“So now, I’m wondering if maybe Minerva was right,” Severus concluded. He had told her the entire sordid tale, starting with his real identity and a brief overview of his life so far, and ending with a near blow-by-blow of the past couple days.

Amanda had listened in silence the entire time he’d been speaking, nodding occasionally, but otherwise keeping her peace, and Severus had truly appreciated that. It had let him get everything off his chest without losing his train of thought.

Once he was done speaking, she let the silence hang in the air for a moment. Then she said, “Are you fucking serious? I genuinely cannot tell the difference between the Potters based on what you’ve told me. You didn’t even tell me their first names, let alone a single feature that could be used to distinguish the two of them. And you had several people you seem to trust tell you that you’re wrong and even what to do to fix it, but you still have done nothing!”

Severus was momentarily taken aback by how vehement she was. He chose to ignore the part about ignoring other people and instead said, “Wait, did I really not mention their names?”

He was used to people just knowing who the Potters were, but that seemed like an important piece of information to overlook even then.

“No,” Amanda said acidly, “you didn’t.”

Severus took a deep breath. The fact that even with all the talking about the Potters that he’d done, Amanda still hadn’t been able to distinguish between them. It felt like as clear a sign as any that he needed to comb through his memories and figure out what the hell was going on.

“I am going to enter a meditative trance so I can sort through my memories,” he informed Amanda.

She said, “Good for you, it takes a real smart guy to listen to the advice everyone in his life is giving him.”

Severus was focused on finding a position comfortable enough to not jolt him out of his trance, but he paused long enough to throw a flat look at Amanda.

After a couple more moments of settling in, Severus was forced to admit that he was as comfortable as he was going to get.

He reluctantly closed his eyes and focused his attention inward. Before he descended further, he checked on the status of his shields. He was quickly able to ascertain that they were in the same condition that he’d last left them. After being discovered as a spy, his shields had required practically no maintenance since the Dark Lord no longer had the opportunity to destroy them just because he could.

Reassured that his shields were still secure, Severus hesitantly moved his focus further inward, to the part of his mind protected by the shields. A potions lab materialized around him, and despite his apprehension about the task he was here to do, he breathed a sigh of relief as he was enveloped by the calming atmosphere.

He allowed himself a few more moments to simply enjoy the ambience.

Then he reluctantly called up a memory of Potter, his senses alert so as to track it to its source. He had narrowed the location to the left side of his lab before he had to quickly release the memory. He had no desire to be enveloped in it, wary of it being a memory from his school days.

He repeated the process of calling, tracking, and releasing a memory several more times until he found himself swinging open a door that led into a dark, cramped supply closet. As he groped around for a light switch, he was irritated by the inconvenience of the closet. The closet was tiny, but the door opened into the closet, reducing the already small amount of space available even further. And he still couldn’t find a goddamned light switch.

He took a deep breath to calm down. This was his mind, Severus reminded himself, which meant it was subject to his needs. He concentrated on his current need for there to be a light in this specific closet. It didn’t occur instantly, to his aggravation, but he was pleased a moment later when one came into existence in the closet, illuminating the contents.

Severus reluctantly stepped into the closet. It was so small and cramped that he had to close the door in order to properly survey the area, but he had to carefully maneuver his way into the closet to be able to close the door behind him.

Once he managed it, he pressed his back to the door, and called up a Potter memory once more.

He groaned when it slipped out from on top of the bottom shelf, then released the memory and watched with sharp annoyance as it slipped back beneath another shelf.

Nothing about this endeavor was going to be easy, was it.

He reluctantly got to his knees and grunted in pain. His physical body might have been sixteen, but apparently his inner manifestation was still very much a grown adult with the concomitant aches and pains.

Finally, Severus was able to see the shelf that held his memories of the Potters. It was sparsely populated by potions bottles, each clearly labeled with a name and sealed tight.

He shifted several out of the way as he looked for the ones labelled with the appropriate names, grimacing as he read “Sirius Black” then, “Peter Pettigrew”, and “Sybill Trelawney”.

