Chapter 4: The long dark teatime of the soul II
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First of all I'd like to apologize that I took so long to update. But (for once!!!) I have an excuse: I was forced to write 25 damn pages on the topic of some bloody kid getting a faulty house as a birthday present for university, which stole quite an amount of my precious time. I'll try to update more regularly from now on (please not the careful use of the word "try"...)
Isidra - DANKE SCHÖN!!! Du bist und bleibst mein Lieblingshäschen!!!!!
Mrs. Snape - Slytherin sympathizer? I wonder what made you think so ^_^
And my thanks to all other reviewers!!!
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The sound of the shrill laughter paralysed the boy. "Professor McGregor?" he whispered.
But she did not stop, in the contrary, her body was shaking so violently from her hysterical outburst that she had obvious difficulties to get enough air to breathe. Choking, she touched her lustrous hair and began to laugh even higher as if her fingertips were blistered, before she suddenly changed into heartbreaking sobs. "Oh, Lily, Lil, Lil, did you hate me this much?"
"Professor?" Harry whispered a second time, his voice trembling. "What...what happened?"
As she raised her head jerkily, the boy stepped back, terrified by the cold undisguised hatred of her eyes. "What happened? You want to know what happened?" She laughed high-pitched and shrilly, the sound sending a flash of pain through Harry's head. "I have committed some unforgivable sin, that happened. And your mother, when being forced to carry out the consequences, choose death over forgiving me and the circle that began in this very halls a lifetime ago finally closed itself."
With this she began to sob softly in her hands.
Helplessly Harry stared at the crying woman, not knowing what to do. His eyes shot frantically through the room, desperately trying to find something that would be of a help to him, that would tell him what to do. They finally came to rest on the book.
The Flowers of Evil.
*Oh that. Severus borrowed it to me.*
His eyes widened. Snape! Of course, Snape had been Professor McGregor's friend for years, surely he would know what reduced her to this broken being. He would know how to help her!
"Professor, shall I get you Snape?" he asked carefully.
She did not even look up, just continued to cry silently into her hands.
Pale, the boy finally hastened out of the room, his eyes by now as frantic as the blonde ones.
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As fast as he could Harry hastened through the empty corridors down to the dungeons where the entrance of Slytherin laid. He only hoped that he would find Snape in his private rooms for he had no other idea where else to look for the Potion Master. Breathlessly he finally stopped in front of the stone wall, whose trap door lead into the Serpent's House, already opening his mouth when he realized a thing he had completely forgotten in his hurry to arrive here: he did not know the password to enter.
Staring blankly at the stone image, a nasty little voice in his head told him that this was just what he deserved for not having followed the Sorting Head's recommendation on his first evening in Hogwarts. Cursing himself quietly for allowing his mind to get caught up in that destructive circle again, but feeling too helpless and too desperate to shove the thought away, he suddenly heard a low silken laughter. Spinning around, he tried to catch the spot of the voice but there was nothing, only the vast corridor behind him.
His eyes narrowed. Had some Slytherin observed his futile attempt to enter the dungeons? That would mean mocking with no end, so much for sure. "Hello?" he asked nevertheless. "Is there someone?"
Then he heard the sound again. And this time he recognized the soothing, hissing undertone of the voice. Slowly he rose his head to the Slytherin emblem on the stone wall, green with the embroided silver snake.
"Was that you?" he hesitantly hissed back in Parsel.
The laughter abruptly ceased. Slowly, very slowly, the serpent's black eyes deepened, became livelier and dangerously intelligent as the silvery coils slithered over each other and gradually untangled themselves. Raising her head until she could muster Harry from head to feet, the small eyes narrowed slightly. "Now that´sss a ssssurprise", she hissed. "A human who talksss like one of usss. It hasss been a long time sssince the last of your kind passssed here."
Harry's mind began to whirl. One part of his mind was simply amazed at the speaking image -he was quite sure that the other emblems never showed any sign of life- the other one saw a sudden possibility to get into Slytherin even without password. "Listen, I'd really like to talk to you, but I don't have the time now", he explained, the syllables of the alien language now flowing as easily from his mouth as if he had never spoken any other tongue. "Something happened, something bad, and I must absolutely see Snape!"
"Sssnape?" The serpent began to uncoil herself lazily. "The sssilent man with the black hair and the sssad eyes?"
"Yes, I guess that must be him", Harry agreed, although he wouldn't have described Snape's eyes as sad. Not really. "So please let me in!"
The black eyes mustered him thoughtfully. "It´sss not your houssse", the snake hissed after a while. "You don't belong in here."
"I know, but..."
"I wonder why", she interrupted him, the sound of her voice by now soothingly familiar. The intelligent black eyes seemed to stare right into his soul, but Harry was not sure if he wanted to know what they, judging from the satisfied cold light appearing in them, obviously found there. "One who talksss like usss, should alssso go our waysss. Why are you not in the Ssserpent´s House, little sssnake?"
Harry grew pale under the piercing glance. "Because I..."
But all of a sudden the snake recoiled herself again and returned to her earlier motionless status.
"What...", Harry began, but was interrupted by a far too familiar silky voice.
"Trying to break into Slytherin, Potter? I must admit, this dubious talent of yours that always finds some new school rule you have not already broken before, never fails to surprise me."
Harry jumped so hard he almost fell off. Staring at the distant wall, it took him one moment to recognise the black-robed silhouette with the sharp, hook-nosed profile in the dim light.
"Professor Snape?" he finally asked in utter relief.
The Potion Master's black eyes were as cold and depthless as usual, the ever-present sneer stretched across his lips. "So delightened to see me? Well, perhaps this will change after we'll have discussed your detention for this humble attempt of burglary with the Headmaster. I am sure Professor Dumbledore will be as interested as myself to know the reason for your..." His sentence trailed off and Harry felt long cold fingers lifting his pale and contorted face to the dim light. "What the hell happened to you, Potter?"
Harry stared blankly at him, wondering how in God's name he could ever begin. Now that he had found the Potion Master, he was suddenly trembling nearly as badly as the DADA teacher had been when he left her. There seemed to be no way how he could arrange his thoughts and feelings long enough to hold down a single coherent sentence. Opening his mouth to try nevertheless, no sound came emerged from his dry throat.
"Potter, answer me immediately or I will take so many points from your house that it will have problems to surpass Hufflepuff at the Housecup." In spite of the words, there was worry flickering in the depths of those icy black eyes. "I warn you, boy, if this is some mindless joke of yours..."
