Chapter 3: Bargaining
Term resumes with a squelch, as a freezing rain turns the snow atop the Hogwarts grounds to sludge. Filch has his work cut out for him, clearing wet tracks from the Entrance Hall at all hours of the day and attempting to confiscate the multitude of Zonko's products gifted over Christmas and smuggled back into the castle.
Potter reports to his first night of detention, looks around expectantly, and blurts out, "No cauldrons?"
It takes supreme effort not to roll his eyes, but Severus manages it. "Astute observation," he drawls. "Sit." Atop a student's desk that he's moved into his office for the occasion are a quill, ink, parchment, and Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts. "You will read chapters twelve through fifteen and make a list of everyone known or suspected to be supportive of the Dark Lord."
Potter stares at the book as if it's planning to jump up and hex him. After Severus' lecture about the dangers of unfamiliar magical objects, though, Severus will consider that an improvement. "Sir?" the boy says.
"You clearly have yet to understand the precarious position in which you have found yourself, both in the wizarding world at large and in Slytherin," Severus explains. "Tomorrow you will read chapters seventeen through nineteen and make a separate analysis of individuals who remain free to this day and may plausibly maintain their support for the Dark Lord and his cause."
"You mean people who might want to… hurt me?"
Well, well. The brat is capable of logical thought after all.
"There are unequivocally dozens of people who want to kill you, Potter," Severus drawls. "The question is not of mere ill-will but of ability and opportunity. Many of the Dark Lord's most fanatical followers are safely imprisoned in Azkaban, but not all of them, and assuredly not all of their offspring. It would serve you well to be cognizant of which families may have cause to wish you harm, should you ever encounter one of their more vengeful scions."
Potter gulps and gingerly takes a seat at the desk. Once he finally cracks the book open, Severus turns his attention to his fourth-year essays. They work in silence for three hours, broken only by the rustling of pages and scratching of quills, and, about an hour in, Potter's quiet but rather triumphant gasp of, "Malfoy!"
Well, the truth will do no favors for their inner-House feud, but it's better that Potter knows now before Draco comes back from the holidays with some political sense beaten into him by his father and attempts to win Potter over. Severus has no doubt that Lucius would see a great deal to be gained from an association with a Slytherin Harry Potter, and the boy should know from the first overtures exactly who he's dealing with.
...
The next evening, as promised, Severus assigns Potter additional reading from Rise and Fall and a new list to compile of Death Eaters who still roam free.
Potter looks him in the eye, takes a deep breath, and asks, "Does that include you, sir?"
He's known this was coming, of course, so Severus is not offended; he only smirks. "Trust nobody until you have reason to," is all he replies.
Oddly enough, Potter looks both frightened and vindicated by that answer. When he sits down, he shifts the desk around in a manner that would keep the professor in Potter's peripheral vision as he reads.
Good. Severus likes to be feared.
...
On day three of detention, Severus presents Potter with two tomes: Nature's Nobility and the more extensive Almanac of British Wizarding Families. He relishes Potter's apprehension at their size.
"You will research every known supporter of the Dark Lord- alive, dead, missing, and imprisoned- and compile a new list of all surviving family members who may seek vengeance on their behalf."
Two hours in, he realizes that he hasn't heard the scratch of Potter's quill for quite some time. It's too soon for Potter to have completed his task; British pureblood families, especially the pureblood supremacists, are notorious for the complexity of both their family trees and their individual loyalties. When he looks over, it's to find the boy staring avidly at the Potter section of the Almanac. The sight awakens an old bitterness in Severus, but it doesn't last; the child is, after all, the only living Potter left in existence. It's a vicariously lonely thought.
Severus clears his throat gently. Potter flushes and turns the page. Neither of them comments on it.
...
Now that Potter has a decent background in who may have motive to do him harm, Severus moves on to his original concern. For the remaining nights of detention, he assigns books about the most common mail- and object-based curses, jinxes, and hexes, as well as the easier spells used to detect them. Each night Potter stares at his reading material like he's trying to decide whether it's a threat, an approach which Severus makes no efforts to contradict.
At the end of the last night of detention, Severus returns the week's worth of lists to Potter, to keep and hopefully to study. Potter stares at them as if he'd like to test out some of those detection spells he's been reading about. When offered the chance, he only manages to successfully cast one of them, but he makes valiant attempts at the rest.
...
The Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff quidditch match goes off without a hitch. No brooms jinxed, no seekers almost killed, and, last but certainly not least, Hufflepuff only wins by 50 points, which keeps them quite nicely middling in the cup standings.
Severus takes advantage of the post-match furor to sneak out of the castle and meet Quirrell in the Forest. Quirrell is already trembling by the time Severus reaches the clearing of their rendezvous, but he's been looking rather pale and drawn for weeks now, so Severus refuses to shoulder the blame for his shivers.
