Destined to Repeat It by Bonehammer
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and associated characters belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement is intended.
6. They Pray with Snakes
"It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,
Where danger is double and pleasures are few..."
MERLE TRAVIS, Dark as a Dungeon
- Poke! -
- Poke! -
- Poke! Poke! Poke! -
Dragged out of sleep but not quite awake, Harry curled into a ball, trying to squeeze out the cold that had seeped under the blankets and into his bones. What a nightmare: he had been sorted into Slytherin and his successor had Avada Kedavra'd him in the dungeons. There was Malfoy, overjoyed at the prospect of having a Boy Who Lived all to himself, to impress and indoctrinate. He'd need to tell Hermione, she always liked to go all Sigmund Freud about his dreams…
He awoke completely, opened his eyes and froze, a scream fighting for a way out of his clenched throat: his nightmare had followed him into reality and a green venomous light filled his sight, flooding the entire room in the signature colour of the Killing Curse.
As he lay paralysed in the bed, crumpling the sheets with white-knuckled fists, something poked him in the shins again. Then a voice jeered: "Poor Potter here seems to have suffered a cardiac. Know any good eulogies, Theo?"
"None," was the grunted reply, "Just a few curses for those who feel gabby at six in the morning."
Harry collected his wits, blinked the sleep stuff out of his eyes. They were under the lake; of course the light would be greenish, what with the algae growing on the windows. This was no dream; he had returned.
And he really was in Slytherin now.
He let out a quivering sigh as the last tatters of the dream dissipated. How long would it take, before another voyager from the future arrived for real to rectify the mistake? If only he could undo the Sorting... fat chance of that...
Wait. I'm an idiot.
If he could not renege his House placement, then neither could his substitute. So this particular horse had bolted by now. If no one had travelled from the future yet, it meant that success was still an option.
The invisible weight slid off his chest and he sat up with renewed enthusiasm, the world again a bubbling cauldron overflowing with opportunities.
"Come and take a look, Potter. Isn't it just beautiful?"
Harry jumped out of bed, but his feet entangled into the bedsheets and the gesture was less athletic than it ought to be. He joined his Housemate in front of the windows. Green really didn't suit Malfoy: his skin, usually pale, was the colour of dried seaweed.
But the view was beautiful, at least for people who didn't suffer from recurrent green-tinted nightmares. The windows all faced the lake from underneath, and every now and then a droplet of water would ooze from the putty around the windows, like a silvery pearl. As they stood watching, a Grindylow swam by, pulling faces as it went.
Malfoy pranced away from the windows, slapping Harry's butt on the way out. "Come on, boys!" he chimed, prodding with his wand the mounds of blankets. "Time for breakfast!"
Malfoy was clearly an early bird, and Harry sort of liked bright and early himself, but the others were not morning people. When Nott finally crept out of the blankets, he was yawning like a Manticore. It took some time and a few Stinging Hexes to wake up Goyle, and although Crabbe spent a reasonable amount of time in the bathroom, no one could hear the water running; but finally, they were dressed up and ready to go.
Harry would have dashed up the stairs as soon as he was ready, but Malfoy had already put himself on top of the pecking order and insisted that they had to prove themselves by marching up to the Hall an in orderly group, not in dribs and drabs, "like toad farts from the bottom of a pond".
Even Harry found himself at a loss for arguments when confronted with such powerful rhetoric.
Besides, he was not at all familiar with this part of the castle and unsure that he would find his way back all by himself, not after he had come down wrapped in his personal cloud of gloom.
He checked his watch as they crossed a narrow corridor; they were still early. He could drop by the Gryffindor table and spend some time there. Chat up to Ron and Hermione and Neville, pretend he hadn't noticed how the two Houses looked daggers at each other…
He bumped into Malfoy, who had stopped all of a sudden, and Crabbengoyle piled into him in turn.
"What's up?"
"I don't think this is the same corridor we took yesterday," Malfoy replied, in a hesitant tone that wasn't quite him.
"You got lost?" Harry protested. "We're barely out of the door!"