"Professor McGregor!" The boy finally found his words back, briefly wondering why the other's body went rigid at the name. "I visited her this evening. We drank tea and she told me something about my mum and all of a sudden..." He swallowed hardly as he remembered the coldness of the teacher's sapphire blue eyes. "She got hysteric, I guess. She laughed like mad and said something about unforgivable sins and closing circles."
The piercing eyes narrowed slightly as if these words were wakening up some old memory. "Continue."
Harry mind was swirling with the attempt to focus on the earlier events. "She touched my scar." Again he saw the Potion Master's body freezing and again he couldn't think of a reason why. "She said something about it being Hate's Kiss and that I should be grateful not to remember the night Voldemort gave it to me." He stopped himself, feeling a fierce resentment to speak further. In spite of the blonde's praise on him, Snape had never shown him the slightest hint of understanding, let alone kindness. When there was one person on earth, he did not want to know about the vague terrors that he sometimes still felt at nighttime, it surely was the Head of Slytherin. He could just see the greasy git telling his students about famous Potter whining like a baby over the memories of his mother's death in the next Potion lesson. But then the Snape was probably the only one that knew Professor McGregor well enough to help her. And for some highly dubious reason he had been his mum's friend, so perhaps there was a faint chance that he would not act like his usual nasty self. When Harry finally made his decision, his words were not more than a barely audible whisper. "I told her I did."
Something in Stapes's face changed. "You what?!"
For one short moment, Harry closed his eyes, feeling as though the memories of that night were going to swallow him whole. There were voices in his head, the high pitched, cold sound of Voldemort speaking to his mother as if they were acquaintances of old...Lily's desperate pleas for mercy...his father's death and...quickly he opened the eyes again, only to be forced to stare into Snape's black ones. "Do you remember how I reacted to the Dementors in my third year?" he eventually asked, his voice hoarse.
A small smirk appeared on the other's thin lips, but was forced away nearly in the same instant. "Considering the fact that your fainting was the Slytherin Common Room's favourite joke for the entire term, it would be hard to forget it", Snape finally responded dryly.
Harry choose to ignore this one.
"When they approached me, I could hear..." Again he had to interrupt himself, trying to remind him of the Gryffindor bravery he seemed to have lost sometime in the events of this night. Feeling Snape's glance on him, piercing, but for once not hard or glaring, he finally continued in a dull, toneless voice as though reciting the story of someone else. "I could hear Voldemort telling my mum to step aside. Hear how she refused. Hear how she screamed when he put the killing curse on her."
The blood drained from Snape's face. "Dear Merlin", he whispered in a fragile voice Harry had never heard from him before. For one moment the Potion Master seemed lost in some dangerous chamber of his own thoughts, a faraway look on his features that seemed to remove his mind from this plane of reality and to transport it onto one that was only his and Harry's mother's alone. Then he snapped back, a subliminal panic in his eyes that frightened the boy even more than Professor McGregor's outburst. If Snape was afraid, the world was probably standing shortly before the apocalypse.
Suddenly the Potion Master gripped his shoulders roughly. "Did you tell her this as well, Potter? Did you tell Morrigan that Voldemort wanted Lily to step aside?"
Shocked by the black fire of those eyes, Harry had to resist the urge to step back. "Yes", he stuttered. "Pro...Professor, what does this mean?"
"It means that you're not the only one who had lost a loved one in this war," Snape snarled, but the flicker of pain in his eyes betrayed the harsh tone of his voice. Regaining control of his expression again, he released the boy from his painful grip. "And although it is really none of your business, Potter, your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher had lost even more than that. She had been crucially damaged more than your underexposed teenage brain can even begin to imagine and your mother's death took quite a major part in the process."
"But she never..."
Snape snorted derisively. "She never shows it? Potter, don't be more of an idiot than you already are!" The black eyes laid on him with the same furious impatience he showed whenever the boy botched some perfectly simple task in his class. "No matter how well she hides it behind her silliness and her easy laughter, Morrigan is carrying a pain within her you cannot even begin to understand. And tonight you managed to destroy this fragile mask of hers and I really don't know what she will do now."
The harsh words send a rush of guilt through Harry's chest. His fault. These two words pondered painfully in his ears. Like always his fault. The desolate tears Professor McGregor had shed, the coldness in her usually so lovable blue eyes, somehow this was his doing.
Seeing the guilt in the other one's expression, Snape's eyes softened a bit.
"I did not say that it was your fault, Potter. This may be a miracle in itself, but for once it is not." The voice was calmer this time, almost soothing. "Neither was it Lily's or Morrigan's, I might add. It was just some very bad luck."
"Please, Sir." Harry did not know what possessed him when he gripped Snape's robe. Determined he stared in the eyes of the frozen man in front of him. "Please...you owe it to my mum to tell me what happened between you."
The black eyes flashed. Leaning forwards in a rather intimidating manner, Snape's face was suddenly only inches away from Harry's. "Don't dare to tell me what I owe to Lily." The silky voice did not rise in volume or pitch. Rather it got softer, lower and infinitely more deadly. "Never again tell me what I owe to Lily."
His expression was profoundly intimidating, but this time Harry did not withdrew from the death glare of those icy eyes. To hell with the points he would loose his House. "Then I'll tell you that you owe it to *me*." For one moment he did not realize the restrained bitter voice that was suddenly filling the corridor. Then he realized that it was his own. "She was my mother and yet the only thing I remember about her is the way the screamed when she died. Nothing else, sir, just that. Don't you think that I have every right to know the reason for this?"
To his surprise, the Professor did not take advantage of his chance to take points from him for the first time since he knew him. Instead his black eyes laid with frightening intensity on his face, their expression unreadable, beyond anything the boy could grasp. "Has Morrigan told you about the reason our friendship ended?" Snape finally asked harshly without so much as an introduction.
Harry shook his head, relieved that the Potion Master had not decided to kill him right on the spot. "No, sir." He frowned a bit, trying to remember Professor McGregor's exact words. "She said...she said that it was about greatness."
A little smile graced Snape's thin lips for a bare instant. "Leave it to Morrigan to reveal the whole truth without saying anything at all. She was always the best when it came to games like these." His voice sounded soft for a moment, then he waved his hand impatiently. "Anyway, when we were in our fifth year, she found a forbidden book in the library which contained the instructions for a powerful magical ritual of the darkest kind." He snorted shortly at the memory. "Being the good Slytherin that she was, she had been eager to try it, but a circle of three persons was needed to perform the magic. So she asked Lily and me to help her."
Harry listened breathlessly. "And what did you say?"