As he moved that last one out of the way, he was finally able to see two bottles that were placed so close together they were touching. He knew instinctively that these were what he was looking for.

He placed his hand behind them, slid them forwards into the light, and then was finally able to see that Minerva had been absolutely right all along.

For the two bottles were lacking the clear labels that had been so prominent on all the other bottles.

And, Severus realized as he glanced at the other bottles, they were the only bottles that looked anything like each other. All the other bottles were uniquely shaped, colored, and even sized, but the two bottles he was now staring at were identical in every way that Severus could discern.

Even the labels, which Severus was finally able to see once he rotated the bottles, were identical; they were faded to yellow and bearing only one name: Potter.

He grabbed one of them, just to make sure there were no differences, when he finally saw what he’d missed. Both bottles were identical, right down to the jagged hole in the back where dirty-looking sand was slowly spilling onto the shelf and mingling together.

Severus set the bottle back down next to its twin and settled back onto his haunches. This was bad.

His memory organization system clearly did not distinguish between the Potters. He wondered how it had gotten so bad, but quickly terminated that train of thought. He needed to rectify the situation before he speculated over how it had happened.

He could tell that sorting through the memories would not be as simple as relabelling the bottles, and he was still for a moment as he considered how he ought to go about that.

Severus sighed and called a basin into existence in his hands. Then he set both Potter bottles into the basin and swept the grains of sand that had spilled onto the shelf into the basin with them. He climbed to his feet with a groan as his knees and hips protested the rough treatment he’d subjected them to.

When Albus had forced him into this farce, he hadn’t thought that there would be benefits to the situation, but being reminded of the pain of having an adult body was forcing him to reconsider that stance.

He staggered into the main lab on slightly-numb legs, then set the basin onto a lab bench and looked down at it. He pulled out one of the bottles and uncorked it, pouring the memories into the basin. He set the bottle aside and repeated the process with the other one.

As soon as the last grain connected with the rest of the sand, the memories became a swirling liquid, thick and shiny as mercury. Severus flinched back in shock. The basin full of memories on the lab bench was startling reminiscent of Dumbledore’s pensieve. The last time he’d seen it, it had been on his desk during the disastrous Occlumency lessons with Potter the year before.

No sooner had he made the association, a clump of liquid had risen from the surface of the liquid. Severus quickly focused on conjuring a new bottle clearly labeled with “Harry Potter” to hold the memory.

As he brought the bottle into contact with the liquid, it was pulled in, as if the bottle was a vacuum. Severus peered into the bottle curiously and saw that it had returned to sand. He set the bottle down on the counter, then turned back to the basin full of liquid. It had not been noticeably depleted by the removal of the memory and that was how Severus knew that this was going to take a while.

He stuck a single index finger into the shimmering liquid and withdrew it. He set the glob of liquid that came out along with his finger into his palm, and brought it closer to his eyes to examine it.

There was a brief sensation of falling. Severus yanked his face away from his palm. The falling sensation stopped and Severus felt like he had been hit with the force of a train. He now knew that the memory he still held in his palm was from his very first meeting with James Potter.

It was a bit shocking to experience the memory in a single moment, only from a detached viewpoint. Severus realized that that was the point of a pensieve. To give a fresh perspective on old memories. This only confirmed that the basin now sitting on his lab bench was more than superficially reminiscent of a pensieve, because now he could think of his first meeting with James without the usual blind rage that he’d attached to it over the years.

Thankfully, unlike a pensieve, this method of memory reviewal did not require him to sit through and experience the memories in their entirety, because it would have taken years to sort through them all, even with the altered flow of time within his own mind.

Severus quickly conjured a bottle labelled “James Potter”, and set the opening next to the memory in his palm. It obligingly slid into the bottle, and Severus set the bottle next to the other one.

He set his teeth, stuck his finger into the basin again, and pulled out another memory.

