The Last Time I Saw You by LucCa

The next morning as Severus rolled to his side and whispered the anti-charm to shut off the alarm resounding in his mind he grumbled to himself. "To bestir oneself is easier said than done."

With the alarm silenced, he lay there and his mind took off in a million directions, as most people’s minds tend to do in the morning. Sighing he occluded his mind as his mind began to wander down the most forbidden path.

"I'm so sorry. I am so sorry, my love. Please forgive me! What I would give to tell you!" He lamented as he wiped the lone tear off of his scarred cheek. Getting up he groaned as the wounds from his previous Death Eater lifestyle seemed to break open and cause him fresh hurt.

As he donned his many layers and his heavy teacher robes that let him pretend he was impervious to everything, he straightened suddenly as he remembered the previous night and the strange slip of light that had piqued his attention last night. He exhaled a long sigh, "I suppose I should have investigated that. Oh well, I suppose if anyone has met ones end from their midnight expedition it's my fault."

Severus grimaced as he straightened his robes. "I expect if anything happened I will hear about it at the damned staff meeting later."

He swept out of his quarters and headed straight down to his dungeons to prepare another batch of dreamless sleep. He was running out...again.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

When Harry cracked open one of his eyes the next morning he realized that he must have slept through all of his roommates getting up and heading off for breakfast, which was fine with him. He sat up and looked around the room trying to find his shoes.

Shuffling them on, he walked into the bathroom and looked into the mirror after he washed his face he noticed that as he touched his cheek it hurt a bit. No, forget that, it hurt like hell. Turning he warded the door against any errant roommates that might walk in uninvited.

Taking his shirt off, he took in his thin chest that looked fine to him for being so scrawny and took of his pygamas pants off standing there in just his johns. Turning back to the mirror, he whispered, "Finite incantatum" and watched wincing every so often as he slowly dropped his layers of glamours, some accidental and most purposely put on.

As he forced himself to look back into the mirror he gasped as he noticed the large bruise that was forming on his cheek and reached up with his finger to trace his old scar that ran up from underneath his right ear to his eyebrow. He was also developing a nice black eye he saw. He took in his chest sighing as he was no longer scrawny he was underfed and skinny, he just could barely eat at Hogwarts from years of going two days without food at the Dursley’s.

Noticing that his chest hurt than usual he reached up gingerly and moaned as he saw three of ribs were once again much more pronounced than all of the others. He had hoped that they had finally healed after almost six months of being away from the Dursleys but alas as usual nothing was working in his favor. For the next ten minutes he took in the rest of the scars, burn scars and the rest of the hurts he had accumulated throughout his short life. That bloody spells they had cast last night plus the strange experience had caused a vast array of damage on his body.

As he recast his glamours and felt them reset themselves on his body he felt a faint emotion that he supposed was hope. "Perhaps that damned book has an advanced potion in it to help fix some of these stupid scars and such. It's such a tire to have to maintain them."

As it was Friday he had a study period right off, he headed down to the library he made a quick stop to the alcove where the book lay in the corner of the abandoned classroom where he had deposited it the night before on his way back. Walking gingerly around the stacks of broken desks and clutter he made it to the corner where he had hid the book. As he stuffed it in his satchel and walked out of the room he noticed that at the end of the hall of was the bane of his existence, Draco Malfoy.

"Damn. Well, if I actually want to get something done I better try to get past the git and his goons." So, stiffening his back and pushing chin out he strode towards the three. "Well, good morning my dear fellow rivals. It seems the fates have brought us together once more. I hope that you had a wonderful nights sleep!"

Watching Malfoy's usually sneering face go from a blank stare to confusion was enough entertainment for his entire week. As Malfoy sputtered and tried to come out with a decent snide remark, he walked by and continued on towards the library.

When he got to the library he walked to the back wall that contained the History of Goblins. "No one ever comes over here; I don’t even think we have a Goblin class anymore. I think Hermione mentioned something about the Goblins having a fit over the misrepresentation of them being greedy?” Setting his satchel down on the table, he took out the book and made sure the coast was clear before he set up a concealment charm on himself and all his books. As he set the book down in front of him he felt a thrill of excitement go through his body.

"There is nothing like opening a book and having no idea what you were going to find in it!" He gently turned over the cover and read the first page, Written by: Alexandra Syanda. ”Well I don’t recognize that name, the name looks a bit familiar. Kind of like the one that was scrawled across this book in fact. Maybe this is her potions diary?”

He turned the next couple of pages and saw that they were filled with dates. Not knowing what they were, he continued on. The very first potion that he came across was labeled: DANGEROUS! Smiling, Harry got out a piece of parchment. He read through the potion and decided that while it was at potion masters level he could perhaps succeed if he tried it a couple of times.