"This place changes all the time, Potter. Takes a while to get used to," Nott explained, not without a faint trace of disdain for Harry's lack of understanding of the very basics of wizardry. Harry turned, a cutting reply at the ready, and saw.
A rush of air, a swirl of robes behind them. His past lives had not been spent in vain and Harry reacted with consummate reflexes, turning and drawing, but he did not have a clear target, and Malfoy's lumbering minions were in his line of sight. Nott looked at him and went white, and then several voices boomed in perfect unison:
"Petrificus Totalis!"
Harry's arms mutinied, as did his legs. The room somersaulted around him. The floor soared to meet him head-on, in an adrenaline-induced slow motion; he could count the little balls of fluff in the cracks between the stones and calculate which tile would take credit for his impending broken nose.
A thousand firecrackers lit in his skull as he touched down. One lens of his glasses popped out of its frame; he rolled to one side like a felled tree, and lay still.
What for? Frantically, he scanned the corridor, but for what he could see it was empty. His assailants – their assailants? – had already vanished. Just a prank, apparently, and just for the hell of it – even if the events of the previous evening had seemed to take place in a dense fog, Harry was pretty sure he hadn't mortally offended anyone.
Yet.
Petrified, broken nose... this rings a bell. But there would be no one coming to his rescue: there was nothing he could do, save wait for the spell to wear itself out. Little comfort came from the sight of Draco lying a few feet to his left. He had been luckier than Harry in that he hadn't fallen on his conk, but he was drooling on the floor from a mouth open in stupor, and his eyes wide open seemed to plead for an explanation.
Minutes crawled by, as slow as flowing molasses. Goyle was the first to move, but he had no idea how to cast Finite and the only way that he knew, to speed up the recovery of his frozen companions, was to shake them savagely, by the collar, two at a time: by the time Harry regained sensibility to his limbs, his glasses were askew, his robe ripped, and his hair worse than ever.
"What was that for? What the hell was that for?" Malfoy cried hysterically as soon as he was able to speak. "Snape warned us! It must've been those Weasley twins! Wait until my father hears about it..."
"Don't be a prat, Malfoy. We're still in the Slytherin quarters, how would they even get in?" Harry said grumpily, his previous enthusiasm all but deflated. "What time is it? My watch has stopped."
Draco checked his own watch and jolted. "We've been lying here for an hour! Hurry!"
Unsurprisingly, they were late. Luckily, the first lesson was History of Magic: Professor Binns barely seemed to notice them as they entered the classroom, muttering apologies, and didn't take points. As Harry sat down, his stomach did the first of that morning's many grumbles.
Harry did not know what to make of it. The most obvious hypothesis put him as the intended target, while his roommates had only been a collateral. They must have come to the same conclusion, because they gave him a wide berth for the rest of the morning, both in the classrooms and in the corridors.
It was clear before long who their mysterious assailants were: The glorious tradition of the Serpent House apparently required that the newly induced be tested to destruction.
On return from the lessons, they had another ugly surprise: their room had been given a thorough once-over. The chests had been opened, the beds were unmade, the pillows ripped and a layer of feathers covered the floor like freshly fallen snow.
Remembering similar scenes from the past, Harry suspected foul play, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw his trunk had been emptied and upturned – but the precautions taken by his former self had held: the false bottom was still in place, and Harry's most precious possessions, safe.
That gave him some respite. Quirrell – or Snape, or Dumbledore, for that matter – would have been subtler and more efficient.
What marked the gesture as a prank was the fact that, despite the mess, nothing was damaged beyond the range of a good Reparo:wrinkled robes could be pressed, bedsheets washed and inkwells refilled.
Still...
Harry looked at his dorm mates and saw his own disconcert reflected in their eyes: they exchanged silent, distrustful looks, then started cleaning up at once, in a silence only broken by occasional mutterings when they treaded on each other's feet.
The following days were appalling. Though Harry knew the shortcuts through the castle by heart, he and his roommates were always barely in time for lessons nonetheless. Tripping Jinxes, Sponge-Knees Curses and the occasional Locomotor Mortis started as soon as they were out of their dormitory. Once out of the dungeons, they were left alone; but the morning walk to the first floor looked more and more like an assault course as the days passed.
