Author's Note: This story will eventually turn into slash- dealing with a homosexual relationship in some aspect or other between Harry Potter and Severus Snape. If that isn't your cup of tea, please move along; there's nothing to see here. You have been warned. If, on the other hand, that's something you might find enjoyable (as a further dimension of plot and story) then please do read on and enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or related characters and properties. I'm just having a bit of fun.
No Milk Today
Summer
-1969-
The old man's garden was a favorite for all the children of the neighborhood, and Severus was no exception. He was nine, but he was smart for his age, and he knew something that none of the other children in the village knew: the man was a wizard.
Severus stood back from the other children as the man took fresh apples from his tree to give to each one. He was telling a story about a dragon. The old man was always telling stories like that. The stupid muggles all thought that they were fairy tales of course, but Severus knew better. Severus knew that they were true- even if there hadn't been a Norwegian Ridgeback in Britain in over half a century.
He hung back still as the man finished his story and the other children left, laughing and joking with each other. It wasn't until all the other children had gone that the man finally turned to look at the sullen greasy-haired boy in the baggy second-hand clothes.
"Didn't you want your apple, young master Snape?" He asked, reaching a gnarled old hand up to pluck another from the tree. "You really should try one. They're quite good this time of year."
Severus reluctantly left the garden fence and walked over to take the apple. He took a bite with his crooked teeth, chewed and swallowed, and finally said what he'd been wanting to say every day since he had come to the garden the first time a few weeks ago- trailing unseen behind the other village children.
"I know you're a wizard."
The old man's reaction to the accusation wasn't the one Severus' had been expecting. He shrugged it off. "They're just stories I tell, master Snape. They aren't true- just stories that I make up to entertain the children." The man spoke to him like he was explaining to a small child that there was no such thing as Father Christmas. Severus wasn't swayed.
"They might not all be true," Severus said, "but I know you're a wizard anyway."
The man regarded him seriously, but there was something in the way that his eyes sparkled within the deep folds and wrinkles of the man's face that made Severus think that he was really amused.
"And what," the man asks, "has so firmly set such a silly notion to work in your mind, might I ask?"
This is what Severus had been hoping for, and he brightened. He always liked to show adults how clever he was. "This," he said, pointing to a purple flower near the fence. "This is aconite."
"Very good," the man praised, still not looking convinced.
"And that over there," he pointed to a blood-red flower near the cobblestone path leading up to the old man's cottage. "That's flowering dragon lotus."
"Correct again."
"Mugwort and wormwood over there," he pointed to one of the shadows near the garden shed. "And asphodel." His eyes widened in excitement. "Asphodel right out where anyone can see it."
The old man smiled. "I'm impressed with your knowledge of botany, master Snape, but I fail to see what it has to do with why you seem to think I'm some kind of magician."
Severus scowled. Even at this age, he was quite good at it. "Not a magician," he spat the word out with disgust, "a wizard. And it isn't botany either; it's herbology. And I knowyou're a wizard, because no muggle would plant wormwood and asphodel in their back garden."
"Maybe I just like the way they look."
"Or maybe," Snape said mockingly, "you're going to chop them up into potion ingredients and brew the draught of living death."
The man smiled. "I have half a mind to chop you up into potion ingredients, you precocious little brat."
Severus was pretty sure the man was joking.
The old man chuckled at the look of near terror on Severus' face. "Well, come along," he said, gesturing to the door of his little cottage. "You'd better come inside and have a cup of tea while I read you the Statute of Secrecy."
The boy followed him into the cottage with hardly a second thought, and looked around with deep interest.
This definitely wasn't the house of a muggle. Growing up in a household where magic was almost scorned, Severus thought he had never seen anything as blatantly magical as the old man's home.
A broomstick sat on a small worktable at one end of the kitchen, though the old man hardly looked capable of riding it. The rest of the table was covered with miscellaneous Quidditch gear, and a broken snitch lay in pieces on a black cloth. There were spell books and robes littered around haphazardly, and a small cauldron hung on a hook near the fireplace.
"Your mother is Eileen Prince, is she not?" the old man asked. "You have her look about you."