He continued in the same fashion, reading through the pages and writing down the potions that sounded the most interesting to him. For the next hour and half he wrote until he had filled up a foot of parchment.

Looking up at the magical clock, Harry realized with a start that he was going to be late for Potions if he didn’t run the entire way there. Whispering a hasty "Finite Incantatum!" He took the book and carefully put it into his backpack, grabbed the parchment off the table and dashed out of the library.

It was time for Potions and since Professor Slughorn was still out and Snape was still the sub Harry continued sprinting down the corridors to get to class on time. Because everyone knew that even if you hated the greasy git you never skipped or arrived late one of his classes even if he was just the sub. And poor Harry Potter always tried his best to be on time. So as he flew down the hall, his robes doing a poor imitation of Snape's, he made it into his seat before the Professor even came in and began barking out instructions. He sat next to Neville panting and feeling drained from the run, the injuries were really rearing their ugly head today. He groaned as he realized as he looked at the front and saw the list that Snape wasn’t going to lecture today but have them make another potion.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"Pair up! The list is up at the front." As Severus made his way to the front of the classroom he noticed that his least favorite student, Potter was taking his sweet time walking up to the front to check the list. " Do not dawdle Potter. Five points from Gryffindor." As the Gryffindor students groaned and turned to glare at Potter he felt a twinge of surprise at the venom in their glares.

He watched as Ron Weasley, Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas turned and gave Potter a especially deathly glare. He was surprised to see that Potter didn’t do something rash as he usually did but instead avoided eye contact and seemed resigned. "Oh well, it’s not as if Potter didn’t deserve those glares." Although he had a feeling there was something sinister behind the glares.

He turned away and focused on grading the remaining first year's potion papers that he had assigned two days before. How he loathed reading these uneducated, idiots papers that were filled with spelling and grammar mistakes. "Really couldn’t their parents at least teach them how to spell?"

He looked up once more and saw that all of the sixth years had done one thing right at least; they had gotten into their pairs. He sighed to himself as he held back a yawn and muttered to himself. “This is going to be one bloody long day. I know that those bleeding night patrols are going to be the death of me!” He stood and placed his quill down, preparing to go to his office to check on his dreamless sleep was progressing. Turning he made one more announcement, “If you care for your life, keep your hands to yourself and stay away from one another’s cauldron.” Shooting a glare towards where Draco and Dean were at a table he made sure to make eye contact with Draco. He was pleased to see that Draco still had enough respect to at least blush and look away.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“Of course the git had to pair me up with a Slytherin. At least he wasn’t the one that tried to kill me last time.” He had to admit that he was kind of happy that he was paired with Blaise instead of another Slytherin student. Blaise was probably one of the least malicious Slytherin boys in the room. Blaise sometimes even talked to him and thet had had some civil conversations over the years. Nothing personal, just quidditch, brooms and their owls.

He shuffled over to where the cauldrons were held, looked for one that was the least worn on the bottom and grabbed it. This particular potion was going to be very finicky about temperature so they were going to need a good thick one. He would have rather used his but he had forgotten to shrink it and bring it back down to the dungeons after he had brewed an energy-replenishing potion on Sunday night.

He walked back over to the table where Blaise was waiting with most of the ingredients that they were going to need and gave him tiny smirk to him. “Looks like you’re stuck with me today, Blaise.”

Blaise chuckled quietly, “Sure does. Although I’m fairly sure your potion won’t “explode” today with me around.”

He set the cauldron down and looked over the ingredients more closely. Some of them weren’t going to help them much because they were getting a bit moldy on the edges from not being preserved correctly. He sighed and reached towards his satchel, where he had a shrunken potion kit that held some fresher ingredients.

“Oy Harry." Blaise elbowed him in the side and pointed with his chin. "What’s their game?” Harry looked over to his right where Ron and Dean were standing at their separate tables shooting him dirty looks every so often.

Harry lied, “Not much. Ron’s and Dean are pissed because I am dating Ginny.” He shrugged his shoulders, “You know, you might be wrong about my potion not exploding today. Those two have been right gits this past week.” Harry inwardly shuddered as he remembered the night before.

“Well let’s get started before I get more points taken.” He handed Blaise the ingredients from his kit and told him a better way to chop and mince them up so they would make the potion more potent.

