Snape did not need long to verify that the bottles did indeed contain Truth Serum. He merely stuck his hooked nose in the vial and inhaled deeply.

“Alright, Potter,” Snape announced briskly, seemingly back to his normal self after his brief insanity in praising the boy. “It is Veritaserum.”

Harry, relieved to be back on safer ground, cocked his head. “How can you tell? I thought Veritaserum was supposed to be odorless?”

“I have my ways,” Snape said repressively.

Harry shrugged, willing to take his word for it. It didn’t make much sense, anyways, for Dumbledore or the Room to give them two vials of water.

“So,” Snape said slowly. “The question becomes, what do we do with it?” He settled against an overturned bit of granite, and cocked his head in a way that meant Harry should join him.

Harry sat across from his professor and waited.

Snape examined the two vials. “What do you think, Potter?”

“You are asking me?” Harry said, surprised. He hesitated. They were meant to drink it, which is why he had been so reluctant to part with the vials in the first place. His thoughts must have been written over his face, because Snape smirked.

“So you think we should drink it?” Harry ventured.

“Yes,” Snape said. “And, let me assure you, your unwillingness to do so is by no means unique. Nonetheless, I feel that we should not deny the Room.”

“Yeah,” Harry said with a groan, finally reconciling himself to the idea. “I agree.” He looked at Snape uncertainly. “So, how do you want to do this? Should we each drink it at the same time, or one at a time?” An idea occurred to Harry. “But if we drink it at the same time, will we even be capable of questioning each other?”

Snape rolled his eyes and looked prepared to say something very nasty. Then, he seemed to change his mind. “Potter, do you have your Potions text in your bag?”

Harry nodded.

“Go and fetch it. I already lectured about Veritaserum once this year in class, and I have no intention of repeating myself.”

Slightly chagrined, Harry jogged over to his bag and fished out the requested text. He flipped through the pages as he walked back, finally finding the right section.

“Read it aloud,” Snape said in a long-suffering tone.

“A person under Veritaserum is physically characterized by a slack, unfocused gaze and a flat, expressionless voice. He or she cannot ask questions, but only respond to them. The victim will not remember anything about the experience afterwards.”

“Thus it would be pointless for us to drink the potion at the same time and then try to question the other. Meaning—“

“We have to do it in turns,” Harry said, heart sinking. “But, Professor, that doesn’t seem fair. There are—rumors, you know, that you are immune to Veritaserum.”

Snape stared at him a long moment, considering him. Finally, just as Harry was losing hope of him ever answering, Snape replied heavily “That particular rumor is false.”

Harry knew they were getting into murky territory, but he plunged forward anyways. “So he’s never used Veritaserum on you?”

“He has,” Snape allowed. “Once.” He looked at Potter slyly. “But he, unlike I, cannot tell water from Veritaserum. And as I am responsible for stocking his potions…”

“You tricked him?” Harry said incredulously. “Cool.”

Snape seemed rather pleased by Harry’s reaction, and allowed a small smile to shade his features. His next words, however, were gruff. “Furthermore, if you ever paid attention in my class, Potter, you would know there is an antidote to Veritaserum. Something I never forget when I am in the company of the Dark Lord.”

“You don’t have the antidote now, do you?”

“We would not be having this conversation then, would we?”

Harry shook his head in defeat. “Okay, okay. So do you want to drink it first or shall I?”

“Not so fast,” Snape drawled. “I am not about to let you ask me anything you like. That would be supremely dangerous, Potter, given your connection to the Dark Lord. It could be devastating to the war effort.”

“You mean if he found out you were a spy?” Harry asked.

Snape cocked his head. “Among other things. The Dark Lord can currently sift through your mind at will, you know. There are a number of topics that he cannot find in your brain. That is final.”

Harry nodded reluctantly at Snape’s logic. “So what is off-limits?”

Snape tapped a long finger against his jaw. “Go fetch a quill and some parchment…if you would.”

Harry got up immediately. As he jogged away, the unwelcome thought flashed through Snape’s mind that sleep deprivation was, apparently, not the only thing that made Potter more obedient. He also seemed to respond better to a slightly less… authoritarian approach.

Harry flopped to the floor, materials in hand, and looked up expectantly.

“I think,” Snape said, “That you and I should have a written agreement about this little truth-telling exercise. Parameters are very important.”

“So,” Harry said, grinning for the first time. “I get to set parameters, too?”

Snape nodded.

After quite a bit of haggling, Harry finally put down his quill, slightly disappointed at the results.

