Potions and Snitches
Snape and Harry Gen Fanfiction Archive

Chapter 23
Draco couldn’t help but groan as he listened to the rumors and gossip already beginning to spread around Slytherin house after Elias, and Professors Snape and Lupin’s abrupt departure during Professor Umbridge’s speech. Elias had seemed ok for the majority of dinner, though he didn’t seem up for conversation with anyone. Even his shakes seemed relatively under control, though Draco had seen him stretching his legs repeatedly under the table which caused them to spasm momentarily. Elias had only looked tired, but not ill and certainly not like he had when he had relapsed during the summer. He wanted so badly to ask Professor Snape as soon as he saw him walk in for his beginning of the year announcements to the house, but when the Professor was several minutes later than usual, he decided against it.

“Good evening, Slytherins,” he began, voice calming and low. “I apologize for my tardiness as I am sure you would all like to be going to bed at this late hour, though a few housekeeping announcements are in order. Welcome back to another year at Hogwarts. For those of you who do not know, I am Professor Severus Snape…”

Severus’s voice droned on for a few short minutes, covering the basic rules which would allow his Slytherins to have the greatest success in their future endeavors as Hogwarts students. Draco could tell, however, that something was on the man’s mind as he spoke as he was simply rattling off the same information as the previous year with nothing additional added. He also seemed to be trying to get through it as quickly as possible.

“...As you may have noticed, Professor Lupin has returned to the school this year,” Severus said, directing this statement towards the third years and over. “He is not here as a professor for the general student body, I want to make that perfectly clear before any of you write to your parents about a werewolf on staff again. Precautions are being taken to ensure he will not be on Hogwarts grounds during the full moon.”

“Why is he even here if he isn’t teaching?” griped Theodore Nott loudly as other students began murmuring amongst themselves as well.

“Which brings me to my final announcement,” Severus said, quickly bringing the room back under his control. “I am certain all of you noticed the young man sitting between myself and Professor Lupin. That was my son, Elias.”

Severus waited a few seconds as the information sunk in with the students, many of whom could only be described as shocked. Widened eyes could be seen around the room, as well as a few dropped jaws. It wasn’t surprising that the students were shocked by this announcement; Professor Snape was a fantastic head of house and kept everyone in line, but the idea that he was a father had never come to anyone’s mind. He maintained an air of privacy to every aspect of his personal life that none of the other professors matched.

“Elias is fifteen and would be considered either a fifth or sixth year had he been able to attend Hogwarts with the rest of you. Unfortunately, due to a variety of factors, namely his health, he is not able to attend a standard wizarding school. Professor Lupin is under both my and Hogwarts’ employ as his personal tutor. I implore all of you to be patient at the very least with Elias; I am not asking you to be his friend, only to consider him as a housemate. All the rules which apply to Slytherin house will also apply to him, though he has not been sorted here.”

Looking around sternly, he was happily surprised at the number of students who were nodding in agreement. In making Elias an unofficial member of Slytherin, he was essentially placing his son in the safest, least ‘Harry Potter’ position imaginable. Keeping him away from Dumbledore would be even easier this way; Dumbledore tended to stay away from the dungeons and Slytherin as a house unless he needed something. He knew his house would protect its own, even if a member was unofficial.

“Welcome, again, to Slytherin house,” Severus said quietly, dismissing the students from the meeting. “Prefects, a brief word.”

The rest of the house quickly emptied into their respective dorms as the students raced to find their beds and get some well deserved sleep after their long day of travel, bellies full of the delicious foods from the feast. In less than five minutes, the common room was empty, though the occasional student wandered through on their way to the loo as they got ready for bed.

Once the noise died down, Severus looked at the group of students left as though daring them to speak out of turn.

