Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

The Christmas Present

In the name of seeming at least slightly more redeemable than the Muggles, Snape again lifted some of the wards to allow Potter movement about the house. He could now access the library, the owlery, and depending upon how tolerant Snape felt at any particular moment, the study.

They saw little of each other apart from their daily Occlumency lesson and their awkward dinners in the dining room. Potter proved much more adept at Occlumency when ensconced in his closet, and Snape was unfortunately forced to curtail his more scathing insults.

"A pity you couldn't match this performance a year ago," he said coldly after one particularly successful session.

Potter, the little prat, had the gall to take it as a complement, and his eyes flashed with bitter triumph as he tucked his wand back into his pocket and fled Snape's presence.

He usually encountered the boy just inside the owlery, where Potter seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time reading Kinship and Related Curses, and gazing listlessly at the sky as if in perpetual wait for something.

On one such encounter, Snape paused upon finding the boy leaning against the wall, gazing down at the book propped open on his lap. The walls bore the tell-tale sign of a hastily-performed scourgify charm; the immediate area around Potter was the only place free of crusted owl droppings.

"I do not see why you insist upon reading up here," Snape complained as he sent his own owl fluttering into the night sky. "The stench alone would drive most people away."

Potter dragged his eyes reluctantly up to meet Snape's. "I like it." He shrugged. "I'm outside, at least."

Snape stared at him a moment. It hadn't occurred to him the boy might miss the sunlight. He himself could tolerate weeks on end cooped up in his potions lab.

Could he trust Potter on his own around the grounds?

Of course not. But perhaps if he were accompanied…

"I'll have Minky escort you into the gardens tomorrow, weather permitting," he offered grudgingly. Then, so as not to seem like he was indulging the brat, he added, "Merry Christmas. Do not expect anything else."

Potter blinked owlishly at him for a moment. Then, "Thanks."

He turned back to the book.

Snape folded his arms across his chest, admittedly curious about just what curse the boy was studying so intently. "I take it you've found something appropriate?"

The boy looked back up again, frustration evident in his face. "No. I haven't." He flipped through the pages carelessly as though to punctuate his point. "There are hundreds of sterility spells--"

"Infecunditas," Snape said dryly. "Quite useful for securing the family fortune for one's own progeny."

"And all the rest seem to be about unfaithful lovers."

"Paecipio infideles is my favorite. 'Admonish the unfaithful.'" He smirked nastily at the boy. "Your father could certainly have used it."

Potter looked at him oddly. Snape felt irritated. Simply because he wasn't married himself did not mean…

His words came back to him.

"Your father."

Ah, that.

He was torn between the urge to correct the mistake, or to just depart this boy's distasteful company.

He settled with the latter.

* * *

Snape was surprised the next morning to receive a parcel from Dumbledore in addition to the small, cursory Christmas gifts the other teachers sent him every year. Usually the old man respected his distaste for this particular custom. McGonagall certainly never did, nor did Flitwick, nor, oddly enough, Trewlaney, but the Headmaster always had.

Receiving useless presents the teachers deemed necessary for his well-being always put him in an awful mood. He could not help but think they were reprimanding him for some behavior or other when Sinistra sent him an assortment of mellowing herbal teas at the same time that Flitwick sent him a primer for easing magic-induced stress. And he would not even mention the shampoo that Trewlaney creature had the nerve to send him two years earlier, claiming her inner eye had anticipated his need for Thicker, Longer, Bouncier Hair in One Month!

He'd complained to Minerva on multiple occasions about the repulsive nature of the custom.

"I do not see why you persist. You'll be sorely disappointed if you expect anything in return."

She smiled thinly, and said, "Perhaps we don't want anything in return, Severus. We might just want to give you something."

Another occasion, she even had the nerve to suggest they sent him presents because they believed him to be lonely. Lonely, indeed! If his fellow Death Eaters and the Dark Lord were taken into account, he had far more intimate ties with a far greater number of acquaintances than any of them…

Hardly a point he could make aloud, of course. But it was true. The Death Eaters were a close lot, bound together in a covenant of hate as well as in servitude to a common Dark Lord.

And apart from his tendency to relay the contents of every meeting to the Headmaster, he carried out the customary functions of any other Death Eater-- raids, the terrorizing of Mudbloods, plotting Dumbledore's grisly demise with a feral glint in his eyes. Never mind that he reported all those assassination plots to the chuckling Headmaster immediately afterwards, and even accepted pointers from him on how to better go about assassinating him. It was the thought that counted.

He attended the social functions-- not entirely unpleasant affairs, assuming the Dark Lord wasn't in a peckish mood and hoping to torture some Muggles, or worse, his own compatriots. Death Eaters were, for the most part, a generous lot; many of the illegal or otherwise questionable ingredients in his Potions stock were at the bequest of other servants of the Dark Lord. All they required in return were debilitating poisons, madness-inducing elixirs, and virility aids.

All in all, he tended to come out on the better end of the bargain.

But now, he opened the Headmaster's gift, sneering in anticipation, and was surprised to discover a pensieve.

