The next morning, Harry was nibbling on a piece of toast, worried and relieved at the same time by Snape’s absence from the High Table when a barn owl swooped over the table and dropped a letter on his plate.
A letter from Sirius!
Harry ripped it open. Sirius had heard of the Death Eater attack and wanted to know if Harry was alright.
Grinning, Harry folded the parchment and put it in his pocket. He definitely could get used to this.
Perhaps even to the point where he’d be embarrassed by the fussing, like Neville, who had hastily shoved his grandmother’s concerned letter in his pocket.
He met Neville later in the dorm, where he tried to answer his grandmother’s letter on a piece of parchment he had placed on his trunk.
“I got a letter from Sirius”, he confided. “He’s worried. Um, what do you write to your grandma? The Dursleys never worried about me, I’m not really sure what Sirius expects me to write.“
Neville looked at him, uncertain, as if he had never been asked for advice before. “Well, Grandma asked whether I wanted to go home for the rest of the holidays, so I have to tell her that it’s okay. And of course she doesn’t know what happened, so I’m telling her that. Professor Snape said I was powerful, I bet she’ll like that.”
Harry stared at him. “Snape complimented you?”
“Not really. He still doesn’t think I’m good at magic. Just that I can get people killed. He said, that man – Crouch – surviving wasn’t important to him, so I ought to just fire some spell at him if he moved.”
“Oh.” That sounded more like Snape. “But you were real clever too, you tricked him. Crouch, I mean”
“I suppose.” Neville blushed a bit.
“Do you think Sirius wants to know what happened? It’s not like I was there, and I’ll have to leave out the rooster, Snape’ll murder me if that gets out, but ...”
“I am making it look like Professor Snape was really there because he was looking for me. That’ll make her feel better about letting me stay in Hogwarts, knowing that the teachers keep an eye on us.”
“Splendid, I’ll do that, too.“ Harry didn’t think Sirius would want to take him out of Hogwarts, and he wasn’t even sure the man could do that, if even the Dursleys couldn’t, but he didn’t want Sirius to worry unnecessarily.
“Dear Sirius”, he wrote after thinking about it for a moment.
“the Daily Prophet exaggerates stuff. I wasn’t even in the dorm when Crouch was there. He got Neville and held him hostage, but not for long. Neville ate some poisonous berries that weren’t all that poisonous and pretended to be dying, and then, when Crouch was distracted, Professor Snape came in and fought him. (He’s our potions teacher, but there’s rumours he wants to teach Defence, he’s really good at that, too.)
Neville is Professor Snape’s least favourite student because he always melts his cauldrons in potions, and I guess he had a detention to be in for some of his mishaps, so Professor Snape got worried when he didn’t turn up. (Neville never talks back to teachers, he’d never try and skip detention).
So, nothing too bad really happened. Neville is fine after Madam Pomfrey gave him an antidote, and Professor Snape will be fine in a couple days, I guess. He talked to Neville after the fight, so whatever he has can’t be too bad, can it?”
That, Harry decided, sounded sufficiently reassuring. After glancing at Neville’s letter, he added some bits about enjoying his holidays.
Harry was not prepared for the answer that arrived in the evening of the same day.
“Dear Harry,
Professor Snape? Not Severus Snape? There was a slimy git of that name in our year, but I can’t imagine old Snivellus becoming a teacher, having to look at his ugly mug for a double lesson would be torture!
I’m glad you’re unharmed. I’ve been meaning to come visit you for a while, now that my life is back on track and I don’t look like an escaped convict anymore. I could come watch your next Quidditch match, what do you say?”
Harry didn’t feel as excited over his godfather coming to watch him play Quidditch as he thought he ought to.
Why was there a whole paragraph about Snape? Wasn’t Harry’s safety more important?
Feeling unable to sleep anytime soon, Harry returned to the common room, where Hermione was still busy revising ... something.
She looked up from her book. “Harry? Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I guess ...” He shrugged. „Sirius is going to come see the next Quidditch match.“
“But that’s great. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t know. Something about his letter rubs me the wrong way.”
Hermione frowned. „Perhaps he isn’t so harmless after all, and your subconscious is picking up on it. I read a book about that.”
“Possibly?” He didn’t think so. He didn’t feel any more scared than when Ron was being a git. Just ... disappointed. “What do you think of this letter?”
She scanned it, reading much faster than Harry could ever have. “That’s weird.”
“What is weird?”
“Well, there’s the fact that he is more interested in our teacher than you being safe, or so it looks, and also he dislikes Professor Snape for all the wrong reasons! He doesn’t even mention that he doesn’t think the boy he knew would make a good teacher.”
Harry stared at Hermione. “You don’t think Snape is a good teacher?” She’d always listened to every word Snape said during lessons, even when they had thought he was trying to murder Harry.
She stared back. “Why, of course not! He doesn’t manage to teach you much, does he?“
“Well, no, but I figure that’s mostly my fault.”
“He’s brilliant, of course, but you can’t insult people and expect them to be interested in what you talk about, can you?”