This one was the moment James had saved him from Lupin. At that time, he and James’s enmity had been at its peak, and James could easily have allowed Black to carry on with his plan. But now Severus could remember that, in the aftermath of the rescue, James had expressed genuine concern for Severus’s safety. He’d almost immediately abandoned him to look after Lupin, but the concern for someone he had purported to hate had been there.

Severus had little desire to linger on this revelation, so he quickly stuffed the memory into the correct bottle.

And so the process of separating his perceptions and memories of the Potters went, with Severus pulling out most of the memories manually, but occasionally thinking of something that caused a memory to rise from the basin as if summoned.

As he neared the end of the memories, Severus was forced to admit that not only were James Potter and Harry Potter very different people, but he also hadn’t had an accurate view of either of them until now.

James Potter was loud and brash and dynamic. He had been a boisterous child with a cruel streak that Severus had borne the brunt of during their school days. He also had a rigid sense of loyalty that bound him to those he loved, and an infectious ability to have fun. As an adult he had mellowed out, and had more or less gotten his cruel streak under control by bending it towards improving his skill at duelling and helping with the war effort. And he had truly loved his wife and child, enough to knowingly and willingly give his life for them.

James Potter was not the two-dimensional bully that Severus had believed him to be for so long. And while he had certainly bullied Severus during their time at Hogwarts, that had not remained his defining characteristic. He had, however, remained a consummate attention-seeker all his life, shamelessly performing for the crowds on and off the Quidditch pitch.

James Potter was his contemporary and his rival and a complex human.

Harry Potter was quiet and insecure and brave. He had been a hopeful child, wide-eyed and curious. He also had a brash, sarcastic streak and a reckless disregard for his own safety. He was still a child, but lately he had become withdrawn, and his self-worth had plummeted. He was immensely loyal to those that earned his trust, and he was patient while he taught.

Harry Potter was not the two-dimensional brat that Severus had believed him to be for so long. Severus could now acknowledge that he’d had practically no basis to justify this judgement. Harry enjoyed flying for fun and went out of his way to avoid attracting attention. He was distressed by his fame and clung to his true friends.

Harry Potter was his student and his charge and a complex human.

And on the heels of his revelation that Harry and James were distinct individuals came a veritable flood of guilt as he realized how terribly he had treated Harry.

Severus had taken on the role of tormentor that he had been denied during his own school years. He had been so bitter and angry at a deceased man that he had leveraged his position of power to get revenge on that dead man’s child.

Severus rubbed his hand over his face and grit his teeth. He had just found clarity, and it had been so hard to obtain that he decided not to squander it by lying to himself.

In the name of honesty, Severus had to admit that he had not played the role of James, the childhood bully, in his interactions with Harry. Severus and James had both been eleven year old boys when they met, and while James would have usually had Sirius Black to back him up, there was no intrinsic power imbalance. Their interactions, at their core, were of children bickering.

But Severus was Harry’s professor. They were inherently on uneven footing, even setting aside their age differences, and Severus held significant power over Harry.

The truth of the matter was that Severus was the Tobias Snape in this situation. Because there was an inherent power imbalance in all their interactions- Harry was not free to fight back against Severus in any meaningful way.

That’s not to say that Harry had never tried to fight back. But when he did, Severus had invariably retaliated with detention or points taken. There had been simply no way for Harry to win.

Tobias had taken advantage of Severus’s powerlessness to vent his frustrations and express his displeasure, taking great pleasure in the harm he caused to Severus. And Severus had done the exact same thing to Harry, telling himself that Harry was the spoiled bully that James had been.

But now, with the clarity sorting through his memories had given him, Severus could see that even if Harry had been James reincarnate, which he was not, he still would not deserve to be treated the way Severus had treated him.

And if Harry didn’t deserve to be treated poorly on account of his parentage, then Gryffindors as a whole didn’t deserve to be treated poorly simply because they were in the same house that James had been all those years ago.

With this realization, Severus felt a bubble of regret build up in his gut. The other day he had bemoaned the lack of potions masters, but now he could see that it was his own fault that there were so few. In sorting through his memories, he had seen potions class after potions class where the atmosphere was so thick and uncomfortable that it was a miracle anyone learned anything at all.