“I, Harry James Potter, do solemnly swear not to ask Professor Snape anything about the Order of the Phoenix, the Death Eaters, Voldemort, Dumbledore, his loyalties to any of the above, or really anything that has to do with the war effort whatsoever, while he is under Veritaserum. I also swear to never tell anybody anything that I find out during my questioning. I understand that failure to keep this agreement would be incredibly dangerous.”

“And especially dangerous to your own health,” Snape growled. “And not because of the Dark Lord. Do you understand me?”

Harry swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

Snape cleared his throat. “I, Severus Snape, do solemnly swear never to tell anybody anything that I find out during my questioning of Harry Potter under Veritaserum. I also swear never to use any knowledge gained against Potter. I also swear not to punish Potter, or anybody else, based on anything incriminating I may find out during questioning. I also solemnly swear not to ask Potter anything about his romantic life.”

Here Snape paused. “Are you sure you don’t want to add anything about your…home life, Potter?”

Harry shrugged. Snape already knew the worst about the Dursleys. “You didn’t add a disclaimer about your childhood. I won’t either.”

“Very well.” Snape paused. “Shall we get this over with, then?”

“I have one more question,” Harry said. “Um, I won’t really know if you break the agreement, will I?”

“And neither will I,” Snape allowed. “I believe, Mr. Potter, that we are supposed to trust each other.”

Harry scowled. “Great.”

With a flourish, Snape pulled a vial out of his pocket. “Why don’t you drink it now before I change my mind on signing such an agreement?”

“Okay,” Harry said hastily, grabbing the vial.

“Go ahead,” Snape said, something glimmering in his eyes. “Three drops ought to do it.”

Harry squeezed three drops on his tongue. “Cheers, then.”

Snape watched as the boy’s expression glazed over and he slumped against the wall. Once verifying that he was good and truly dosed, Snape leisurely walked into the washroom and took the other vial of Veritaserum out of his pocket. He poured the contents down the sink, washed the vial out thoroughly, and refilled it with water. Really, it was for the boy’s own protection. Potter simply could not have too much knowledge about Snape inside his head. Not when he was so horrible at Occlumency.

Snape strolled out of the washroom, trying to ignore the fact that he was now using the same trick on Potter that he had used on the Dark Lord. The boy was too trusting for his own good. One of his Slytherins might have seen this coming. And, even if he was going against the Room’s wishes, Snape found he did not particularly care. Other things were more important.

His secrets were more important.

Snape stuck the now harmless vial back in his pocket, and turned his attention to the boy in front of him. Potter. At his mercy. All of his thoughts laid bare.

Snape smiled wolfishly.

“So, Potter,” he began, starting with the most delicious question. “Who stole the boomslang skin and the gillyweed from my stores? And for what purpose?”

Potter said flatly, eyes rolled back, “Hermione stole the boomslang for the Polyjuice Potion. We wanted to impersonate Slytherins and get Malfoy to tell us what he knew about the Chamber of Secrets. Dobby stole the gillyweed on the morning of the Second Task so I wouldn’t drown.”

Snape frowned, slightly disappointed. He longed to nail Potter for something, anything, even if he couldn’t punish him for it afterwards. This did not suffice.

“Explain how you helped Black escape from the dementors.”
“Hermione had a time-turner that McGonogall had given her. Dumbledore told us to use it to save Sirius. We went back in time, saved Buckbeak, and then I held off all the dementors with my Patronus. Then we flew Buckbeak up to Sirius and helped him escape. We got back into the hospital wing just in time.”

Snape’s mouth fell open. What on earth had Dumbledore been thinking, entrusting a time-turner to two thirteen-year-olds? The idea was incredible! Absurd! No wonder Potter had been so nonchalant about changing his own past at the Dursleys! And what was this about Potter holding off so many dementors? Impossible!

Snape growled, displeased at this apparent evidence of Potter’s magical talent. “Have you ever told anyone about what you saw in my Pensieve?”

“Remus and Sirius.”

“Why?” Snape said sharply. “Wanted to have a laugh with them about me, did you?”

“No. I wanted to know if my dad was really such a git. They said he was an idiot but grew out of it.”

“That would be a matter of opinion,” Snape said sourly, but his venom was lost on the slack-jawed boy in front of him. “You told nobody else?”

“No.”

Snape felt something in him loosen. The boy hadn’t told his little friends, then. He had kept his word.

So like a Gryffindor, to pass up good blackmail information like that.

Snape racked his brain for other instances of wrong-doing he wanted confirmed. “Was that you with the egg in your invisibility cloak during the Triwizard Tournament?”

“Yes.”

