Insolent, just like his father. Arrogant, rule-breaking, pranking, cruel, bullying—
Just like Lily, Albus had said. Kind, loyal, brave, heroic—
It couldn't be. Detention it was for the Potter boy. Green eyes flared at the unjustness of it all—but he didn't care. One small offense was enough. Breathing was enough. Existing was enough.
"But professor—" the bushy-haired little chit began.
"Silence, Granger, or it will be detention for you too."
Green eyes flared again as the boy got to his feet. "I didn't do anything and neither did Hermione!"
"Twenty points from Gryffindor, and another night's detention, Potter."
The boy crossed his arms and sat back down, still glaring at him. Disobedient, just like his father. Unruly, impertinent, impudent. Not like Lily. Never like Lily.
*HP*
"This is the boy's third detention this month," Minerva said. "Don't you think that's a bit much, Severus?"
"No. Maybe the boy should quit earning his detentions."
"By doing what? Existing?"
*HP*
The boy scrubbed the cauldrons. He didn't miss how he glared up at him, when he thought he wasn't looking. How he muttered dungeon bat under his breath. Lily never called him names, even when he had deserved it.
*HP*
"I find him a delightful child," Filius said. "Very engaging. Has a flair for charms, just like Lily."
His nostril's flared. Not just like Lily.
*HP*
Disemboweling flobberworms. He had heard James complain about such a detention once. The boy wouldn't like it either. Greasy git, he murmured. A first year, and already knowing all his names. At least no one called him Snivellous anymore. The boy would if he knew the name. Unkind, just like his father.
*HP*
He was extolling the Potter boy's lack of virtue in the staff room. Minerva glared and Filius looked utterly confused. "That's not the boy we see," Pomona joined in.
"Petty and spiteful, just like his father," he said.
"Are you sure you're not talking about yourself, Severus?" Minerva said.
*HP*
Another detention. This time he didn't even have so thin a reason as Longbottom's cauldron exploding. He gave a detention because he felt like it, thank you very much. The boy looked defeated and nodded his assent. Lily would never have accepted such treatment lying down. Not fiery like Lily, but lazy, just like his father.
*HP*
"I hear you've been assigning young Harry quite the number of detentions. Even his father hadn't had so many as a first year," Dumbledore said.
"He's just like his father, only worse. Mediocre, malicious, loathsome—"
"That's not what I hear, Severus," Dumbledore said sternly. "Quit assigning him detentions. The sins of the father are not the sins of the son."
*HP*
He watched the boy write his lines. I will behave myself, five-hundred times. The boy scribbled furiously, white knuckles clasped around the quill. The boy needed correction, lest he turn out just like his father. He didn't care what Dumbledore said. That's where the boy was heading, if someone didn't step in. He wouldn't let Lily's son be a heathen.
*HP*
He saw the boy in his muggle clothes. Worn, baggy jeans and a tent for a shirt. A sight he knew all too well. His parents hadn't cared enough to clothe him appropriately, but maybe the Potter boy thought it was stylish to look like a beggar. His hate for the boy flared—he knew those Muggles were middle-class. The boy had no business looking poor.
*HP*
"The boy's much too small for his age," Minerva said, one staff meeting.
He didn't care. No one had cared when he was a student.
"Yes," Pomona said. "And he flinched the other day when I held up an empty pan! Flinched!"
"I told you I didn't like the look of those Muggles," Minerva said to Albus.
"We have no evidence Harry is being abused or neglected, Minerva," Albus said. "His relative's home is the safest place for him."
"Yes," she said frostily, shooting a glance towards Severus. "Just like the boy is safe in a school where teachers can bully him with impunity!"
*HP*
The boy did flinch, he discovered. He hovered over the boy's workstation one day. When the boy made a mistake, as he knew he would, he vanished the potion in a sudden movement. The boy had the nerve to flinch, as if he would lower himself to strike the boy. The boy was dramatic, just like his father. And he, he was nothing like his father. He would never strike a child, no matter how contemptible the boy was. Detention it was, for the dramatics.
*HP*
"Really now, Severus," Minerva said. "The Granger girl told me you gave Potter a detention for flinching! Flinching! Is he not allowed to exist now? Did we not tell you Potter may very well have a good reason for flinching?"
"The boy merely has a taste for theatrics, just like his father."
"Listen to me," Minerva said. "That boy is nothing like his father. I knew James and Lily well—as well as you did, Severus—and the boy is much more like Lily. Look at how he rushed off to save Miss Granger from the troll! Lily would have done the same."
