It was on that very evening, while a certain newly-minted Slytherin sat alone and friendless in his common room, that Dumbledore called the potions master to his office.

"Care for a lemon drop, Severus?"

"I see that your conversation-starters remain unchanged," replied Snape flippantly. Dumbledore didn't seem to mind the undertone, however, for he merely smiled and plopped one of the sweets into his own mouth.

"I suppose that I'm here because of Potter?" Snape inquired without ado. "If you're going to ask me to coddle him on your behalf—"

"No, no, my dear friend, I do not wish to impose upon you or your house. However, your guess was, as always, very much accurate. I was wondering whether you could tell me, as Harry's head of house, your impression of him."

"My impression," repeated Snape, narrowing his eyes, "concerning Potter? He is a spoiled and disrespectful individual, what else?"

"What about his housemates then?" persisted Dumbledore. "Do they... flock to him? Has he any associates of yet? Perhaps Mr Malfoy has taken to him?"

Snape gave the headmaster an inquisitive look. "Mr Malfoy scorns Potter, as far as I can tell." It was clear in the way he said so that Snape thought his behavior to be very sensible. "And no, I don't think Potter has garnered himself any 'associates' of yet." He gave the headmaster another assessing look. "You wouldn't, per chance, happen to believe in those baseless rumors which hail Potter as the next Dark Lord, would you?" At the lack of reply, Snape's gaze turned slightly incredulous. "Just because Potter was sorted into my house–"

"I don't think Harry is the next Voldemort, Severus," said Dumbledore firmly. "It's just… an old man can't help but worry…"

"Albus, this is ridiculous!"

"It certainly is, I must admit, but it would assuage me greatly if you were to keep an eye on Harry, just in case."

Snape stood silent as a statue.

"Just what is it that he told you when he was here, Albus?" he said stiffly. "What is it that has influenced your opinion of Potter so greatly?"

"Harry is a good lad," sighed Dumbledore. "So very different from Voldemort, yet in some aspects, so very similar."

"You think they're similar?" rasped Snape, alarmed.

"Are they, indeed?" wondered the old wizard. "I'm afraid that may one day come to pass if we neglect to steer Harry into the right path today. There is nothing like true friendship to lighten a child's heart, Severus, and it saddens me greatly to hear that Harry's housemates haven't taken to him. Perhaps Minerva could talk to her students, if the situation remains unchanged. They'd be delighted to befriend Harry, I'm sure."

"Your solution is to have Potter befriend a gaggle of Gryffindors?" Snape's sneer came back full power. "With their brashness and foolish penchant for taking risks, a horde of supremely loyal, Gryffindor death-eaters would be worse than the original product! Slytherins can be swayed by reason, Albus, Gryffindors, most unfortunately, cannot."

"Ah, loyalty. In the end, it all seems to come back to that one word," reflected Dumbledore merrily. "As you said, unconditional loyalty can be dangerous, Severus… but, like unconditional love, those at its receiving end will never try to abuse it." At this, Snape snorted. Dumbledore, however, continued undeterred. "I believe that this positive reinforcement might be exactly what Harry needs – but we're getting ahead of ourselves, I'm afraid. It's unfair of me to be judging him so, based on such a short acquaintance. I merely wished to glean a little more insight into Harry's character by talking to you, my dear friend. I am sorry to have taken up your time."

"I will keep an eye on Potter, just as I do with all of the students in my house," said Snape tightly. "Don't expect me to report to you unless something is definitely amiss – I still think that he is a dunderhead more than anything."

"I understand, Severus. Then I won't keep you any longer."

Scowling privately, Snape turned tail and stalked out of the office.

The next morning, Harry and the other Slytherins gathered in the Great Hall for breakfast.

"Something's wrong with the timetable, look!" exclaimed a brunette as he shoveled eggs on his plate. Harry thought his name might be Dorado Redclay, but he wasn't certain. "Malfoy," Redclay prattled on, "you've got a double period of potions now, but I have astronomy, see. What's up with that?"

Checking his timetable, Harry realized that he, too, had potions first thing in the morning, but no astronomy.

Malfoy smirked. "It must be a printing error. It seems that Hogwarts' incompetence has reached new heights—I would say I'm surprised but I'd be lying."