Loathsome, senseless, infuriating as it might be, bullying was something Harry at least was used to, used to having to watch over his shoulder – first for Dudley and his friends, then for Voldemort's minions, then for the Ministry Aurors and the Magical Armed Forces – but his dormmates were, for all intents and purposes, Death Eaters in training and he did not want to offer tactical advice to them. So they took the only available solution, distancing themselves from Potter – Potter the half-blood, Potter the champion of the Light, the fish out of water, the unknown quantity – and putting up a show of doing their homework in the Common Room, always in the opposite corner from Harry.
The outcome was not in their favour. All the tables were occupied or 'reserved', so they were shuffled to the darkest, draftiest spots. Quills and parchment were "borrowed" and swapped for Zonko's products that exploded, vanished or attacked them. The writing on their homework rearranged itself into nonsense or fell right off the scroll. They were plagued by weird boils, tendrils and antlers, and before long Crabbe was browsing the Common Room's consultation copy of Curses And Countercurses while dangling upside down from the ceiling as Nott, oozing custard from his ears, waited patiently for his turn.
In the days that followed, they were deprived of their names: Harry, unsurprisingly, was addressed by the seniors only as Crackpot, and not much thought was put into turning the others' names into Crap, Nuts and Gargle, either; but some evil genius had turned Malfoy into "Small Fry", a moniker that made Draco seethe and the others chuckle.
By Wednesday, they were all doing their homework huddled together in the dank dormitory. At first, conversation was strictly functional – all that Crabbe said to Harry on the first day was "You're in my light," – but the forced cohabitation was not without effect, and the atmosphere lost its frosty quality after a while.
Apart from Theodore Nott.
Harry thought he would have chosen his quiet detachment over Malfoy's chattering any day, but as it was, it was just grating: it was like they were all beneath his contempt.
The fact that Crabbe and Goyle were beyond anyone's contempt did not help. They were not actually illiterate: in fact, Crabbe had brought along a whole year of Martin Miggs with him, and Goyle at least could tell which side of a textbook was up. But their attitude towards learning was one of civil disobedience. They never read a page ahead of the assignment, they never questioned the most obvious typos, and they often dozed off as they waited for their liege lord to finish his essay, which they would then copy down hastily in a large, heavy, irregular handwriting that wore out quills by the dozen.
And the Erumpent was in the room the whole time.
No one wondered aloud why they returned day after day to a dormitory raided so thoroughly that it took a solid hour of casting and cleaning just to be able to walk inside; or why they were taking turns at dinner so that a pair of them was always standing guard as the others ate – just the one wasn't enough, as they found out the hard way, returning to an unconscious Crabbe lying on the floor, soapsuds coming out of his nostrils with every breath.
No one spoke, even though Malfoy's morning routine grew silent and subdued, and although he spent the evenings writing long letters home, no help seemed to be coming from there. Was Lucius behind the entire business? Was Snape? And weren't senior Slytherins afraid of bringing on bad blood, riling their own? They weren't even being covert about it. Montague could be engrossed in a discussion about the flowering period of ragwort, pull out his wand and aim a Tripping Jinx at a passing-by Harry, and resume the conversation without missing a beat.
And the days passed by. Goyle had his feet bitten bloody when his own slippers sprouted fangs and chased him all around the room; Nott's necktie became alive without a warning and coiled around his neck doing its best rendition of a python; Harry woke up to the clickety-click of his glasses dancing a merry jig on the bedside table, and sported a shiner for the rest of the morning because he had instinctively tried to put them on to see what was happening.
He could not figure out whether the girls were getting the same treatment, but circumstantial evidence came in the form of Tracey Davis having another meltdown on Wednesday evening, when she refused to leave the Great Hall after dinner. Only when Peeves appeared, complete with pillow and nightcap and grinning madly, was she finally convinced to check out.
After that episode, she stuck to Millicent Bulstrode like a barnacle to a boat.
