Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Story Notes:

This is for the 2009 Halloween fest.

Set just before the tournament in Return to Prince Manor, later chapters will refer to this story.

Happy Halloween all!

Will take reviews in place of candy! :)

Awesome banner made by lilausty!

Summary:

Author's Chapter Notes:
Kissing and brewing potions do not mix
Unintentional Mistake
 

October 30,1994:

Harry found himself recalling some lines from Macbeth, or The Scottish Play, as it was called onstage lest bad luck dog the performance, as he made his way down the stairs towards the dungeons in search of Katie Bell.  Ever since he had asked Katie to go to the Yule Ball with him, and she had agreed, he found he couldn't keep away from her.  When he went to class, he found himself drifting off into a daze, thinking of the sweep of her sable hair as it fluttered against her cheek, and the way her azure eyes lit up when she was playing Quidditch or brewing potions. He dreamed of the way her slender hands caught a Quaffle and held a wand, gently yet firmly, and those same hands were gentle enough to handle the most delicate glass vial in Snape's cabinet, yet deft enough to dice, chop, and grind potion ingredients to her professor's exacting standards. Her laugh reminded him of bells chiming and her smile was pure magic. 

Several times he had to be shaken back to reality by Ron, and often was scolded by teachers for not paying attention.  But he could hardly be faulted for that, since this was the first time he had ever had a girlfriend.  Now that he was done with classes, he was heading down to the dungeons to see if Katie was done with her internship class. Katie had confided to him that she wished to be a Potions Mistress and so she was taking extra credit courses with Severus, who gave her more difficult potions to brew than even his advanced seventh years. 

"Double, double

Toil and trouble,

Fire burn and cauldron bubble,

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,


Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,


Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,


For a charm of powerful trouble,


Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."

 

Recalling those famous lines from the three witches in the play made Harry grin as he slipped inside the lab, where he did indeed find a sweet witch toiling over a bubbling cauldron, only he didn't see any eye of newt or toe of frog on her workstation, merely some ground up herbs and peeled willowbark and a dish of salt.  Katie had her back to him, stirring the concoction in her cauldron carefully with a long handled wooden stirrer.  Smoke wreathed her head, making odd patterns in the air.

He crept up behind her, waiting till she had ceased stirring before putting his hands on her shoulders and crying, "Boo, my sweet witch!"

"Harry!" she exclaimed, spinning around to face him, her blue eyes dancing.

"Miss me?"

"I just saw you this morning at breakfast."

"So? I missed you." He returned, and kissed her lightly.  "What are you brewing this time?"

"A potion to summon a magical water-breathing creature," she replied.

"Hmm . . .sounds interesting.  Where's my father?"

"At a staff meeting, I think."

"And he trusts you down here alone?"

She snorted.  "Please, Harry.  I'm his intern, he knows I won't blow up his lab.  My last name's not Longbottom or Nott."

"And I'm sure glad of that."

She slipped free of his arms to give the mixture in the cauldron, it was a thick aqua and sea-green shade, another quarter stir and add a handful of coarse salt crystals. She dipped up some of the mixture and watched it fall back into the cauldron, testing the consistency.  "Almost ready for the next stage."

Harry stepped a little away from her cauldron, not wanting to risk catching the hem of his robes on fire.  "Fire burn and cauldron bubble," he quoted softly.

"What?"

"It's a quote from Macbeth, a famous Muggle play by William Shakespeare," Harry explained.  "Ever read him?"

"Not recently, but I've heard of him," she answered, reaching for the crushed mallow root and sea grass and sprinkling it into the cauldron. Then she flicked her hand at the fire beneath her pewter cauldron and it lowered to a gentle simmer. "Who said that?"

"One of the old witches in the beginning of the play," Harry said. "The one with one eye I think."

Katie cocked her head and frowned, pretending to be insulted.  "Are you saying I'm old? Or ugly, Mr. Snape?"

Harry shook his head rapidly, knowing the folly of getting a witch of Katie's caliber angry.  "No, of course not.  But you are brewing a potion the evening before Halloween and that verse just came to mind." He stepped forward and wrapped his arms about her again.  "I can't wait till you're done in here.  Then we can go outside and take a walk around the lake or go flying."

"Me too. But first I need to finish this draft. Want to help?"

"Okay. Tell me what I need to add next." Harry agreed.  He was a very good potion maker now thanks to his father's tutelage over the summer at Prince Manor, and he loved brewing with Katie.  

"A pinch of salt and that clump of starwort," she indicated the required ingredients upon her workstation. 

He carefully added the required ingredients and Katie stirred carefully, twice counterclockwise and three times clockwise. 

"It has to steep for five minutes," she told him, tossing her hair behind her ears.  "Should have put it up this morning."

He moved over and gently tucked it behind her ears, murmuring, "I like you with your hair down.  You look like a mermaid."

"A mermaid? Why do I have salt in my hair?" she asked in alarm.

"No, but it's long and wavy, like I think a mermaid's would be," he said, starting to finger comb it.  He playfully twirled it into a knot up on her head and then fixed it in place with a quill summoned off of Snape's desk.

"What are you doing?" she asked, trying to see what he had done.

"Just playing," was all he said. He pulled her close, hearing her heartbeat and feeling her breath upon his cheek.  It was irresistible.  He lowered his head and kissed her, deep and slow, surrendering himself utterly to her. 

She wrapped her arms about his slender shoulders and kissed him back ardently, loving how tender and passionate he was with her.  He might be a year younger than she, but he kissed better than any guy her own age ever had.  Her hands tangled in his silky black hair, so different from the messy mop he used to have as a result of a Glamour Charm cast when he was baby to make him resemble his stepfather, James Potter.  Now his hair fell nearly to his shoulders, black as a rook's wing and it brought out the slender cheekbones and accentuated his green eyes even more.  Oh yes, he was definitely a heartbreaker, but that wasn't what she loved best about him.  What she loved best was that he wasn't arrogant or pretentious, despite being the famous Harry Potter, the son of a professor, and a great Quidditch player. Most other boys his age would have allowed all the fame and family connections to go to their head and become insufferable, but not Harry.