“I know many of you are now wondering why I left the hall early tonight. Why Professor Lupin was seemingly dragging Elias out of the hall and why he seemed ‘almost drunk’ if I overheard some of your classmates correctly,” Severus said quietly, watching as his prefects clung to his every word. He had chosen well in who he wished to have as his prefects for the year. “Elias is epileptic. He occasionally can tell when he is about to have a seizure, though many of his symptoms are masked by his primary condition. This is the reason Madam Pomfrey sent the information to be read to you all about what to do should someone have a seizure. He is doing fine now, just very confused and exhausted though this is normal following a seizure. There are many types of seizure and everyone’s reaction to them is fairly personal.

“As you go about your prefect duties, do be aware that he is required to follow all of the same rules as the students. You will not be able to take away points from him, for obvious reasons, however you may contact me directly should he do something out of line and I will deal with his punishment personally. Questions?”

Pansy Parkinson immediately raised her hand. “You said ‘his primary condition,’ may I ask what that is and if there is anything else we should be on the lookout for?”

Severus nodded before answering her question solemnly. “He has a condition which I do not expect you to remember the full name of, though the shortened name is Shervil’s. It causes him to have problems with his memory, muscle coordination, and speech as well as causing his seizures, migraines, headaches, and general twitches. All of these are the reason he is unable to attend Hogwarts. If you see him looking rather lost, he very well may have lost his way and simply cannot remember where he was headed. Do not expect him to fully remember verbal instructions; either write them out or escort him to his destination. He should not be wandering the castle alone, though I would not put it past him to attempt sneaking around.”

Several of the prefects snorted at the thought of Snape’s son attempting to sneak around, as they themselves had done the same thing and had faced his wrath afterwards for ‘acting like a Gryffindor’ and assuming the rules didn’t apply to them.

“Any further questions?” asked Severus, opening the floor to questions once more.

“Will he always sit at the head table?” Draco asked, hoping his friend hadn’t forgotten him in the week they’d been apart.

“No, he hopes to sit at the house tables and get to know you all better,” Severus said with a sigh. “He has to come to me first for his potions, however, or that will be a privilege which will quickly be revoked. Other questions?”

The rest of the prefects looked at each other before shaking their heads. They had more questions, of course, but they were also exhausted and knew they needed to be up early to begin their duties for the year. More questions would have to wait; their beds were calling them too strongly to be ignored.

“Then I bid you all a good night,” Severus said before turning to leave. None of the alarm wards had gone off, but he was still rather anxious to check on Elias as well as work some muscle relaxer cream into the overwrought muscles of his neck and back to hopefully allow him to rest better and be more functional in the morning.

“Sir,” Draco called, hurrying after the man. “Is he ok?”

Severus stopped momentarily and looked down at Draco before nodding. “It was a seizure, not a relapse. He should be fine in the morning.”

“Thank you, sir,” Draco said, letting out a sigh of relief. “Will he be at breakfast?”

“That remains to be seen,” Severus said with a sigh. “If he does decide to eat in the Great Hall, he may want to sit at the head table just to see how the other students react to him once more before trying to eat with them.”

“Alright, thank you sir,” Draco said before heading to his dorm.

Severus sighed as he left the Slytherin dorms. They had made it to the first day of school, Dumbledore was keeping his distance for now, and Elias was doing ok. This school year was going to be rough, no doubt about that, but they would take it one day at a time.




The entire trek up to the Gryffindor dorms had been a rather somber one for Ron and Hermione despite the fact they were in charge of leading the first years to the common room. Nothing was quite right without Harry around. It was so strange to think that their friend had disappeared and no one knew where he had gone to.

Harry’s disappearance had been noticed by all at the feast, though Professor Dumbledore stated that he had been removed from the castle grounds for one on one training. In all likelihood, the fact that he wasn’t at Hogwarts would be all over the Daily Prophet by tomorrow with the following week being filled with theories as to where he had gone to, followed shortly thereafter by insane theories and interviews “proving” his lack of sanity.

In fact, the chance that the trash writers of the Daily Prophet writing something along the lines of him having actually gone into a mental institution were so high that Ron was surprised no one had started a betting pool on it yet.