As Harry stirred, chopped, minced and juiced he let his mind wander. He was still so confused about the night before. As he finished juicing the last ingredient and began stirring it slowly 10 times counterclockwise he was on number 9 when a loud explosion startled him. He continued to make the last round then set the stir stick down and looked over to where there was a small billowing cloud by the table Ron and Neville had been standing. He frowned, "poor Nev, he always got so nervous during this class. It doesn’t help that his potions are always blowing up." He winced as he watched Snape, who was wearing a furious expression, stride over to their table and begin berating the two. While he was inwardly happy that Ron was getting what was coming to him he also wished that he could save Nev from Snape.

He turned away from the scene and they began to clean up their area. They were the first group to be done, as he placed the clean knives and juicers back into the cabinets he looked over at Hermione. He chuckled as he took in her frustrated face as she tried to instruct Seamus how to correctly juice the wormwood. She gave up and instead grabbed it from him and did it herself all the while muttering to herself. While he couldn’t hear her he could imagine that she was muttering about “useless, idiotic boys that never pay attention.”

He stepped back over to their table and sat down quietly and waited for Snape to announce that he was coming around to test the potions.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

As Severus dropped the strangleweed seeds, the last ingredient needed, and finished stirring the potion he turned down the heat and put a stasis spell on it and turned to walk back into the classroom. As he stepped into the room and turned to make a round to check on the students progress he hadn’t even made it to the first desk when he felt the floor rumble under his feet as the cauldron Mr. Weasley and (of course) Mr. Longbottom blew up. He whipped out his wand spoke out a freezing charm on the flying potion droplets. As they froze in midair and dropped he spun on his heel and strode over to their table.

“Mr. Weasley and Mr. Longbottom, would you care to explain what kind of misguided and carelessness actions you were doing?” Severus asked them in his most deadly quiet voice. He watched with satisfaction as Longbottom’s face lost all colour and his hands trembled as he dropped the melted stir stick onto the table.

“Nu-No-Nothing….Sir! It-It just BLEW UP!” Neville managed to stutter out.

“That much is very evident to me, Mr. Longbottom.” Severus answered.

“Sir, I don’t know what happened. All we did was add the minced beans.” Ron answered, trying to act confident while really shaking in his robes.

Severus turned to glare at him, “Perhaps the reason behind the explosion was that you were supposed to juice not MINCE! You blundering idiot!” Severus yelled as he backhanded the back of their heads. “Read the damned book! Now clean this up!”

He turned, shaking his head. How they were still alive was beyond his reasoning. He felt his stomach rumble and his head start to ache from lack of nutrients and sleep. His last shred of patience, if he had ever had any, had disappeared with that last occurrence; he stalked to the head of the classroom and turned to address the classroom. “You will all be receiving failing grades and a triple detention if I do not find three groups with perfect potions. Mr. Longbottom and Mr. Weasley already count as one failure” With this announcement, he began to make his rounds starting with the most likely pair, Draco and Dean. He spoke after examining it, “One.” Moving on to the middle of the room the next two groups he announced them as failures, he moved to Ms. Granger and Mr. Finnegan’s, “Two.”

Looking up he realized that Ms. Parvati and Ms. Padma were one of the pairs left; the other was Potter and Mr. Zambini. He smirked, out of the five years he new that none of the students in those groups were good enough to make a perfect potion. He walked quickly over to the girls’ table and pronounced it a failure. The students in the room started to fidget and titter as they watched Severus walk slowly to Potter and Blaise’s table. Severus stepped up to their table, and reached for the stick. Smirking he dipped the stick in, he looked down as he stirred it. It was a perfect consistency and as he bent down, it smelled correct as well, this might be the best-made potion out of the room. There was one way to test if it was, he turned calling out. “Mr. Longbottom, come here!”

He summoned a ladle from cabinet and dipped it down into the cauldron. He dipped some out and cast a cooling spell onto it. He handed it to Neville, “Drink it.”

Neville looked at Harry and reached towards the ladle. “But, sir, what is it going to do to me?”

“Did you not read the text Longbottom?” Severus spit out. “Perhaps if you had your potion would not have ended as it had. Now, drink!”

Neville lifted it to his lips and hesitantly drank it. He gasped as it suddenly caused his throat to feel like he was drinking cold water and settled his nervous stomach. “Oh,” Neville sighed. “That was wonderful!”

Severus grimaced, if this potion was perfectly made it was a wonderful experience but only if it was. It is was less than perfect it could be painful to drink. His mind raced, Zambini was a terrible potioneer. He had only made it into this year’s potion class because he was no longer the teacher. He had heard Horace praising Potter’s natural ability with potions this year but Severus had never experienced this in all his years as his teacher therefore this was not possible. “Three.” Severus spit out. “And Potter, another detention for cheating! You are dismissed, now leave.”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^