Title: Little Moments in Time
Rating: PG I don't even think there is even any cursing in it
Characters: Snape and Harry
Warnings: Absolutely none
Summary: Snape and Harry have some encounters that mold their future relations.
Word Count: 1,943
Harry Potter is a normal boy. He enjoys sweets, he finds Zonko's exciting, he procrastinates on his homework, is a slob, and is very outspoken. He also loves dark moonlit corridors and Quidditch, silent time and exploding snap.
He is well aware that a war is going on. He is also well aware that light wizards such as Ron have reasons to hate Dark wizards like Malfoy. They have old family grudges dating back centuries. Harry has also quietly realized that he cannot be this way. He knows that he has to learn to be open minded.
How did he learn this, you ask?
A simple conversation with a certain Potions Master named Severus Snape.
Before that moment he had not realized that Snape had a sense of humor. He had not realized that while he could be rude, the man was in fact, quite witty.
He now wonders not how much of Snape is an act, but how much he just lets people think the wrong things of him.
It's as though he and Snape share a secret.
Harry does not seek him out. He does not look up at him in the Great Hall, nor does he smile at him in familiarity. He does not get angry at Snape when provoked, but uses those moments to sharpen his own wit and practice double entendres.
"Potter! Watch that knife!" Snape growls after Harry slips and slices his own finger."One would think you mistook your own fingers for slugs!"
Harry resists the temptation to lick the blood off the wound. Instead he ties Hermione's kerchief around his finger and tries not to hiss as the slug slime enters the cut, stinging the injury.
"As slow as my poor fingers react, they might as well be." Harry retorts sharply.
A glint can be seen in Snape's eyes only by those who look for it. He appreciates Harry's humor.
"10 Points from Griffindor for talking back to a teacher and general stupidity in the classroom."
"It's a wonder I don't get points off for that more often," Harry notes, stepping away from his cauldron. "May I go see Madam Pomphrey, Sir?"
Snape appears to be grinding his teeth, but Harry can see crows feet of humor at the corner of his eyes. "Be gone, Potter."
Harry leaves in good humor, hoping to cut is easy to mend so that he's not late to his next class.
Occasionally Harry meets Snape (by "accident") in the corridors at unknown hours. Often they say nothing to each other.
The night after Harry's slip up in Potions is an exception.
Harry stands by a moonlit window in an abandoned corridor and waits.
"Hello, Snape." He greets.
"Potter. "
Snape does not approach Harry or the window, but speaks from the shadows.
"You are becoming foolish," He chastises.
"I am sorry for cutting myself in class Sir, the slime makes it--"
"Not that!" he interrupts, true ire in his voice. "You are letting your righteous Griffyndor anger slip away. You are becoming obvious. " Harry is afraid that his disdain is so viscous that it will drip from Snape's words and burn holes in the stones.
"Do you wish me to forget?" Harry murmurs. "Do you wish me to close my eyes and blunder around like a true fool once again?"
"You will get no concessions from me, Potter. Figure it out yourself."
Harry has taken to shouting at Snape. Just to please his own twisted humor. If subtlety bothers Snape, he tells himself, he shall adopt the opposite.
"Once again, Potter, an abysmal potion." He vanishes the lumpy purple goo. "Zero points."
"You try it with a great bat flapping around behind you!" To Harry's delight a bit of his spittle hits said bat's face.
Snape's hand twitches for his wand, but his lips twist wryly as well.
I hope he realizes that he asked for it. Harry thinks to himself.
It takes five days for Snape to approach a very smug boy hero.
"It would help if you wiped that smile off your face whilst you vent, Potter. It's best if you act as though you don't hold a secret about the two of us. Because you don't."
All of Harry's daydreams about Snape advising him to cease and desist and revert to his last tactic, or even a new one, pop in a spectacular manner.
Their next match is not a game for Harry. He is truly angry and unleashes it's ferocity in the classroom after class.
Shock is plain on the Potion Masters face as he tries to reign the problem in. Desperately he wandlessly closes the door.
Harry snaps.
"I've no wish to be in a room alone with you, Snape!" Then he blasts the heavy door open with his agitated magic.
Wandlessly and wordlessly.
Snape searches deep through the nights, but does not come across Harry for two weeks. The boy only quietly simmers in class, but he takes a chance.
"Detention, Potter. Tomorrow night. With me."
"I did nothing!" Harry snarls.
Snape raises an eyebrow and Harry subsides.
He does not show up to detention.
He does, on the other hand, begin sharpening his wit on others, and Snape finds out when Draco Malfoy shows up in his office one evening.
"Potter has become a true challenge," The future scion remarks. "This is the man I would follow."
To his consternation, the rest of the Slytherins begin to agree with the blond ferret.
Professor Snape paces Dumbledore's office, robes whipping about. "Potter is starting a bloody revolution!"
"Isn't that a good thing, Severus?" The old man comments mildly.
"But…but…" Snape splutters to a halt, long fingers twisting in his hair.
"He believed he had found a mentor, and you refused to cooperate. So he looked elsewhere for whetstones to sharpen himself on. It is only to our benefit that this impresses people."
