always known! Addressing my Hogwarts letter to the cupboard under the stairs. Don't you have a clue how sick those people were? What they did to me, year after year? I've never been wanted! I've never been loved! How dare you sit there on my bed like some kindly old grandfather figure when you're nothing but an interfering crackpot old coot!"

"Harry!" Snape gasped. "Apologize to the headmaster!"

Harry was hardly repentant. He looked straight at Dumbledore's blurry visage and distinctly announced, "I'm very sorry that you're an interfering crackpot old coot."

"It's all right, Severus," the headmaster wheezed, unsteadily pushing himself to stand. "I did what I had to, but as Harry's the one who suffered for it, I don't expect him to understand." If Harry didn't know better, he'd have said there were tears in the old man's voice. But that was probably just one more of his ploys, on a level with the constant offers he made of candy. "If you could explain the rest to him, Severus . . ." His voice drifted off, and then he did as well.

Snape watched him go, his breathing ragged, then stalked to the doors to re-establish the silencing charms. When he strode back to Harry, his expression alone spoke volumes: anger, disappointment, impatience, rage. Funny how clear all that was, even if the image of his face was blurry . . .

Snape's voice was low, cold, and methodical when he spoke.

"The sacrificial magic used to extend the power of your mother's love to you can potentially be applied to many things. Unfortunately for you, the only blood left in her line belongs to your cousin, who has lived almost all his life in a house imbued with one particular kind of warding. Her blood that lives on in him is therefore most appropriately applied to the same kind of warding."

Harry didn't follow that at all, although Snape's stress on the word love wasn't lost on him. He'd been wrong to say he'd never been loved; his parents had loved him enough to die protecting him. There was no stronger love, Harry knew that. It just didn't help to know it, when he'd lost it before he'd really learned to remember, or feel love himself.

"I don't understand, Professor," he admitted in a small voice.

"Well, allow me to explain in simpler words," Snape snarled. "Your cousin cannot ward the entire castle. He can only ward a personal residence."

"The Tower, then," Harry nodded. "So I'd be safe when I'm there, at least, though I still don't know what I'll do about getting to classes . . ."

"Who do you think the Tower recognises as its owner, Potter?"

Harry frowned. "Uh, I don't know. There's dozens and dozens of us rooming there."

"Your own room, then," Snape smoothly inserted, though he didn't sound too far off from the snarl of the minute before. "Who do you think your room believes is its owner?"

"Well, there's a bunch of us--"

"And though your age mates and you stay together, you change rooms each year as in Slytherin?" Snape pressed. "Not to mention vacating the Tower entirely for a full fourth of each year. So, think about this carefully. Wouldn't the room you're in now be rather confused as to who owns it?"

"I suppose so . . ."

"Then it's not a personal residence, not in the sense the warding spells will require," Snape abruptly announced. "The Tower cannot be warded by Dudley Dursley, nor even your own room in it. To keep you safe from the students out for your blood, not to mention from the Dark Lord himself and Lucius Malfoy, who not incidentally, blames you for his son's treachery, you will need to live in a place the spells will recognise as the longstanding domain of a consistent resident."

Something about the way Snape was looking at him made Harry's hair almost stand on end. Well, more than it usually did all by itself. "Longstanding?" he echoed, starting to catch on. "Just how longstanding are we talking here? Like, about twenty years?"

"I see you've deduced the plan," Snape announced, his voice cold. "You shall come to live in my own quarters until the worst of the danger has passed. At that point we can re-evaluate."

"The headmaster actually okayed this?"

"It was his idea, Potter," Snape sourly informed him. "So you might as well just save your protests. You know what he's like when he takes a notion into his head."

Harry wasn't about to stop his protests. Sure, sure, he and Snape were getting along these days, and Snape had even gone so far as to admit that he didn't exactly hate Harry's guts, but that didn't mean Harry was prepared to leave beautiful Gryffindor Tower for the bowels of the earth! "The whole idea's ridiculous," he asserted. "I'm sure the Dursleys didn't live in their house for twenty years before I came along."

"I'm sure they had clear title to their own property, too," Snape sneered. "It's a matter of convincing the spell, Potter. Your cousin can't ward an area without consent of the owners. I don't have title to my little corner of the dungeons but by sheer right of domicile for so long I feel they're mine, so the spell will serve its function."