“-happy he’s gone,” Ron heard Seamus say as he entered the dorm room. “Me mam almost didn’t let me come back because of him!”

“What happened?” asked Ron curiously as he kicked off his shoes and undid his robe, very nearly forgetting to remove his Prefect badge.

“Seamus’s mum almost didn’t let him come back because of Harry,” Dean said, trying to retrieve a house shoe from within his trunk. “I’m just glad my parents are both muggles and don’t try to follow the magical news! Doubt they’d be too keen on me coming back either if they knew of all the things that happened here.”

“The Prophet is a load of bollocks if you ask me,” Ron said, kicking open his own trunk and pulling his pajamas from the top.

“You can’t honestly believe You-Know-Who is back, do you?” asked Seamus, an incredulous look on his face. “I mean, if Harry was to be believed, Quirrell had You-Know-Who on the back of his head, Sirius Black is innocent, and there was a Basilisk in the school. How do we know any of that is true? Harry was the only witness to all of that!”

“Look, Seamus,” Ron said dangerously. “My sister saw the Basilisk as well! And would have died if it hadn’t been for Harry! Do you honestly believe that he killed Cedric?”

Seamus shrugged before climbing into bed and pulling the heavy hangings around his bed. “It’s possible.”

Ron stared at his dorm-mate’s bed in disbelief before shaking his head and quickly changing clothing, trying to ignore the empty bed which sat next to his. It was unnerving to not see Harry’s trunk at the foot of his bed, or see his ratty trainers lined up next to it, or see him pulling on the perpetually oversized clothing he came from home with. What had happened to him?

Ron had his doubts that Voldemort had anything to do with Harry’s disappearance. If the Order’s spy was to be believed, he was as much in the dark about Harry’s location as the rest of the wizarding world. So where could he have gone?

A sinking feeling began in Ron’s stomach as he thought of Harry’s summers and how horrible they had always gone. The year they had rescued him from his bedroom and had needed to pull the bars off of his window flashed before his mind. The bedroom door had had so many locks on it and a cat flap that Harry swore was for food to be passed through. His uncle had always been a threatening man, had he done something? He had starved Harry before, who’s to say he hadn’t done it again? Had they actually managed to starve him to death?

Why hadn’t they told anyone?

“Hey Ron, any idea who that boy was who was at the head table?” Dean asked, pulling Ron from his increasingly morbid thoughts.

“What? Oh, him,” Ron sneered. “That’s Snape’s kid. Hermione met him when she was volunteering over the summer. Said he asked her about her blood status, then blasted her across the room.”

“What?!” Dean said, shocked. “He didn’t look that bad. I mean Snape is always sneering at our table. He just looked nervous. Did you see Professor Lupin basically drag him from the hall?”

“Yeah, wonder what that was about,” Ron muttered as he crawled into bed.

There was a moment of silence as the boy’s finished getting their things in order and climbing into bed before a slight sniff was heard from over by the window where Neville was carefully rearranging an odd cactus he had gotten over the summer. He had been oddly quiet all night, not even mentioning once that his new plant also happened to be the password to get into the house.

“You alright over there, Nev?” Ron called, looking in concern at the rather timid boy.

Neville sighed and wiped his eyes quickly before turning back to his bed and climbing in. “Yeah, I just … saw something I wasn’t expecting tonight.”

Ron frowned as Neville picked slightly at the hem of his bedspread before huffing slightly and looking up towards the ceiling for a moment as though making up his mind on something.

“I think Snape’s kid might have been tortured,” he said quietly.

Ron’s eyes went wide at the accusation. How would Snape’s son have been exposed to torture? And if that was the case, how would Neville know what to look for? It wasn’t like Neville had ever been tortured himself outside of the stories of his Uncle Augie trying to scare the magic into him. Even that wasn’t torture in the same sense though. Judging by the expression on Neville’s face, it was a fresh trauma in his mind, however.