"I h-hope you'll k-keep this q-q-quick," says Quirrell. His affected stutter is not at all improved by the chattering of his teeth. "I d-don't know why you wanted t-t-to meet me here of all p-places…"
"Oh, I thought we'd keep this private; students aren't supposed to know about the Sorcerer's Stone, after all."
Alas, Severus' little exposition there is the closest to a straightforward sentence to come out of that meeting; Quirrell does nothing but stutter, deny, and prevaricate, and it's too cold to waste his time trying to intimidate him further for the moment.
"We'll have another little chat soon," Severus promises. "When you've had time to think things over and decided where your loyalties lie."
...
A month later, he watches vigilantly from the professors' stands as Potter once again takes to the air. He hates having to split his attention between the boy and Quirrell, whom he's taken pains to sit behind but close enough to monitor. Thankfully, Potter catches the snitch in less than ten minutes, so apparently, if there was another assassination attempt in the works, it hadn't enough time to come to fruition.
Severus again monitors the post-game party from his office. Given Potter's sabotaged and clumsy debut, today's match seems to be what has truly proven his talent to the rest of his House. Potter spends a rather flustered half-hour being passed around from shoulder to shoulder of various upper-year Slytherins, and slinks off as soon as his feet hit the ground to the safety of a group of first-years.
Nott and Davis are there, of course, but also Bulstrode, Zabini, and Greengrass. Bulstrode, who has proclaimed herself bored of both Draco's little gang and all of the girls in her year, and, indeed, everything except quidditch, seems to have finally deemed Potter worth her time. Zabini, too, appears to be assessing Potter, and Severus is just glad he has chosen to re-evaluate Potter on a day when he's proven himself talented and well-liked. Greengrass doesn't look quite as open to an alliance as the others, but she's always kept herself closely guarded. Regardless, if Potter wants to build up a support base, today is a good day to start making those moves.
...
In the weeks before Easter, Severus notices Potter and his little Gryffindor friends acting strangely. They've been slipping out of the castle often, but all they appear to be doing is visiting Hagrid. Severus can't tell if their suspicious behavior has something to do with the gamekeeper himself or if they're using the cover of visiting Hagrid to then sneak off to other, more nefarious pursuits on the grounds.
He keeps an eye on them while he can, but he's spending most of his energies on protecting the Stone and bullying Quirrell into giving up his secrets… unsuccessfully.
You'd think, for a man who looks ever more sickly by the week, that either his willpower would crumble or he'd be desperate enough to access the Elixir of Life that he'd accept Severus' demanding but still useful "offer to help." But alas, Quirrell remains steadfastly tight-lipped, no matter how hard Severus pushes.
Sometimes, he gets the feeling that Quirrell is working for someone more terrifying than Severus himself. Even more infuriatingly, Dumbledore doesn't seem the least bit surprised nor perturbed when Severus voices this impression. Most frustrating of all, neither professor seems inclined to fill Severus in on who might be guiding Quirrell's wand.
...
Severus is woken in the past-midnight darkness to Minerva and Draco at his door. Draco looks indignant, while Minerva just looks furious.
This will be a lovely visit, he's sure.
"Severus," Minerva says. "I encountered Mr. Malfoy here by the astronomy tower, after hours, spouting some kind of nonsense about Potter and a dragon!"
"I swear," Draco whines, rubbing the conspicuously red top of his ear. "Potter and his friends are smuggling a dragon out to Weasley's brother! Tonight! They were supposed to meet on the astronomy tower at midnight!"
"Never in my life have I heard such an absurd excuse for being out after hours!" Minerva gasps.
Severus remains silent, watching Draco. He certainly looks sincere, and Severus hasn't noticed any tells that suggest he's lying, but that only means that Draco believes he's telling the truth. Much more likely, Severus suspects, is that this is an uncharacteristically elaborate (and uncharacteristically successful) ruse from Potter or one of his friends to get Draco into trouble.
But he won't display any of that doubt in front of Minerva, so he falls back on an old favourite method of Slytherin discipline.
"You're saying you believed that Mr. Potter and his friends were in possession of a Class XXXXX highly dangerous magical creature, and chose not to alert a single adult to its presence in a castle full of schoolchildren?"
Minerva looks at him askance, but he ignores her.
"And then, upon learning of their plans to move the dragon, you decided to sneak around after hours to, what, confront them? Where you would be outnumbered two or three to one, not to mention putting yourself in the presence of a volatile magical beast of unknown age and ability? Did you perhaps come prepared with any means by which to subdue the dragon, Draco?"