"It's not an error, I have astronomy too," interrupted Livingstone brazenly. Lynx Livingstone was the only other Slytherin boy in their year besides for Malfoy who had blond hair, but unlike Malfoy, he didn't seem to disdain half of Hogwarts' population on principle.

"What? Then why do we have potions?" grumbled Draco, gesturing to his henchmen.

"Beats me!"

"They're dividing us up." The one to speak this time had been the normally reserved Gethen Everett, if Harry was correct. With his crazy, dark curls and even darker eyes, he bore a striking resemblance to the creepy girl which Harry had seen at the feast, though he didn't appear to be nearly as batty as her.

"Dividing us?" repeated Theodore Nott curiously.

"Yeah, but only for subjects which require special attention from a teacher, I would wager, such as potions, astronomy and herbology," Everett explained, munching on his toast distractedly. "I reckon they're splitting us up by bedrooms – it's what makes the most sense."

Livingstone nodded, looking thoughtful. "There's five students per room, so I'm guessing they'll pick five girls and five boys for each class."

"Isn't that way too little?" interrupted Malfoy.

Everett shrugged. "Neil Nizamutdinov, you know, that third year, told me that we're gonna get paired with another house for this."

"You're kidding right?"

"Well potions had better not be with the Gryffindorks," said Pansy snidely. The others unanimously agreed.

It was with the Gryffindors. They filtered into the classroom shortly after the Slytherins did, taking their seats as far from them as they could possibly manage. Of course, none of them seemed to be inclined to sit in the free spot next to Harry, even though it was objectively one of the best seats.

'Do they think we're diseased or something?' wondered Harry with frustration.

Just then, two gryffindors plopped down behind him.

"Did you know?" whispered one. "You-Know-Who was in Slytherin when he was at Hogwarts." The redhead shivered. "Thank Merlin the hat didn't put me with those slimy snakes!"

The other boy gave a start.

"Do you think… they still support him?" he had a strong Irish accent, which Harry recognized even though his words were barely a muffle.

"I heard all of You-Know-Who's supporters were Slytherins," informed the read-head knowledgeably. "Just look at Malfoy. He's a prejudiced git, just like Salazar Slytherin."

"Um. Wasn't that guy one of the founders of Hogwarts?"

"Yeah. The old loony even invented blood supremacy, I think. Mad as a hatter!"

Harry was torn between feelings of outrage and wanting to be placed in another house. Voldemort had been in Slytherin? Had he known that before the sorting, Harry would've begged the hat not to put him there. On the other hand, he was annoyed at the two Gryffindors for consistently insulting his house like that. Apparently they'd both rather stay at home than be sorted there. Harry found that that was rather mean to say, but his train of thought broke upon Snape's appearance in the classroom.

His arrival was silent, but suddenly he was there, like a telephone post you walk straight into. Harry's mouth probably dropped open.

"Potter," Snape called suddenly, and Harry's mouth snapped shut. "Why are you here?"

Wait, what? Had Harry messed up the schedule or something? He glanced around uneasily, noting that this was indeed the right classroom. The creepy jars on the walls with pickled animals sort of gave it away.

Snape sneered at his prolonged silence.

"I can see that your interest in my subject knows no boundaries, Potter." His gaze began to roam the room like the ghosts did the Hogwarts hallways, an uneasy silence taking over the students. Malfoy lifted his hand, smirking covertly. Snape nodded at him.

"I don't know about Potter, Professor, but I'm here to learn."

"We'll see," Snape promised with a pleased glint in his eye. Malfoy gave Harry a supremely condescending side-glance, high-fiving Crabbe and Parkinson victoriously. Meanwhile, Snape had pulled out a slip of parchment and began taking attendance. His tunnel-like eyes fitted over each student in silent appraisal as he did so, pausing at certain names every now and then. His gaze was sometimes inscrutable, others, tinted with mockery.

When he finished taking roll call, Snape tucked the parchment away and paused to survey each and every one of his students. There was a gripping sort of silence, one that the professor seemed to bask in. He took his time, watching a few Gryffindors fidget in the last row, whereupon a chubby boy gave a squeak. Sparing him a disdainful slant, Snape strode across the dungeon.