"Look, you and Dumbledore are great at magic; I'm sure you can figure out a way to bend the spell so it can attach itself to the Tower--"

"That won't produce a teacher fully trained against the Dark Arts, there to safeguard you when the next hex or curse comes your way! It also won't carry with it the sheer deterrence my quarters will. My Slytherins will think twice before they mount an attack there!"

"Will they?" Harry questioned. "No offence, but you've got to be high on their list of people to kill, too. I mean, they must know by now that you were the one who got me away at Samhain. Your cover as a bad guy is completely blown to smithereens."

"Yes," Snape silkily agreed, "but you're forgetting two things. One, I am their Head of House, which means I can expel them at will. Meddling with my private space is a shade different from bringing a snake into my classroom. I have wards and spells plastered across my quarters to catch anyone who violates my privacy, and well they know it."

"And two?" Harry pressed.

Snape glanced heavily at him. "I know all those Dark Arts they lust after, and I'm quite capable of murder if provoked enough. Expulsion is the least of their worries. Believe me, no one will dare attack a student right under my own roof."

"If your sheer presence alone is warding enough, what do we need with Dudley?"

"My presence won't hold off the Dark Lord, or Lucius Malfoy. My own defensive measures might not even reject the former, but with the blood sacrifice shielding you, you will be perfectly safe. Remember, the Dark Lord himself could not do a thing to harm you at Number Four Privet Drive, could not even touch the building around you, not until your aunt died and the wards fell."

"I could just have a Portkey that would take me down to your rooms at the least hint of danger," Harry suggested, beginning to feel desperate.

"And what if the danger is yourself? Have you thought of that? Where do you want to be if you have another nightmare and your magic goes wild? In the Tower where your power might lash out to hurt the other Gryffindors? Or with me? Last time I was the only one who could calm you."

"That was just because we weren't all right and it was really bugging me!"

Snape shook his head. "There is more to it. I've seen your dark powers firsthand, when I've been in your mind guiding you towards Occlumency. They know me. And too, you might consider that you still cannot bear to be touched by anyone except me. Is that a burden you wish to inflict on all your friends?"

Harry didn't know what to say to that. It was true that he didn't want to unleash his wild magic in the Tower, or freak out his friends with his aversion to any contact. But still, live in the dungeons with Snape? The Slytherin dungeons, no less?

Taking advantage of Harry's hesitation, Snape briskly announced, "As your own question about classes indicates, you are well enough to finish your recuperation out of hospital. Therefore, I will have the house-elves move your things at once--"

"But I don't want to live with you!" Harry erupted, only to feel himself taken aback by Snape's irate reply.

"Yes, you've made that quite evident! Well, I don't expect it to be a basket of roses, either, but in the interests of keeping you alive, Potter, I've been good enough to agree! I frankly don't see what issue you can have with it. Or do you think I'll take my chance to poison you if you have to eat at my table?"

Harry was about to ask why he'd be eating down there at all; didn't they even think the Great Hall could be made safe for him? But that question was overshadowed by a greater one. Why would Snape bring up poison?

I frankly don't see what issue you can have with it . . .

"It's nothing personal, Professor," Harry murmured, suddenly realizing he'd made it sound like it was. "I mean, um . . . you've been really good to me lately, the operation, and Occlumency, and telling me my father came out all right after all, and saving my life again, and then Devon, and the night the windows smashed and you held me again. It's not like I don't appreciate all that, and all those potions too . . . I've been meaning to thank you--"

"Merlin preserve me," Snape drawled.

"Oh, cut the attitude," Harry chided. "You want more? I even like you, sarcasm and all. Breathe, Professor . . . anyway, don't bring up poison like that. It's stupid."

Snape's eyes narrowed, though he didn't look nearly so angry any longer, at least in Harry's estimation, which was getting fuzzier all the time. He was used to the sight by then; it meant the Eyesight Elixir was waning. "Then what is your objection?"

"I have friends in Gryffindor," Harry explained, thinking it was really weird he'd have to. It was pretty bloody obvious, wasn't it? Then again, maybe it wasn't to someone like Snape. He didn't appear to have friends now; maybe he'd never had any, so he couldn't understand how Harry must feel. "I've just got back here after what seems like a month in Hell, Professor, and we've barely caught up. And now it looks as though I won't even get to see them in classes. So when am I going to, if I move out?"

"Harry . . ." Well, that was good at least, a break from the infernal Potter Snape had been going on with. "There are more important things than friends."

