Chapter One, Potions Gone Awry
The day had started out normal, perhaps a bit rowdier that usual at breakfast, but normal all the sameā¦until it came time for his potion's class. Now, Harry, despite what some might think, truly did enjoy his potion's class. All the different scents and smells of various plants, bubbling brews, and odd ingredients always seemed to catch Harry in their own spell. The gentle sound of boiling liquid contrasting with the sharp repetitive chop of a knife on a cutting board, or the subtle grinding noise while he turned an ingredient into a fine powder soothed Harry's frazzled nerves greatly. Yes, Harry was a closet potion lover, yet besides a good long solo flight on his broom of a nice walk in the Forbidden Forest, Harry had very little else that could truly calm him down.
Yet, in spite of all this, Harry was at best, mediocre, barely able to brew a high-level potion without Hermione or Professor Snape looming over his shoulder. Even then, the potion itself might be weak or defective. Harry sighed softly, the sound drowned out by several students preparing their own ingredients at different phases of the new potion Snape had taught them. Before him, his cauldron: filled with an amber colored liquid, clear like a rich pot of honey, an almost sweet mouth-watering scent rising up in fresh little waves every time a bubble popped. Perhaps if it had been a different sort of potion, Harry would not have felt so disappointed with himself, but this was not a different potion. His emerald gaze drifted to his right, peering subtly at Hermione's cauldron. His heart wrenched slightly when he found hers to be the perfect shade of lavender the book and Snape had described, the center starting to spiral with a deep navy blue as it entered the next phase correctly. Tearing his eyes from the sight and fighting back his jealousy, he checked on Ron's in the same fashion only to find that while far from Hermione's, the red head at least was close to the color purple.
Harry stared at his cauldron, wondering how he could have botched his potion so badly that it looked more like a godly form of honey rather than a complex long lasting cooling potion that his friends had more or less achieved. Looking down, he found that he had used up the ingredients given, his brewing at an end with a completely different result. Harry scowled and moved to stand; reaching blindly for the vile he would have had to place a sample of his potion in any way. A pained yelp broke over the peaceful and busied sounds of potion making as Harry accidentally smacked the scalding hot cauldron. The ebony haired youth snatched his hand back reflexively, knocking his book into the cauldron hard enough to send it pitching towards his feet.
Ron and Hermione gasped and scrambled back out of shock as the heavy cauldron toppled their friend, coating him in the contents that had once filled it. Harry, expecting to be burned horribly, went limp in confusion as the golden liquid washed over him, pleasantly warm and relaxing, soothing him to the point of nearly falling asleep in the thick mixture. The cauldron had merely clipped Harry, clanging to the ground and rolling slightly as the last of failed potion pooled about the now lethargic Harry.
Severus Snape, normally vigil over his class, was busy looking over the newest commissions for his potions with a dark scowl. It was not until he heard Potter's cry of pain did he pull away from the large stack of parchments, his dark onyx eyes going wide with alarm as Harry went down, potion and all. Ignoring the immediate red flag of the foreign substance coating his student, Snape barked out an icy command for one of the other students to fetch Poppy. As he waited, Snape took a sample of the potion, tucking it away in his robes before casting a thorough cleaning charm over Harry, hoping it would at least reveal any obvious side effects of the brew the youth had created.
The last thing Harry could remember was the dark worried eyes of Severus looking him over while keeping the same sneering expression that seemed to blame him for his current predicament. Harry smiled slightly at the strange mix of expressions before going completely limp, darkness swallowing up his mind.
~Tilde Time Skip~
(Switching To More or Less Snape Oriented View)
Severus paced slowly in his room, most of his attire gone save for his black slacks and a crisp button down he normally wore beneath his all black outer shell. Severus waited for the results of a spell designed to break down a potion and give a brief description on what it did impatiently. Contrary to belief, Snape deeply cared for Harry, this out of character emotion sprouting back when Severus finally figured out that Potter wasn't like James, or Lily for that matter, but a completely unique person all his own. After that, Severus found himself watching Harry closely, trying to satiate the growing need to figure Potter out, to know what made the ebony haired youth tick so to speak. Had he been anywhere else in the world with the emerald-eyed male, Severus would have been far gentler in his quest to decode Harry. Yet, the Slytherin headmaster found himself at Hogwarts, his reputation of that of a wrathful and harsh teacher to any other house student, while strict and merely icy to his own snakes.
Now, thanks to this reputation, Harry seemed to have gotten the idea that merely asking him for help would have deducted points from Gryffindor. Severus sighed and leaned against a wall heavily, his face bearing a mask of barely contained weariness and worry over Potter. He clutched at the front of his shirt, as if trying to grasp some sort of understanding as his mind flashed back to what had happened once he used the cleaning charm.
Severus turned his attentions to the entryway, watching with an impassively icy, if not annoyed expression on his pale features. A soft gasp from Granger swung his gaze back to Potter. At first, he merely dismissed it as the bushy haired girl's shock of Harry promptly passing out, onyx eyes narrowing when he caught a soft shimmer of gold reflecting off the youth's sun kissed skin. It was an unnatural shade, as well as far too shiny to be natural on a mere mortal human. Focusing a bit closer, Snape went rigid when he found that not only had a thin layer of the potion had remained on Potter, but that it was growing rapidly, spreading and hardening swiftly.