"She wouldn't have," he said savagely. "But his father would have, for the attention."
*HP*
The boy was scraping gum out from under the desks, gum he probably helped put there. Disgusting, just like his father. Lily never had a detention, and here the boy was in his first year, already on his sixth. He deserved more, but he had been uncertain how to react to the boy at first, so had avoided him until he understood what he was like. But now he knew he was foul, just like his father.
*HP*
"I went to the Dursley residence," Minerva said, the next staff meeting. "Do you know where they kept him? A cupboard, a cupboard under the stairs. If that's not abuse, Albus, then what is?"
Getting special treatment, just like his father. No one had ever cared to visit Spinner's End, when he was a child. No one had bothered to look. If they had they would have seen that his mother was mad and that his father was a drunk. They would have seen the filth, the empty beer bottles strewn everywhere.
"Perhaps you are right, Minerva," Albus said. "But what are our options? There's no one else to take the boy."
"What about Remus Lupin?" she said. "He was very close to the Potters."
His nostrils flared. Lupin the werewolf. The last thing the world needed was the boy being raised by a werewolf and Marauder, or he would end up just like his father.
"The Ministry would not award custody of the Boy Who Lived to a werewolf," Albus said.
Just as well. The boy was already enough like his father.
"Then I will do it, Albus! The boy needs someone to care for him, and those Muggles are plainly not up for the job."
"Very well," Albus said.
And that was that.
*HP*
"Harry is my ward now, Severus, and I will not stand for this ridiculous bullying of him!"
"I do not bully that foolish child. That was his father's domain as you recall."
"The boy is not his father!"
*HP*
The boy stayed after class one day. "I'm not my father," he said. He didn't look up, and instead scrawled a T on a Hufflepuff's essay. The boy walked away.
*HP*
"I'm not confused as to who the boy is, Albus," he said. "As if his bloody green eyes weren't enough, he has that blasted scar he wears like a crown."
"You cannot bully the child. He has tried to reconcile with you, per Minerva's instruction, but you refused to even look at him. This cannot continue."
*HP*
The boy made a perfect potion, for the third class in a row. It reminded him of Lily. But that couldn't be right. The boy was just like his father, a nasty, ungrateful little boy who happened to have a modicum of talent at convincing people he wasn't useless. He gave him a detention for cheating.
*HP*
"That boy didn't cheat!" Minerva said.
"Then why has his performance suddenly improved?"
"Because he has someone who actually cares about his grades! Because he has started studying! Severus, you cannot possibly be this thick-headed."
"Thick-headed?" he snarled.
"Thick-headed," she said. "The boy is not his father."
*HP*
Albus was giving him one of his signature piercing stares. "The boy did not cheat and we both know it. I am disappointed in you, my boy. I thought you would be willing to see Lily in the boy, but you see only what you want to and heap more hurt on a child who has been abused. I thought you of all the staff would be most understanding of his situation, but I see you need some encouragement. These are Harry's memories. Watch them with me."
"I have no desire to watch the memories of a spoiled, pampered child," he said.
"Watch them," he repeated.
*HP*
A little boy, much too little for his four or five years watched a fat boy enviously as he played with a fire truck while a whale of a man gifted him a pair of foul old socks.
*HP*
The same boy asking a horse-faced woman his mother's name, only to be told not to ask questions.
*HP*
The boy being locked in a cupboard without dinner, a small piece of paper on the door reading "Harry's Room."
*HP*
A boy watching his first friend at primary school being beaten up by the fat boy, and then making no more friends thereafter.
*HP*
Potter being chased in a game of "Harry Hunting."
*HP*
Potter apparating to the roof, desperately trying to get away from the bigger boys.
*HP*
Harry crying himself to sleep after another dinnerless night, wondering why no one came to take him away.
*HP*
Harry's hope at coming to Hogwarts, hope for how things would be different.
*HP*
His first potions class.
*HP*
His first detention.
*HP*
Every ounce of hurt he had heaped on the boy.
*HP*
"Enough, Albus," he said at last.
The old man before him radiated a powerful energy.
"Are those the memories of a pampered child? Of a contemptible one, as you say? Tell me Severus, does Lily Evan's son deserve all the hate you have given him?"
"No, Albus."
"Will you treat the boy with respect now?"
"Yes," he croaked. "I'm sorry."
"It is not me you owe an apology."
*HP*
The next day, he kept Harry after class. "You are not your father," he said, each syllable stark and clear.
Harry smiled, just like Lily.