“What makes you think that?” Seamus said, poking his head out of the bed hangings in curiosity having overheard what Neville said.

Neville swallowed heavily and took a deep breath. “I recognized the potions he was taking.”

“Mate, sorry, but I don’t believe you,” Dean said with a laugh. “You’re rubbish at potions.”

“My parents take a lot of the same potions I saw him taking,” Neville continued, a slight blush gracing his cheeks. “I didn’t recognize all of the one’s Snape’s kid was taking, but I did recognize some of them. They’re very specific to … Cruciatus damage.”

The other boys froze as they began to put two and two together. Neville had never spoken about his parents though they all were well aware of the fact he lived with his grandmother. For him to know those potions through sight alone, he must have routinely spent time around them. There was only one possible conclusion to be drawn from the situation.

“Nev, why didn’t you tell us?” Dean said softly as the other boys continued to try and wrap their heads around the idea.

Neville shrugged and laid down under the covers facing the window and his beloved little plant. He didn’t feel like a pity party, he just wanted to sleep and forget about the damn potions. He was curious why Snape’s son would have come to need those potions, but it was too painful to think about. Who would want to torture him anyways? The war was over and had been for years, until the Dark Lord returned, that is.

But those were mysteries for another time. Now it was time to try and sleep, though Neville was afraid that sleep for him may be punctuated with nightmares of dark clad women coming to kill him.




Tonks sat at her desk, feet propped on a slightly open drawer, as she sipped on a rather nice and hot cuppa. It had been a rather long day already and she knew she would be up for another few hours just sorting through the nonsense that had been the day.

The Hogwarts Express had left on time, as expected, and thankfully there had been no incidents along the route though she and five other Aurors had been tasked with monitoring the train on its route to the castle. But before the train had even left the station, she had been called to two incidents. One was a domestic disturbance and the other … well she wouldn’t be eating pork for a while, that was for certain.

While the rest of the day was rather uneventful, even the most uneventful of days generated a stack of parchment on her desk which needed to be filled out.

Thumbing through the parchment envelopes and papers on her desk to make sure she wasn’t missing anything, Tonks was rather surprised with a finger grazed against a rather smooth, yellow envelope who’s flap was bound shut with a red string. That wasn’t parchment; that was muggle paper. Why was she receiving muggle post now? Wasn’t she getting enough post from the wizarding world?

Out of curiosity, she pulled the manila envelope out of the pile and looked at it in curiosity. It was from Stonehill Primary School in Little Whinging and addressed to Kingsley. Odd, she couldn’t remember them having had any connection with a primary school, especially not a muggle one, for any of their recent cases. Little Whinging seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place it. It niggled the back of her brain for a while as she stared at the envelope before she finally had a moment of realization.

Harry Potter was from Little Whinging. This was from Harry Potter’s primary school, the muggle one he attended prior to going to Hogwarts.

Holding her breath, she turned the envelope over and carefully undid the string before removing a small ream of documents from within it. Kingsley must have reached out to them for his academic record and any documents about his time there in case there were any clues as to where the boy had gone hidden within his muggle past. A good plan, though a bit of a shot in the dark if she was honest. Every lead they had had on that case was either a dead end or tied up in the intradepartmental bureaucracy that was the British Ministries. The muggle Prime Minister and the Minister of Magic had never really established a way of having the police forces interact without breaking the statute of secrecy outside of turning the arrested party over to their proper governing body: muggle to muggle, magical to magical.

It was so strange to be holding Harry Potter’s muggle school record. She could remember the end of the first war and the celebrations which followed; to be touching something of Harry Potter’s hidden muggle life was still something she held rather reverently in her mind's eye. The chances of her living to adulthood had been slim prior to the fall of You-Know-Who as her parents were so staunchly on the side of the light and her mother was considered a “blood traitor.” Harry Potter had saved her life, albeit inadvertently.