“And it was you, wasn’t it, who put something in Goyle’s cauldron that led to everyone getting splashed with Swelling Solution?”

“Yes. So Hermione could steal the—“

“Boomslang skin, I know,” Snape said, irritated. “And when Draco saw your head in Hogsmeade? How did you manage that?”

“There’s a tunnel by that statue of the One-Eyed Witch. I used my Invisibility Cloak.”

Snape nodded, allowing a vision of catching wayward Weasley twins to flit across his mind. Satisfied with this accounting of the boy’s petty misdeeds, he turned his attention to weightier matters. “You never really wanted to learn Occlumency, did you? Why?”

“The link has been useful to me. It saved Mr. Weasley’s life. And I really, really want to know what is behind the door at the Department of Mysteries. Also, you were a bad teacher. I couldn’t learn Occlumency from you. ”

“Well! You are ungrateful!” said Snape, startled by candor about his teaching skills. He leaned forward, thirsty for revenge. “Tell me your worst memory of the Dursleys.”

Harry obediently responded. “When I was really little, around four, I saw something on the telly about making Christmas cards for your parents. The parents in the advert gave their son a cuddle when they saw the card. So I decided to make a really nice Christmas card for the Dursleys. I wanted it to work like it did on the telly. Nothing else had worked on them. So on Christmas morning, after Dudley had opened all of his presents, I gave them my card. Uncle Vernon started to laugh, and Aunt Petunia tore it up and told me to never do such a thing again.”

“That’s it?” Snape said incredulously, after it became clear that this was the end of the story. “It can’t be. Potter, didn’t the Dursleys hit you?”

“Yes.”

“And starve you?”

“Yes.”

“And lock you up in a cupboard?”

“Yes.”

“And your aunt tearing up a card you made, that’s your worst memory?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Snape said, unconsciously slapping his hand against his thigh as he did when he was particular impatient with a student.

“Because,” Harry said unemotionally, “That’s when I realized they didn’t love me, and that I was alone.”

Snape averted his eyes, not liking this answer. He would have preferred something about a particularly nasty beating. This…this was different.

“And your best memory of the Muggles?”

“The day Hagrid took me away from them,” the boy replied instantly.

“What do you really think of me, Potter?” Snape asked next, determined to do the thing thoroughly, no matter how unpleasant the response.

“I think you are a bully. I know my father was a git to you, but it was nothing to do with me. I think you are an awful teacher. You’re horrible to my friends, but you saved my life. Dumbledore trusts you, and I don’t know why. I don’t like you. I don’t understand you.”

“Are you scared of me?”

“Sometimes.”

This pleased Snape. He had one more question, or maybe he had had just one question all along. “Potter. What do you remember of your mother?”

“The night she died. The dementors show me the night she died.”

“Tell me,” Snape said quietly.

“When she saw Voldemort, she put me in the crib behind her and threw her arms wide to shield me. She kept saying ‘Not Harry, not Harry, oh please not Harry!’ and he told her to stand aside. He called her a silly girl. She begged him, told her she would do anything, and he kept telling her to stand aside. But she didn’t. And so he killed her. She died to protect me. She kept me safe from him.”

Snape closed his eyes, unable to look at the boy.

“What else do you know of her?”

“She was very good at Charms. She was beautiful, with pale skin and dark red hair. And green eyes. I have her eyes. She was in Gryffindor, and in the Order. She defended you. She used to hate my dad, but something changed, I don’t know what. I don’t know why she loved him. She looks happy in the pictures I have of her. I don’t think she got along with my Aunt Petunia.”

“That’s all?” Snape croaked. “Do you have any keepsakes from her? Has nobody ever told you stories about her?”

“No.”

Snape took out his wand. He ran his hand gently over the tip of it, his thoughts far away. He was done with his interrogation.

-----

Harry fuzzily opened his eyes. Snape was sitting across from him, staring off into space. Harry grunted, and Snape fixed his black eyes on him.

“How…how did it go?” Harry asked, sitting up and rolling his shoulders. “Learn anything interesting?”

“From you? Not once in five years,” Snape said snidely.

Harry was still too out of it to fully register this insult. “Has it been five? Feels more...like five hundred.”

Snape snorted, watching as the boy came back to himself. He was not looking forward, particularly, to his upcoming deception. One more in a long line of deceptions, really. But, as always, it was for the greater good. It would be very useful to know what questions Potter wanted to ask him. He also admitted a certain curiosity as to whether the boy would keep his word about the off-limits questions. That had been the whole point about creating the agreement, so that he could see how trustworthy the boy really was.