Paying a visit to the library was a laughable idea and stopping at the Gryffindor table a suicidal one; being separated from the herd led to the harshest jinxing. Only Malfoy could wander alone and remain unscathed – hardly surprising as how his father was on the Board of Governors – but the first time his eagle owl brought cakes from home, three huge seventh-years rounded in on him soon as he left the Great Hall. The sweets were commandeered, and Malfoy, having protested, had to trudge like a toy robot back to the dungeons, where he spent the evening sussing out how to Transfigure his knees back on. After that episode, Malfoy always kept Crabbe and Goyle as close as it was physically possible, and took to opening and consuming his care packages right at the Slytherin table.
Thus Harry could only glance at his former mates from afar: Sean and Dean's friendship had not been affected by the changes, Ron seemed at ease with three roommates out of four, whereas Neville and Hermione hardly raised their eyes from the breakfast and never took part in the chatter: Ernie McMillan was the only one Harry ever saw initiating a conversation with either of them.
With such ongoings, it was hardly surprising that Friday morning found Harry waiting for Hedwig's arrival with bated breath. His spirit sank at the sight of the owl flying in, empty-beaked as usual, and perching on his shoulder for a morsel of bacon and a playful nibble to the ear before returning to her post at the Owlery.
That was hardly unexpected; the joke that went around was that Hagrid could never have Slytherins over for tea… he didn't have a large enough cup to dunk them in.
Harry stirred the porridge glumly: another tie that he had always taken for granted had been severed.
Speaking of which...
His "first" Potions class was approaching ominously. Harry sighed again, making Nott's eyebrows raise.
"Lovesick, Potter?" he snickered.
Harry just glared at him from above his glasses.
Handling that first confrontation was something they had rehearsed with care before his departure, but he was unable to evaluate how his new House placement would affect their state of affairs. He had a hunch, however, that things could only get worse: Snape's hatred of him, like the speed of light, was a fixed constant in all known universes.
The Slytherins had arrived first and were sitting in silence, examining the creepy classroom; the small windows encrusted with the grime of centuries, the burning torches giving away a tawny light, the tall stone benches, caked with curdled spillage; and rows and rows of jars lining the walls, filled with every imaginable filthy thing. There was a lingering smell, half herbalist's, half leper colony.
The door opened with a creak and the Gryffindors entered cautiously, looking around. Malfoy having shared a place with Nott, Harry was alone in his bench and looked up hopefully at the newcomers, but they sat down keeping to their half of the class as if the Green Line had been painted along the floor.
Snape entered from a side door, delivered the entire class a scathing look and slammed the door shut with a wave of his wand, making Neville jolt. By now, most Slytherins had adjusted to the temperature of the dungeons or just wore some extra wadding, but the newcomers were shivering like malarial patients.
Snape took the register, and took pause at reaching Harry's name – "our new - celebrity," he repeated, albeit with a difference. His inflection, his stance, his gaze were directed towards the Gryffindors on the other side of the dungeon. He was rubbing their nose in it for having been unable to secure famous Harry Potter for themselves. Then he curled his nose when he read the last line in the Gryffindor registry.
"…and yet another Weasley," he drawled. "What are your parents going to do when they run out of names? Whistle?"
Ron's ears flared like traffic lights, but he remained silent. Malfoy snorted, which earned him a twitch of the lip by the Potions Master, like the two were sharing a private joke.
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making…" Snape began in a whisper. By the corner of his eye Harry saw that Hermione was already taking notes. He stood still, his hoopoe-feather quill in hand, waiting for the end of the sermon, remembering another time, another Potions class, another teacher...
The memory from the Pensieve is as clear as icy water.
The Potions lab is not in the dungeons, it is too cold and damp and overall uncomfortable for Slughorn. Even his office is up near the Ravenclaw Tower, some Head of Slytherin he turned out to be...
Snape sits alone at a desk in the far corner, in his ill-fitting second-hand robe, too short to cover the frayed trousers and Muggle shoes. He came prepared, he has read the book cover to cover beforehand; this is his great occasion to a good start with his Head of House...