Snape's eyes were darker than Harry had ever seen them. "Thanks to our thrice-damned Slytherin ambition, I've been easy to convince, but your mother hesitated. She said that it was far too dangerous, a little blacker than she liked her arts." He wrinkled his nose disdainfully. "We had quite a fight about the topic but in the end, she finally agreed. And so we did it."
"And you failed?"
The other one shuddered at the memory. "No, we succeeded. And yet it went horribly wrong." He paused for a short moment, clutching his black robe tighter as if trying to withstand a cold only he could feel. "We awakened a power far beyond our ability to control and within the process we drew a most unwanted attention on us."
The dark eyes flashed to the scar on Harry's forehead and suddenly the boy understood. "Voldemort?" he whispered.
A bitter smile appeared on Snape's thin lips. "Voldemort indeed." His voice was strangely hoarse when he spoke the forbidden name. "The Headmaster never knew until I told him years later, but we drew the Dark Lord's eyes here to Hogwarts. He felt the dark power we had awoken and he knew of those who did it." Shaking his head unwillingly, he continued rather harshly. "I still have no idea how, but somehow we managed to dismiss this hellish thing we had called. Somehow we got away alive and unpunished. But it had been quite clear to me that this would not have closed the circle we had so carelessly opened with our mindless action."
Harry nodded slowly in understanding. "So you thought that Voldemort would come back to get the persons, who were powerful enough to awaken such a power, to join him."
Snape threw a slightly sarcastic glance in his direction. "So in spite of your lifetime quest to prove otherwise, you can do common sense, Potter", he sneered half-heartedly. "Will wonders ever cease?"
Ignoring the sarcasm, the boy's mind began to whirl around. "But why did you break with my mother after this?"
The Potion Master snorted. "You would not know it when you meet her, but Morrigan always tends to act like hell's own bitch when she does not feel comfortable with herself and just now she had to experience the feeling of guilt for the very first time. She did not take it too well and chose to blame Lily for everything."
"And..." "You" he wanted to ask but the word died on his lips when he finally understood. Staring into Snape's ebony eyes, he felt his own widening. "You knew that Voldemort would come after you", he whispered bewildered. "You knew it and you wanted... you wanted to save my mum from this."
Snape's mouth quirked into a humourless sneer. "Please, Potter, the least thing I desire is to become some kind of shining hero in your imagination. One of this kind here at Hogwarts seems to be more than enough to me."
But as Harry did not turn his piercing glance away from him, his cool expression began to flicker. Obviously unable to face the sight of the questioning green eyes any longer, Snape turned them away. "If you insist to hear it, you're -for once- right. I did not want Lily to be harmed any more, so I did my best to make our friendship an unfortunate lapse in her judgment", he finally acknowledged quietly, his bitter black eyes softening for a moment, before he turned them back on the boy with hard intensity and full of undisguised self-loathing. "And indeed I was so stunningly successful that she turned her attention to your father, Gryffindor´s goddamn Golden Boy, in no time at all. James, of all people! First I have considered this just a stupid act of vengeance, but obviously I had not known Lily half as well as I thought to do."
In spite of himself, a wave of pity overwhelmed Harry when he saw the savage pain in the other one's eyes. Until now he had not known that the man was capable of any feelings beside sadistic joy and nastiness. "Is this why you hate me so much?" he suddenly heard himself whisper. "Not because of my dad, but because of my mum?"
Snape eyed him sharply for a moment, then he sighed with a quiet air of exasperation. "I don't hate you, foolish boy", he murmured unfriendly. "But this is neither your nor my worry at the moment."
Harry felt his cheeks flaming. He had nearly forgotten about Professor McGregor and the desperate expression in those haunted sapphire eyes. Then he suddenly grew pale. "I made her think that she had set Voldemort on my mother's tracks", he uttered horrified. "She thinks that she is responsible for her death."
Snape gave him an unreadable look. "Don't you have enough pain of your own, Potter? Do you so necessarily need to burden yourself with other's misery as well?" Shaking his head in a mixture of anger and exhaustion when the boy expression did not change, the older man finally sighed resigned. "If you want my advice for once, don't try to understand Morrigan. You would not be the first to fail miserably."
With this he began to hurry down the corridor. Harry hesitated only for one moment before he followed him, a behaviour, Snape did not comment on until they arrived at the DADA teacher's door. "This is nothing of your business, Potter, so go."
"No."
"Boy, this is not the time for your Gryffindor stupidity, so please spare me the explanations I would have to give the Headmaster if he had to face you in animal form the next time..."
"It's my fault that she is in this state", Harry interrupted him, not caring about how many points a behaviour like this would certainly cost his House. "I am responsible for this and I can't just look away and pretend that it was not this way. She was my mother's friend and I had no right to burden her with my pain only because I am to weak to master it alone."
With this he stopped, feeling that he had said much more than he had ever intended to do. Hesitantly, he looked into Snape's eyes, not sure about what he saw there. Not the cold assessment that he got in Potions and nothing of the usual loathing. "Then come." The Potion Master finally said and opened the door.
Both relieved and hesitating, Harry followed him into the room. His eyes flashed instantly to the sofa, and indeed, Professor McGregor was still sitting there in the same position he had left her in, the beautiful face buried into her hands.
Snape eyed her for several moments, the expression of his face unreadable. "Morrigan?" he finally asked. His voice was soft, soothing, his words gentle and for an instant Harry understood what his mother had probably seen in him. "Morrigan, it's Severus."
She looked up, her face smeared with tears, her eyes, wide and wondering as if she was merely considering things, staring at both of them in a perfect stillness that was in its way as frightening as her hysterical outburst. "Sev", she eventually greeted him, her voice broken, so different from its usual melodic tone that Harry barely recognized it as hers. Her blue eyes searched something in his black ones, visibly without success, then flashed to Harry. "He told you?"
With surprising tenderness, Snape approached her and wiped her face carefully with the sleeve of his robe. "Morrigan, please listen to reason, you can't possible..."
"And you don't suppose him to invent this, do you?" she interrupted him, still in the same blank voice.
For one moment Snape stared at her in incomprehension, then he shook his head. "I've never known the boy to lie." He smirked shortly, but without his usual vicious pleasure. "It could be that he's just too stupid to know how, but either way I believe him."
"Then you must know what this means." Still no emotion was displayed in her voice.
"I know what you think that it means." He shook his head slowly, his black eyes looking slightly worried. "Morrigan, you must let it go. You can't linger in your misery forever."