Potions was a dangerous subject, and Severus had made it even more so by refusing to discipline students for clear safety violations. The fact that his godson, Draco, had felt like it was reasonable to just toss ingredients into Potter’s cauldron, was proof of Severus’s utter failure in classroom management.

Because while Draco was talented at potions, he was not talented enough to account for all the possible ingredient interactions required to pull a prank like that safely. And Severus knew that Draco had only felt particularly safe targeting Harry because Severus had made his opinions of Harry abundantly clear.

And Severus had treated Harry’s friends especially badly, even considering how he’d treated Gryffindors in general. He had looked at them and seen Lupin in both Weasley’s poverty and Granger’s ostracism for her blood status. All because they were “Potter’s” friend.

It all came back to Severus’s issues with James, didn’t it?

Because his issues with James had lead him to mistreating Gryffindors, to creating a tense and dangerous classroom environment, and, most of all, to victimizing and denigrating a child in his charge.

At least Severus had had this chance to see what he had done and now had an opportunity to right some of the wrongs.

Severus realized that he was staring blankly at the nearly empty basin. There was just one memory remaining, and Severus reached out to touch it, ready to have this whole process be over with.

He flushed with shame as he realized what the memory was. He had been taken back to Harry’s first Occlumency lesson, and Severus was now able to realize that he had been nearly entirely at fault for Harry’s failure with the subject.

Prior to sorting through his memories, he had genuinely believed that Harry had received the typical pureblood heir’s training in Occlumency, much like James would have. He had had some vague idea that perhaps Black had given him lessons, or perhaps a more distant Potter relative had stepped in.

So the lessons Severus had been told to give would be meant to help strengthen and refine existent shields. But he now knew that that was not the case, because Harry and James were not the same people- Harry had been raised in the muggle world and would not have had an opportunity to receive lessons.

So, in reality, Severus been violating Harry’s mind. He had assumed that if Harry had wanted to, he could have shielded his mind, thanks to the aforementioned lessons, but had simply chosen not to out of disrespect for Severus. And he had retaliated accordingly.

Except now he knew that Harry had had no opportunities for lessons, and he felt the bubble of regret that had been building in his gut finally burst. He had wronged the boy in so very many ways.

From the moment Harry had entered his classroom. Severus had bullied and harassed him, and Severus had been unable to see it. No wonder Albus, Minerva, Chen, even Amanda had all been so disappointed and frustrated with him. The size of his failures felt monumental.

He knew he could do nothing about the past, but he could do something in the present to change the future. Albus had asked him to befriend Harry, and Severus would do that- for a day or so.

Then he would go and speak to Albus about how his “mission” had gone, and then return to his proper body. He would be able to resume his position as potions professor and Chen would leave. Severus could acknowledge that she had been right to point out his shortfallings, but that didn’t mean he had to like her. And once he was back in his position as potions professor, he’d be able to move forward from his past mistakes.

Maybe once he’d established that he’d changed he could offer to properly teach Harry Occlumency, but that was further down the line. For now, he’d focus on being a good potions professor.

Severus refocused on his inner potions lab and banished the now empty basin. He scooped up the clearly labeled bottles that contained all his memories of the Potters and set Harry’s on the shelf with Minerva McGonagall’s and Albus Dumbledore’s. Then he crossed the lab to where Lily Evans’ bottle resided and set James’s down next to hers, an odd sense of finality resonating within him at the sight of the two names next to each other.

Then he had a thought, so he gently slid Lily’s bottle off the shelf. He focused for a moment on the label and it rearranged itself to his will. He set the bottle back on the shelf, next to James’s, and gave them one last look.

James Potter and Lily Evans Potter.

He closed his eyes, the image of the two bottles still visible in his mind’s eye, and took a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes again it was to the sitting room and the painting of Amanda. He blinked a few times and stretched luxuriously, both to reestablish his connection to reality and to enjoy the lack of aches or pains in this young body for one of the last times he’d get the chance to.

“Have a good time?” Amanda asked snidely.