Slughorn does the roll call, stopping at the most prominent surnames, asking the students about their relatives and their health; the tactic is so transparent it's pathetic. Some, like Black, answer evasively, others seem mildly amused. Neither Snape nor Lily are entitled to a friendly chat. The professor launches himself into a brief introduction about the fine art of potioning, then browses the register again.
"Just a little test, to check the entry level," he says jovially. "Mr. Black, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Black, who was sprawled in his seat and looking out of the window, goggles like a dazzled owl. Snape's hand is up before he realizes it: that is an easy one, Draught of Living Death; the hyperbolic name has been stuck in his mind since he first browsed the book.
When it becomes clear that Black does not know the answer, Slughorn just shrugs and chuckles.
"Never mind, never mind. Mr. Avery - where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"
Snape has his hand up again. The Slytherin boy that throws his family name around a lot is equally at a loss, but this does not seem to irritate Slughorn; the professor ignores Snape's silent plea and pops the third question.
"Mister... ah, Potter, what's the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
So much for lowering one's sights – this is downright ridiculous. It's not even a matter for Potions, it's entry-level Herbology. But Potter does not have the slightest idea. Snape is positively itching now, leaning on his bench, right arm almost devoid of blood, please please pick me pick me me me me...
And Potter, slouched in his chair like he was at the pub and not in a school, shrugs. To a Hogwarts teacher.
"I have no idea, Professor." Then, turning towards Snape with a stupid grin on his face: "Though Snivellus seems to know – why don't you ask him?"
The laughter is sudden and horrifying and it comes from both sides of the classroom, Gryffindor and Slytherins alike. Even Slughorn is chuckling behind his moustache as he rebuffs, "Now, now, Potter..."
"Potter!" Snape's brisk tone brought Harry back to the present. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Hermione's hand shot in the air. Harry produced a strangled sound: "None, sir," had nearly escaped his mouth.
"A sleeping potion called the Draught of the Living Death, sir," he offered matter-of-factly. Okay, so the questions were in a different order this time around. Wasn't it weird, how small details could be preserved word by word, and yet be encased in a larger picture that disrupted their meaning altogether? He nearly missed the second volley.
"…where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"
Harry paused. In an apothecary, or in the cupboard behind your back was a proper answer, but surely Snape wouldn't accept that kind of reply from him, so he went for short and sweet. "Inside the stomach of a goat... sir."
There were dim chortles in the dungeon: Harry's answer must have seemed outlandish to the unwary. Snape killed the hilarity with a single glare.
"The stomach of a goat," he repeated, slowly. "Care to be more specific, Potter?"
Harry blinked. That had to be the right answer, it was the same Snape had given himself. What was he playing at?
"A goat has four stomachs, Potter," Snape finally said, holding out a hand with four fingers extended as if unsure Harry was able to count to such a large number without a visual reference. "Bezoars form preferentially in the first one, also known as rumen, and to the uncultured, as paunch."
A few students dared to snort, but these too were petrified by Snape's glare.
"You find this funny, do you? Would you still laugh if your best friend were dying of poisoning while you stood close like a gagging idiot, unable to help?"
That last one came so close to home that Harry felt a shiver run down his spine: Snape definitely had a point there. The Potion Master rounded in on him.
"No uncertainty is allowed in Potions, Potter; a miss is a good as a mile. A successful brew is the result of hours of patient, tidy labour supported by precise knowledge. For your information, a bezoar is a calcified concretion of vegetable matter and it will save you from most poisons. What's the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane…?"
Hermione's hand shot up again, in a kind of Nazi salute.
"…none," Harry replied eagerly.
"…Miss Granger?" Snape concluded, baring uneven teeth in a wolf-like grin.
Hermione was so taken aback that she nearly choked. When she managed to reply, the answer came out in a jumble: "Theyarethesameplantwhichisalsocalledaconiteprofessor."
"Hm. Passable. One point to Gryffindor." Snape grinned. "And one from Slytherin, for speaking out of turn."
Harry had been expecting something of the sort by now, and managed to keep his mouth shut, but the others gave a collective gasp as if the air had been Banished from the dungeon: it was hard to tell which House looked more shocked.