But already while he spoke these words, the blonde's face had undergone some ugly change; while her eyes had become smaller, her mouth, without switching at all, suddenly looked cruel for some reason. "You are the one to speak, Severus", she replied bitterly. "You, who crawls yourself into your dungeons, afraid of every human warmth and endlessly lamenting on your failures. You cannot let it go any better than me, so please spare me your lame bit of advice about how the time heals all wounds."
"Morrigan..."
Her expression was profoundly cold by now. "Poor Severus, such a desire to atone", she mocked him, her voice silken and seductive, yet underlined with unspeakable cruelty. The ghost of a smile appeared on her crimson lips all of a sudden. "Do you want to know the difference between us, my darling? Do you want to know what separates you and me from each other? We both have lived in the dark for over ten years by now, but in contrast to me you cannot adjust." She laughed humourlessly. "You just sit there in your self-chosen loneliness and regret everything, every failure, every sin, every mistake, every hurt you've caused out of love or hatred or hunger. You even tacked mine and Lily's names on the end of the list to set aside for your broodier moments, but it doesn't change a goddamn thing."
For a long moment silence laid in the room. Nothing but silence and the beauty of her eyes.
"Maybe you're right", Snape replied after a while, surprising Harry with the amount of weariness in his voice. "But can you really blame me? We all have our scars."
"And not all of them heal." The coldness suddenly vanished out of her eyes, leaving nothing back but deep sympathy and understanding. Tenderly she reached out to touch his cheek. "We all learned this lesson. You, me, Lily and this poor boy I have probably scared to death tonight."
Her eyes wandered to Harry, unbearable sad and full of guilt, yet indescribable beautiful. Nothing of the coldness, the hatred or the bitterness was left, only a complete honesty that was in its way strangely soothing. "I am sorry, Harry", she told him quietly. "I was not as sorry as I am now for nearly twenty years. Not since the night when I condemned your mother to a fate worse than death."
The boy had to clear his throat before he could speak again. "It's okay." Feeling himself how inappropriate these words sounded at a moment like this, he added, far quieter, "It was not your fault. Professor Snape told me everything. How could you know what misery your experiment would cause? Besides", he continued barely audible, avoiding the two pairs of sapphire blue and ebony black eyes that stared at him with the same unbelieving expression. "She did not die because of you. She died for me."
"No!" The word was spoken so vehemently that it made Harry's head jerk. The blonde had stood up from the sofa, shaking her head roughly, her sapphire eyes shining brightly in the candlelight.
"Professor McGregor?" he whispered.
Suddenly he found himself in a warm, comforting embrace. "It's not your fault, dear", the blonde murmured gently against his hair. "And you must never think this way, Harry, never, do you hear me!"
Stiffening at first, for nobody had ever taken him in the arms, Harry felt himself weaken after a moment and finally he melted against the soothing comfort of those tender arms, giving himself over completely to the blonde. Memories rushed through his head in frightening speed, long forgotten memories and the sudden desperate wish that the arms that were holding him right now, were those of his mother. "I'm so sorry", he whispered, without knowing whether he was sorry for his parents to die so young, for Professor McGregor's guilt and Snape's so well hidden pain, sorry perhaps even for Tom Riddle who had never known the loving embrace of a mother as well, or simply sorry for himself.
"So, you're sorry?" Although so very close to him, she seemed distant for a moment, indescribably beautiful in the firelight, the golden strands of her hair barely touching her smooth forehead, her lips parted in a beatific yet sad smile. "How every one of us loves his precious guilt", she whispered, before suddenly settling back into herself and carefully releasing him.
She shot a quick, apprehensive look at Snape, their eye contact pregnant with meaning, but of what, the boy didn't know. Suddenly the familiar brilliant smile reappeared on her lips, letting her radiant blue eyes glitter like the sapphires they favoured so much. "I think I know the perfect medicine for this miserable state we are all in", she stated merrily. "A good cup of tea."
As Harry only stared in utter disbelief at her, Snape sneered contemptuously. "You don't actually mean this, do you?"
"Well why not?" she returned defiantly. "Tea never fails to calm down your nerves."
"So?" Suspiciously, the Potion Master reached out for the cup Harry had left on the table. "Oh God, you still drink this horrible jasmine tea."
"He was always like this", Morrigan confided into a still dumbfolded Harry with a twinkle. "Try to be nice to him and the only thanks you will get is his criticism."
Snape frowned. "You know, Morrigan, I'm not used to people talking about me as if I'm not here."
"Oh shut up, Sev, I am not in the mood for this senseless jerk act right now!"
"And I think I have every right to act like I want to, considering how your hysterics have once more managed to destroy a peaceful evening of mine."
"Sev, you're impossible."
"Maybe so. But have you ever asked yourself the question whether you would like it if I called you Mor?"
Watching the two exchanging wits with the expert ease of a often-practised dance, Harry suddenly felt the tired irritation of a teenage boy who thought that he would never get close to understand the dubious logic of adults. "No offence, but I think I'd rather go back to the Gryffindor Tower", he finally said wearily, feeling that if anything could calm his nerves just now, it would surely not be a teaparty with these two crazy Slytherins. "Another time gratefully, though."
Professor McGregor beamed happily, her eyes nothing but sweetness and laughter. "I am looking forward to it."
"So am I", Harry returned, the tone of his voice rather unconvincing as he moved towards the door. "I see you tomorrow."
But even long after he had left the room, two pairs of blue and black eyes still lingered on the space where he had stood. "He favours Lily very much, doesn't he?" The blonde finally broke the silence thoughtfully. "A pity, the boy would have done well in Slytherin."
Snape wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Well, in my eyes he takes completely after his worthless father." Seeing the doubt in her brilliant eyes, he paused, after a short while adding far quieter, "though I acknowledge that he sometimes acts just like her."
Her eyes still rested on her face. "It must be hard for you", she said very softly as though trying not to hurt him with her words. "The face of the man you hated most and the eyes of the only woman you have ever loved."
He closed his eyes in sudden agony. "Shut the hell up", he whispered hoarsely.
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Not that I want to appear whiny (I am whiny, but this is not the point), but this chapter nearly drove me crazy. The characters simply did not do what I wanted them to do. First Snape was acting like the Overgrown Bat out of Hell, after I've changed that he was suddenly more lovable than Mother Theresa and I don't even want to begin about the problems I had with Morrigan and Harry....(yes, I know that it is insane to talk about my characters as if they had a will of their own, but I swear, they have!). However, I need a bit of support right now. So please review if you love it, review if you hate it, review if you think they were out of character, review if it doesn't make sense at all, review if I've made a mistake- and if you can think of anything I've forgotten - REVIEW!