He prickled with irritation as he scanned the note… "Severus, please examine the contents… clear some misconceptions…"

He rolled his eyes and cast the note aside. He looked at the pensieve curiously.

Intrigued despite himself, Severus sifted through the memories, catching glimpses of himself as a teenager, as a young man fresh from Azkaban, as a young teacher crouched on the floor of the Potions classroom.

He scowled. If the Headmaster hoped to humiliate him with recollections of Snivellus at his worst, he certainly had succeeded.

A flash of green eyes.

Lily.

This one he would see.

* * *

Lily Potter stood trembling before Dumbledore, just outside Godric's Hollow. There was a hunted, furtive look on her face, and she clutched the infant to her chest as though she thought her visitor meant to steal him.

Dumbledore held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture, concerned for his former pupil and the infant she was shielding from his gaze.

"I received your message," he said carefully. "Minerva told me you seemed distraught."

Lily's green eyes looked manic as she let out a wild laugh. "Oh, just a little." Her haunted gaze traveled down to the infant in her arms. "I--Oh, Merlin. Oh, God."

The blanket shifted just enough for Albus to catch a glimpse of the boy's rosy cheeks and dark eyes--

"His eye color has changed," Dumbledore observed.

He took a tentative step closer to the distressed woman, and she looked up, suddenly appearing very young and very lost. Her grip on the infant relaxed just enough for him to remove the baby from her grasp.

"What have you done to him, Lily?" Dumbledore said gently, delicately lifting the infant from her trembling arms.

"What I had to do," she said in a flat, emotionless tone, watching with hooded green eyes as her child rested in another's arms. "I never realized-- I never thought it could be his, Albus. I didn't think-- we were only together once. One mistake. If I'd known--" She turned emerald eyes glistening with tears up to her mentor. "I couldn’t even tell until a few weeks ago. Thank God James is still off in the mountains, or he'd know it, too... I didn't realize when the baby was first born... But after a few weeks passed… I couldn't see James in the baby's face, not anywhere! And then when I performed the paternity spell…" Her tone grew slightly harder, less hysterical. "They can never know. James would leave me. Don't let that happen, Albus... And Severus-- he'll take my son away. You know he'll do it! If he ever finds out…"

Dumbledore's lips thinned into a grave line. He looked at the child, troubled.

"You've cast a glamour."

She smiled wistfully through her tears. "He looks like his father now-- his true father. James." A note of hysteria crept into her voice, "I didn't think it would make him look exactly like James... I can't even see myself in him now. And his eyes-- James will know once he sees the eyes have changed! Please-- I don’t know how to reverse it. I don't know what to do!"

Dumbledore looked sympathetic, and he thoughtfully looked over the infant. Shifting the baby to one of his arms, he drew out his wand with the other, muttering a soft incantation as he waved it over the boy's eyes.

Lily gasped as the brown slowly crept from his irises, leaving the baby's brilliant green eyes gazing back at her. The eyes she'd gazed into when he was first born.

"Albus, the glamour--"

"Is still intact," he assured her. "I took the liberty of selectively severing one element of it. And I reinforced it for you; it will remain in place even as Harry grows older."

Her eyes shone with tears of gratitude, and Dumbledore's expression was a mixture of compassion and remorse.

The scene vanished.

Abruptly, another memory intimately bound with the previous sprang in its place.

A younger Severus was gazing out into the sky, occasionally shooting seething looks of thinly veiled hostility at the aurors stationed by the entrance. His entire body appeared a coiled mass of tension, the black robes draped like a shroud over his emaciated frame.

Dumbledore stepped into the room, and Severus whirled about to confront him, eyes flashing with a desperate rage.

"This is your amnesty, Dumbledore?" Severus snarled. "Azkaban!?"

Dumbledore hung back by the entranceway.

"I should kill you," Severus rasped. His voice was shaking.

"If you wish to vent your fury upon me, Severus," Dumbledore said softly, "You are perfectly entitled to do so. We have severely misused you. I only warn you that I do not care for your chances of having the conviction overturned, should you act on that impulse."

Severus glared at him darkly, but otherwise said nothing.

"I will do everything in my power to get the sentence revoked, Severus," he said gently, taking a step towards the younger wizard, with the caution one might employ approaching a wild animal. "I swear to you, you will not be in there long."

Severus still looked angry, but some of his terror seeped through to the surface. "After everything I've done for you… Why can't you stop them? Why can't you make them see reason? There must be something you can do! The Dementors…" Severus's eyes looked utterly haunted, and his gaze drifted back out to the morning sky. "The innocent and the ruthless. They say they're the only ones who can withstand them. I am neither."

"It will not be long, Severus, I swear it."

Severus's expression was dark. A calculating gleam appeared in his eye, and the older wizard stiffened almost imperceptibly, anticipating the verbal assault soon to come.

"At least I won't be alone," Severus said.

Dumbledore watched him warily.

"Black," Severus spat the name, "will rot by my side."

Pain stole into the Headmaster's expression. Sirius Black's defection to the Dark Lord clearly wrenched at his heart.

Severus's eyes glinted in satisfaction at seeing Dumbledore hurt, but it quickly melted into the bleakness of his expression.