Harry walked around the room, feeling a bit as though he had overdosed on butterbeer. After a few laps, though, he felt back to normal and ready for the far more exciting part of this little procedure.

“Alright, Professor,” Harry said gleefully, sitting back down and pulling his knees up. “Your turn!”

Snape gave him a glare for his impertinence, and then took out the other vial. “Remember, Potter,” he said silkily. “Nothing about the war.”

“Got it,” Harry said confidently. “Three drops then, off you go.”

Snape daintily stuck out his tongue and shook three drops out of the vial. Potter had seen Crouch under Veritaserum, so he knew what the results looked like. That wasn’t a problem. He had faked the effects before. Snape immediately slumped against the wall, allowing his features to slacken and his gaze to become uncoordinated.

“Wow!” Harry said, impressed. “Brilliant. Okay. What did you find out from questioning me under Veritaserum?”

A clever opening gambit, Snape thought. “How you helped Black escape from the dementors. How your friends stole things for you from my stores. How you managed to get in and out of Hogsmeade undetected. How you told two people about what you saw in my Pensieve against my express wishes. How you used your Invisibility Cloak to sneak out after curfew. How you deliberately ignored my instructions in Occlumency.”

“Oh, dear,” Harry murmured, half amused and half aghast. “Did you ask me anything about the Dursleys?”

“Yes. I asked you what your worst memory was with them.”

“And what was that?” Harry asked, wincing as he wondered how talkative his drugged self had been.

“The Christmas when you were four. Your aunt tore up the card you made for her.”

Harry lurched as though Snape had slapped him.

Then he said, so quietly Snape had to strain his ears to catch it, “Oh.”

Harry scratched his chin and looked at Snape, needing to verify that the man was well and truly out of it. He wouldn’t remember any of this, right?

“Interesting what your mind comes up with, huh, Snape?” Harry mused. “I dunno, the day Uncle Vernon drove me to the dump and left me there, that…that was pretty bad too. But, yeah, I think that Christmas was worse.”

With effort, Snape kept his features loose and relaxed. An unwelcome image of a hook-nosed man, arm raised, flashed through his mind.

“So,” Harry said, heaving a ragged breath as he changed the subject. “Ron will kill me if I don’t ask this one. Why is your hair always so greasy?”

Of all the impertinent questions! Snape wasn’t a Death-Eater for nothing, though, so he merely said flatly, “It is genetic.”

“Like your nose,” Harry said, his thoughts swinging transparently to other matters. Snape, seeing this, silently cursed to himself for leading the boy to his family tree.

“So, Snape, your childhood was pretty rough, huh?”

“Yes.”

“What did they do to you?” Harry inched forward, keen to hear the answer, although his tone was solemn.

Snape considered lying, but he doubted the boy would accept it. He had seen the memories, after all. Perhaps a partial answer was prudent.

“They were unhappily married,” Snape said, careful to keep voice even. “And a child inconvenienced them. I was not a priority.”

“I know how that feels,” Harry said sympathetically. To Snape’s surprise, Potter did not continue this painful line of questioning. “Professor? What do you really think of me?”

Now this was a question he could answer, Snape thought with relish. “You are a mediocre student with a knack for getting in and out of terrible trouble. You are impertinent, arrogant, cocky like your father. Your disrespect is terrible: you never call me ‘sir’ or ‘professor.’ You are a terrible potions maker. Your risk-taking is foolish, your so-called bravery misplaced. You’ve done nothing to deserve your fame, and you expect that none of the rules apply to you. You are weak and cannot conceal your emotions. Moreover--”

“Okay, okay,” Harry said hastily. “Is there anything you do like about me? Professor Snape?” he added pointedly.

Slightly mollified by this token of respect, Snape decided to be generous. “You are not as spoiled or as pampered as your father was.”

“Gee,” Harry said sarcastically. “Thanks.”

Then Harry suddenly leaned forward, Snape’s response turning a switch in his head. “Can you tell me something nice about my mum, Professor?”

Something in Snape’s chest clenched. It took an enormous amount of willpower to not tense his muscles.

Oh, Merlin, why did Potter have to ask that question?

Perhaps it was inevitable. The boy had just admitted he had no stories about her. Of course he would want to know. And he, Snape, could say anything, anything about her at all, and Potter wouldn’t know if it were true.

But he would.

“Lily Evans was a good woman,” Snape said, hoping Potter wouldn’t notice the waver in his voice. “She deserved far better than James Potter. Something nice about her was her laugh. She had a lovely laugh. Like bells.”

And she had a lovely smile, and lovely eyes, and the way she smelled was lovely, and the way she said Severus was especially lovely. Everything about her was lovely, except for the man she married, and the son she produced.