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First of all I'd like to apologize that I took so long to update. But (for once!!!) I have an excuse: I was forced to write 25 damn pages on the topic of some bloody kid getting a faulty house as a birthday present for university, which stole quite an amount of my precious time. I'll try to update more regularly from now on (please not the careful use of the word "try"...)
Isidra - DANKE SCHÖN!!! Du bist und bleibst mein Lieblingshäschen!!!!!
Mrs. Snape - Slytherin sympathizer? I wonder what made you think so ^_^
And my thanks to all other reviewers!!!
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The sound of the shrill laughter paralysed the boy. "Professor McGregor?" he whispered.
But she did not stop, in the contrary, her body was shaking so violently from her hysterical outburst that she had obvious difficulties to get enough air to breathe. Choking, she touched her lustrous hair and began to laugh even higher as if her fingertips were blistered, before she suddenly changed into heartbreaking sobs. "Oh, Lily, Lil, Lil, did you hate me this much?"
"Professor?" Harry whispered a second time, his voice trembling. "What...what happened?"
As she raised her head jerkily, the boy stepped back, terrified by the cold undisguised hatred of her eyes. "What happened? You want to know what happened?" She laughed high-pitched and shrilly, the sound sending a flash of pain through Harry's head. "I have committed some unforgivable sin, that happened. And your mother, when being forced to carry out the consequences, choose death over forgiving me and the circle that began in this very halls a lifetime ago finally closed itself."
With this she began to sob softly in her hands.
Helplessly Harry stared at the crying woman, not knowing what to do. His eyes shot frantically through the room, desperately trying to find something that would be of a help to him, that would tell him what to do. They finally came to rest on the book.
The Flowers of Evil.
*Oh that. Severus borrowed it to me.*
His eyes widened. Snape! Of course, Snape had been Professor McGregor's friend for years, surely he would know what reduced her to this broken being. He would know how to help her!
"Professor, shall I get you Snape?" he asked carefully.
She did not even look up, just continued to cry silently into her hands.
Pale, the boy finally hastened out of the room, his eyes by now as frantic as the blonde ones.
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As fast as he could Harry hastened through the empty corridors down to the dungeons where the entrance of Slytherin laid. He only hoped that he would find Snape in his private rooms for he had no other idea where else to look for the Potion Master. Breathlessly he finally stopped in front of the stone wall, whose trap door lead into the Serpent's House, already opening his mouth when he realized a thing he had completely forgotten in his hurry to arrive here: he did not know the password to enter.
Staring blankly at the stone image, a nasty little voice in his head told him that this was just what he deserved for not having followed the Sorting Head's recommendation on his first evening in Hogwarts. Cursing himself quietly for allowing his mind to get caught up in that destructive circle again, but feeling too helpless and too desperate to shove the thought away, he suddenly heard a low silken laughter. Spinning around, he tried to catch the spot of the voice but there was nothing, only the vast corridor behind him.
His eyes narrowed. Had some Slytherin observed his futile attempt to enter the dungeons? That would mean mocking with no end, so much for sure. "Hello?" he asked nevertheless. "Is there someone?"
Then he heard the sound again. And this time he recognized the soothing, hissing undertone of the voice. Slowly he rose his head to the Slytherin emblem on the stone wall, green with the embroided silver snake.
"Was that you?" he hesitantly hissed back in Parsel.
The laughter abruptly ceased. Slowly, very slowly, the serpent's black eyes deepened, became livelier and dangerously intelligent as the silvery coils slithered over each other and gradually untangled themselves. Raising her head until she could muster Harry from head to feet, the small eyes narrowed slightly. "Now that´sss a ssssurprise", she hissed. "A human who talksss like one of usss. It hasss been a long time sssince the last of your kind passssed here."
Harry's mind began to whirl. One part of his mind was simply amazed at the speaking image -he was quite sure that the other emblems never showed any sign of life- the other one saw a sudden possibility to get into Slytherin even without password. "Listen, I'd really like to talk to you, but I don't have the time now", he explained, the syllables of the alien language now flowing as easily from his mouth as if he had never spoken any other tongue. "Something happened, something bad, and I must absolutely see Snape!"
"Sssnape?" The serpent began to uncoil herself lazily. "The sssilent man with the black hair and the sssad eyes?"
"Yes, I guess that must be him", Harry agreed, although he wouldn't have described Snape's eyes as sad. Not really. "So please let me in!"
The black eyes mustered him thoughtfully. "It´sss not your houssse", the snake hissed after a while. "You don't belong in here."
"I know, but..."
"I wonder why", she interrupted him, the sound of her voice by now soothingly familiar. The intelligent black eyes seemed to stare right into his soul, but Harry was not sure if he wanted to know what they, judging from the satisfied cold light appearing in them, obviously found there. "One who talksss like usss, should alssso go our waysss. Why are you not in the Ssserpent´s House, little sssnake?"
Harry grew pale under the piercing glance. "Because I..."
But all of a sudden the snake recoiled herself again and returned to her earlier motionless status.
"What...", Harry began, but was interrupted by a far too familiar silky voice.
"Trying to break into Slytherin, Potter? I must admit, this dubious talent of yours that always finds some new school rule you have not already broken before, never fails to surprise me."
Harry jumped so hard he almost fell off. Staring at the distant wall, it took him one moment to recognise the black-robed silhouette with the sharp, hook-nosed profile in the dim light.
"Professor Snape?" he finally asked in utter relief.
The Potion Master's black eyes were as cold and depthless as usual, the ever-present sneer stretched across his lips. "So delightened to see me? Well, perhaps this will change after we'll have discussed your detention for this humble attempt of burglary with the Headmaster. I am sure Professor Dumbledore will be as interested as myself to know the reason for your..." His sentence trailed off and Harry felt long cold fingers lifting his pale and contorted face to the dim light. "What the hell happened to you, Potter?"
Harry stared blankly at him, wondering how in God's name he could ever begin. Now that he had found the Potion Master, he was suddenly trembling nearly as badly as the DADA teacher had been when he left her. There seemed to be no way how he could arrange his thoughts and feelings long enough to hold down a single coherent sentence. Opening his mouth to try nevertheless, no sound came emerged from his dry throat.
"Potter, answer me immediately or I will take so many points from your house that it will have problems to surpass Hufflepuff at the Housecup." In spite of the words, there was worry flickering in the depths of those icy black eyes. "I warn you, boy, if this is some mindless joke of yours..."