"All I've ever wanted was to just be like everyone else," he had confided to her shortly after they began dating.  "With a home and a family."

Since discovering that he was actually Severus's son, Harry could now have that, and he was content. 

"Mmm . . .you taste so good," he muttered.  "Like chocolate."

She giggled and nipped his ear playfully.

He blushed and kissed her neck, thanking God that Severus was still at that meeting, for he would have had a fit if he had come down and found his son and his intern making out while brewing an unfinished potion.

Suddenly, Katie jerked upright as if she had been bitten by a doxy. "Hells! It's time to add the grindylow scales! Harry, can you grab them? They're on the professor's desk."

Harry hurried over to the desk and grabbed the first jar of scales he found and brought it back to Katie.  "Here.  How many of them do you need to add?" He unscrewed the lid and reached inside to grab a handful of large black iridescent scales. 

Katie was busy perusing her notes and did not look up.  "Five."

Harry dutifully added five scales to the cauldron.  That would determine the kind of creature that would be summoned with this particular potion.

Then he walked back to set the jar on Snape's desk.

Katie turned to stir the mixture vigorously, not recalling that Snape had told her as he left that he had left the grindylow scales in the storeroom and she would need to fetch them when she needed some. 

The scales upon his desk had no label, as Snape had just acquired them, and had not had time to write one before being summoned to his meeting.

They were from a rare fae creature that often frequented rivers and lakes in the Realm of Faerie, a magical shape shifting creature called a kelpie.

Katie finished the last stages of the brewing, then bottled the potion into two vials, labeling it carefully.  One vial she set upon the professor's desk, the other she tucked in her pocket.  Then she carefully cleaned up her workstation, because students with shoddy work habits drove Snape crazy, and at last said, "Let's take a walk down by the lake and we can continue where we left off."

Harry smirked in delight, his blood racing.  "Sounds great to me."

They spent the entire time snogging behind a cluster of aspens along the shores of the lake, and Katie chattered on about the Halloween feast and if the decorations would be better than last year's and who was going to get sick from eating too much sweets and guzzling too much pumpkin juice.

Harry was quiet, he really had no good memories of Halloween, because that had been the night his mother and James Potter had died and he himself had been nearly killed as well.  Even when he lived with the Dursleys, who never discussed what had happened that long ago Halloween night, he had spent the holiday at home, forbidden to go out trick-or-treating with Dudley and not allowed to go to the annual Halloween block party either. "You don't need a costume, freak, you can just go as yourself!" he recalled Dudley saying one year when Harry was seven.  Dudley had always come home with loads of candy, and Harry had never been allowed to eat a single piece.  Uncle Vernon used to count it and put it in a great bowl on the fridge, only taking it down when Dudley had whined for some.

"Harry? Is something wrong?" Katie asked, sensing that something was bothering him.

"No. Not really."

But Katie was used to dealing with men who hid their feelings and she was not fooled by his stoic attitude.  "If it's something I said . . ."

"No, it's not you.  Just the holiday."

"What's wrong with Halloween?"

He sighed.  "Nothing, except . . .my mum and stepdad died then."

"Oh! Oh, I'm so stupid, I knew that, everyone does," Katie could have kicked herself.  "And here I am babbling about parties and feasts when you . . .I'm so sorry, Harry. I'm an idiot."

"No, you're not.  It's okay. Really." He reassured her, but he could not meet her eyes.

She hugged him.  "It's not okay.  What happened was terrible, and I understand if you don't want to be at the feast and all because of it."

He leaned his head on her shoulder.  "I'll be at the feast.  It'll help take my mind off it. I can't really remember them, only bits and pieces, like my mum's hair, and the way she smelled, like lilacs, and sometimes I can hear her voice.  James I just remember as a pair of hands, lifting me into the air.  And then there was a green light . . ." And Mum was screaming. But he wasn't about to tell her that.  "It's worse for my dad, I think.  Because he . . .found them there, after they were killed."

"That's just . . .horrible! Poor Professor Snape!" Katie said, shivering.  "No wonder he disappears as soon as the feast is underway. People used to say it was because he was an old stiff that didn't like to be happy and celebrate holidays, but who could celebrate the anniversary of your wife's death?"

"Not me," his son said softly.  Before last summer at Prince Manor, Harry would have thought the same about his Potions professor that everyone else had, but that was before Snape had been found injured in the Dursley's living room and Petunia had revealed her long kept secret.  Now he knew better, and he couldn't blame his father for wanting to be alone to mourn the woman he had loved.

 "Maybe we could leave the feast early, if you want," Katie offered.  "We could come here and test out my new potion.  See if I did it right."

Harry smiled. "That would be good.  You know, my mum loved to brew too.  If she were here, I think you'd have a lot in common."

"I would have been honored to meet her." Katie said, and then she pulled him down to sit upon the grass, her arm about his shoulders, and they watched the lake quietly, content to just sit and be still, lost in their own thoughts.

Katie leaned her head on Harry's shoulder, still kicking herself for being so insensitive, and hoping that she could make it up to him tomorrow night.  I'll make this Halloween a night to remember for us both.

Little did she know just how true that would be.          

Chapter End Notes:
The passage "Double, double . . ." is quoted from Macbeth by Shakespeare, as most of you probably recognize.

Next: Halloween ends in disaster, as Katie's potion summons up something totally unexpected. Severus makes his first appearance in the story here.

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