Draco's face reddens steadily throughout the course of this chastisement, until his cheeks and forehead match the patch of his ear that was evidently manhandled by Minerva upon his apprehension. He hangs his head, but answers with no small amount of defensiveness.
"Once I caught them I was going to yell for Filch," he mutters. "Then the adults could have handled the dragon."
"So hypothetically, Potter and his friends would be sneaking around, quietly, by necessity, with the dragon in hand, and your brilliant idea was to yell for help once you spotted them? Did you stop to think for even an instant how a dragon would respond to a sudden loud noise in its vicinity? Did it not occur to you that a sudden disturbance could frighten or upset it, even single you out as a threat?"
Draco's face pales impressively for how red it was mere moments ago. "It didn't occur to me," says quietly, sounding defeated.
"Obviously," Severus drawls. "I have to admit I'm quite disappointed by your behavior this evening. You exhibited a shocking lack of foresight and a Gryffindor's worth of rashness and idiocy. I thought you were above placing yourself in unnecessary danger for the sake of petty personal rivalries."
"Please," Draco whispers, "don't write to father."
"I won't," Severus promises after a long, tense beat. Draco's shoulders visibly slump in relief. "But I will be informing your mother. What she chooses to do with that information is her own prerogative."
He lets the boy stew and looks back at Minerva. "I will escort young Mr. Malfoy back to the dormitory," he promises.
Minerva nods. "Detention, Mr. Malfoy," she says. "And twenty points from Slytherin for being out after curfew."
Severus has no doubt that she would have taken more points had she not witnessed Severus' lecture first-hand. Still, it rankles to watch another Head of House take points from his student in his presence. Not that he would have done it himself if she hadn't, which Minerva obviously knew.
The walk back to the common room is quiet. Draco takes a couple of deep inhales, as if preparing to speak, but never does. Severus suspects that's for the best; he's in no mood to hear whatever half-stewed excuses Draco's no doubt brewing up. All he wants to do is go back to bed.
Once he makes it back to his quarters, though, it feels like his head has hardly hit the pillow before he's once again woken, this time by Filch with Potter. He fixes them both with his most poisonous stare, which only seems to work on Potter.
"Found Potter here leaving the astronomy tower with the Granger girl," Filch says gleefully.
"Thank you, Mr. Filch," Severus sneers. "I'll take it from here."
"Aye," says the caretaker. He whistles for his accursed cat and leaves them.
Severus siphons a bit of his ire into slamming his office door, which feels good for a half-second before the sound reverberates a headache into existence right behind his eyes. He winces, whirls around, and all but flings himself down into the chair.
"Explain yourself," he snaps.
"Er," says Potter. "Hermione and I were just exploring the castle, sir. Filch caught us."
It's such a flimsy lie it's practically an embarrassment to the name of Slytherin.
"And you couldn't explore the castle during daylight hours?" he drawls.
"It's more fun at night, is all."
Severus looks up so that Potter can clearly see him roll his eyes. It hurts; he'd forgotten for a moment about the throbbing ache in his frontal cortex. But other than that, he stays silent long enough for the boy to start fidgeting.
"And this has nothing to do with Mr. Malfoy's report of a dragon in your possession?"
The watching pays off: he sees Potter's neck twitch up, catches a glimpse of wide, panicked eyes before Potter catches himself and stills the automatic head-jerk half-way.
"Dragon?" he echoes, several octaves too high.
"Indeed," drawls Severus. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about a dragon, would you?"
From the way Potter's shoulders tense, he obviously does, although it's still not clear whether the dragon was just an elaborate story told to mislead Draco or, Merlin forbid, a real-life beast that has been raised somewhere in the castle. He does seem exceedingly anxious for someone caught out in a mere lie to a fellow student, but that would mean, impossibly, Potter actually had a dragon tonight…
"I told Malfoy I had a pet dragon to try to intimidate him," Potter blurts out. "And then when he demanded to see it, I told him he couldn't because I was giving it away tonight and it was already packed up in a crate for transport. It was all a lie, though. I just wanted to rile him up."
Severus briefly wonders whether Lily would blame him if he inadvertently allowed her son's head to be bitten off by a secret Class XXXXX pet.
"And what were you and Miss Granger doing out of bed then?"
The several-seconds-long pause that Potter takes to marshal his thoughts is damning. "Like I said, just exploring, sir. I forgot I'd told Malfoy I was getting rid of the dragon tonight. It was all just a coincidence."
Severus finally succumbs to the urge to press his fingers deeply to the portion of his forehead that feels like his skull is threatening to burst. "Potter," he grinds out from between his teeth, "if I find even one shred of evidence that you are or have ever been in possession of an actual dragon on school grounds, I promise I shall not stop until I personally see you expelled from this school."