"Professor McGregor!" The boy finally found his words back, briefly wondering why the other's body went rigid at the name. "I visited her this evening. We drank tea and she told me something about my mum and all of a sudden..." He swallowed hardly as he remembered the coldness of the teacher's sapphire blue eyes. "She got hysteric, I guess. She laughed like mad and said something about unforgivable sins and closing circles."
The piercing eyes narrowed slightly as if these words were wakening up some old memory. "Continue."
Harry mind was swirling with the attempt to focus on the earlier events. "She touched my scar." Again he saw the Potion Master's body freezing and again he couldn't think of a reason why. "She said something about it being Hate's Kiss and that I should be grateful not to remember the night Voldemort gave it to me." He stopped himself, feeling a fierce resentment to speak further. In spite of the blonde's praise on him, Snape had never shown him the slightest hint of understanding, let alone kindness. When there was one person on earth, he did not want to know about the vague terrors that he sometimes still felt at nighttime, it surely was the Head of Slytherin. He could just see the greasy git telling his students about famous Potter whining like a baby over the memories of his mother's death in the next Potion lesson. But then the Snape was probably the only one that knew Professor McGregor well enough to help her. And for some highly dubious reason he had been his mum's friend, so perhaps there was a faint chance that he would not act like his usual nasty self. When Harry finally made his decision, his words were not more than a barely audible whisper. "I told her I did."
Something in Stapes's face changed. "You what?!"
For one short moment, Harry closed his eyes, feeling as though the memories of that night were going to swallow him whole. There were voices in his head, the high pitched, cold sound of Voldemort speaking to his mother as if they were acquaintances of old...Lily's desperate pleas for mercy...his father's death and...quickly he opened the eyes again, only to be forced to stare into Snape's black ones. "Do you remember how I reacted to the Dementors in my third year?" he eventually asked, his voice hoarse.
A small smirk appeared on the other's thin lips, but was forced away nearly in the same instant. "Considering the fact that your fainting was the Slytherin Common Room's favourite joke for the entire term, it would be hard to forget it", Snape finally responded dryly.
Harry choose to ignore this one.
"When they approached me, I could hear..." Again he had to interrupt himself, trying to remind him of the Gryffindor bravery he seemed to have lost sometime in the events of this night. Feeling Snape's glance on him, piercing, but for once not hard or glaring, he finally continued in a dull, toneless voice as though reciting the story of someone else. "I could hear Voldemort telling my mum to step aside. Hear how she refused. Hear how she screamed when he put the killing curse on her."
The blood drained from Snape's face. "Dear Merlin", he whispered in a fragile voice Harry had never heard from him before. For one moment the Potion Master seemed lost in some dangerous chamber of his own thoughts, a faraway look on his features that seemed to remove his mind from this plane of reality and to transport it onto one that was only his and Harry's mother's alone. Then he snapped back, a subliminal panic in his eyes that frightened the boy even more than Professor McGregor's outburst. If Snape was afraid, the world was probably standing shortly before the apocalypse.
Suddenly the Potion Master gripped his shoulders roughly. "Did you tell her this as well, Potter? Did you tell Morrigan that Voldemort wanted Lily to step aside?"
Shocked by the black fire of those eyes, Harry had to resist the urge to step back. "Yes", he stuttered. "Pro...Professor, what does this mean?"
"It means that you're not the only one who had lost a loved one in this war," Snape snarled, but the flicker of pain in his eyes betrayed the harsh tone of his voice. Regaining control of his expression again, he released the boy from his painful grip. "And although it is really none of your business, Potter, your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher had lost even more than that. She had been crucially damaged more than your underexposed teenage brain can even begin to imagine and your mother's death took quite a major part in the process."
"But she never..."
Snape snorted derisively. "She never shows it? Potter, don't be more of an idiot than you already are!" The black eyes laid on him with the same furious impatience he showed whenever the boy botched some perfectly simple task in his class. "No matter how well she hides it behind her silliness and her easy laughter, Morrigan is carrying a pain within her you cannot even begin to understand. And tonight you managed to destroy this fragile mask of hers and I really don't know what she will do now."
The harsh words send a rush of guilt through Harry's chest. His fault. These two words pondered painfully in his ears. Like always his fault. The desolate tears Professor McGregor had shed, the coldness in her usually so lovable blue eyes, somehow this was his doing.
Seeing the guilt in the other one's expression, Snape's eyes softened a bit.
"I did not say that it was your fault, Potter. This may be a miracle in itself, but for once it is not." The voice was calmer this time, almost soothing. "Neither was it Lily's or Morrigan's, I might add. It was just some very bad luck."
"Please, Sir." Harry did not know what possessed him when he gripped Snape's robe. Determined he stared in the eyes of the frozen man in front of him. "Please...you owe it to my mum to tell me what happened between you."
The black eyes flashed. Leaning forwards in a rather intimidating manner, Snape's face was suddenly only inches away from Harry's. "Don't dare to tell me what I owe to Lily." The silky voice did not rise in volume or pitch. Rather it got softer, lower and infinitely more deadly. "Never again tell me what I owe to Lily."
His expression was profoundly intimidating, but this time Harry did not withdrew from the death glare of those icy eyes. To hell with the points he would loose his House. "Then I'll tell you that you owe it to *me*." For one moment he did not realize the restrained bitter voice that was suddenly filling the corridor. Then he realized that it was his own. "She was my mother and yet the only thing I remember about her is the way the screamed when she died. Nothing else, sir, just that. Don't you think that I have every right to know the reason for this?"
To his surprise, the Professor did not take advantage of his chance to take points from him for the first time since he knew him. Instead his black eyes laid with frightening intensity on his face, their expression unreadable, beyond anything the boy could grasp. "Has Morrigan told you about the reason our friendship ended?" Snape finally asked harshly without so much as an introduction.
Harry shook his head, relieved that the Potion Master had not decided to kill him right on the spot. "No, sir." He frowned a bit, trying to remember Professor McGregor's exact words. "She said...she said that it was about greatness."
A little smile graced Snape's thin lips for a bare instant. "Leave it to Morrigan to reveal the whole truth without saying anything at all. She was always the best when it came to games like these." His voice sounded soft for a moment, then he waved his hand impatiently. "Anyway, when we were in our fifth year, she found a forbidden book in the library which contained the instructions for a powerful magical ritual of the darkest kind." He snorted shortly at the memory. "Being the good Slytherin that she was, she had been eager to try it, but a circle of three persons was needed to perform the magic. So she asked Lily and me to help her."
Harry listened breathlessly. "And what did you say?"