"In my class, you will learn to blend those ingredients carelessly strewn across your desks into a brew infinitely more useful. You will learn potions, which entail the dexterity and precision of a science, and the ingenious intuition known only to art." Snape paused, giving them all a withering look. Especially to the gryffindors. "I don't expect you will ever come to appreciate the complexity layered in the swirling depths of a cauldron, nor manage a truly succinct brewing, an utterly precise preparation… Potions have been the downfall of many a fool who considered harebrained enchantments the only thing there is to magic; they are a subtle snare, you do not need a wand to kill a man. It is potions, and potions only, which will inveigle your reason and mesmerize your mind, coursing through your veins, bewitching your blood. In my class, you will learn to distinguish the deadly from the innocuous, might come to stir a cauldron of iridescent prestige, or even hazard to bend death by its spine. But only if you aren't even half as driveling," Snape paused to look at Harry, "as you appear to be."

The room broke into whispers, but the potions master silenced them with an acidic look. "We will begin by brewing a boil-curing potion." He waited for a beat, in which everybody stared at him expectantly. "Well?" Snape sneered. "Why aren't you looking that up in your book?" The class scrambled to find whatever he was talking about and was quickly filled in silence as the students hunched over the text.

Snake broke the silence again: "Potter, why aren't you paired up? Think you're above us peasants, do you?"

Glancing away from his book, Harry saw a few Slytherins snickering at his distress. Snape was still looking at him, and Harry surmised that he truly wanted an answer to his inquiry. His throat felt raw as he spoke:

"No one sat down next to me." The admission stung, and so did the boiling embarrassment creeping up Harry's neck.

Snape appeared to relish in it. "Longbottom," he called snidely. "Pair up with Potter."

The chubby, blond boy who had squeaked earlier stood up shiftily and moved his things to Harry's desk. Following that, students started getting up to approach the supply closet for ingredients, settling their cauldrons and so forth. Harry figured that he could try to introduce himself to his new desk-mate, even though he was a Gryffindor.

"Hey," Harry whispered. "Nice to meet you."

The boy looked up with a start.

"Hi," he replied timidly. "I'm Neville."

"Harry." He grinned a little. "So, er, are you any good at potions?"

Neville shrugged helplessly, and both he and Harry soon began to work.

After the first five minutes, it had become apparent that no, neither Harry nor Neville were even passable at potions, though that might have something to do with their professor. During the entire course of the lesson, Snape swept trough the rows of struggling students, watching them intently as they weighed dried nettles or crushed snake fangs, criticizing everyone except for Malfoy, whom he seemed to like. It was amazing how he could one minute be praising the blonde and the next second curse Harry and Neville to the depths of hell, which is where Harry was starting to feel like with the heat of his cauldron building on his face and the snickers crowing all around when Snape decided to single him out. Harry thought he had finally gotten some reprieve, (Snape was just telling the class to look at the perfect way Malfoy had stewed his horned slugs) when clouds of acid green smoke and a loud hissing filled the dungeon. Harry gave a start when something awful stung him, jumping for cover onto the desk behind him, and somehow tipping over a cauldron on it. Behind him, one of the Gryffindors let out a shout of outrage, but it soon turned into terror, for Neville had somehow managed to melt Harry's cauldron into a twisted blob, and their potion was seeping across the stone floor, burning holes in people's shoes. Within seconds, the whole class had evacuated to the top of their stools or desks while Neville, who had been drenched in the potion when the cauldron collapsed, moaned in pain as angry red boils sprang up all over his arms and legs.

"Idiot boy!" snarled Snape, clearing the two spilled potions away with one wave of his wand. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?"

Neville whimpered as boils started to pop up all over his nose. "Take him up to the hospital wing," Snape spat at the read-head whose potion Harry had ruined. Then he rounded on Harry himself. "Potter! Why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought you'd save yourself and no one else, did you? And while you were at it, ruin Weasley's potion? That's a week's worth of detention for you."

"I'm sorry, Neville," Harry muttered, abated, when the blonde returned at the end of the lesson to fetch his things. His face was mercifully boil-free, though that hadn't kept Snape from delivering a five-minute-long tirade about mole-like dunderheads who insisted on hassling him. "Snape's problem, whatever it is, is with me. You shouldn't have to shoulder it too." Neville seemed close to tears and thus failed to provide a coherent response. Malfoy, on the other hand, seemed close to tears of laughter.

"I suppose not everyone has the talent to get an outstanding," he crooned loudly as he passed their desk. Harry clenched his jaw furiously, but kept silent. Silence was something he would have to learn in the house of snakes.

A/N:

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