Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Author's Chapter Notes:
Written by Fen at 6:00 pm Pacific time, on 5/6/13.
Whispers and Warnings

The walk back to Gryffindor Tower had been quiet and uneventful. Snape had been deep in thought, about what, Harry could not have guessed. Had he found what he’d been looking for in those dusty old books? If he had, he didn’t bother enlightening Harry. In fact, apart from the slight ache in his fingers, where Harry had clutched at a section of Snape’s robes in a death grip, he had nothing to show his friends of the night’s harrowing events.

Luckily, the only proof they required was his word. He was still getting used to that.

“A cat, you say?” Harry nodded grimly at Hermione as they sat around the fireplace in the common rooms late that night. “But you couldn’t see it?”

“Well, no. It was really dark,” he said slowly, thinking back to the hallway where the creature had repeatedly brushed against his legs.

“And when Professor Snape cast the revealing spell?” she prompted.

Harry shrugged. “I guess it had disappeared by then.”

Hadn’t it happened that way?

“Or maybe you just couldn’t see it...” Hermione suggested, tapping her index finger against her chin thoughtfully and taking on a very faraway look, as though she were scanning the pages of a book that resided in her bushy head.

Ron, who had maintained a white-knuckled grip on his squashy armchair throughout the duration of Harry’s tale, jerked his feet onto the cushion as if they were in danger of being gobbled up at any moment.

“That thing ‘s invisible?” he cried.

“It’s just theory I have,” Hermione answered, unaffected by the redhead’s complexion turning several shades greener.

Ron gulped loudly, fearfully regarding the darkened hides and catches of the Gryffindor Commons. “You...you don’t reckon it followed you back here, do you Harry?”

“No, of course not.” Harry rushed to ease his friend’s suffering, even though he felt every bit as alarmed by the possibility, “I got the feeling that it lived down there. In the dungeons, I mean.”

Despite his best efforts at reassurance, Ron’s face crumpled in misery.

“What did I say?”

“As if the dungeons weren’t bad enough! Now I have to worry about being eaten by an invisible demon cat on top of the Potions test tomorrow? Just great!”

Potions test? Tomorrow? Harry groaned into his hands.

After a lightning fast Potions review, during which Hermione both asked and answered  the questions, Harry and Ron retired to their dorm room feeling very bleak about the coming day.

 

The Potions exam was abysmal, as expected, but Harry was consoled in the fact that he was not alone.

Beside him, Ron’s eyes skittered across the classroom, searching fruitlessly for the invisible creature every time a page rustled or a shoe scuffed the floor. On one occasion, an unlucky Slytherin knocked over her inkwell, and the subsequent commotion was enough to elicit a squeak of terror from the poor Gryffindor.

Even Neville spared Ron a look of sympathy before bending his head over his desk, Quill hovering ineffectually over his own blank parchment.

Harry returned his attention to the exam. He’d managed to pick up the spelling of a few potions and ingredients during lecture. Whenever Snape slapped the blackboard with his wooden pointer, Harry would make it a point to remember the words...at least, he tried.

Indian Snakeroot. Harry sounded the words out cautiously in his head. He vaguely recalled an incident two weeks ago, in which Snape nastily corrected Parvati Patil on the uses of it in medicinal potions. He strained himself trying to recreate the scene in his head. Finally, he muttered something almost inaudibly so as not to attract unwanted attention, and the Quill he held loosely in his hand jotted his words across the page as though he had written them himself.

He admired his work, pleased at this small victory, but the feeling was soon clouded by guilt as Ron squirmed nervously in his seat for the umpteenth time.

Harry couldn’t say for sure why he wasn’t as fearful this morning as he had been the night before. Maybe it was because the dungeon was presently alive with activity, surrounded as he was by fellow students and faculty. More than likely, though, was the fact that the only eyes he felt on him just then were those of the Potions Master.

When he glanced up at the sallow-cheeked man, however, it was to find him apparently engrossed in a book much like the one Harry had cracked open the previous evening, before giving up and falling asleep. Snape raised his eyes then to meet Harry’s directly.