Severus, who had never been told that he resembled anyone but his father, only nodded, not taking his eyes from the potion ingredients hung to dry from the rafters in the kitchen.
"I'll just floo her to come collect you then," the old man said, starting toward the hearth.
"We aren't on the network," Severus quickly answered. "My father is a muggle, and he doesn't really approve of magic."
The old man raised one shaggy grey eyebrow at this, but made no comment. "Is your father home this afternoon?"
Severus shook his head.
"Wonderful." The old man took his wand from somewhere within the folds of his rough spun work shirt, and something ghostly-white erupted from the tip.
It capered around the enclosed space of the cottage's main room and when it turned to face its master, Severus saw that it was a large antlered deer.
"Miss Eileen Snape, you may come to fetch your son at your leisure. I think you know where you'll find him," he spoke to the animal, and it disappeared.
"What spell was that?" Severus asked when the hart had gone.
"It's called a patronus," the old man answered.
Severus' eyes widened. "I thought they were for fighting off dementors."
"Primarily, though they have a few other uses- including a means of sending a message to your mother without leaving some evidence to get her into trouble with your father."
"Can you teach me?"
"Perhaps one day, when you've earned your wand." The old man moved to the kitchen and set the kettle on the stove. "We'll just have a cup of tea while we wait for your mother. I have no doubt she'll be along shortly," he said as he returned to the sitting room.
"Are you a Potion Master?" Severus asked, touching the edge of the cauldron in the corner. "You must be if you have asphodel. It's only used for the draught of living death, and you'd have to be a Potion Master to be able to brew that."
The man shook his head. "Unfortunately, I do not have that particular title, though I did take my N.E.W.T. levels in Potions. I did fairly well too; I had a good teacher. But no, I am not a Potion Master, I didn't plant the asphodel, it was there when I moved in, and no decent wizard would brew the draught of living death in any case."
"Oh," Severus seemed disappointed with this answer. "So what do you do then?"
"I tend my garden and tell the children stories to entertain them."
"Well, yeah, but you're a wizard. What do you really do?"
"I'm retired."
Severus rolled his eyes. "Before that."
"Before that?" the man considered his answer for a long time. "I suppose you could say that I was involved in Defense Against the Dark Arts."
"Like an Auror?"
"No, master Snape, not at all like an Auror," the man snapped. "I have neither the time nor the patience to deal with the Ministry of Magic."
"A teacher then?" Severus asked.
"I have taught before, yes."
Severus' heart soared at this- imaginings of castles full of books, and magic, and adventure.
"Will you teach me something?" the boy asked. "My mother lets me help her with her brewing sometimes, when father is away."
The old man made a thoughtful noise. "Has your magical ability manifested itself already then?"
"Manifested?" Severus asked, turning the unfamiliar word over in his mouth.
"Yes, manifested, Mr. Snape. In this case, it means to make its presence known through a physical demonstration- to appear, as it were. Have you done some magic accidentally when you were in a heightened emotional state? When you were upset or angry or worried? When you were happy? Most witches and wizards show their magical ability around eight or nine. This is why they start Hogwarts at the age of eleven."
"Oh yes," Severus nodded. "I can do other things too. When I'm trying, I mean, if I concentrate."
"What sorts of things?"
Severus shrugged. "Move objects from one end of the room to the other, light candles, little things like that."
"Interesting." The man nodded. He looked the boy over appraisingly. "Perhaps I may have some use for you, after all."
There was a knock on the door then, and the old man answered it to find the boy's mother standing on the stoop. She really did have a similar look to her son, but where the boy's features looked awkward and oversized, the woman's dark hair and eyes, and the large nose, coupled with her height and slender figure gave her a look of nobility.
"Mrs. Snape," the old man greeted, ushering her in. "Thank you for coming."
She nodded briskly. "I hope that Severus hasn't been a bother."
"Oh, not at all," the old man smiled warmly. "Your boy is very sharp."
She gave the boy in question a piercing gaze. "That does not save him from being tiresome."
