Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Author's Chapter Notes:
I'm sorry if anyone got any unwanted notifications. I updated the previous chapters with minor changes/fixes, and I don't know if changes to old chapters result in notifications for readers. Chapter 28 is the only new chapter posted today.
Chapter 28

Harry came awake slowly and sluggishly, like he was floating toward the surface of a deep pool of ice-cold black water, with a distant star in the night sky his only source of light and direction. His ears were filled with a wind-like roar, and his chest hurt like he had been holding his breath for too long.

When his mind cleared a bit, he realized he was still lying on the lumpy couch in Snape's quarters. The sense of being underwater came from having a wet cloth draped over his face, which dripped frigid water down his neck and into his ears. The dull roar he heard was just the fire in the fireplace a few feet away, and the spot of intense white light was gone.

"-- wake him up," Snape was saying from somewhere to Harry's left.

Harry sat up. His head reeled, and he swayed sideways and nearly toppled over, but managed to stay upright. He raised a hand, needing two tries just to find his own head, and clawed at the cloth, his fingers clumsy as though they had swollen to three times their usual size.

"He's awake," Snape said, and the roar of the flames died in a hiss.

The cloth was whisked off his face, his damp, clammy skin prickling as it came into contact with the warmer air.

"Wuzzappen?" Harry's tongue felt as swollen as his fingers, and he struggled to make it form coherent words. "Wha' 'appen't?"

Snape's brows knit together. "Your fever returned."

Harry thought he tasted the residue of a potion, and supposed Snape had dosed him with something. "Tha'ks."

Snape stared at him with that same look that Harry could only call worried. Snape never looked simply worried, like other people did, of course. He looked like he was only a moment away from finding an excuse to blame Harry for whatever the problem might be, and was only holding back until Harry came fully awake.

"Did you drink the sleeping draught?"

Harry shook his head. It was still in his hand, and he managed to uncurl his uncooperative fingers to allow Snape to take it from him.

"Hold still."

The white light had been the light at the end of Snape's wand, which he waved slowly in front of Harry's face as Harry squirmed away from it, pain stabbing into his brain straight through his tightly closed eyelids.

"I said hold still, Potter," Snape growled. "This isn't possibly hurting you."

Harry wanted to glare at him and demand how Snape would know how it felt, but that would have required opening his eyes and being able to speak without slurring. He had to settle for huddling against the cushions and turning his face as much away from Snape as he could while Snape was holding his head steady with a firm grip.

After some time, during which Harry gave up struggling and accepted the discomfort with miserable resignation, Snape sniffed irritably and let the light go out.

Harry squinted his eyes open.

"You're fine," Snape said, putting his wand away and standing up with a dismissive air. "Go rinse out your mouth and then I will give you something for your tongue. You seem to have bitten it at some point. I apologize for not noticing."

Harry got to his feet a bit unsteadily. Snape watched, not stepping out of arm's reach, but didn't try to help him. He was clumsy on deadened feet, but the dizziness had passed and he didn't think he was in danger of falling.

In the bathroom, he took stock of his appearance. Or Hadrian's, anyway.

His eyes were a bit glassy, with redness at the corners that made him look like he had been crying. He remembered, with some shame, that he had been. In front of Snape, no less.

The rough material of the cushions had left an imprint on one of his cheeks, which was redder than the other and looked puffy.

He opened his mouth. His tongue lolled out like it had been too big to fit. There was no bite wound, but there was a pale indentation in a straight line cutting diagonally across it, and one side was lividly purpled and swollen.

He managed to dribble cold water into his mouth by turning his head sideways to get it past his tongue, which refused to go back into his mouth properly. The potion aftertaste gradually went away.

He splashed the rest of his face with water, finally feeling like he was really awake.

He remembered, with unwanted clarity, how he had fallen asleep mid-thought, staying awake suddenly becoming the most difficult thing in the world. He remembered his conversation with Lupin, Snape's interruption, the argument that made him feel like shrinking into a corner until it was over, and Snape explaining things in a horribly logical way that was a ten-fold worse than Lupin's drink-fueled ranting.

He remembered Snape giving him the potion and leaving him alone.

He looked down at his feet, hoping to see socks or bare toes, but knowing perfectly well he wouldn't.

That explained Snape's foul mood, then.