Snape's defiant gaze swept through the whole class: "Well? Why aren't you all copying this down?"
Thanks Merlin for small certainties, Harry mused later, as they started chopping roots and stoking fires. Having been played at with the questions stank, but it was something he could live with. In fact, as Snape went, this had been a polite, enjoyable, mutually rewarding exchange. Meanwhile the Potions Master was waxing lyrical about the perfect way Malfoy had stewed his horned slugs and Neville's cauldron melted with a loud hiss, causing immediate panic. Snape didn't yell at him half as badly as in Harry's memories – although even so, he managed to send Neville on the verge of hysterics – and didn't blame Harry, either because he was already satisfied or because his favourite scapegoat was sitting all by himself at the other end of the classroom from Neville. He Evanesco'd the spilled potion and ordered Seamus to walk his mate to the Hospital wing.
Harry's classmates, however, were not in a good mood and made sure their disapproval would not go undetected. Nott only turned his eyes significantly as he passed by, but Crabbe gave Harry a solid shove as they filed out of the dungeons, sending him into the wall, and as soon as they were out of earshot of the Gryffindors, Malfoy came face to face with him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Potter?" he spat.
Harry's reply came out in a hiss. "Can't you see for yourself, Small Fry?"
"What have you done to rile Snape that way?"
"I dunno, you seem to best pals, Master Slug Stewer Extraordinaire. Why don't you go and ask him? "
"Are you lot going to move anytime soon?" came Parkinson's annoyed voice from downstairs. "You're blocking the gangway."
After a quick and solitary lunch, he went back to the dormitory (receiving a Stinging Hex in the back along the road), threw his books on the bed and left. Seniors could chuck them into the lake for all he cared: he knew them by heart already.
He walked out of the castle and towards the edge of the Forest, where Hagrid lived. The giant's wooden, warm, smoky hut would be a pleasant change from the damp expanse of mossy stone that were the dungeons; all considered, the rock cakes would be a small price to pay.
He knocked.
No answer.
"Hagrid? It's me, Harry. Harry Potter. Mind if I come in?"
He knocked again.
"Come on, Hagrid! It's me! You gave me an owl for my birthday, I'm not gonna bite you!"
Then he realized that even if Hagrid had wanted to make himself scarce, there was no way he could stop Fang from barking his head off at the presence of an intruder: he looked up and saw no smoke coming out of the chimney.
Well, he really couldn't expect Hagrid to sit around all day, waiting for students to drop by; he was probably deep in the Forest now, cutting wood or collecting unicorn hairs or teaching Aragog how to fetch a stick.
Sighing, he took out a bit of parchment and a pencil and scribbled:
Hi Hagrid,
I dropped by, but you were not home. I would like to come and visit some time, please let me know via Hedwig if it is okay.
First week has been a riot. My House mates are nice, they remind me of my cousin.
Greetings,
H.
He read it again, and thought it was okay. Not exactly cheerful, but not heavy on the angst either, and not too compromising in case it fell into prying hands. He folded it and slipped it between the door and the frame, then made his way back to the castle, where he was greeted by a fuming Prescott.
"Where have you been?" the Prefect barked. "I've been looking for you all afternoon."
"To my business and back again."
"When a first year loses House points within a week from the start of term, their business become my business. What did I tell you on your very first night here?"
"That we were not to lose House points, yeah," Harry chanted, eager to be done with this. "Listen, I was just a tad too…"
"No, you listen. Acuphenes," Prescott recited, and pointed his wand.
It was like having nails driven into one's ears with a sledgehammer; Harry brought his hands to his ears and cried out, realising too late that it was the wrong thing to do. The yelp he had produced echoed like a foghorn.
"IT SEEMS YOU HAVE A PROBLEM," Prescott boomed, each syllable an atomic test right inside Harry's head. "A HEARING PROBLEM, PERHAPS. I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER SAYING THAT IF YOU LOST HOUSE POINTS I WOULD MAKE YOUR LIFE AT HOGWARTS MISERABLE. DO YOU REMEMBER THAT, CRACKPOT?"
