Three weeks into the school term, the new students began to settle in. There had been the first minor crises: a spectacular fight between Pansy Parkinson and Parvati Patil, which began in the girls’ bathroom on the second floor and spilled down the stairs into the entrance hall; tearful midnight visits to the infirmary after an unauthorized sugar binge; and, last but not least, the discovery of Potter’s little food cache. Snape had kept an eye on the boy ever since. Potter was still pocketing the occasional apple or bread roll, but as none of his dorm mates complained about the smell, Snape surmised that the boy either ate the food or had mastered the Stasis Spell.

By now, he had a fairly good impression of the individual students’ level, secretly pleased that his godson proved to be one of the brighter additions to the student population. Hermione Granger in Ravenclaw, of course, outperformed everyone else. The girl seemed to inhale knowledge, and could have easily skipped a year if such were the practice at Hogwarts. Snape couldn’t help but award her full marks in every Potions lesson. Her yearmates, he noticed, didn’t take too kindly to frequent displays of brilliance in their midst. The girl sat alone most of the time, surrounded by a wall of books.

Snape was surprised, therefore, to step into the courtyard one day and spot her sitting in the colonnades with Potter, of all people. Curious, he stepped closer, staying behind one of columns so the two children wouldn’t see him.

“…says here that it is July 30, and in this one it says that it’s July 31, so there’s obviously a mistake.” The rustle of turned pages followed. “Look, it’s right there!”

“It’s July 31,” came Potter’s quiet voice.

“Oh good, I thought it was, I’d read it somewhere before, but I wanted to make sure before I write to the editor.”

“When’s your birthday?”

Snape listened in surprise; he’d never heard Potter ask a fellow student anything.

“It was a few days ago,” the girl replied. “September 19th.”

“Oh. Happy birthday, then.”

“Thank you,” she said, sounding pleased. “Mum and Dad sent me a birthday cake and some clothes and a gift certificate for owl orders from Flourish and Blotts. They must have asked Aunt Miranda to get it from Diagon Alley. My parents are Muggles,” she added as an explanation. “You live with your Muggle relatives, don’t you? It says so in Famous Sorcerers of the 20th Century, although Celebrities A-Z says that your current whereabouts are unknown to the public. They seem to have been a bit sloppy in their research, what with getting your birthday wrong and everything.”

“I live with my aunt and uncle,” the boy said softly.

“You should write to the editor and tell them to get their facts straight,” Granger said decidedly. “People want correct information, after all. You could send them a picture, too, to put in the next edition.”

“Um,” said Potter.

“Well, never mind, I’ll write to them anyway, so you needn’t bother. What’s her name?”

“Hedwig,” the boy said, and Snape realized that he must have his owl with him.

“She’s beautiful,” Granger said admiringly. “I’ve read that snowy owls are the best messenger birds because they can cover great distances in a very short time. Rowena Ravenclaw had a snowy owl, did you know?”

The boy seemed to have shaken his head, for Granger continued, “Yes, and Godric Gryffindor had a horse – of course he would have, every knight back then had one, but his was special, it could fly – and Helga Hufflepuff had a St. Bernard, and Salazar Slytherin had a basilisk.”

“What’s a basilisk?”

“It’s a giant snake, and it’s very dangerous. I’ve read about it in All You Need to Know About Magical Creatures.”

“Wouldn’t it have eaten the other pets?”

Granger paused; she obviously hadn’t considered this aspect before. Snape waited, genuinely interested in her answer. “Maybe it wasn’t allowed,” she said finally. “It was Salazar Slytherin’s familiar, so it had to listen to him.”

“It could’ve eaten them while he was asleep,” Potter mused. Snape thought that Potter seemed disturbingly familiar with the concept of eating in secret while others slept.

“Of course it couldn’t,” Granger said in a slightly patronizing tone. “Slytherin was a powerful wizard, he probably put a spell on it so it had to obey him.”

“Oh.” Potter seemed to be feeling sorry for the basilisk.

“Anyway, I want to get myself an owl, too, or maybe a cat. I can always use the school owls, and I’ve wanted a cat for ever and ever. I couldn’t have one until now because Mum’s allergic, but I’ve read about magical cats and there’s a spell you can put on them against allergies. – Are you allergic to cats?”

“Dunno. Don’t think so.”

“Weren’t you tested for allergies? We had doctors come to our school and they drew these funny little circles on our arms before we got our shots.”