“You are interested in what he says”, Harry pointed out.
“Yes, well, as I said, he’s brilliant. But for people like you and Ron, who aren’t very interested in the subject anyway ...”
“I was interested before he went and ruined it for me”, Harry defended himself. He took the letter from Sirius back. “You are right, you’d expect Sirius to say something like ‘the man hates children, hated children when he himself was one and should never have become a teacher’ or something.”
Hermione helped him formulate a response, where he mentioned that Snape had saved him from being turned into a chick the year before and asked what the man had been like in school.
And of course, Harry mentioned that he’d be delighted to see Sirius at his Quidditch match.
When lessons started again, their first double lesson of Potions was cancelled. Ginny told them she’d overheard Lockhart offering to substitute for Snape, but thankfully, Dumbledore must have refused.
The rumours that had already started after the attack got even worse after that.
Fred and George started taking bets on whether Snape was dead.
Harry couldn’t bear it anymore. He fetched his invisibility cloak and sneaked to the Hospital Wing.
There was one boy with what looked like extreme curse damage, but no one else.
Well, Madam Pomfrey, of course.
Frustrated, Harry was about to head back to the Gryffindor common room for the remainder of the potions lesson, when he realized that there was one more thing he could do.
He went to a secluded corner, took off his invisibility cloak, and repeated his visit to the Hospital Wing.
“Mr. Potter.” Madam Pomfrey frowned. „I do hope you are not injured?“
„No, no, don’t worry. Um. I wondered … Potions was cancelled … well, if … Professor Snape is okay?“ He half-mumbled the last part of the sentence and spoke too quickly.
„Oh. Him.” Madam Pomfrey pursed her lips. “He insisted on returning to his rooms. Claimed he could recover better there.”
Harry was surprised at how much relief he felt. “So he’s okay?”
“If he isn’t, it is not my fault.” Madam Pomfrey sighed and took an old fashioned watch out of her pocket. “There.”
It was like the Weasleys’ clock, Harry realized. The watch had only two hands. One was inscribed with a name Harry didn’t recognize, and the hand pointed to “Awake, in no imminent danger. Needs treatment.”
The other one had the name “Severus Snape” on it, and it pointed at “Asleep. In no imminent danger. Slightly dehydrated.”
“Where he ought to be”, Madam Pomfrey said approvingly as she took the watch back. “But of course he didn’t call a house elf to fetch him water. Typical. I will send someone.“
„So he can’t get something to drink himself?“, Harry asked, alarmed again.
“Oh, he could. But I explicitly told him not to move unless absolutely necessary. Seems he is heeding my instructions.” She pocketed the watch. „There is no need to worry, Mr. Potter“, she continued in a gentler tone. “If he continues to heed my advice, Professor Snape will be teaching again by next week. Was there anything else?”
“No, Ma’am. Thank you.“
The next week, Snape was indeed back.
He did not give any excuse for his absence, but instead started the lesson as if nothing at all had happened.
Letting his gaze roam over the class, he at least paused to glare at Neville. “Mr. Longbottom.”
Neville seemed to shrink in his seat. Snape concentrating on you like this usually didn’t bode well.
“Despite your repeated attempts to prove the opposite in my class, you do seem to be in possession of a brain. So, do tell me ... what is the most insidious property of the weyberry?”
It seemed to take Neville a while to process the fact that Snape had actually asked him something he knew.
The most unusual thing, Harry mused, was that Snape knew that Neville knew.
“Um. It ... er ... the kernels are the most poisonous part, sir. The berries themselves are almost safe to eat if you spit the kernels. And you will only be moderately poisoned if you don’t chew the kernels. Symptoms of poisoning will set in about a quarter of an hour after eating them. They include - ”
“Correct, Mr. Longbottom“, Snape replied, his voice sounding slightly disgruntled as always when a Gryffindor could answer his questions. “What are the properties of fluxweed?”
Even Harry was surprised when Neville answered that question in as much detail as Hermione would have, albeit with a lot more stuttering at the beginning.
The rest of the lesson was theory, too, but Snape completely ignored Harry.
“Well, that was almost civil, for Professor Snape”, Hermione concluded when they had left the classroom. “Of course, he really should have given Neville points for knowing that about weyberries. It is only in one book in the library, and not in the Herbology book or the Potions book! I didn’t even know before Neville told us!”
They waited for Neville to catch up to them, he seemed in a daze. “Did I just dream that?”, he asked. “Or did I really not lose Gryffindor any points in this lesson?”
“I was just telling Harry and Ron”, Hermione said. “You really should have been given points for knowing that obscure fact about weyberries! And you would also have known all the poisoning symptoms, wouldn’t you?”
“Um, yeah, I guess?” Neville shrugged, blushing pink. “Plants are just fascinating. Did you know that one of the symptoms is seeing a purple swirl of colour when you close your eyes?”
Hermione had not known, but found it very fascinating, and soon, Harry tuned the conversation out.
Chapter 15