He breathed out another resigned sigh, feeling like he was doing a whole lot of that lately, because there were so many things he could do nothing but accept, no matter how he might feel about them.

There was nothing to do but face Snape; he couldn't very well hide out in Snape's bathroom all evening, could he? Besides, Snape had already taken his displeasure out by tormenting Harry's aching brain with too-bright wandlight, so maybe they were even now. Harry would much rather have been given the chance to apologize for his oversight, but of course Snape never believed Harry could be anything other than purposely defiant.

He pushed the door open quietly, just enough to slip through. His eyes searched the shadowy room.

Snape was waving his wand over something misshapen that was on a low table in a corner.

Harry started to approach, but leaped back, startled, when a spell exploded out of Snape's wand in a flash of sickly yellowish light accompanied by the stench of sulfur and burnt herbs.

The misshapen object was a cauldron, warped and melted and leaning to one side, its stretched rim dipping off the table and nearly to the floor.

"Is that the Skele-Gro?" Harry asked cautiously. He wondered what the cauldron was doing there, when it had been in Snape's office earlier, and he hated to think what it said about Snape's skills at brewing that he had failed so spectacularly. Of course, it was Snape's first time making it, and he had said it was very complicated... "What happened?"

Snape looked at him and glared.

"I'm sorry," Harry said quickly. "I didn't do it on purpose. I just forgot."

"Forgot what?" Snape asked, his glare slipping just enough to allow for frown lines to be added. It wasn't a great improvement. "Speak sense for once."

"The... my..." Harry stopped and tried again, irritated that Snape's badgering was turning him into a stuttering idiot. "I didn't disobey on purpose."

Snape continued to frown at him for a few moments. Then his eyes flicked down to Harry's feet. He looked up, the frown beginning to be edged off his face by the returning glare.

"I'm sorry," Harry repeated, for some reason hearing Malfoy's sullen, 'I said I was sorry,' echo in his mind. He hoped that wasn't what he sounded like.

"No matter," Snape said, shaking his head dismissively, like he was done with the whole ordeal. "It's very late. If you feel well enough, you can head to your own room."

"Is it late?" Harry asked, confused. "Was I asleep long?"

"You missed dinner. Draco was looking for you, but I made your excuses. It's just after midnight now." Snape walked past Harry, abandoning the ruined, smelly cauldron and opening a cabinet. He took out two vials. "Have some Dreamless Sleep and go straight to bed. Take this one for your tongue."

Harry slowly reached for the offered potions. "What about my magic?"

"Refrain from using your wand tonight," Snape said impatiently, thrusting the potions at him like he found Harry much too slow. "We will do some spellwork in the morning."

Harry didn't move. He knew Snape wanted him to go, but some part of him evidently didn't want to leave Snape's quarters and face being alone in his own room with nothing but his own thoughts. Maddening, wasn't it, to prefer Snape's company to his own?

"I left some things in your room," Snape said. His tone may have been meant to be enticing. "Including a few things your friends sent along."

Harry still didn't move, or at least didn't move fast enough for Snape's liking.

"Go on," Snape snapped, jerking his hand toward the door, "so I can waste the rest of my night making sure that idiot werewolf hasn't found a new way to bring himself closer to organ failure."

Harry left without a word or backward glance.

He was half-way to his room when his steps suddenly faltered and he stopped in the middle of the corridor, staring blankly at the nearest wall.

How long had he slept, to have slept through dinner and not awaken until past midnight?


 




 

 

Harry might have done as Snape had told him, but the dungeons had something else in mind and he ended up walking down a narrow corridor he knew wasn't the one that led to his room, but looked familiar just the same.

It wasn't until he was staring up at the towering bronze statue that he realized where he was, and then he wished he wasn't there, but in his room, comfortably asleep with the Dreamless Sleep keeping the nightmares away.

He could plainly see that Malfoy was in there, because the aged statue was leaning over a bit and wasn't flush against the wall, and the opening behind it had no other cover. The light spilling through the cracks was enough to tell Harry that Malfoy had gone ahead with his mad plans even though Harry had stood him up.

Harry didn't know what made him go in. Snape had, after all, made some excuse for him. He wasn't Malfoy's keeper, no matter his promise to Snape to keep his eyes out for signs Malfoy was up to something, and he certainly wasn't Malfoy's friend, with any of the obligations that came with friendship.