"On the contrary, Severus has been a delight." The kettle began to whistle then. "Ah, perfect timing! Do stay for tea, won't you?"
"Certainly." She took a seat on the couch beside her son. Her cold visage looked almost comically out of place in the warm little cottage.
The old man busied himself with making tea- putting three teacups and some biscuits on a tray with the pot. "Do you know what mint looks like, master Snape? A friend of mine favors it in his tea, and I've developed a taste for it myself. There is some growing near the garden shed. Would you be so kind as to fetch a sprig for me?"
Severus nodded. "I like it too."
"Two sprigs then." The old man smiled, and the boy hurried off diligently.
The man set the tea tray down on the table and took a seat to Eileen Snape's right hand. He poured the tea and handed a cup to the handsome woman.
"From what I've observed and gleaned from Severus, I've learned something of the situation with your husband."
Eileen opened her mouth to protest, but the man held up a hand to forestall her.
"I'm not judging. I merely hope that I might offer a mutually beneficial solution," the old man said in answer to her unvoiced objections. "Your son has expressed some desire to learn magic. And, as I grow older, I begin to regret my choice never to have children. I have no one to pass my knowledge down to. It seems like only yesterday I was a young man." He let out a little laugh. "And now I grow so old in my dotage that, the truth is, I could use a bit of help here and there. With your blessing, and the boy's consent of course, I would like to take Severus on as my apprentice. I would have someone to teach the things I've learned, of course, and some well needed help, and Severus would have something to occupy his inquisitive nature, while you would be saved the trouble of hiding such things from your brutish husband. So, you see," the man spread his hands, "mutually beneficial."
The woman's face had grown stern while the old man explained his proposal. She sipped her tea now. "I'm sorry, Mr….?"
"Peverell," the old man answered.
Her eyes widened at this. "I thought all the Peverells were dead."
The man favored her with a bitter smile. "I have the unhappy distinction of being the last," he explained, "and, as you can see, I'm still hanging on."
Eileen made no reply to this. "Mr. Peverell, I do not know you. You must surely understand how I cannot entrust the care of my only child to a complete stranger, however distinguished a line he claims to come from."
"As you say," the man answered, unperturbed, "but wouldn't it be preferable to know where he is and what he's up to than to have him wandering untended about the village. I may be doggedly old, but I do still remember what it's like to be a young boy."
She sighed. "I tell him to let me know where he's going, but nothing I do seems to stop him from doing as he pleases."
The old man nodded, smiling. "I'm sorry to say that I was much the same."
Eileen frowned but nodded. "Very well, Mr. Peverell, but I want him home before three o'clock every day, and only during the week- no weekends. If Severus agrees, of course."
"If I agree to what?" Severus asked, returning with the mint.
The man took the sprig of mint from him and crushed it between his gnarled arthritic fingers before dropping it into his cup.
"I'd like to offer you a job," he said finally. "I need someone to help me with my work- a sort of apprenticeship. I would pay you, or course, and teach you some of what I know."
Severus' eyes brightened with excitement and even Eileen seemed to lose her remaining reluctance at the mention of payment.
"I'll take it," Severus agreed. "The job, that is. Thank you, sir."
"Excellent," the old man clapped his hands together once. "I'll want you here at nine tomorrow morning. If that's all right with you, Madam?"
Eileen inclined her head. "Yes, that will be fine. Now, come along Severus. I thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Peverell, but we really must be going now."
"It was a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Snape, and I'll be seeing you tomorrow, Severus," the old man said, still smiling.
Eileen wrapped one hand delicately over her son's shoulder, and they disapparated with a little pop of displaced air, leaving the old man once again alone.
He sat there for a moment, staring at the two untouched cups of tea before him. Then he pulled his pocket watch from his trousers and glanced at it. The numerous whirling dials and spinning symbols would have meant nothing to anyone else, but the man replaced the watch with a muttering of, "Never enough time," and hurried to change before he missed his appointment.
oOoOoOo
It was a much younger man who apparated directly into Albus Dumbledore's office.
Dumbledore's eyes widened as he looked up from the tea service he'd been arranging in anticipation of his guest's arrival. "Why, Mr. Peverell, how very peculiar," he said by means of greeting.
