Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Down the Rabbit Hole

He walked, fuming, out of the dungeons. How dare they? How dare they! McWhirr as potions master… as if! The concept was bloody laughable! The man could barely teach defense, let alone potions! And all this about his dad not working at the school anymore? Honestly! Even if their little story certainly explained why the Potions lab was so bloody dirty, there was no way in hell that his dad would ever truly serve Voldemort again. No. Way. In. Hell. Clear and simple.

He was extremely glad that he had pocketed more than enough of the potion before confronting them, as the remainder of his concoction was presently allowing him his chance to ditch the old fools. It was McWhirr’s own fault, really, keeping the lab so filthy. It was only the boy’s luck that there was enough essence of anteater and powdered goat hoof on the floor to cause the Whomping Willow seeds (now dissolved, making them more reactive) in the potion to activate. The result? Thick, blue-gray smoke that was known to cause confusion (or so every third year ought know… not his fault the supposed ‘Potions Master’ didn’t), but was otherwise completely harmless.

Okay, so his chosen course of action might not have been the most prudent, but hell, the old geezer was going on about mind alteration and Voldemort possessing him for crying out loud! Dumbledore must have gone bonkers! And the boy just knew that if he had allowed it, he’d be spending the next… Merlin knows how long… in the hospital wing. No way was he going to allow anyone to toss him back there. Not him, nope, not unless the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse dragged him there themselves. So he had had to have ‘accidentally’ knocked over his potion… a small price to pay. It was better than stunning them or something, at any rate, even if he had wanted to curse them… a lot.

Concentrate, he told himself, trying to get his anger under control. He couldn’t fume about the damn Headmaster, not now, even if said idiot was trying to get him to believe in some warped tale of his. He had to figure everything out, first and foremost, and for that he needed a place where they wouldn’t find him.

His room? Too obvious, and he had already walked away from the dungeons. He didn’t know what the Slytherins’ reaction to one Harry Potter stepping into their inner sanctum would be, either, which just made the location that much less accessible. The same rang true for his father’s office, especially if the old goon truly had tossed his dad out.

The Gryffindor dorms then? He did look like a Gryffindor, after all.

No, the choice was crossed off immediately. Unlike the Slytherins, the Gryffindors didn’t know how to keep out of a person’s business… and the common room was nearly never empty. No individual rooms, either, and getting the people out of the dorm would prove fruitless. Unlike a prominent Slytherin’s order, that of a Gryffindor was quite readily ignored. Damn Gryffindors!

Where then? The Marauders’ room? He’d hate to have to go back there. After all, that’s where the man he presently looked the ‘spitting image’ of conspired with his buds to humiliate his father! But, as annoying as it was to accept, the room was probably the safest place for him right now. Lea, Weasley, Sirius and Remus knew of it… maybe Dumbledore, but he knew that the place could be locked from all of them. He had used it to think before, and it certainly had the luxuries one needed for a somewhat prolonged stay (as he imagined this might turn into), not to mention the way it wouldn’t betray his actions or locations to anyone… even on the map.

.∞ . ∞ . ∞.

The state of the room was more shocking than that of the Potions lab, and the boy found himself wondering how many more such shocks it would take for him to go completely insane. There was dust everywhere, thick and dry, the kind that instantly took to the air at the lightest shift or movement. It hit his face dead on, too, when he pulled the door open with quite some force. Merlin above it was thick! He coughed and wheezed as it invaded his lungs, his struggle to regain his breath only spurring more dust into the air. No one must have been here in decades… a thought as comforting as disturbing. It should have been clean, after all the charms Lea and himself (and Weasley…) had dast after finding it. Either it never happen, or someone was trying to make it seem that it hadn’t; and the boy had far too great a headache to figure out which he’d prefer to assume at this point. Taking things at face value was dangerous, and being overly paranoid was proving taxing both mentally and physically.

He was half considering going to the damn Chamber, as he was at least sure any dust there would have only gathered naturally, and not out of some old Headmaster’s wand. The entrance was blocked though, and at present he needed somewhere not so filled with bad memories. It reeked of Voldemort, after all, and that was one man the boy did not want to think about right now. He was still standing in the entryway of the Marauders’ room, dreading walking in any further. But was there anywhere else? No, he supposed not. Not unless he went to the Forbidden Forest, but that would be dangerous on even more levels unless he remained in his animal form… and he couldn’t do what he wanted in that state. It would have to be here, then… dust and all.

He closed the door behind him ever-so-lightly, as not to entice the dust into a second assault on his lungs, and sat gingerly on one of the seats there.

“First thing’s first…” he mumbled, “let’s see what I’m dealing with.” He had to find out what abilities he could count on and which had been wiped away… by the loss of his venoms, by his sudden Potter-ish appearance, by the meddling of a certain Headmaster or some other inhibiting factor.