Potter seemed satisfied with this answer. “Like bells,” he repeated slowly, and then something awful, a raw horrible desperate yearning, crossed his face, and Snape knew he was trying, and failing, to remember that laugh.

The boy hunched his shoulders, and asked nothing else for a long while. Then, finally, he started again, his voice almost as flat as his victim’s.

“I don’t know what else to ask you. I can’t ask you about all those war things. But I don’t know if I’ll ever get a straight answer otherwise.” The boy seemed to be talking himself into something. “I know the agreement said I’m not to ask you about your loyalties. But I really, really need to know the answer. It would make everything so much easier.” Various emotions struggled across the boy’s face. The desire for the truth was practically radiating off of him. Transparent! Why was Potter always so transparent!

Harry groaned, working his way aloud through his dilemma. “If I break our agreement, does that mean the Room won’t let us out of here? That seems like the kind of thing Dumbledore would do.” Harry drummed his fingers against his leg. To Snape’s practiced eye, it was obvious that the boy’s irrepressible curiosity was going to win out.

Harry finally succumbed to the inevitable. “I’m sorry, Professor,” he muttered, casting his eyes upwards. “Professor Snape, where do your loyalties lie?”

The little sneak! Snape felt rage simmering inside of him at this evidence of the boy’s dishonesty. His own betrayal felt like nothing now, because clearly it had been justified, absolutely justified. Snape nearly got up and ended the whole charade when it came to him that Potter’s apology was not intended for him. But he mastered himself, and continued to loll about stupidly like a ghoul.

“Never mind!” Harry yelped suddenly, waving his hands wildly in a STOP motion. “Never mind, I don’t want to know! Voldemort can’t know the answer from me, he can’t.” Harry shuddered, terrified at what he had almost done. He had to remain ignorant of Snape’s true loyalties. Anything else was much too dangerous.

Harry jumped up, nervous. He wanted to ask Snape so many things. He wanted Snape to tell him what the weapon was that Voldemort was after. He wanted to know why everyone was so keen to keep him away from the Department of Mysteries. He wanted, no, he needed to know if Snape was truly on Dumbledore’s side.

But, more than that, he wanted to stay alive, and he wanted to keep those he loved alive.

“Why didn’t I learn Occlumency?” Harry groaned, berating himself. “Then I could ask you this stuff and not worry about Voldemort finding out.”

“You didn’t learn Occlumency because you are an arrogant little twit,” Snape couldn’t help adding in his flat voice, still very much annoyed, and still finding it quite easy to rationalize his own betrayal while despising Potter for his slip.

“Shut up,” Harry said nastily. “Just because I’ve decided not to ask you those questions doesn’t mean I can’t ask you something awful.” He ran his hand through his untidy hair, racking his brains for something so satisfying that it would make up for all those other questions he knew he could never ask.

Ah. There it was. “Tell me something nice about my dad.”

Snape wished, for the first time in his life, that he really was under Veritaserum. He cursed himself for his deception, cursed James Potter, cursed Harry Potter, and cursed the whole lot of Gryffindor for a good measure. How, exactly, had he come to find himself in the position of having to compliment that arrogant toerag?

Harry began to grow impatient. “Well? You’re supposed to answer straight off, aren’t you?”

Snape opened his mouth, inspiration coming in the form of a bland Quidditch compliment. But no words came out.

Potter looked at him, clearly on tenterhooks, eyes deeply and richly green with his desire for something new about his father. And suddenly, Snape couldn’t do it. He couldn’t find the loophole, as he had done with the Veritaserum, in order to spare himself pain.

“Your father,” Snape said, “took you to Hogsmeade when you were six months old. I don’t know why. I was coming out of Borgin & Berkes when I spotted the pair of you. He was tossing you up in the air, and you were laughing. And then he called you Fawn. That was his nickname for you. Fawn.”

Harry closed his eyes and ears, closed his mind, forgot that Snape was in the Room, forgot everything, as he tried desperately to remember his father, to remember Prongs, calling him Fawn.

But it was no use.

Harry sank to his knees, overcome by the strength of his emotions. It was unbearable to know and not to remember. His mother’s laugh, his father’s nickname for him…all of it.

None of it.

Harry looked miserably about him, desperate for something, anything to dull the sharp grief that had possessed him. His eyes landed on Snape.

“Snape,” he whispered. “Please--”

It was not a question, strictly speaking, so Snape was under no obligation to answer it under Veritaserum.

So he didn’t.

Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the ragged gulps from the boy next to him.

But they were hard to ignore.