"Weren't you expecting me, Albus?" he asked, glancing at the tea and biscuits.
"Of course, my dear man," Albus smiled, eyes twinkling, "but most people do not simply apparate into the office of the headmaster of Hogwarts. You'll have to forgive my surprise."
The man calling himself Peverell forced a smile. He's been trying desperately to ignore the fact that Albus Dumbledore has been flirting with him since he first made contact with the man some months before. The more time they've spent together, the harder this has become to achieve, and he can think of few things more unsettling than that. "Hogwarts has a bit of a soft spot where I'm concerned. I've not had any trouble with the wards in quite some time."
"Hmm," Albus made a thoughtful noise in the bottom of his throat and began pouring them tea.
"You seem to be settling in," Peverell said, glancing speculatively around the office as he accepted his cup.
"Yes," Albus agreed, "Headmaster Dippet has been threatening retirement for so long I'd never thought he'd actually do it, but I feel the position suits me."
Peverell smiled. "I would agree."
There was a high tuneful cry as a mass of red and gold came careening in through the open window and landed in Peverell's lap.
"Ah, there's my boy," Peverell said, scratching the phoenix affectionately on the head. The bird made a happy cooing noise.
"Fawkes certainly seems to have taken a liking to you," Albus observed.
"Phoenixes have a long ranging existence, they experience things differently than people do; they have long lives, and even longer memories," Peverell said. "At one point he belonged to me- in so far as such an animal may belong to anyone other than himself."
Albus' eyes lit. "So you are a traveler then," he said the words with a certain reverence.
Peverell nodded with seeming reluctance. This was all part of his ultimate endgame. He had to give away just enough to get Albus to go along with whatever he asked without giving away any of his true intentions.
"I must admit that I had suspected as much," Albus looked almost gleeful at this new turn of events. "I always thought that the name Peverell was a bit too old for a man of your years. If you were sixty years older perhaps, but a man in his forties claiming the name Peverell must either be lying or have a more interesting story than he's letting on. I'd have known if you were simply lying, so you must have travelled here from the past. But please, won't you tell me what your first name is? I think we're passed surnames by now, wouldn't you agree?"
Peverell sipped at his tea, trying to hide a smile. "Would you like me to lie to you, Albus? I could make something up for proprieties sake I suppose."
Albus only smiled. "Oh, that won't be necessary. But on to another mystery, how is your little project coming along?"
"Well, I've secured the apprentice that I wanted. I have to say that I'm impressed by both his abilities and his… how should I say…malleability? I had expected to have a lot of work ahead of me- many firmly set ideas I'd need to coax out of him. I'm happy to find him so receptive. It makes my plans much simpler."
"And what exactly might those be?"
Peverell shrugged enigmatically.
"You know," Dumbledore said, "they've restricted the use of time-turners now. Too many people messing about was starting to have an effect on the time line. There are no more travelers. The Department of Mysteries has been tracking down anyone using a time turner and returning them to their proper time."
"Ah," Peverell said. "That's the funny thing about time travel, Albus. It's not easy to track."
"I could turn you in."
"Oh, you wouldn't do that, Albus."
"And why shouldn't I? Changing the future can have disastrous effects."
"You won't because you enjoy these conversations as much as I do, and you'd miss me if I was suddenly sent back to my own time. Also, you know as well as I do that any events that would drastically change the timeline have a way of making themselves unchangeable. And while the vast majority of what we think of as the major turning points in our lives have no historical significance whatsoever, those few events that do, even something so inconsequential as a trip to the zoo, or arriving a few minutes too late to catch a train, are more or less set in stone. Anything that must happen inevitably does happen, and there's nothing at all we can do to stop it- whether we have the ability to travel through time or not. Nature has her own ways of preventing paradoxes, as you know quite well."
Albus studied him for a long time, and then finally he took a sip of his tea and said, "You know about Gellert."
"How many times did you try to change his path before you finally gave up?"
"Seven," he said, sipping his tea again and adopting an air of nonchalance that was so obviously feigned that Peverell nearly let the subject drop entirely to save Albus the discomfort of rehashing old regrets.