Potter said nothing, but Granger didn’t seem to notice that she hadn’t received an answer to her question. “Were you really surprised when you got your letter? Of course you must have known about being a wizard, but I never knew I was a witch until the letter came! Well, I knew Aunt Miranda went away to learn magic, but I’d never thought I could do the same!”

“I never knew either,” Potter said quietly, and then: “D’you… like being magical?”

“Of course I do!” cried Granger. “Think of all the things they’re going to teach us!”

“I don’t,” Potter said, so softly that Snape had to strain his ears to catch the words. “I don’t like it.”

“Why not?” Snape couldn’t see Granger’s expression, but he imagined her face to be one big question mark.

“It’s evil,” Potter said.

“Evil?” Granger repeated in disbelief. “Why do you say that?”

“It just is.”

Granger seemed at a loss what to say. Snape, for his part, found it difficult to believe what he had just heard. Potter’s voice had never been more firm than when he had condemned magic as “evil”.

It just is. Not the kind of statement you’d expect from an eleven-year-old; Snape knew only too well that they questioned everything at that age. But Potter didn’t doubt the truth of what he’d said. The boy lived at Hogwarts and attended his lessons in the firm belief that everything he witnessed around him was… evil.

The two children were silent for a while, and Snape was about to abandon his listening post when the girl hesitantly spoke up again.

“Would you like to come to Ravenclaw Tower with me? I have some of my birthday cake left. Boys aren’t allowed in the girls’ dormitories, but I could bring it down to the common room…”

Even Snape did not miss the anxiety in her voice.

“Yeah, okay,” Potter said softly.

“Great!” Granger cried. A rustle indicated that she was gathering up the entourage of books that followed her everywhere. “Prefect O’Malley said that we should keep our common room a secret, but that we can invite students from other Houses so I guess it’s okay! Do you want to go right now?”

“Okay.” Potter sounded pleased, even if he kept to his usual one-word answers.

“You can bring Hedwig along if you like,” Granger continued as their steps retreated. “Padma Patil has a snowy owl, too, but hers has dark spots on its back. I’ve read in All You Need to Know About Magical Creatures that snowy owls with dark spots are always owned by witches…”

Quietly, Snape left his post behind the column and slipped away into a nearby corridor.

So, Potter and Granger. It amused him that people who liked to dominate a conversation, like Draco and Granger, found themselves drawn to the taciturn boy. Potter didn’t mind having his ears talked off, content to listen and keep most of his thoughts to himself. A very Slytherin attitude, now that Snape came to think about it.

The boy certainly was nothing like his father. Potter senior had revelled in his above-average magical abilities; he’d displayed them at every opportunity, and more often than not used them to embarrass or humiliate others. The idea that magic per se was evil would have seemed ridiculous to him.

Harry, on the other hand… something was wrong with boy. Snape wondered if he had ever seen the child smile, let alone laugh. And he wasn’t… right. It was a strange thing to say about a little boy, but Snape knew it to be true. He wasn’t the only one who had noticed, either. Minerva had spoken to him about Potter’s reticence, and Flitwick had made several remarks about Harry’s tendency to turn his charms against himself. And Aurora Sinistra… for some reason, her observations had unsettled Snape the most.

“We were drawing star charts, and he was sitting on his own in the darkest corner of the room. I turned around to see how he was doing, and… I thought it was a trick of light at first. His eyes were different, all of a sudden… very bright, almost white. I believed I had imagined things at the time, but then I looked at the memory in my pensieve and it happened again. His eyes *changed*. You need to watch out for that boy, Severus.”

Had it been Sybil Trelawney telling him this, Snape wouldn’t have paid it any more attention than her frequent death predictions. Aurora Sinistra, on the other hand, was not given to flights of fantasy. Far more than most witches and wizards, the Astronomy teacher adhered to logic and the absolute truths of mathematics. She must have seen something happen to the boy to bring it up with his Head of House.

Snape wondered, for a moment or two, whether he should let Albus in on the matter. The Headmaster had surely made his own observations; Snape had noticed his eyes following the boy more than once in the Great Hall. Yet whatever Albus’ conclusions were, he did not seem willing to share them with his staff just yet, and Snape decided not to bring up the subject. Potter was first and foremost one of his, and he wasn’t in the habit of palming off his problems to the Headmaster. Slytherin took care of their own.