Potter gulps audibly but doesn't look nearly as defeated as Draco did earlier tonight. "I swear I am not and have never been in possession of a dragon on school grounds," he says.
All of a sudden, he appears to be telling the truth, which makes even less sense than all the rest of this conversation. Severus' head throbs in frustration. He needs more sleep before he can deal with Potter's nonsense.
"Twenty points from Slytherin for breaking curfew," he hisses. It hurts to take points from his own House, but he'll never hear the end of it if Draco loses points and Potter doesn't. And, well, if he was going to take points from any one Slytherin over the course of his Hogwarts tenure, it would be Potter. "And you'll serve the same detention Professor McGonagall assigns Draco and Granger."
"Yes, sir."
Potter looks entirely too relieved to have reached the apparent end of his interrogation. Severus does not have the capacity to wonder why that is at the moment.
"Bed, Potter. Now."
"Yes, sir."
...
Severus' headache persists in the morning and he feels awful. He must look awful, too, because Pomona takes one glance at him over breakfast and says, "Oh, not you too, Severus?"
She nods at Hagrid, who looks even worse than Severus feels: eyes rimmed red and puffy above purpling bags. He seems to have had little sleep and a long, recent cry.
On the night that a dragon was possibly smuggled out of the school.
Severus wants to strangle someone.
He settles for ranting at Dumbledore an hour later, a fat lot of good that does. Dumbledore says that with the dragon gone he has no reason to investigate Hagrid and there's nothing to be done.
Severus wants to strangle Dumbledore.
Later, in the staff room, he hears that Hagrid has "generously offered" to take the supervision of first-year detentions off of Filch's hands, seeing as he has some work to do with which he could use the help. This only cements the idea in Severus' mind that Potter and his cronies were acting on Hagrid's behalf, and that the groundskeeper is now rewarding their loyalty by making sure their token punishments are easy.
He wants to strangle Hagrid.
The headache lingers for a whole week.
...
"Potter," he calls over the din of students preparing to leave. "Stay after class."
The boy looks nervously at his mediocre potion, flask still in hand, but waves off his friends who are sending him exceedingly obvious (in the case of the Gryffindors) looks of concern. He approaches the desk once the rest of his classmates have left.
"Yes, sir?"
"I believe that it was not your dragon you were smuggling out of the castle," Severus says without preamble.
As suspected, Potter freezes for several long and incriminating moments.
"There was no dragon," he lies. It is only slightly more convincing than it was on Saturday night. "That was just a story I told Malfoy-"
"Potter."
He falls silent.
"Perhaps I was not clear enough after the mountain troll incident," Severus sneers. "If you believe yourself or other students to be in danger, what are you to do?"
"Alert a prefect or professor?" Potter answers warily.
"And if you believe one prefect or professor in particular of being a danger to yourself or other students, what do you think would be the best course of action?"
Maybe Potter's caught on to his line of thought, because suddenly he looks extremely wary. His shoulders tense, he shifts the books in his arms to leave one hand free, and he steps slightly back, one foot angled towards the door. It's a bit of an overreaction for a child facing nothing more than a lecture, or perhaps being caught out in a lie; Potter looks two seconds away from fleeing the room altogether. Still, he answers, cautiously, "Alert a different prefect or professor?"
Severus smiles his most condescending smile. "And tell me, Potter, would you consider a Class XXXXX magical beast on the school grounds to be a danger to yourself or other students?"
He watches the realization hit with no small amount of satisfaction, but he's a bit confused by the flash of relief that follows, and he really doesn't like the crafty little smirk Potter ends up with.
"You mean like a cerberus?" Potter says with a falsely innocent voice that sounds entirely too much like his father.
"I mean Hagrid's bloody dragon!" Severus spits.
"Well sir," the boy says, still infuriatingly pleasant, "If Dumbledore knows about the giant three-headed dog on the third floor and hasn't moved it, then I guess I just don't know enough yet to understand what makes an animal too dangerous to be in a school. I am just a first-year, after all."
If he's forced to remain in Potter's presence another moment longer, Severus will start casting hexes. "Out, Potter," he snarls.
"Yes, sir," Potter answers. He turns away, but not before Severus catches the flash of triumph on his face.
He wants to strangle Potter, too.
...
[A/N]
Hermione: I think Snape tried to kill you
Harry: no way
...
Snape: let me teach you about all the people who want to kill you
Harry: like you?
Snape: yes, exactly
Snape: here are some of the ways I could kill you
Snape: CONSTANT VIGILANCE
...
Snape: one of your professors is trying to kill you
Harry: *time to run*
Snape: it's hagrid
Snape: with the dragon
Snape: duh