Severus considered this for a moment. He had certainly had an educational time, but- “No, not really. It was rather like taking a potion. Good for me, but decidedly unpleasant as it happened.”

Amanda took a long sip from her glass of wine then gave it a swirl before she said, “And it sounded to me like that was a long time coming.”

He glanced away from her piercing eyes. “Yes, well, better late than never, right?” He grimaced at the way this came out. He’d meant it to be a flat statement of fact, not the childishly hopeful question it came out as.

“I suppose,” she said, in a very bored tone of voice. “I assume you’re going to run off now and I’ll be left to sit here for another decade without any contact with anyone…” Amanda trailed off with a forlorn look at her glass of wine.

Severus shifted awkwardly, not sure what to say.

“It’s fine! It’s not like I sat here and listened to you talk through your problems and then stared at you taking your little nap or anything!” she continued, shifting her gaze from her wineglass to stare sadly at Severus.

He found himself missing her piercing stare, because the forlorn look was making him feel guilty. Well, it was a nice room, maybe he could tip Harry and his friends off about it before he became himself again. Then they could do their studying here sometimes, and Amanda could stop looking at him like that.

“I’ll try and make sure you get visitors,” Severus offered awkwardly.

Amanda smiled. “Please do,” she said.

Severus stood from his seat, opened the door, and awkwardly stood in the doorway for a moment as he bid her farewell. The smile fell from her face and she mumbled a farewell. He allowed the door to close behind him and set off for the Gryffindor tower.

He wanted to spend some time with Harry before the next morning because after breakfast he intended to go speak with Albus. And now he also had to make sure that Harry knew about Amanda’s room before he became himself again.

God knew there was no way Harry would take a suggestion on something like that from Snape.

And then Severus remembered something that he’d overlooked. Severus had undergone massive changes in a very short amount of time, but Harry didn’t know that he had. Harry didn’t even know that Severus was Eli, but if Severus told him that, then Harry would hate Severus more than ever for lying to him.

He’d have to tread very carefully once he was the potion professor again, just to make sure he didn’t set Harry on edge, or, rather, more on edge than he normally was with Severus. After Crouch had impersonated Moody for an entire year, Harry would be well within his rights to be wary of a sudden change in a professor.

When Severus entered the common room, Harry was seated off to the side with his group of friends, and they were all excitedly discussing the meeting. It took Severus a moment to recall the meeting because so much had happened, for him, since then.

“Hey Eli,” Harry said, once he noticed Severus hovering beside their group.

Severus started a little; he hadn’t realized he’d gotten so close to them. “Hey everyone,” he said to the group at large. He had the thought that both Weasleys still at Hogwarts were in the crowd, and then came to the irritating conclusion that he couldn’t think of them as “Weasley” and have any idea which one he was thinking about. And the ways he had distinguished them before this evening were not conducive to his determination to turn over a new leaf.

Flicking his eyes between the two Weasleys, Severus decided that the older one would be Weasley One and the younger one would be Weasley Two. The other ones were graduated, so if he encountered them he’d figure out what to think of them as at that point.

“We were just talking about the meeting,” Granger informed him.

“Take a seat, mate,” Weasley One said with a gesture to an empty chair.

Severus moved to take a seat, and as he went, Longbottom said, “We were waiting for you to show up so we saved you a seat.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “You just kinda disappeared from the meeting?” the question was clear in his tone and Severus realized he’d neglected to plan a response.

“Once I had the charm down, I decided to head off to get some more studying done,” Severus decided to say.

“Well, you missed the truly epic game of ‘don’t let the beach ball touch the ground’ that we played at the end,” Weasley One said.

Harry blushed at this.

Severus frowned slightly and stared at Weasley One for a moment.

Granger clarified, “Harry blasted all the beach balls into the air and the goal was to keep as many balls in the air using just the shield as possible.”

“We would’ve lasted a lot longer had someone-” Weasley Two paused to shoot a dirty look at Weasley One. “-not tried to hoard four beach balls to bounce on their own.”

“Oy! I was doing just fine!” Weasley One objected.