Flipping through the papers, Tonks let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She didn’t know what she was expecting to find, but this wasn’t it. This was just grades and discipline reports. Looking through the grades, she found his grades to be startlingly below average. He seemed to start the year with good grades only for them to rapidly drop down to a level which could barely be considered passing. It was odd, because the more she looked through the reports, the more she began to see a pattern as she compared attendance records with his grades.

If his grades were good, he would suddenly be called out of school for a few days before returning. The attendance record always said he was home sick, but the more Tonks looked the more she saw this same pattern occurring. Good grades, home sick, back to school with bad grades. Reading the teachers comments on his report cards was equally disheartening.

“Harry is a lovely, quiet student who works extremely hard, however he does not seem to know his own name. States that his name is ‘boy’ as that is what his Aunt and Uncle call him.”

“Harry seems to lack motivation when placed in a class with his cousin. Is very quiet and avoids confrontation unless his cousin is pestering another student.”

“Harry is quite the trouble maker, though he always seems to place the blame on his cousin. I would recommend not having him in the same class as his cousin so we can find out who the true culprit is.”

“I am concerned for Harry’s wellbeing at home. He is perpetually tired and seems rather underweight. He seems to be purposefully trying to keep his grades lower than his cousin.”

“Harry did well for the first few weeks of the semester while his cousin was home sick then his grades dropped once again. He seems to understand the topics but refuses to turn any homework in. Do not put Harry in the same class as his cousin.”

“I can tell Harry understands the topics, but he refuses to put in any effort what-so-ever into his school work.”


Every report card was nearly the same. Harry’s a good student who doesn’t try. Harry seems afraid of his cousin. Harry doesn’t want to talk about home. It was depressing to read through, but it only made her more determined to go through the school paperwork. Something was going on under their noses and she wasn’t sure what exactly it was but she was determined to find out.

“Tonks, why are you still here?” Kingsley said from the doorway, causing her to jump and fall off her chair when her bootlace got caught on the drawer.

“Got Harry Potter’s muggle school records put on my desk,” she said, pulling herself off the ground and dusting her robes off.

Kingsley nodded before coming in and leaning against her desk as she took her seat once more. “Anything interesting about them?”

Tonks nodded sharply. “I’ve only been looking at them for about five minutes and I’m concerned already. Something about his relatives doesn’t sit right with me. Didn’t with all of his primary school teachers either.”

Handing Kingsley the report cards, she then turned to the next stack of papers in the envelope. Again, a pattern quickly emerged. Harry was blamed for something, said his cousin did it, then he got punished for it. If this was a one time occurrence, she could write it off, but it seemed like things like this would happen every year. Dudley, as she learned his cousin was named, seemed to have a penchant for causing all sorts of havoc and blaming it on Harry. Whenever he tried to set the record straight, his aunt and uncle would be called in and the blame for whatever the incident was would fall squarely on him.

This continued until one particular incident when he was nine and seemed to have apparated to the roof of the school. An impressive feat of accidental magic, but a worrisome one. Why would a nine year old feel so threatened that he had to apparate away from a situation? Double checking the attendance rosters, her heart sank into her boots. He was then home sick for nearly two weeks following this incident. Something wasn’t adding up in her mind.

“Kingsley, have you ever heard of a wizarding child being sick for two weeks with a muggle disease?” Tonks asked, looking over at her mentor who was still reading over the teachers comments.

“No, never. Why?” Kingsley said, putting down the report cards and looking over her shoulder at the papers in her hands.

“I think … I think there was something going on with his family. Something about this just doesn’t sit right with me,” Tonks said, wringing her hands. “His grades, the frequent absences, the teachers’ concerns that his cousin is causing him to struggle. It’s all adding up to something, it feels like, and not anything good.”

Kingsley sighed and gently placed the report cards back into their envelope. “Find your evidence.”

“Yes, sir,” Tonks said, putting the rest of the papers back in the envelope as well before placing the envelope in the top drawer of her desk and warding it shut. Tracking Harry Potter was a priority, even if it meant finding controversial information.

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