Teach Me: Where Harry learns, Severus gets angry, and Harry shows the first (and only) signs of manning up.

"Concentrate."

"I am."

"Harder."

"Why?" he shrieks at last, breaking eye contact and turning away from me. I smirk behind his back. Our bickering inspires some sense of normalcy. Being with the boy shouldn't be normal. I tell myself that it isn't.

Isn't it?

This is actually becoming enjoyable. Albus often said that I should teach the way children need to learn. It is my belief that the only children worth working with are the ones who are willing to learn the way I teach. However, desperate times call for desperate measures.

"Because the most fundamental skill when hiding from people who want to kill you is the ability to hide your emotions. It's the basis for everything else. And of course, more importantly to you, if you learn, we will return to Occlumency, and if you manage to remove me from your head, I'll owe you favor. To be redeemed immediately, of course." I refuse to owe another life debt to a Potter.

He blinks. "This is a trick." He says that to me everyday. I'm tired of hearing it. His constant uncertainty is insanely annoying.

"How so?"

"You know that you're going to win. You just want to play with my brain."

I snort. "Do not assume, Potter, that I am even the tiniest bit interested in what is going on within your simple mind. I am attempting to give you some incentive. If you do not wish to, then I can return to my… original methods."

"God. Fine," he barks. "Whatever."

"You're angry," I remark.

"Shit," he curses. "This is moronic."

"Only because you're making it so."

"Fuck you."

The boy is so easy to provoke, and our past Occlumency lessons provide an abundance of new material.

"Potter," I say. "Who is the girl in your memories?" This is always easy bait.

"What?" he asks, genuinely confused. After all, he knows more than one young lady. Am I referring to Hermione Granger? No.

"The one I've seen you kissing." His eye twitches. It's all in the phrasing. Highlighting the fact that I've seen it. That it isn't private. That he doesn't know how to keep it private. It breaks him.

He mumbles something, and I can tell that he is concentrating on restraining his blush. Still, this is progress, the first time his face has not turned beet red.

"How was it?" I continue, as if it's the most normal question in the world. I pick at my nails, watching him out of the corner of my eye.

"Excuse me?" he gasps out, his eyebrows leaping into his hairline.

"Lesson One: Never underestimate your opponent."

He glares at me. I will admit that I almost smile.

It's easy to lose track of time. I cannot say how long we've been here, because even in the lazier summers of my past, I've found it easy to forget myself without the rigid schedule of classes dictating my free time.

I nicked a Muggle newspaper form the lawn in the house next to ours yesterday. Lowered to petty theft. Disgusting. The date at the top revealed that we have been in hiding for two months. Goddamn. It hasn't been that long.

Time flies.

I find that I've adjusted almost too easily to Potter's presence. He does manage to keep out of my way. He spends his free time fiddling in the upstairs rooms, cleaning up and refurbishing, while I prefer to keep to the Library, a room untouched by the murders in this house's past. I'm surprised at the number of interesting books here, because I never took Potter The Original as much of a reader. I suppose that Lily might have read them, but when I open one I often find that they are brand new.

Trapped in time, like the rest of this godforsaken place.

"What?" I snap. He's reading one of the books with browned pages and dog-eared corners. I picked it up, once, when he'd left in on his favorite chair. It is a Quidditch book, and someone, most likely his father, had scrawled messy notes in the margins.

But now he is pretending to read, peering instead over the top of the book in my general direction.

"Hmm?" he says, as if he's just been startled out of a daydream. He's getting good at this. Granted, it's taken months, and I know the boy so well that his near perfect defenses are easily read. However, I cannot help the twang of pride that rumbles in my chest whenever his passive face greets my queries.

I will admit, reluctantly, that it can be disturbing at times. I long, almost eerily, for the days when the simplest of taunts revealed his emotions in a heartbeat. I long for that reliable bit of control. It's a shame, really, when my desires conflict with the necessities of our situation.

He's smiling. He can tell when he annoys me. I hate that.

"You're pretending to read," I point out. He shrugs.

"I want to go out," he replies, fingering one of the pages in his book.

"No." The answer has been 'no' every single time he's asked. I refuse to leave the protection of the wards without complete faith in his ability to block others from his mind. I've told him this. Again and again. And still we have yet to begin work on Occlumency. He is reluctant. He is afraid. I cannot help my curiosity; I wonder what memories he keeps that I have not seen.

How he has managed to get under my skin eludes me.

"Professor," he says. His voice is devoid of emotion. I feel sick.

"What?" I snap. I prefer the days when he leaves me to my books.

"Can we start working on Occlumency again?" I would expect sheepishness in his voice, or a blush on his face. I glance up. Neither. However, a smirk spreads across my face. I've been waiting for his surrender.

"As you wish."

"You're not trying," I sigh. He huffs and puffs and collapses back on the sofa. "Come on, Potter."

He blinks up at me, glaring. I've stopped pointing out the moments when his control wavers and his emotions shine through. He is not perfect. I do not ask him to be. And in return he stops reminding me that his bursts of embarrassment, amusement, exhaustion and pride seem to relax me.

How healthy of you.

"Alright," he says, standing up. "Go ahead."

As if I needed his permission.

You don't need anyone's permission anymore.

That's true, too. "On the count of three. One. Two. Three. Legilimens!"

I step into his mind, and what a jumbled mess it is. Like the floor of the room of a spoiled child. I forage past the images I have already seen, ignoring the boy's fat cousin and those photographs of his parents. I ignore the memories of Albus, which surge to the forefront more often these days. Undoubtedly in response to—

No. Not here.

I draw myself in further, past the image of him kissing the Ravenclaw. Old news. And there he is with the Weasley girl. I move closer. This kiss is different than the other, less chaste, more heated. Now he's pushing her away. She's screaming something. I can sense waves of dissatisfaction rolling off of him, and then the larger waves of his emotions now. Anger, embarrassment. It's inebriating.

I pull myself reluctantly away from the scene. The Weasley girl has left him sitting alone.

I open my eyes. He's breathing heavily again, collapsed once more on the sofa.

"Potter," I bark.

"No," he moans. "Just. No."

My lips curls. He is disgusting to me when he's like this. "You weak, sniveling, little child," I hiss, and his head snaps up. A reaction. At last. "I will not sit here and watch you wallow in self-pity. You refuse to make an effort. You refuse to listen or to learn. You spoiled little brat! Albus taught you to expect a song and dance from anyone who desires your attention. But so help me, Potter, now that he is gone, I refuse to play these games. You will close your mind even if I have to use a rock to bang all the memories out of it!"

Now I am breathing heavily. He stares at me, seemingly dumbfounded, before he masters his expression and chooses to stand.

"Again," he says steadily, bracing himself.

I smile.

Legilimens.