CHAPTER 4

LOTUS

"How much trouble were you in this morning?" Ella asks while passing Harry a bowl of candy.

"Not much. He was just worried."

"You should be more careful next time. I would have been worried too were I in his position."

"Yes, professor," the boy replies shyly and starts to swing his legs.

"Does he know you are here now?"

"Yes. I told him."

"That's good then. At least he knows where to find you. But couldn't you have sent him a reply message? The way he sent it to you?"

"You mean the patronus?"

"It is called a patronus?"

"You don't know it, professor?"

"No, I don't. It was the first time I saw something like that."

"It was a patronus. My dad's patronus. It is advanced magic. He is teaching me how to do it but I haven't managed yet."

"I see. Well, that's enough sugar intake for today, young man," Ella takes the candy bowl away from Harry's enthusiastically picking fingers. "Would you like some berries?"

Harry flushes:

"I'm sorry."

"You are forgiven whatever you are being sorry for," Ella replies absent-mindedly while walking towards her kitchen to fetch her collection of berries and a bottle of homemade blueberry juice.

When she comes back, the boy is still flushing. He awkwardly drives the topic away from the sugar intake:

"Thank you for this morning, professor. For trying to... you know, talk me out of trouble."

Ella fights back a grin and pours themselves two glasses of juice.

"I was not trying to talk you out of trouble. It was partly my fault. Although I was indeed concerned when you said you were dead."

Harry flushes even more and swings his legs more vigorously.

"Have some berries. They are good for your health. I take it your dad is strict?"

"He is not strict. He is legendary," the boy brightens up, giggles and starts to help himself with the berries.

"What do you mean 'legendary'?"

"You will see when students arrive, especially the first years."

"Is he in charge of welcoming the first years or something?"

"Merlin, no!," he bursts into laughter. "I'm sorry. I mean, no, he is not welcoming the first years. They would scream and run straight home if he were. Professor McGonagall is bad enough - I mean scary enough, but when she welcomed us in my first year, we did have some nerve left to at least walk in."

Ella chuckles at the vision. Poor kids, why couldn't it be someone with a big smile or something waiting for them at the doorstep? Imagine a bunch of eleven-year-olds bouncing towards Hogwarts for the first time and ending up facing an old witch whose appearance alone screams "Do. Not. Even. Think. Of. Messing. With. Discipline. Here."

"It seems your professors are strict, aren't they?"

"I don't know. But I think most of the professors are... you know, just normal. It's Professor McGonagall and... I guess, my dad, who are equals. Well, not exactly. They have different ways. But they both scare the daylights out of first years. Not that the upper years are not scared, we are just more accustomed to it. Only my dad makes them cry though. Anyway, he is improving. I hope this year he will make fewer poor first years cry," the boy trails off, at some point seeming to talk to himself and forget about his company.

Ella frowns:

"Why would the first years cry?"

"There are different reasons. I don't know how my dad always ends up reducing at least some of them to tears every year. Even though he swears to me he has no interest in making little dunderheads cry. He was simply running his class and it was out of his control that some of them decided to display their distress that way."

"Little. Dunderheads?!," Ella repeats with disbelief. Just why on earth would a teacher refer to his students like that when talking to his son, no less?

"Uhm... well... you see... I have been complaining a lot about that too. But honestly, I think I would have a heart attack if one day I heard my dad speaking about his students in Professor Flitwitch's sweetie-cutie tone. It is just... how he is, you know," the boy shrugs.

"I see."

No, it is only a catchphrase. Ella does not "see" anything here. It is NOT okay for a teacher to call his students "little dunderheads", Snape or not. Her blood starts simmering. She forces herself to remember that she is merely a teacher, a newbie no less, and far from being the headmistress. But Snape had better not let her catch him red-handed speaking about, or worst, speaking to, students that way. No, he had better not.

"But he is not all how he looks and sounds like, you know," Harry adds quietly.

Ella raises an eyebrow.

"You said he had been your teacher since before he adopted you, right?"

"Yes."

She has been waiting for a right moment to bring up that question. She is curious, merely, but deeply, curious. Harry does not really show signs of a child with complications in life (or they have simply escaped her notice), yet his background seems to be far from normal. And Snape, by the looks and the sounds, does not seem to be a normal father either.

"May I ask what happened?" Ella asks cautiously.

Harry studies his swinging feet for a while and then, perhaps realising Ella is waiting, he quietly speaks up.

"Before that, I lived with my aunt and uncle. The summer after my first year here, I caused an accident to my uncle's sister by accidental magic. The Ministry sent someone to my aunt and uncle's home to deal with it, and my aunt and uncle were so mad that they signed the paper to send me to the wizarding orphanage right that evening."

His head drops, and so does his voice. Ella doesn't know what to think. She has heard all kinds of backstories in the world, adults and children, happy and tragic. But it feels so different from this moment, when she is actually listening to this lovely, kind-hearted child, in her new classroom, without a pen ready to jot down field notes, and without her ever-analysing mind working.