Snape's eyes were darker than Harry had ever seen them. "Thanks to our thrice-damned Slytherin ambition, I've been easy to convince, but your mother hesitated. She said that it was far too dangerous, a little blacker than she liked her arts." He wrinkled his nose disdainfully. "We had quite a fight about the topic but in the end, she finally agreed. And so we did it."
"And you failed?"
The other one shuddered at the memory. "No, we succeeded. And yet it went horribly wrong." He paused for a short moment, clutching his black robe tighter as if trying to withstand a cold only he could feel. "We awakened a power far beyond our ability to control and within the process we drew a most unwanted attention on us."
The dark eyes flashed to the scar on Harry's forehead and suddenly the boy understood. "Voldemort?" he whispered.
A bitter smile appeared on Snape's thin lips. "Voldemort indeed." His voice was strangely hoarse when he spoke the forbidden name. "The Headmaster never knew until I told him years later, but we drew the Dark Lord's eyes here to Hogwarts. He felt the dark power we had awoken and he knew of those who did it." Shaking his head unwillingly, he continued rather harshly. "I still have no idea how, but somehow we managed to dismiss this hellish thing we had called. Somehow we got away alive and unpunished. But it had been quite clear to me that this would not have closed the circle we had so carelessly opened with our mindless action."
Harry nodded slowly in understanding. "So you thought that Voldemort would come back to get the persons, who were powerful enough to awaken such a power, to join him."
Snape threw a slightly sarcastic glance in his direction. "So in spite of your lifetime quest to prove otherwise, you can do common sense, Potter", he sneered half-heartedly. "Will wonders ever cease?"
Ignoring the sarcasm, the boy's mind began to whirl around. "But why did you break with my mother after this?"
The Potion Master snorted. "You would not know it when you meet her, but Morrigan always tends to act like hell's own bitch when she does not feel comfortable with herself and just now she had to experience the feeling of guilt for the very first time. She did not take it too well and chose to blame Lily for everything."
"And..." "You" he wanted to ask but the word died on his lips when he finally understood. Staring into Snape's ebony eyes, he felt his own widening. "You knew that Voldemort would come after you", he whispered bewildered. "You knew it and you wanted... you wanted to save my mum from this."
Snape's mouth quirked into a humourless sneer. "Please, Potter, the least thing I desire is to become some kind of shining hero in your imagination. One of this kind here at Hogwarts seems to be more than enough to me."
But as Harry did not turn his piercing glance away from him, his cool expression began to flicker. Obviously unable to face the sight of the questioning green eyes any longer, Snape turned them away. "If you insist to hear it, you're -for once- right. I did not want Lily to be harmed any more, so I did my best to make our friendship an unfortunate lapse in her judgment", he finally acknowledged quietly, his bitter black eyes softening for a moment, before he turned them back on the boy with hard intensity and full of undisguised self-loathing. "And indeed I was so stunningly successful that she turned her attention to your father, Gryffindor´s goddamn Golden Boy, in no time at all. James, of all people! First I have considered this just a stupid act of vengeance, but obviously I had not known Lily half as well as I thought to do."
In spite of himself, a wave of pity overwhelmed Harry when he saw the savage pain in the other one's eyes. Until now he had not known that the man was capable of any feelings beside sadistic joy and nastiness. "Is this why you hate me so much?" he suddenly heard himself whisper. "Not because of my dad, but because of my mum?"
Snape eyed him sharply for a moment, then he sighed with a quiet air of exasperation. "I don't hate you, foolish boy", he murmured unfriendly. "But this is neither your nor my worry at the moment."
Harry felt his cheeks flaming. He had nearly forgotten about Professor McGregor and the desperate expression in those haunted sapphire eyes. Then he suddenly grew pale. "I made her think that she had set Voldemort on my mother's tracks", he uttered horrified. "She thinks that she is responsible for her death."
Snape gave him an unreadable look. "Don't you have enough pain of your own, Potter? Do you so necessarily need to burden yourself with other's misery as well?" Shaking his head in a mixture of anger and exhaustion when the boy expression did not change, the older man finally sighed resigned. "If you want my advice for once, don't try to understand Morrigan. You would not be the first to fail miserably."
With this he began to hurry down the corridor. Harry hesitated only for one moment before he followed him, a behaviour, Snape did not comment on until they arrived at the DADA teacher's door. "This is nothing of your business, Potter, so go."
"No."
"Boy, this is not the time for your Gryffindor stupidity, so please spare me the explanations I would have to give the Headmaster if he had to face you in animal form the next time..."
"It's my fault that she is in this state", Harry interrupted him, not caring about how many points a behaviour like this would certainly cost his House. "I am responsible for this and I can't just look away and pretend that it was not this way. She was my mother's friend and I had no right to burden her with my pain only because I am to weak to master it alone."
With this he stopped, feeling that he had said much more than he had ever intended to do. Hesitantly, he looked into Snape's eyes, not sure about what he saw there. Not the cold assessment that he got in Potions and nothing of the usual loathing. "Then come." The Potion Master finally said and opened the door.
Both relieved and hesitating, Harry followed him into the room. His eyes flashed instantly to the sofa, and indeed, Professor McGregor was still sitting there in the same position he had left her in, the beautiful face buried into her hands.
Snape eyed her for several moments, the expression of his face unreadable. "Morrigan?" he finally asked. His voice was soft, soothing, his words gentle and for an instant Harry understood what his mother had probably seen in him. "Morrigan, it's Severus."
She looked up, her face smeared with tears, her eyes, wide and wondering as if she was merely considering things, staring at both of them in a perfect stillness that was in its way as frightening as her hysterical outburst. "Sev", she eventually greeted him, her voice broken, so different from its usual melodic tone that Harry barely recognized it as hers. Her blue eyes searched something in his black ones, visibly without success, then flashed to Harry. "He told you?"
With surprising tenderness, Snape approached her and wiped her face carefully with the sleeve of his robe. "Morrigan, please listen to reason, you can't possible..."
"And you don't suppose him to invent this, do you?" she interrupted him, still in the same blank voice.
For one moment Snape stared at her in incomprehension, then he shook his head. "I've never known the boy to lie." He smirked shortly, but without his usual vicious pleasure. "It could be that he's just too stupid to know how, but either way I believe him."
"Then you must know what this means." Still no emotion was displayed in her voice.
"I know what you think that it means." He shook his head slowly, his black eyes looking slightly worried. "Morrigan, you must let it go. You can't linger in your misery forever."
