Severus hoped the boy had gotten the message. Though perhaps he had already gotten it before – after all, he had sent his owl because of a problem that wasn’t related to running away.
That was promising.
Really, he should have made an effort to get the boy to trust him earlier. It was so much easier to protect him like this ...
And it hadn’t been so hard to overcome his revulsion at the sight of a James Potter clone, once he had tried. The trick was to focus on the Lily eyes.
On the other hand, it would be foolish to not use the reputation he had built of hating Potter. If, as the possession of Quirinus Quirrell seemed to indicate, the Dark Lord might actually return for good, it would be very useful if it was common knowledge that Severus hated the Potter brat and the Potter brat hated him.
Right now, though, the child was too young to keep a secret, so he would have to make sure Potter actually continued to dislike him. Shouldn’t be too difficult, considering James Potter had hated him for no reason at all, and he had managed to make Lily hate him, too, eventually.
And yet ... it might be safer to focus on getting the boy to trust him, right now. If Dobby was actually acting on his own – and it didn’t seem like Lucius to send a house elf to torment Potter in petty ways – then something bad was going to happen at Hogwarts. And Lucius was somehow involved.
Not a situation Severus wanted three children to try and tackle by themselves.
**
Ron arrived just in time for the Sorting.
To no one’s surprise, Ginny was sorted into Gryffindor. After applauding for her, Ron told Harry that flooing to Hogsmeade had gone okay, but when stumbling out of the fireplace, he had broken his wand.
“Mum says I can’t use it anymore, broken wands are dangerous, but I don’t think I’ll get a new one – not with having to get all those books by Lockhart.”
Dangerous? Harry hadn’t known that. “It can’t be repaired?”
“No, not possible with wands. Something special about them.”
“But you need a wand for lessons ... um, you can use mine?” Harry was pretty sure he could afford to pay for a new wand for Ron, but Ron would never let him. “After I’m done ...” Which sometimes didn’t happen at all.
“You can use my wand”, Hermione informed Ron. “That is, if it works for you. Wands usually work best for the owner, and you need one that specifically chose you to reach your full potential –“
“Thanks! And don’t worry, I had Charlie’s old wand, not like it chose me, anyways.”
**
Severus opted for a tactic of mostly ignoring Potter in class, only commenting on the boy’s work if the concoction produced wasn’t just substandard, but useless or poisonous.
It wasn’t hard to be nasty in his comments, even though he did not hate the boy anymore. Sarcasm was his second nature, and Lily had often accused him of being “mean” back when they still had been friends.
Lily.
She was the only one he had ever listened to about that. He had not wanted her to think badly of him, and so he had tried to rein in his contempt for stupidity, tried to be kind about his criticisms of other people’s work. Tried.
He barely managed with his Slytherins, and didn’t often make an effort with students from any other house.
No, it was not at all hard to continue behaviours that would cause the Potter boy to continue disliking him.
In fact, he thought he was doing it so well that the boy would likely not take him up on his offer again.
His visit with Lucius and careful fishing for information had not rendered any useful results, and Severus had just allowed himself to relax a bit about the house-elf’s warnings when, just on the anniversary of Lily’s death, the triumphant cries of Draco Malfoy summoned him to a scene of crime.
It was, admittedly, only a cat who had been harmed, but the fact remained that she had been petrified, something no student could have done just out of annoyance over her spying for the caretaker.
And, as usual, Harry was in the midst of trouble, claiming he hadn’t done it – which Severus believed – but unwilling to say the whole truth.
Just when Severus wanted to comment on that, the boy’s eyes found his.
There was, or did he just imagine it, something pleading in those Lily-green eyes.
Severus nodded his head, ever so slightly, in the hope the boy would understand.
“While I am sure Potter was up to no good”, he drawled. “I have to concur with the headmaster. If any second year could have done this, then certainly not Potter. His performance in my class has been consistently sub-par. He simply is not capable of such advanced magic.”
There was a twinkle in Dumbledore’s eyes which betrayed that he had seen through the ruse and guessed at Severus’ intentions, but he seemed to be the only one. Filch seemed mollified, and Lockhart started to explain how Potter’s sub-par performance must be Severus’ fault because in his class, the boy had always excelled.
Fortunately, Minerva agreed that Potter must be innocent, and the children were sent off to their common room.
Severus fled as soon as they were out of sight.