He went in anyway.

There was utter chaos.

Harry had only taken a few steps into the room before coming to a dead stop, his mouth gaping as he tried to understand what he was looking at.

There were twenty or more cauldrons of various sizes, all of them hissing and spitting and looking on the verge of melting. A ring of fire surrounded one table entirely, burning through a wooden bench with a hungry crackling sound that promised it would only spread farther when it was done.

Malfoy had clearly lost control long ago. He was rushing here and there, back and forth and back again, trying to put out one fire after the other. It seemed as if the flames would catch again as soon as he turned his back to deal with the next cauldron. And the next, and next, and next, never making any headway.

Harry blinked, rather hoping the whole scene might disappear if he just shut his eyes for a moment.

He hadn't wanted to watch when Snape was teaching Malfoy the extinguishing charm. He hadn't wanted to admit to feeling jealousy twisting in his guts, or to admit he wanted to be taught, too, rather than ignored and relegated to a table in the corner like an unwanted interloper who wasn't worth Snape's time.

But he hadn't been able to help himself. He had watched.

And Malfoy was waving his wand entirely wrong.

"Help me -- don't just stand there!" Malfoy yelled hoarsely, suddenly noticing him. His hair was plastered to his lividly flushed, sweaty face. "The potions are going to be ruined!"

Harry had his wand in his hand as easily as breathing. Something familiar burst to life inside him, filling him with a tingling warmth that spread from the center of his chest into his arm and down to his wrist, hand, fingers...

The fires went out -- all of them at once.

Acrid smoke billowed from the ruined bench. Malfoy shut his mouth and stopped staring at Harry long enough to cast the air clearing charm, coughing as the smoke reached him before the charm could work.

Harry didn't know how to cast that one, but he did know a charm that blew puffs of air at your target, and he aimed his wand at the smoke that remained, pushing it away from the two of them.

When he looked at Malfoy again, Malfoy was surveying the classroom with a look of exhausted dismay. He sank onto the nearest bench and dropped his head into his hands.

Harry, after a few moments of uncertainty, joined him there.

"I thought you weren't any good at spells, you said," Malfoy said, not looking up. "What nutter told you that?"

Harry shrugged. Snape had made him rehearse an explanation, back when they went over Harry's background. "Dad's been tutoring me. I haven't cast many spells except when he's standing over me, and I think I've been failing out of nervousness. He told me not to cast spells without adult supervision, until he was sure my skills were improved enough."

"Yeah," Malfoy agreed after a bit of silence. "I could see that. He's so particular. But didn't you try when you were alone, anyway?"

"It's summer. He said students aren't allowed to do magic in the summer, and I reckoned that meant there was some way to track it."

"Not at Hogwarts," Malfoy said, grimacing. "Not any place where there's lots of magic, really. They can't track underage magic with all the other magic floating around, and they can't tell who cast the spell when there are other witches and wizards around you, anyway."

"Oh," Harry said. "Good to know, I guess."

"Good to know he lied to you?" Malfoy said, raising an eyebrow.

Harry shrugged again.

"Thanks," Malfoy said, dropping the subject and indicating the room at large. "It all went wrong, somehow. I had it under control until I couldn't get the charm to work."

"Are they all ruined, you think?" Harry asked, looking at the nearest cauldron. It wasn't melted, but the bottom was rather charred.

"Not all," Malfoy said, standing with effort. "Those ones over there are." He waved his hand in the direction of the cauldrons that had been engulfed by the ring of flames as it consumed the bench and part of the table they sat upon. "The rest should be all right, I think."

"I'll help you bottle them," Harry said. He didn't know where all this generosity was coming from, but he found he wasn't even all that irritated with Malfoy anymore. "Sorry I didn't get here earlier."

"Your father said --" Malfoy hesitated, and then didn't finish. He sat down next to Harry again. "It wasn't all that nonsense I said earlier, was it?"

Harry shook his head, not trusting himself to answer that.

"Because I am sorry and that was completely stupid," Malfoy said in a sudden rush. "But if you were really ill then I'm sorry about that, too."

"I'm fine," Harry said. He was surprised to find that he actually believed himself. He was fine. His magic was back. It was fine. He was fine. "I just... I have these panic attacks."