He shifted to the floor, careful not to stir the dust too much, and concentrated. He focused on the wisps of passive protective magic which he had always used to erect the wards. The strands were there, he was sure, but it was as if his attempts passed right through them instead of molding them into the wards he needed. Hell, he could barely sense the damn things. Shit. He tried banishing the dust, hoping that if he was to rely on his internal magic, it would work… that it was a problem with the room, not him.

Nothing.

And he hadn’t seen his wand since Merlin knew when. Perfect.

The boy panicked, pushing his reserves into the spell; any spell. Hell, even a burst of childish, uncontrolled magic would be welcomed. Still nothing. It had to be the room… but all the colors were the same. The walls still had the motley blue patches on them, the different hues merging and fading from one to the next. The paintings stood out as bright yellow squares, contrasting sharply with the pale blue walls. And the dust, seemingly devoid of all magic, glistened an unearthly white. Not made by Dumbledore then.

But… if he could see that it was natural dust… he still had his aura sight!

“The skills of your mind are eternal; while the skills of the body can wither right before your eyes.” he seemed to hear the words echo in the room around him, far more haunting than when his father had truly spoken them. And with each tested ability, they rang all the truer. The spells he remembered; even those he wish he could suppress and never think of again. But the power to focus those spells, he lacked. He could explain any combat move in perfect detail, but his body would reject his command. Potter’s muscles lacked precision and power. His reflexes seemed surprisingly slow for one who was acclaimed a great Seeker, and his hand-eye coordination was pitiful. No wonder Potter had been so much of a klutz at potions! Merlin, with this body, the boy was amazed that his potions turned out as well as they did.

Potter’s magic levels, too, seemed substantially weakened. Where once he could see bright violet wisps of energy, of power, now swam thin orangeish-red ones. Wandless magic was out of the question here. Permanently. Unless he could somehow overload Potter’s body with enough raw magic to flare his aura into green at least.

It was like being stuck in the body of a ten-year-old again. The body of a child; defenseless. He could barely see through the cloud of dust his movements had stirred up, though the piece of old tablecloth he had ripped off and tied around his face helped him breath. His eyes still stung, a lot, as the bulky frames offered almost no protection.

But at least he had checked most of his powers, he appeased, and that was what he had set out to do. That most didn’t work anymore could not be helped, at least not at present. And as he checked one last thing, hoping beyond hope that at least it would work, he was rewarded with the feel of his tail flicking cautiously before changing back. He had this, at least.

The potions, taken on his way to the room, should have already run their course. The pain had slowly faded, falling from his attention while he checked what level he was on. Now, as he realized that the pain had stopped, he also realized he gained no new memories… so he hadn’t suppressed them. He knew it! But that meant…

What did it mean? Was Dumbledore lying? It would certainly explain why the old coot had insisted that there was no potion to restore him… but if the Headmaster had altered so much in order to keep the illusion real, why had he not simply altered his memories too?

But if Dumbledore was telling the truth, an option the boy placed next to no faith in, how could his Animagus form still be intact?

The answers would not come to him in this room, however, that much was certain. Answers were annoying like that… they always made you look for them. But outside this room, apparently, Horatius Snape had never existed… and answers are weary of non-existent inquirers. No, outside this room he would have to be what everyone took him for; the idiotic Gryffindor brat known as Harry Potter. He had his Animagus form and his aura sight, however, perfect tools for finding fickle truths…

.∞ . ∞ . ∞.

He walked the halls, as silent and unnoticeable as possible without the aid of his venoms or his old cloak. He tried to find out what the hell he had gotten himself into, trying to get any information he could without having to outright ask anyone for it. He found an odd date on a bulletin near the room he had left behind, one which announced him to have missed almost a year of his life. According to it, something called the ‘DA’ was now an ‘officially recognized club’, and was accepting new members. The acronym gave him an eerie flashback to SPEW, and he passively wondered if the sorry excuse for Lea he had earlier encountered was perhaps behind this DA thing, but he didn’t think much of it. Later, he heard several younger years talking about it rather excitedly, which made him wonder what it was, though he gathered it was some sort of student-run dueling club… terrible idea, in his opinion, he could just see one of the little third years (who, from his experience, knew just enough to let them think they knew everything, and thus were quite dangerous) landing in the hospital wind after a show-off session or two. Good luck to whomever ran the damn thing…

The next moment however, his thoughts wandered to his own sessions with his Asps. Those sessions, however, weren’t games, and every last one of his subordinates knew just what failure meant. They would have, also, never have been approved by the school… had Dumbledore had any inkling as to what truly went on. Oh yes, he could just see the old coot’s face if he had found their syllabus. This though, sent a pang of longing to his heart. Merlin, if he would pretend to be insufferable Potter of all people, getting in touch with his Asps would be far out of the question.

“Oh for Merlin’s sake!” he heard from beyond a near-by door, the voice almost too familiar, “Dumbledore said so!”