Caught you! Harry thought with satisfaction, and Snape growled, making a show of flattening the cover of the ancient text against his desk, not that Harry’s myopic eyes were in any danger of catching the title at such a distance.

“Hm,” Harry wondered aloud, and the charmed Quill in his hand echoed “Hm” on his parchment.

 

By the time he had a chance to complain to his friends about how infuriating it was to be purposefully kept in the dark on matters that clearly concerned him, they were entering Defense Against the Dark Arts, and his train of thought was abruptly derailed by the strange behavior of Professor Lockhart.

Their professor was huffing loudly on the platform outside his office, his golden hair still in rollers and his forget-me-not blues whirling in their sockets, scanning the wave of students with wild suspicion. He looked as though he hadn’t slept a wink. Behind him, the open door to his office showed several leather trunks already packed and set off to the side, while many more still lay open.

“Class, class,” he boomed too cheerily, “Ah, apologies for the inconvenience, but lecture has been cancelled...indefinitely.”

“But why?” a voice thick with emotion cried from the lingering crowd of mostly female students. Most of the boys had already dashed off in good spirits.

“Ah...I’ve been called away to Kenya,” he said busily. “They’ve got a nasty Theluji Kiumbe on their hands. A bit out of their league, if you ask me, but I’ve got just the expertese to subdue it. Well,” he  paused at the railing again to gaze at the remaining admirers. “Shove off then!” And he disappeared into his office in a frenzy.

The room instantly erupted in sobbing that Harry could only liken to the shrill shrieks of the baby Mandrakes from Herbology the week before, and to his disbelief, Hermione joined in! So upset was she, that she dropped her books and darted from the classroom.

Harry and Ron gave each other a look.

“Women,” the redhead shook his head in confusion, but Harry noted that he happily gathered Hermione’s things and took off after her.

Could it be mere coincidence that Lockhart was leaving right after Snape had been attacked by the creature? The two hardly seemed related, but something tickled at the back of his mind, so he pushed his way through a huddle of weepy girls and past a teary-eyed second year boy he didn’t recognize and made his way to Lockhart’s office.

“Professor,” he knocked politely on the open door.

Lockhart startled in response, nearly scattering a wobbly stack of autographed photos of himself.

“Oh, it’s just you, Harry,” he gasped, levitating the load safely into a large trunk. “I’m sorry, my boy, but I’m afraid I can’t sign anything at the moment. In a terrible hurry, you see. Send it to my agent and she’ll forward it to my publicist, who will pass it on to me.”

“No, sir, I don’t want—“

“Oh, one autograph for the Harry Potter, my most devoted fan, won’t slow me do too much!” Lockhart interrupted, jogging to his desk and spewing a steady stream of nonsensical self-flattery.

“It wasn’t true, was it?” Harry finally yelled when the other man showed no sign of stopping.

Lockhart froze.

“What you said about the...the Julie Coomby?”

“Theluji Kiumbe,” the other wizard correctly weakly. He sighed and crossed his arms, as though debating what to tell the boy.

“I’ve never been good at lying,” he finally began and grinned at some private thought that Harry was not privy to.

“Why are you in such a hurry to leave Hogwarts, Professor?” Harry pressed.

“I don’t know how much I should tell you, Harry, but if I were you, I’d owl my guardians and be out of here tonight!” He stepped closer and lowered his voice, “The Headmaster believes there’s something in the castle. A dangerous creature, and it’s targeting me.” When he saw that he had Harry’s full attention, he continued, “It likely sees me as its only true threat, having defeated all manner of dark and fearsome beasts. No doubt, you’ve read my book Marauding With Monsters, in which I detail how I single-handedly—”

“Sir!” Harry cut him off, lest the man went loopy with self-obsession.

“Yes, of course. As I was saying, Dumbledore was rather tight-lipped about it all, but whatever it is that’s stalking the castle, it’s old magic. Likely as old as Hogwarts, itself.”

Lockhart escorted Harry to the door of his office and ended with, what Harry believed to be, an overly dramatic warning. “Leave with your life Potter, while it’s still yours to leave with!”

With that, the older wizard slammed the door in his face.

Chapter End Notes:
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