"It's quite likely that my efforts here will be in vain as well, but you must surely understand why I have to at least try."
"That's where this boy comes in then?" Albus asked. "You're trying to do for him what I was trying to do for Gellert."
Peverell nodded. "But for entirely different reasons."
Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. "And you want my help?"
"From time to time I may ask the odd favor. Nothing that would overstretch the boundaries of what one friend may freely ask from another."
"And in return, I might expect you to continue to drop in for tea when it suits our schedules?"
Peverell raised his cup in a salute.
-October 2002-
Harry Potter tucked his time turner back into his robes and slumped into his desk chair- already an old man at twenty and the youngest headmaster Hogwarts had ever seen, he was beginning to look distinctly careworn around the edges. He pulled a bottle of scotch from the bottom drawer of his desk, poured a generous amount, and began nursing the first glass of the night. Fawkes ruffled his feathers from his perch in the corner.
"I know you're awake," Harry said to the empty room- seemingly addressing thin air.
There was a derisive snort from the portrait directly behind him.
"You know you can talk to me," Harry said, "I don't mind."
"I have no interest in indulging you in your self-pity, Potter," the portrait replied.
"You're hanging in here to advise your successors, not insult them," Harry said, draining his glass and filling it again from the bottle of Glenlivit that sat on his desk.
"Then I'll offer some advice. If you're feeling sorry for yourself, do what everyone else does and go out and find something pretty to shag and forget about it for a few hours. Or at least find somewhere else to mope."
Harry turned in his chair to regard the portrait of Severus Snape- given the place of honor on his cluttered wall.
"I happen to prefer this," he held up his glass. "And since this is my office, I don't have to go anywhere. If I'm bothering you, you're free to go skulk about the dungeon like you do whenever I'm not here anyway."
"What I do with my free time is no concern of yours, and if you insist on seeking me for advice, then why don't we talk about what really has you sitting at your desk drinking scotch in the dark at two in the morning. I find it peculiar that you insist on spending your every waking moment fixated on this half-baked scheme of yours to save my life, and yet you refuse to talk to me about it."
"Yeah, but you're not you," Harry insisted. "You're just a portrait, a shadow of a man, not the man himself."
The portrait of Severus Snape snorted. "Your point isn't completely invalid. However, the Severus Snape you spent your afternoon with is no more your beloved dungeon bat than I am. Surely the boy barely even resembles the man you knew. So, I'm afraid, little Headmaster, I am the best you can do. At least I'm a reasonable facsimile." He paused then, considering that. "I could refer to myself in the third person if you think it would make you more comfortable." When Harry didn't respond, he asked, "Did you love him?"
Harry spat scotch across his desk and turned back again to glare at the smugly smirking portrait. "Did you breathe in a few too many fumes the day they painted you?"
"Portraits don't breathe, Headmaster. Answer the question."
"How could I possibly love him? He hated me. Anyway, he's dead now, so what does it matter."
"You don't stop loving someone just because they're dead, and you've been trying quite desperately to remedy that little setback."
"That doesn't change the fact that he hated my guts and did everything in his power to make my life a living hell while I was at school."
Severus snorted. "Don't sound like such a petulant child. I was trying to protect you- even as you did everything in your power to make that impossible."
Harry tried a smirk on for size. "What happened to talking in the third person?"
"I often find it difficult to be objective where you're concerned."
Harry filled his glass for the third time while he considered that answer. "Are you trying to say that you were in love with me? Because, I'm finding that just a little hard to believe."
"I always had very strong feelings for you. I'm not saying that they were necessarily positive feelings, but your involvement in any situation made it difficult to ignore my emotions in favor of clear thinking."
"What are you trying to say?" Harry asked, giving him a puzzled look.
"Just that, given time and world enough to try, things may have turned out differently."
"You can be one cryptic bastard, Snape. Do you have any idea how infuriating that can be?"
The portrait smirked, and, if he didn't have the scotch to blame, he would have sworn he'd seen Snape's dark eyes twinkle. "I have an inkling."