Harry shook his head. "No, see? That's where you're wrong. Or maybe it's just you being Slytherin, I can't really tell. But there isn't anything more important. What's the point of fighting Voldemort if when it's all over, there isn't anybody I did it for? If I give up everybody I care about just to win, then I'm giving up my reasons to bother winning."

Snape said nothing, just stared at him, his dark eyes calculating. Just what they were calculating, Harry couldn't have said.

"I am a Gryffindor, you know," Harry continued. "Whatever the Sorting Hat might have wanted for me at first, whatever you think would have been best, I ended up there, and five years has an impact. Professor? Summers with the Dursleys weren't so much a misery for me because of the weeding and the occasional slap, it was because nobody there cared about me. After I'd been in with Gryffindors for a year, I knew how much that meant. The worst part of summers was missing my friends. You know, that's why I never read that letter until you made me?"

Snape had appeared to be listening carefully, and he was without a doubt one of the smartest people Harry had ever been around, so he was slightly stunned when his professor merely replied, "Come again?"

"Uh . . ." Harry paused, trying to think how to explain. "I'd never got a letter, except from Hogwarts or my friends here. And in the summers, sometimes I'd think the letters were all that kept me from going barmy--"

"You are stronger than that."

"Yeah, maybe so, but it felt that way. And then I got the letter from the Dursleys, and I knew it was going to be filled with insults and such . . . all right, laugh if you want, but it just seemed like opening it would make it real. And I didn't want it to be real, 'cause then the whole idea of letters would just be shot for me. I mean, it would ruin the only good thing I got to have each summer. See?" he finished hopefully.

"No," Snape shortly answered. "That is wholly irrational."

"Well, it's true, all the same," Harry answered, quirking a small smile. "We're not all cool composed Potions Masters. Really, Professor. I need my friends."

"Oh, very well," the man sighed, which lifted Harry's spirits considerably until he continued, "your imbecilic Gryffindor friends will be allowed to visit you in my quarters."

"That's not what I meant--"

Snape's voice came across as imperious, as well it might, Harry supposed; that had been quite the concession he'd just made. Actually, Harry was touched, and impressed, though he hadn't managed to say so yet. For Snape to allow Hermione and Ron and maybe even Neville into his private living space . . . that spoke volumes. A warm sort of fuzzy glow crept over Harry, making him feel like he'd eaten his fill of buttered pancakes or something.

"You have another difficulty?" Snape was snapping out, the words practically a lash.

Oh Merlin, Harry thought, that's it. I'm hurting his feelings . . . Funny how life turned out. If anyone had told him a year ago that he'd be worried about hurting Snape, that he'd feel really really bad about it . . . well, he'd have died laughing.

"Just some questions," Harry sighed. "Try not to fly off the handle."

"I do not fly--"

"Yeah," Harry cut him off, managing not to add sure you don't, right. "I know you've said not to fret over this, but what about my classes?"

"I will see to that," Snape replied rather dismissively.

"You mean you'll tutor me at night, or something? Um, no offence, but do you know all that much about every subject? I mean, I'm sure you're ace at defence and Potions, maybe Charms, that's sort of related--"

"Would you like to see my own N.E.W.T. results?" Snape drawled. "Or my curriculum vitae, perhaps? Don't be an idiot!"

All right, maybe that had been a little dumb. "What about the days? I mean, you teach. What am I supposed to do all day, rattling around in the dungeons all by myself?"

"Why, I'm sure you'll study. Isn't that your main preoccupation, getting caught up to your classmates? Without games of Exploding Snap and candies that turn you into a rhinoceros to distract you, I'm sure you'll learn more in a week than you acquire in months with all your friends about."

"Um, I don't suppose you know how long I'll have to stay with you, do you?"

"No, I don't suppose I do," Snape mocked. "We'll see how long it may take Draco Malfoy to do the job he's been assigned, and sway Slytherin to your cause. Our cause, rather. I must learn an entirely new way of speaking, do you realise that? Well, no matter. In the alternative, I imagine that the Tower will be safe for you once your powers are fully recovered. Certainly, they will be so after you put the Dark Lord in his grave, for good this time, one would hope."

"Voldemort," Harry suddenly corrected. "Say Voldemort."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous--"

"Do it. Say Voldemort. You give him power when you won't say his name. I understand when you were spying and all, you had to distance yourself from Dumbledore, who uses it. And me too, probably, when it came to that. But that's all over."

"I tried to make you say the Dark Lord as well, much good it ever did me," Snape reminded him.