“But Herm…” another painfully familiar voice protested, and he had to count to a hundred before he could control himself enough not to barge in there and kill the offender who had caused him so much pain.

Proof, a little voice inside him seemed to note, proof for which is real.

He nodded, though quite aware of the voice’s internal nature, and took several calming breaths before twisting the knob and pulling the door open. There, two figures stood before him, and it took a continuous chant to keep him from cursing one of the said figures.

‘Not gonna rush in like a bloody Gryffindor, not gonna rush in like a bloody Gryffindor, Not gonna rush in…’ played over and over in his head, a crack of his fist the only outward sign of the inner struggle. Seeing Weasley within reach of Lea was truly a hard sight to see. Hell, seeing the bugger within cursing distance was a hard temptation to overcome… it was pure torture to stand by and not do something. He was perfectly aware that he would eventually have to announce his presence, have to do something beyond the tense and seemingly frozen stance he now displayed, but any chance to execute the next move on his terms was wiped away when Lea caught sight of him.

“Harry?” she asked attentively, making him twitch slightly. He was not Potter, regardless of how he presently looked.

“Um, yeah?” he asked nevertheless, trying to sound as ‘Potterish’ as possible. Judging by the way she relaxed slightly, it worked.

“Don’t mind her Harry,” Weasley suddenly interrupted whatever Lea was about to say, “she’s been strung tighter than McGonnagall’s bun ever since ‘the broom incident’.”

“…right. Um, W- Ron… do you happen to know the time?” he asked, forcing himself not to spit the name out. The question was stupid and not very Snape-worthy, he knew, but it was the best he could come up with at the moment that would still serve his purpose.

“Uh, sure. It’s-” the idiot redhead never got a chance to tell him, not that the hour was important. As soon as Weasley had brought his arm up so that he could see the time (his left), the raven-haired boy had grabbed the offered hand just above where the leather band sat, not paying any heed to the surprised (and slightly pained)‘Hey!’ from the shocked owner of the limb.

“Damnit Harry, that hurts!” Weasley growled, trying to yank his arm free from the other boy’s grip.

“No, it doesn’t.” he insisted however, and that was the problem.

Death Eaters were protectively discreet about their mark for a reason. All Death Eaters. And the reason, as he knew first hand and on the word of his father, was that the mirror spell was bloody painful and extremely sensitive. Even under light pressure, it could make even men like his father cringe. For Weasley, his vice-like pinch ought have been unbearable.

Few knew of the Death Eater weakness, of course, which is precisely why Voldemort never made any attempt to hide it. Even undercover Death Eaters, who’s mark was deactivated and rendered invisible, retained the mirror spell. In this way (Voldemort had once practically bragged) , they looked unmarked, but since the brand was never actually lifted, could be called back (or ‘discovered’) at the Dark Lord’s whim. His father’s mark had not been hidden so, since his presence was always required at the meetings, and he was (first and foremost) a Snape.

“Harry, let him go!” Lea insisted, slapping his shoulder. “I swear Harry, your damn mood swings and Quidditch stunts are going to be the end of me!” she sighed when he forced himself to let Weasley scoot away. The idiot seemed scared enough… in any case, and Merlin knew he needed concrete information.

“Sorry, Ron.” he apologized, hoping it sounded sincere as he reminded himself to act like bloody Potter.

“Just… just don’t do it again, mate.” Weasley smiled, “You must of really hit your head…”

“Dumbledore told us… you… don’t remember things…” Lea prompted, always to the point.

“And apparently, remember too much.” he mumbled, though Lea seemed to take that as a clear-cut ‘yes’.

“You don’t think He possessed you again, do you?” she whispered, sounding far more worried than the moment before. Perhaps she had heard his mumble? But what the hell was she on about… Possesed? Again?

“I, ermm, don’t think so L-Hermione.”

“You don’t remember, do ya Harry?” Weasley asked, having apparently forgotten his earlier fear as quickly as he had forsaken his alliances.

“No.” he answered nevertheless, finding it an opportune moment to milk the two for facts. “Something tells me you’ll need to remind me of quite a lot of things…”

“Not here.” Lea nodded, clearly debating something with herself. “Do you remember the DA?”

DA? What the…

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’.” she sighed, turning to Weasley. “ Better cancel it, we’ll need the R.O.R.”

“R.O.R.?” he asked them skeptically. Why the sudden secrecy?

“You’ll see.” she insisted, giving him no further explanation. “We’ll go there right after dinner… seeing as Ron’s stomach is already screaming for sustenance.”


You must login (register) to review.
[Report This]


Disclaimer Charm: Harry Potter and all related works including movie stills belong to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic, Warner Bros, and Bloomsbury. Used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. No money is being made off of this site. All fanfiction and fanart are the property of the individual writers and artists represented on this site and do not represent the views and opinions of the Webmistress.

Powered by eFiction 3.5