She opens her mouth, then closes it. She is not sure what to say and doesn't want to take any risk. However, Harry seems to be sliding down the memory path and thus letting the story flows out.

"Then Professor Dumbledore came to the orphanage the next morning to visit me. He asked if I had in mind a family I wished to live with and said he would help me contact them and help with the arrangements. But I didn't really know any families or any adults in the wizarding world who could and would take me in. Then I remembered Hagrid. Back then he was not a professor yet, he was only the school groundskeeper. Professor Dumbledore helped him with the procedures, but they failed because his income did not meet the Ministry's requirements. So I remained in the orphanage. I thought I would belong there until I come of age. But only two weeks after I was admitted there, one week after Hagrid's adoption was rejected, my dad - Professor Snape - showed up all of a sudden and told me he wanted to adopt me. I thought I had got hit by something on the head."

Harry giggles at the memory, and Ella is still all confused.

"Why?"

"We had never got along and the whole school knew that. He had been very mean and unfair to me since day one. I was one hundred percent sure that he hated me and I didn't hesitate to make it mutual. He was the last one on earth I would imagine showing up there and offering to adopt me. I even thought he just wanted to trick me and then make fun of me if I did believe him, or he just came to continue grating on my nerve how spoiled a brat I was and why no one wanted me."

Dear Väinämöinen, this doesn't sound good. At all.

"Well he couldn't have been that bad could he?"

"I don't know. But when I was eleven, to me Snape was capable of anything including using me as potion ingredients," Harry grins.

Ella is stuck in between a burst of laughter and a sigh.

"Why was he mean to you in the first place?"

"I had no idea until much later. He went to school with my parents. They were in the same year. He hated my dad, and I look so much like my dad that the first moment he saw me, he hated me too. Well, he said he never hated me, but for me, it's all the same. He was always mean and unfair to me for no good reason at all."

Ella rubbed her eyes. It is, unfortunately, quite easy to imagine Snape doing that.

"I didn't know that at the same time he was very close to my mum. He said she was his best friend. He didn't know I was not happy living with my aunt and uncle. When he found out I was sent to the orphanage and heard the story behind that, he came. He said he could be many things but he could not let my mum's child grow up in an orphanage, and that he misunderstood me but didn't hate me. So he asked if I wanted to go home with him. I still have no idea what hit me on the head but I agreed."

Ella smiles.

"Turns out to be a good decision, does it?"

"Well, at first we fought a lot. I even ran back to the orphanage once. We fought a lot, he yelled a lot, and I yelled back all the same. I gave up on him not once but many times and I told him to give up on me too. But dad is really a man of his word. He never gave up on me. Never. Until we found a way to get along."

Harry's features relax into a soft smile.

"You love him very much, don't you?" Ella asks gently.

He flushes, and then shyly nods. Ella wants to ask more about his blood parents, but intuition tells her not to. Perhaps not yet. She stands up and walks towards the bookshelf in her living room. A minute later, she comes back with a postcard. She gives it to Harry.

"Do you know this flower?"

The boy tilts his head at the picture:

"A lotus?"

"Yes. Do you know what it symbolises?"

"No, professor."

"Lotuses grow in mud, but they are very clean and fragrant. In some cultures, they symbolise people who have a difficult background but nevertheless keep their heads up and lead a decent life."

Emerald eyes look up at her expectantly.

"You have had a harder time than most children of your age have, but you are a nice and kind-hearted boy nonetheless. You are like a lotus. We have just met for a very short time, but I have a strong belief that you will grow up into a person you yourself will be proud of."

The boy is still staring at her and looks completely dumbstruck.

"Keep it. It's a gift from Finland," Ella smiles.

"Th.. thank you, professor," he shyly replies.

"You are welcome."

Silence endures for a few moments before Harry glances at the wall clock.

"Oh no... It's already dinner time! I have bothered you all day..."

Ella waves him off:

"No, you have not. I would have kicked you out if you had bothered me, but no, you didn't. I suppose it's time you go home?"

"Yes, professor. Will you be going down to the staff room now?"

"Yes, but I have something to do first. You should go, don't let your dad wait. And here, bring this home."

Ella gives him the berries that she has just transferred from the bowl to a box.

"Thank you, professor, but you don't have to... I have eaten a lot already..."

"It's only good to eat a lot of berries," she shoves the box into his hand. "Take it, and go before you run late."

Harry looks her in the eyes and delivers the bright smile that she ever adores:

"Thank you very much, professor."

"You are welcome. And... thank you for sharing your story with me. It is very touching."

The boy starts fidgeting and scratching the back of his head. Ella gives him a pat on his shoulder.

"See you later, kid. Drop by anytime."

"Goodbye, professor."

She stands and watches the child skipping away. The child with emerald eyes to whom she owes a cup of warm tea in the middle of a storm, at Spinner's End, in Cokeworth, on one of the endless field trips of a lonely ethnographer.