He hated that Snape wanted him to use that as an excuse, but he supposed it was an obvious one. After all, mostly everyone at Hogwarts had witnessed him having a panic attack.

"He said that," Malfoy said, nodding sympathetically. "I think I nearly had one when I thought I was being sent back to the Manor. Felt like I couldn't breathe, suddenly, and the walls were closing in like I was about to be crushed. The portkey made me even dizzier, and I think I passed out right after."

Harry remembered watching Malfoy stumbling up the path to the school gates, dragging his trunk behind him and lurching forward like a drunk, before he fell limply to the ground and didn't move again.

He nodded and didn't say anything, figuring Malfoy would think he was agreeing it felt exactly like that.

They sat in silence for a while.

"We're a mess," Malfoy said. "I'm so tired of it. This isn't who I am. This isn't how I am."

Harry stared at him. "How are you?"

Malfoy made a feeble, aborted motion with his hands, and his shoulders slumped. "I don't know anymore."

Harry sucked in a breath. He let it out slowly. "Me neither."

"Everything's gone," Malfoy went on in the same helpless tone, sounding lost. "Everything's been taken away. If you'd asked me that last year, I think I would've told you about my father and the Manor and being a pureblood and a Slytherin. Now..."

Harry waited, but Malfoy trailed off, staring with a frown at the floor.

"It's not important anymore?" he suggested.

"No," Malfoy said, turning toward him. "It's strange, but... well, that's all gone now, but I feel like..." He frowned again. "Like I'm more now. Only, I don't know why that would be. I don't know what's taken the place of all those things." He looked at Harry rather hopefully. "Is that at all how it is for you?"

"No," Harry said. "I'm just confused, I think. I don't think it should be sprung on anyone that they have a father they never knew about."

He did, after all, feel very sorry for Hadrian on that account. Imagine living a perfectly good life with your mum and grandparents, and one day they're all dead and you might have to go live with a man you had never met and who, for all you know, had chosen to stay out of your life for sixteen years. Hadrian, Harry thought, was probably glad he was staying with his mother's relatives instead of having to deal with Snape right away.

"Didn't you ever ask your mother?" Malfoy asked curiously. "Didn't anyone ever talk about him?"

Harry shook his head. "Mum had told me he was dead." That had been part of his rehearsed story, as well. "She never told me who he was. Just that he'd died before I was even born. I never was that curious about him, so I never asked."

"Makes sense," Malfoy said, nodding slowly. "Do you think she learned he was a Death Eater and thought it was safer to leave for the Muggle world? That would explain why she never told you who he was. She might've thought you were safer not knowing, being a half-blood."

Harry looked at him, trying to read his expression. "Does that matter?"

Malfoy swallowed. Then he shrugged. "Not anymore." He stood up. "Let's get these potions bottled. I didn't do all this work to get nothing out of it, and I'm dead tired and want to go to bed sometime before morning, you know?"

Harry didn't argue. He didn't even know why he had got into such a strange conversation with Malfoy in the first place.

They bottled the potions that could be salvaged. Several cauldrons were beyond their ability to save, and Malfoy banished them. The rest they stacked in a corner, both too tired to bother cleaning them.

"Well... good night," Malfoy said awkwardly, as they looked around and realized they had done everything they could for the moment.

"Good night," Harry said, and went out into the corridor first.

He made it to his own room without further delays, and collapsed heavily on the edge of his bed, feeling like he didn't have an unstrained muscle left in his body.

He stretched his shoulders carefully, feeling a deep ache but no real pain. He was just exhausted, that was all. Exhausted to the point of not being able to keep his eyes open. He managed, however, to pull off his boots this time, before pulling the covers over himself and succumbing to sleep.

He didn't dream, even though the vial of Dreamless Sleep was forgotten in his pocket.

Chapter End Notes:
I don't usually do author notes, preferring to answer questions in reviews. You should definitely let me know if anything is unclear or if there's something you want to see more of. With that in mind... Harry is definitely not a horcrux and Voldemort is definitely gone for good. I would like readers to focus on Harry taking unnecessary risks, not on other characters obstructing his "very important quest". I'm clarifying this because I don't want readers to be disappointed about the resolution of this story. Within the story, it is obviously supposed to be unclear which side is right and whether Harry still needs to sacrifice himself, but this is not a "how will Harry fulfill his destiny and kill Voldemort" story.

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