But already while he spoke these words, the blonde's face had undergone some ugly change; while her eyes had become smaller, her mouth, without switching at all, suddenly looked cruel for some reason. "You are the one to speak, Severus", she replied bitterly. "You, who crawls yourself into your dungeons, afraid of every human warmth and endlessly lamenting on your failures. You cannot let it go any better than me, so please spare me your lame bit of advice about how the time heals all wounds."
"Morrigan..."
Her expression was profoundly cold by now. "Poor Severus, such a desire to atone", she mocked him, her voice silken and seductive, yet underlined with unspeakable cruelty. The ghost of a smile appeared on her crimson lips all of a sudden. "Do you want to know the difference between us, my darling? Do you want to know what separates you and me from each other? We both have lived in the dark for over ten years by now, but in contrast to me you cannot adjust." She laughed humourlessly. "You just sit there in your self-chosen loneliness and regret everything, every failure, every sin, every mistake, every hurt you've caused out of love or hatred or hunger. You even tacked mine and Lily's names on the end of the list to set aside for your broodier moments, but it doesn't change a goddamn thing."
For a long moment silence laid in the room. Nothing but silence and the beauty of her eyes.
"Maybe you're right", Snape replied after a while, surprising Harry with the amount of weariness in his voice. "But can you really blame me? We all have our scars."
"And not all of them heal." The coldness suddenly vanished out of her eyes, leaving nothing back but deep sympathy and understanding. Tenderly she reached out to touch his cheek. "We all learned this lesson. You, me, Lily and this poor boy I have probably scared to death tonight."
Her eyes wandered to Harry, unbearable sad and full of guilt, yet indescribable beautiful. Nothing of the coldness, the hatred or the bitterness was left, only a complete honesty that was in its way strangely soothing. "I am sorry, Harry", she told him quietly. "I was not as sorry as I am now for nearly twenty years. Not since the night when I condemned your mother to a fate worse than death."
The boy had to clear his throat before he could speak again. "It's okay." Feeling himself how inappropriate these words sounded at a moment like this, he added, far quieter, "It was not your fault. Professor Snape told me everything. How could you know what misery your experiment would cause? Besides", he continued barely audible, avoiding the two pairs of sapphire blue and ebony black eyes that stared at him with the same unbelieving expression. "She did not die because of you. She died for me."
"No!" The word was spoken so vehemently that it made Harry's head jerk. The blonde had stood up from the sofa, shaking her head roughly, her sapphire eyes shining brightly in the candlelight.
"Professor McGregor?" he whispered.
Suddenly he found himself in a warm, comforting embrace. "It's not your fault, dear", the blonde murmured gently against his hair. "And you must never think this way, Harry, never, do you hear me!"
Stiffening at first, for nobody had ever taken him in the arms, Harry felt himself weaken after a moment and finally he melted against the soothing comfort of those tender arms, giving himself over completely to the blonde. Memories rushed through his head in frightening speed, long forgotten memories and the sudden desperate wish that the arms that were holding him right now, were those of his mother. "I'm so sorry", he whispered, without knowing whether he was sorry for his parents to die so young, for Professor McGregor's guilt and Snape's so well hidden pain, sorry perhaps even for Tom Riddle who had never known the loving embrace of a mother as well, or simply sorry for himself.
"So, you're sorry?" Although so very close to him, she seemed distant for a moment, indescribably beautiful in the firelight, the golden strands of her hair barely touching her smooth forehead, her lips parted in a beatific yet sad smile. "How every one of us loves his precious guilt", she whispered, before suddenly settling back into herself and carefully releasing him.
She shot a quick, apprehensive look at Snape, their eye contact pregnant with meaning, but of what, the boy didn't know. Suddenly the familiar brilliant smile reappeared on her lips, letting her radiant blue eyes glitter like the sapphires they favoured so much. "I think I know the perfect medicine for this miserable state we are all in", she stated merrily. "A good cup of tea."
As Harry only stared in utter disbelief at her, Snape sneered contemptuously. "You don't actually mean this, do you?"
"Well why not?" she returned defiantly. "Tea never fails to calm down your nerves."
"So?" Suspiciously, the Potion Master reached out for the cup Harry had left on the table. "Oh God, you still drink this horrible jasmine tea."
"He was always like this", Morrigan confided into a still dumbfolded Harry with a twinkle. "Try to be nice to him and the only thanks you will get is his criticism."
Snape frowned. "You know, Morrigan, I'm not used to people talking about me as if I'm not here."
"Oh shut up, Sev, I am not in the mood for this senseless jerk act right now!"
"And I think I have every right to act like I want to, considering how your hysterics have once more managed to destroy a peaceful evening of mine."
"Sev, you're impossible."
"Maybe so. But have you ever asked yourself the question whether you would like it if I called you Mor?"
Watching the two exchanging wits with the expert ease of a often-practised dance, Harry suddenly felt the tired irritation of a teenage boy who thought that he would never get close to understand the dubious logic of adults. "No offence, but I think I'd rather go back to the Gryffindor Tower", he finally said wearily, feeling that if anything could calm his nerves just now, it would surely not be a teaparty with these two crazy Slytherins. "Another time gratefully, though."
Professor McGregor beamed happily, her eyes nothing but sweetness and laughter. "I am looking forward to it."
"So am I", Harry returned, the tone of his voice rather unconvincing as he moved towards the door. "I see you tomorrow."
But even long after he had left the room, two pairs of blue and black eyes still lingered on the space where he had stood. "He favours Lily very much, doesn't he?" The blonde finally broke the silence thoughtfully. "A pity, the boy would have done well in Slytherin."
Snape wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Well, in my eyes he takes completely after his worthless father." Seeing the doubt in her brilliant eyes, he paused, after a short while adding far quieter, "though I acknowledge that he sometimes acts just like her."
Her eyes still rested on her face. "It must be hard for you", she said very softly as though trying not to hurt him with her words. "The face of the man you hated most and the eyes of the only woman you have ever loved."
He closed his eyes in sudden agony. "Shut the hell up", he whispered hoarsely.
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Not that I want to appear whiny (I am whiny, but this is not the point), but this chapter nearly drove me crazy. The characters simply did not do what I wanted them to do. First Snape was acting like the Overgrown Bat out of Hell, after I've changed that he was suddenly more lovable than Mother Theresa and I don't even want to begin about the problems I had with Morrigan and Harry....(yes, I know that it is insane to talk about my characters as if they had a will of their own, but I swear, they have!). However, I need a bit of support right now. So please review if you love it, review if you hate it, review if you think they were out of character, review if it doesn't make sense at all, review if I've made a mistake- and if you can think of anything I've forgotten - REVIEW!