He had just settled in his favourite armchair when the enchantment on his office door alerted him that someone was knocking at the door.
Wand raised, Severus hurried along the corridor, only to almost collide with someone invisible.
“Sorry!”
Oh. Just Potter.
The boy pulled back the hood of his invisibility cloak. “You said I could talk to you.”
“Yes? Is your life in immediate danger?” Severus hoped not. It had been a rather eventful night already and he really wanted to get some rest.
“No, just my, uh, sanity.”
Good. That, he could cope with. “Follow me.”
He led the boy into his office, closed the door securely behind them and gestured towards the visitor chair, then sat down in his own. “Now, what is the matter?”
“I heard a voice. Before we found Mrs. Norris. Hermione and Ron couldn’t hear it.” Harry looked at him, green eyes wide with fear. “You said I could trust you.”
Severus steepled his hands. “You can. What makes you believe your sanity might be in danger?”
“Hearing voices. You know. Ron says that isn’t normal in the magical world, either.”
“Normal? No. Insane? We will see. What did the voice say?”
“That it wanted to kill. It sounded really impatient.”
“Ah.” While that didn’t rule out the possibility of Harry hallucinating the voice, it did make it less likely – after all, people who imagined voices usually had those voices tell them what to do. “So, it did not tell you to do anything?”
“Uh ... no, sir?”
“Can you quote what it said, exactly?”
“Not sure ... I think it was ‘Let me kill’ or ‘Rip, tear, kill’, something like that.”
“And you say your friends could not hear it?”
“Not at all. They believe me that I heard it, though.”
“It also led you directly to the scene of a crime. It is rather unlikely that you imagined it. I do not think your sanity is in any danger.”
“Oh.” Harry looked at him, not quite grateful, more suspicious, as if expecting Severus to punish him for such a needless disturbance.
In fact, it was not at all needless – Severus was quite sure that Harry was in danger, even if it was not immediate danger. “There are a number of magical beasts capable of human speech, but the fact that your friends could not hear the voice seems to hint at a snake.”
“But I didn’t see any snakes!”
“Invisibility is no proof of nonexistence, as you should well know. I will look into the matter.” Severus stood. “And you will now follow me to your common room. If anyone asks, I caught you out after curfew. Understood?”
“Uh. Yes, sir”, Harry replied, and then, very quietly: “Thank you.”
Severus wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.
**
It was strange, Harry thought as he climbed back through the portrait hole. He usually wouldn’t even have considered telling an adult about that kind of thing, but now he had, and, even stranger, Snape had actually been helpful.
A snake. Harry had not thought of it, but it did make a lot of sense. It would explain why Hermione and Ron had not heard the voice – they would simply not have recognized it as voice.
Why had Snape helped him?
Sure, he wanted to keep Harry alive. That was nothing special. Even Aunt Petunia (he wasn’t so sure about Vernon) had wanted to keep him alive.
Caring about Harry’s sanity, or lack thereof, was different. Snape didn’t have to. Especially now that Harry was at Hogwarts and wouldn’t ruin Snape’s holidays by running away again.
Was there some secret reason? Some additional reason to owing a debt to Harry’s father, or to owing a debt to Dumbledore?
Hermione would probably say that Snape was a teacher and it was his job, but she must have gone to different schools. In the muggle school Harry had gone to, no teacher had seemed to particularly care how he felt. They’d occasionally keep Dudley from beating him up, and they had gotten the Dursleys to get him glasses, but that had been it, pretty much.
Harry was a bit surprised that he didn’t feel more worried. With the Dursleys, if Vernon was seemingly nice, it tended to turn out later that he had found a good opportunity to make Harry miserable. Platform nine and three quarters and Vernon’s glee about Harry not knowing where to go was only one example.
So he really should be more interested in finding out why Snape did what he did.
But somehow, Harry couldn’t find it in him to worry about it too much. Perhaps because Snape wasn’t happy. Just slightly less grumpy. And then, of course, sending Snape an owl about the platform problem had turned out pretty well for Harry.
He didn’t tell Hermione and Ron about his talk with Snape, and just muttered something about needing some time alone when Ron sleepily asked him why he had left the dormitory.
When they discussed the chamber of secrets and Slytherin’s monster later on, he did mention it might be a snake, and decided to find out if Malfoy could speak to snakes.
**
Chapter 11