Snape sinks bonelessly into a chair.
"Mentor?" He remarks weakly.
"Harry has been to visit. Very wise of him to do so before you. I should think that he planned that."
Snape's head falls into his hands. "What terrible things has he said of me?"
"He was very impressed with your façade, Severus. Understand that he has become quite enamored with your 'hidden in plain sight' personality. This stripped away all of his prejudices in one blow and left only you in his sights."
Snape peers through his fingers at the twinkling Headmaster.
"He realized in one fell swoop that he could not lead the Wizarding World if he was a bigoted and angry boy, and strove to become a man."
"I thought he was playing a game…"
"Never a game, Severus. You insulted him deeply and by ostracizing him forced his hand. You might've been at his right-hand, but now he stands alone."
Occasionally Severus wondered at what he had lost, but had no difficulties watching from the shadows as a leader was born. He did try engaging Harry in witty repartee, but the boy gained great skill in disengaging before the battle had even begun
to the absolute delight of his classmates.
Over Christmas very few students stayed in the castle. The Slytherin's had no fear of being discovered and returned boldly home. They were good at keeping secrets. Others had no reason to fear their association with Potter.
Snape suspected that Harry's removal of his personal blindfold might inspire even Lucius Malfoy to sit on the fence in regards to the war.
The Potions Master would not be greatly surprised if he was correct.
The Weasley boy would never change his beliefs, though. But could be persuaded to turn a blind eye for Harry. Grumbling, he retreated home for the Hols to strategize how the war might go with such unexpected allies.
Granger hated Malfoy for personal reasons, not familial, and would likely change her mind eventually. She went to the Weasley's for Christmas.
Harry Potter stayed.
The only other children in the castle are a 2nd year Hufflepuff muggleborn orphan, his best friend, a 3rd year Ravenclaw whose nose is so firmly entrenched in a book that he likely does not realize that term is over, and Blaise Zabini….Who knows why on the last.
Normally over the Holidays Severus Snape retreats to his quarters and does leisure time activities. This season the wine sours in his mouth, the books do not hold his attention, his research papers lay unwritten, and his cauldron sits cold.
This does not sit well with Snape, and although it's the holidays he begins to "patrol" the corridors.
The second night of winter break he comes across Potter standing at a moonlit window with the distinct feeling that he was allowed to find the boy.
"Good evening, Professor." Harry murmurs.
"Good evening, Mr. Potter." Not Harry, never Harry for him.
"Do you still believe I am foolish, Professor?"
"No," He replies curtly.
"Good."
The air relaxes noticeably and Snape realizes that the tension was Potter's wild magic.
"May we spar again?" Harry queries.
"Yes."
At the Christmas feast Harry and Snape commence a dry and witty debate on Voldemort's long since abandoned pure ideals. And at the dinner table, no less.
Dumbledore twinkles, McGonagall hides a smile behind her hand, the Ravenclaw is quite engrossed in his book The History of Goblins, and the Hufflepuffs stare in horror.
Snape nearly laughs outright when Harry brandishes his fork so wildly that a chunk of potato gets lodged in Dumbledore's beard.
His siding with Potter goes much more quietly than he would have imagined, had he have allowed himself to imagine such a thing. Not a single child nor teacher even mentions the idea.
Voldemort himself never mentions it, which makes Snape realize that he is a very well kept secret.
Potter grows in leaps and bounds. He has a loyal strategist, a voracious researcher with Ravenclaw cronies, sharply intelligent Slytherins, and amazingly tricky Hufflepuffs.
He has the entirety of Hogwarts.
So when Voldemort attacks the castle and Snape has to go to his side, Harry has every entity in the castle at his back. Snape doesn't allow memories to plague him as he wriggles through the tunnel to the shrieking shack to meet his "Master". He has too much integrity, and needs to keep himself alive.
For Harry.
Snape bows to Voldemort, the back of his neck prickling warily, and tenses when he hears Nagini's hiss.
"Severussssss…Nagini says that you reek of Potter's magic."
Then he's lying on the dirty wood floor, his life blood pouring from his neck, as Voldemort takes his snake and leaves.
"Snape," Harry's frightened green eyes hover above him. "Hold on, you'll be all right." The the boy is fumbling in Snape's robes and shoving a stone down the Professor's throat. "Hold on, Snape."
Harry defeats Voldemort. Snape lays in St. Mungo's for 3 weeks, exactly the length of time Harry Potter, The-Man-Who-Won, is drug from celebration to celebration for awards and speeches. Snape gets no visits from Harry, and only receives a scrap of parchment that says "Wait" with a lightning bolt at the bottom.
The night after Snape returns to Hogwart's and his room, a knock echoes on his door.
Nervously Harry shifts from foot to foot in the corridor, his dress robes hanging on him as though he hasn't changed out of them, in these long weeks, once.
Snape stands aside and they seat themselves, carefully, in opposing chairs next to the fire with a glass of wine at each of their elbows.
"So what did you think of Usu's disposition on defense spells?" Harry begins.
Snape smiles slowly and viciously. "Tripe, utter tripe."
END