Potters Are All The Same
SUMMARY: Severus Snape's thoughts on the confrontation between Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter at the end of OotP. One shot. Rating: K+. This was originally written pre-Deathly Hallows, and I've changed one line slightly to make it line up a little better with later canon.
DISCLAIMER: Just in case there is any confusion, I do not own Harry Potter, or any other person, place, thing, or idea that JKR wrote in her books or WB put in their movies. Nope, not mine.
He stood in the shadows and watched. He'd seen how furious Draco Malfoy was at Potter for getting his father put in Azkaban and was rather looking forward to seeing the Gryffindor golden boy get what was coming to him for once. Of course he'd step in before the boy was messed up too badly - it was his job to protect the students, after all. Even the ones that didn't deserve it, he sneered to himself.
Severus Snape had been watching Draco Malfoy circumspectly since the incident at the Ministry, waiting for the inevitable confrontation. And it seemed likely that it had finally come. Potter, free of allies, had just stepped into the entrance hall at the same moment as the Malfoy boy and his two idiot bodyguards. Finally, he thought to himself, I'm going to see Potter on the wrong end of someone's wand, rather than the other way around.
As the scene played out, however, he realized that wasn't what would happen. While the Malfoy boy was twisted up in his rage, Potter was practically taunting with his nonchalance. As usual when it finally came to hexes, the Malfoy boy was a disappointment and Potter was quicker with his wand. Before the brat could curse his student, Snape barked, "Potter!" and stepped into view.
Now, as always, Potter would try to get by with giving some idiotic excuse for why he had drawn on another student, and the teachers always believed Perfect Potter. But he was a teacher and he knew better, he knew exactly what kind of person Potter really was. He certainly wasn't going to swallow some whale of an excuse.
"What are you doing, Potter?" said Snape coldly as ever, as he strode over to the four of them.
"I'm trying to decide what curse to use on Malfoy, sir," said Harry fiercely.
-quoted from HP and the OotP, p. 852, J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, 2003.
There was nothing he could do but stare at the boy. James Potter never once in his life was honest to a teacher, what was the boy playing at? For a moment only, as those furious green eyes were directed at him, Snape recalled the only duel he'd ever seen Lily Evans in during her years at Hogwarts. It had ended exactly this way. No claims the other had started it, no denials, simply an admission that she was about to curse another student.
And while Snape would certainly not publicly admit to having any care for Evans, he could at least admit to the tiniest bit of respect for her. Since Gryffindor was already in the negative it didn't much matter how many points he took off, as the boy would be having detention his first day back of the next term anyway. Rationalizing it like that, instead of the usual 50 points he took for dueling in the corridors, he decided on only ten. Maybe the boy wasn't an exact clone of his father after all.