“Until you dropped all four!” Weasley Two said.

Severus settled in for the evening. The Weasleys were showing no signs of stopping any time soon and Harry seemed to be enjoying their banter. It looked like he would have to find a way to mention Amanda’s room at breakfast the next morning instead.

He realized now that he had been foolish to expect Harry to be waiting on his own for Severus to befriend him, but this was as good a way as any to spend his last night as a teenager.

The next morning Severus woke up feeling much the same as he had every other time he’d woken up since this “mission” had begun. That is to say, he felt remarkably fresh and chipper thanks to the lack of body aches and how generally refreshed his sleep left him feeling. This morning in particular his good mood was augmented by the thought that this was the last time he’d have to wake up in Gryffindor tower surrounded by teenagers.

“Good morning,” he said cheerily to Harry as he passed him on his way to the bathroom.

“Good morning, Eli,” he heard Harry say back as he closed the door behind him.

When he was done with his morning routine, he headed down to join the others in the common room before they all headed off to breakfast together.

They were discussing how McGonagall had wandered off before the meeting had ended. Harry was worried that that meant she was unhappy with how the meeting had gone, and the others were trying to reassure him that it probably meant that she was happy with his ability to lead the group on his own. Severus actually happened to agree with the group for once.

“Yeah Harry, if she thought you were too incompetent to lead the DA she would never have left you alone with the group,” Severus said as soon as there was a lull.

“Or it meant that she was too disappointed in how badly I did to say anything last night, so she just walked away,” Harry said, anxiously twisting his hands around.

Weasley One reached out and took one of his hands and Granger took the other. “You’re being ridiculous, Harry,” Granger stated calmly.

“Anyways,” Weasley One said, “we really ought to be discussing how her disappearance fits into our McGonagall/Snape conspiracy theories.”

“Please, not this again, not this early in the morning,” Hermione said in a slightly desperate tone as she gave her and Harry’s hand a swing.

“Fine,” Weasley One grumbled.

Severus was quite grateful that that was the end of the conversation topic because he didn’t think he could manage to act normally if they had continued. Even the way they referred to the theories was cursed.

Since Harry was still staring down at his hands that were clasped tightly in his friends’ grasps. when they made it to the Gryffindor table, Severus moved around it with Longbottom to sit across from them.

“Y’know I need my hands to eat right?” Harry said, as Granger and Weasley One started loading up Harry’s plate along with their own.

“Or,” Granger said as she buttered a piece of toast with just her left hand, “you could just sit there while we feed you.”

“Yeah, they ain’t gonna let you starve, Harry,” Severus said with a grimace at the accent spell. Then he added to himself, or at least they better not let him starve. Maybe these ridiculous antics were why Harry was so abominably thin. He resolved to keep an eye on them from the head table from now on, just to be sure that Harry wasn’t wasting away because of his friends’ tomfoolery.

As he was watching, Harry looked as though he wanted to die of embarrassment while Ron spoon fed him scrambled eggs. Then he heard Minerva clear her magically amplified throat.

Severus turned around to see what she would say, and a chill of premonition ran through him when he saw that Dumbledore’s chair was eerily empty.

The students had all fallen silent, even though they had not been all that loud before, since it was only breakfast after all.

“I have a brief announcement before I let you all return to your breakfasts. Professor Dumbledore has asked me to let you all know that he will be unavailable for the next few weeks…”

Severus knew she was still talking, but was unable to pay attention as his world started spinning around him.

This was not how it was supposed to go.

He was supposed to be able to walk up to Dumbledore’s office after breakfast and inform him that not only was Harry mature enough to handle being told of the Horcruxes, but he was also a remarkably good person.

Or, well, he probably wouldn’t mention that last part. But the first part would be sufficient for Dumbledore to return his access to his lab so he could brew the antidote to the deaging potion.

But now Minerva’s words echoed in his head.

A few weeks.

Severus would now have to spend a few weeks as Eli Hopkirk, sixth-year Gryffindor and Harry Potter’s newest friend.