Harry just nodded, not wanting to speak and add to the torture.
"VERY WELL, WE'LL SEE. FINITE."
The ringing in his ears vanished, and Harry slumped to a crouched position, checking himself and surprised that his eardrums weren't bleeding. A part of him was actually complimenting the Prefect for the neat spell, otherwise he would have drawn out his wand and tried the worst he had learned from the Prince.
"I'm not your enemy, you know," Prescott said, making a show of putting his wand away and offering him a hand to pull up. Obviously that was a well-rehearsed routine. "Unless you want me to."
"I'll let you know when there's a vacancy," Harry whispered, refusing Prescott's hand and pulling himself up.
"What?"
But Harry played deaf. Prescott frowned, but seemed to decide that the spell had left his victim a bit delirious, and after scolding Harry for having left without notice, he went about his business.
The trouble, however, was not over. When Harry returned to the relative safety of the dormitory, a particularly angry Goyle confronted him right on the door.
"Where have you been? It was your turn. The room's a mess!"
Carefully, Harry stepped inside. A pair of robes were waltzing across the floor, which could not be seen for the amount of trash on it: it looked like an entire week's worth of notes had been turned into confetti. The coat hangers had been used to make a Calder-like sculpture, swaying and turning gently over the prone and unconscious figure of Crabbe. Goyle's toad had been turned purple and doubled in size, and was squeezed against the glass of its terrarium; Nott's cat, Artemisia, was nowhere in sight.
Three hours later, the room was again fit for living and Harry was lying on the bed, fuming, absently twirling his wand between his fingers. The rest of the space was taken by books such as How to Irritate Wizards, A Theory of Practical Jokes and The Complete Prewett's Prankster Book (If at All Possible, Include a Hippogriff), courtesy of the Common Room library.
What the hell, he though. If he was going to go down in flames, let them at least be blazes of glory. He had grown up to tales of his father and Sirius; he had witnessed the best and the worst of the Weasley twins; he had made Umbridge dance the Humiliation Conga till her feet were bleeding. There was no way in Merlin's green realm he was going to let a bunch of robed snakes get the better of him. He took all the books in his arms and chucked them on the floor; he was not going to need them.
"Look, boys, I've had it up to my eyeballs with this hazing thing," he announced. "Is anyone up for a little payback?"
Severus twirled the chalice, contemplating the flames dancing in the fireplace, a warm green when seen through the liquor swirling in the double-curved glass. The Muggle bastardization of the beverage was a powerful, crude tranquilizer, with all the subtleness of a Stunning Hex and harsher aftereffects; his own creation took away the pain and allowed him to meditate on past events without wanting to Annihilate his brains. Neither green nor silver, it brought to mind, by association, a kaleidoscope of memories – as bittersweet as its taste. Willow leaves; Slytherin banners; the trace of a Killing Curse; bright eyes.
Young bright eyes.
He had been too harsh, too soon. Perhaps he needn't have worried. The first week had shown promise: James would have never taken such an obvious provocation lying down. Unlike his father, Potter understood the concept of restraint: he had passed the test.
Because it had been a test, not a rouse for rousing's sake. That was something that James would have done if the roles had been reversed.
And if I keep telling that to myself, perhaps one day I'll actually believe it. That I could have ever reigned in my worst tendencies, avoided the wrong companies. That I could have won her back. That I could have died a hero's death, mourned by thousands, leaving my old nemesis to live an empty life, with his regrets for sole company.
Between the two of them, Severus felt he was the one who'd had it worse.
Depending on one's concept of the afterlife, James was either enjoying Lily's company or unaware of the loss. And he had left a legacy, something that Severus would - could - never do.
Even in his youth, he had never fallen for what Avery jokingly called "the obsession with succession". He had actually looked forward to ending the bloodline of cursed Tobias Snape. But "voluntary abstinence" sounded very much like "sour grapes" when there was nothing to abstain from.
It would be a subtle revenge, and the achievement of a lifetime, to turn the table on James, to obliterate the Potter traits in the boy – to turn him into an Evans.
Next:
I'm going to make a cake.