"Come on, you can do it . . ." Harry thought for a second, then plunged ahead. "Tell you what, you say Voldemort for me, and I'll come live in the dungeons like you want."

"You have no choice in that. At any rate, you have already tacitly agreed."

Harry thought a moment. "True. Well, you say Voldemort then, and I'll overtly agree."

"Why does it matter to you so much, what I say?"

"A new way of speaking, Professor. A new way of thinking, really," Harry insisted. "It matters."

"You'll agree to reside in my quarters until we're agreed the danger is passed? No matter how difficult you may find it to live there?"

"I'm sure we can figure out how to co-exist," Harry murmured. "Yeah. All right, yes. But you have to say it from now on. You can't go around acting like you're still his minion."

"Voldemort," Snape said, smiling slightly.

"See, it was easy," Harry mocked.

"Taking up residence in my quarters may well not be the same for you," Snape warned. "But that's settled, now. Can you see well enough to navigate your way down with me?"

"Ah, no, don't think so."

"More Elixir, then. Hold still, Harry. Dare I say that's been well done of you the last few times?" He paused to put it in, one hand prying each eye open in turn while the other dosed him. "There. Now you'll get dressed; Minerva fetched some of your clothes so that you wouldn't have to wander the halls in your pyjamas."

Harry groaned. "Oh, no . . . there I was thinking all about myself, but what are my friends going to think when all my stuff gets moved out, when they hear I've gone down into the Slytherin dungeons to live?"

"No doubt they'll descend on me like locusts," Snape lamented. "I imagine your cousin will make it even worse, though really, he did seem much changed in that hospital."

"My cousin?" Harry gasped, nonplussed.

"Yes," Snape said, wiping his hands on a towel and neatly corking the flask of Elixir. "You didn't think he could ward my rooms from a distance, did you? Dudley Dursley will have to come here if he wishes to help you."

"Oh," Harry returned, blinking several times. Seeing that his teacher had walked off toward the windows--decorum again--Harry hurriedly swapped his pyjamas for the clothes laid out, and after slipping on his shoes, hopped off the bed. Hmm, he was still sore, but not enough to even need a pain draught any longer. Thinking fast, he stuffed the letter to Dudley into a trouser pocket, and picked up the enchanted quill from where Pomfrey had laid it. Then he pulled on his robes--now those felt nice at last--and walked over to join Snape, feeling rather proud that he only stumbled once as he navigated the hazy room.

"Dudley will want to help me," Harry admitted. "But . . . he's a Muggle, professor. I mean, he won't even be able to see Hogwarts, will he? He'll see some crumbling old ruin . . . how will he even get in, or down to the dungeons to ward them?"

"It will be a bit of a trick," Snape admitted, slanting him a look. "I suppose we shall have to use magic."

Harry was hardly amused. "We can't do this to him," he protested, his voice increasing in volume. "He's . . . fragile, Professor. Mentally, I mean. And he was raised to really, really fear magic, you know."

"Albus has spoken with his therapist, who feels it will be to his benefit to come here," Snape insisted, looking down at him. "Yes, he fears magic. But you are his only family left, and magic is an integral part of you. Your cousin needs to see you in your natural element. It will help him to know that magic is more than Dementors attacking him."

"But to stay in the dungeons, with you?" Harry couldn't help but scoff. "No offence, all right, but look at you! You'll make him pee his pants, Professor!" When Snape's soft laugh sounded wickedly amused, Harry snapped, "I'm not joking!"

Snape frowned, his eyebrows creasing as he leaned forward. "Your cousin already knows me as Remus Lupin," he commented rather darkly. "Shall I Polyjuice back into his mangy form for a few days?"

"Oh, Merlin, no," Harry gasped. "That wasn't what I meant."

"Good," Snape approved. He walked across the length of the hospital wing and beckoned Harry to follow. Hmm, a little nerve-wracking, walking unaided all that way, Harry thought. But he managed. At least he wasn't completely blind any longer.

"Good?" he lightly joked as Snape issued a series of Finite Incantatems toward the warded doors. "You didn't like being Remus?"

"I did not," Snape murmured, throwing wide the doors to the corridor. "But that is not what I meant. It is good if I remain my usual self, so to speak because . . ." he looked down at Harry, a sardonic gleam dancing in his eyes, and finished, "Anything else would, I think, truly baffle Draco."

Chapter End Notes:

Coming Soon in A Year Like None Other:

Chapter Thirty-Four: House Colours

~

Comments very welcome,

Aspen in the Sunlight


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