"There is nothing for me out here," Severus noted quietly. "I have nothing to hope for even if they do release me. Why should I care? What does it matter? They could administer the kiss now, and I'd welcome it --"

"Severus, do not speak this way!"

Dumbledore closed the distance between them and grasped the younger man by his thin shoulders.

"There is always hope, and there is always something to live for."

Dumbledore drew closer to Severus.

* * *

Snape, immersed in the memory, froze upon seeing the look on Dumbledore's face. The entreaty, the remorse.

Dumbledore was about to tell him.

He knew it, he should have known it. He should have realized that Dumbledore came there to say something to him.

He should not have done what he did.

* * *

"There is something for you, too, Severus. It is well past time for you to know this, but I must tell you before you --"

Young Severus looked up at met Dumbledore's eyes hatefully, the betrayal and fury written plainly across his face.

"Yes, there is something for me," Severus said maliciously, interrupting the older wizard. "The knowledge that at this very moment, Black is rotting in Azkaban, and James Potter is rotting in the ground. Your Golden Gryffindors are dead or disgraced. You pardoned Black for his first murderous gesture, and now he's struck down your most beloved Marauder in his second. That is mine."

Dumbledore's expression flickered, his hands slipping from the younger wizard's shoulders.

A chilling smile crept across Severus's lips, one that spoke of all the hatred in his heart.

"That triumph," Severus continued, still smiling that terrible smile, "I will cherish until my dying day."
Dumbledore stared at him for a long moment, as though he felt uncertain just what to do with the younger wizard. At last, the emotion vanished from his eyes, and he again appeared the stoic, serene old wizard Severus had come to know.

"I will get you out of there," Dumbledore quietly pledged. "It will just take time. I--" His expression looked troubled, but the emotions flashed by in an instant. "There will be something waiting for you. I swear it."

* * *

And there had been. He spent three months in Azkaban before the Ministry was suitably convinced he was actually a spy, and he emerged to find a position as Potions Master available for him at Hogwarts. He had blamed Dumbledore for a long time, even after he had secured Snape's release. He'd just known that, had he been one of the golden Gryffindors, Dumbledore would never have permitted the Ministry to send him to Azkaban. Not for a day, not for an hour, and certainly not for three bloody months.

But now, it was a somewhat shaken Severus Snape who retreated from the pensieve, who collapsed into an easy chair for fear his legs would not support him. His thoughts were haunted by those words, by that expression on Albus's face.

"It is well past time for you to know this, but I must tell you before you…"

They had meant nothing in his own memory. The expression on Albus's face, it had been meaningless. It was only upon viewing Dumbledore's memory that they gained significance.

He could have doctored the memory, Snape thought viciously, but even as he considered the idea, he knew it to be untrue. His own recollection of that tumultuous scene, that awful day after his sentencing, played through his mind in perfect accord with what he'd just witnessed.

Why had Dumbledore sent him this pensieve? Did he simply want to flaunt the fact that Snape had had his chance at fatherhood and thrown it away?

He had been about to tell him he had a son. And Severus had launched viciously into his hatred of James Potter, throwing all of Dumbledore's fears back in his face.

No, it wasn't to rub Severus's face in the possibilities he'd lost. Dumbledore wanted him to see exactly why he had concealed the boy from him. Those brief glimpses of the other memories in there-- a haunted man fresh from Azkaban, that incident early in his teaching career when the older wizard discovered him huddling on the floor of his classroom after a negative experience with a disassociative draught… He was trying to show Severus that he'd been protecting a man unprepared for the burden of a child just as much as he'd been sheltering a child from that man.

Had he known about the boy… Had he realized, it would have tugged at his thoughts, even if he let the Muggles keep him. It would have been unacceptable to him for the boy to remain a Potter, but it would have been equally as destructive for him to take the boy in as his own.

Really, would he have been any better as a father when he was younger than he was now?

And he was a terrible father; he could admit that freely. He had no love for the boy, no emotional investment in him other than six years of deep-rooted dislike. No tender feelings had arisen within his breast, and he truly had no desire for them to. He was perfectly content with being an abominable tyrant to the boy, because he couldn't contemplate himself in any other relation to this particular child

It was several hours before he thought to write a response to Dumbledore. Perhaps he should have viewed the rest of the pensieve incidents, but he was disgusted enough with his younger self without viewing memories of those terrible times through another's eyes.

The person Dumbledore had confronted shortly after Severus's trial…

That emaciated, angry, frightened wreck of a wizard…

He'd seen enough of him to last a lifetime.

When he sent the return owl, the contents of his response were etched into his memory.

"Headmaster-- You have proved already you have no respect for the sanctity of my memories, nor have you accorded me my natural rights in other aspects. Do not persist in these expressions of your contempt. I have no wish for anything you have to offer me."

It was a simple message. I do not forgive you. And I will never forget what you did.

Despite his best efforts, though, the fury that had raged through him since that day he uncovered the truth had somewhat abated.

Dumbledore had not taken the boy from him because he thought Severus unworthy. He did not think Snivellus was the scum of the earth.

It shouldn't have meant so much to him, but it did. It meant everything.


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