Severus felt a cold chill run down his spine as the thought of Harry actually perishing under the strange side effect of the spell. The distraught professor tried everything he could think of to at least slow down the rate of growth the shell of living golden stone, if not get rid of it completely. Each time, the stone like material reflected the spell, enchantment, charm, or hex. Any sort of potion slid off the pristine surface like water over a perfectly smooth gem. By the time Poppy had arrived, an amber gold shell at least six inches thick was all that remained of Harry.
Severus sat down on his bed, the rich forest green silk gathering and pulling delicately in response. He rubbed his forehead that same chilling sensation rippling down his spine yet again when he remembered Albus coming to him in person to tell him that while the growth of the potion induced shell had ceased; Harry remained trapped within easily three feet of the strange golden stone. It was after that, many people tried to free the-boy-who-lived. Some even resorted to explosive measures to mar the pristine surface of the stone shell even in the slightest. None had even left so much as a smudge on the smooth polished surface.
Suddenly, a soft musical tone shattered the tense silence in Severus' quarters, a sound that signaled his spell was complete. The ebony haired male rushed to the next room, a quill made from a raven feather scratching busily at a sheet of parchment. Hopeful eyes gazed down at the neat elegant scrawl, those same eyes turning cold with anger when the spell resulted in turning up an unknown potion. Yet, the anger Severus felt was not for the spell. No, it was for himself. The spell he had used was specific to each caster. Drawing upon their own knowledge to break down and identify a potion so they could do other things. It was in his own lack of knowledge, that the spell had failed leaving Severus with yet another mystery. Snape sagged, his normally perfect and graceful posture, slumped as he curled up on the bed, his heart and mind despairing at the fate his student and secret care had succumbed to from his lack of attention.
~Tilde Jump Thing~
(Back To a More or Less Harry Oriented View)
Harry shifted, feeling cramped, but comfortable, warm and protected in what felt like a cocoon of thick blankets. He blinked sleepily, growing uncomfortably warm. At first, he thought he might have been face down in a Gryffindor blanket, nothing but a golden hue filling his sight. He inhaled deeply hoping to catch any sort of remaining scent of Snape he may have picked up in the brooding male's potions class. Yes, Harry, not only a secret potion lover; was a secret Severus Snape lover as well. Any sort of daydream of the mysterious and often frigid man cut short when the same scent of the failed potion he had made filled his senses. Gone was the alluring sweetness of before. Now it was sickly, sticky, and sweet stench that reminded Harry of that time Ron thought he could combine several candies together to make one super candy. Harry groaned in disgust and struggled to get out of the mass of blankets he that trapped him. Curling in tightly, the emerald-eyed male kicked out sharply, hoping that he would force the blankets to loosen up.
To his great surprise, his one of his legs broke through the bottom sharply, a loud crack echoing not only in his little cocoon; but also in the entire room where he slept. The shock of the sound did not still him for long, the sudden need to get out causing him to wriggle and writhe, kicking and clawing at the walls of golden blankets. Soon, one of his hands punched through, his other tearing at the hole there as he kicked almost feebly at the hole at the bottom. He cried out pitifully, the noise a strange mix between a mewling of a cat and a soft chirp of a bird. This odd sound did not faze Harry, but only increased his struggles when no one seemed to answer.
With a sudden, and rather ungraceful, thrash of his body, Harry finally broke free of those confounded blankets, floundering about to right himself in the bed. As soon as he rolled on his belly, Harry paused, even moving his head about felt awkward, as if the movement itself was new. Looking down at the bed, he froze, his emerald gaze locked on a pair of ebony hand like paws, all five semi-flexible digits tipped with a rather nasty looking claw. Harry clenched his hands nervously, his fear bubbling up further when the paws curled slightly in response, easily shredding the fabric beneath them with those smooth polished claws.
Harry whimpered and shrunk back, panicking when the paws moved back as well. Harry looked around wildly, trying to find the beast that owned the paws. Yet, to his despair, he only found other parts of the animal, but not the whole thing. Behind him was a long slender tail, covered in a thick, but soft looking fur that ended in a sort of exaggerated lion like tail tuft, a sort crest following the spine of the tail, growing just a bit longer as it went until the tail was out of sight. On either side of him were black wings, like a raven's yet absent of the blue or purple hue, fluttering madly as he struggled to find the main body of the beast. Looking back behind him as far as he could, he caught sight of a feline, or perhaps vulpine, like body covered in the same thick inky fur as the tail. The crest towards the middle of the back was only about two to three inches in length, sticking up in a tousled sort of way.
When he looked back far enough to catch sight of the start of the creature's shoulders, it hurt Harry too much to keep his neck twisted in such a tight angle. Switching to a new angle, Harry carefully ducked his head past the paws and looked at what seemed to be underneath of him. A furred belly greeted his sight, the shade more of an inky gray than black. A pair of slender hind legs grew gracefully from the lithe body, secretly hiding muscle on the thin frame. The rear paws resembled something more like a cat, the claws there retracted, but still peeking through just enough to show off the sharp claws. Looking up just a bit higher, Harry blushed when he found something, or some things, that proved the creature to be a definite male. The emerald-eyed youth sighed and grumbled softly, the thing that was somehow above, below, and on either side of him growling loud enough to drown his own noises out. Harry suddenly paused, as though watching someone spelling puzzle pieces to fall seamlessly into place.
