Chapter 8: Born of nightmares and dreams
The darkness was overwhelming and he was lost in it, lost in the frightening silence that was only interrupted by the distant echoes of memories dancing in the shadows, both born of nightmares and of dreams, and somehow he knew that even those quiet reminders of the life that laid behind him would cease in time; they would leave him completely alone and a part of him was sadly relieved at this knowledge. Was life worth its troubles? He did not know. This pain, it was not particularly unusual, this suffering nothing special. He really did not know whether it was worth this...
But then there came another voice, stronger than the distant whispers, its call more urgent: "Harry! Harry! Dammit wake up, foolish boy!"
Harry?
Again and again the name was uttered, driving into his subconscious.
Harry. He was Harry, wasn't he?
"Harry!"
All of a sudden the dark seemed less menacing than it had just moments earlier. Yes, he was Harry. The doubts and misgivings inside him begun to ebb, leaving him with a certainty he had not known since the earliest days of his childhood. Perhaps it was because of the voice that called out to him, that created him a way back to the light, but he was no longer afraid. No, he wouldn't let Voldemort haunt him forever. He had to be strong, because he was himself, Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, son of James, son of Lily, a Gryffindor and not to be beaten by mere dreams.
With all his mental strength he concentrated on the real world around him and to his astonishment he found himself partially in Snape's arms, being held up by the older man. His first thought was surprise at the fact how warm the body pressed against his was; he had always assumed that touching Snape would be just like looking in his eyes, cold and hard. Then another, far more shocking fact stroke him: What the hell was he doing in Snape's embrace?! "Professor?" he asked stunned.
A flicker of relief appeared in the dark eyes, but before Harry could say anything, the Potions Master had already disengaged himself roughly from him, the usual sneer around his thin lips again. "So you've finally decided to regain your senses, Potter?" he snarled unfriendly. "I must say that you are developing a fatal tendency to tragedy lately and considering all your other personality flaws, I don't consider this too wisely."
Regain his senses? Harry frowned at these words. But had he passed out?
Flickering his eyes to the snake on the emblem, now dull and lifeless again, he finally understood what must have been happened. The damn thing had somehow managed to freaken him out so much that he had lost himself in the memory of his dream and Snape must have found him here in the dungeons, completely lost in his nightmare world and not knowing who or where he was.
Dammit.
The Potions Master had followed his gaze, his expression grim. "Always full of surprises, Slytherin House", he muttered quietly to himself before he turned his attention back to Harry, his black eyes piercing. "Will you kindly inform me of what had happened here, Potter?"
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again. Staring at the glaring professor, he wondered how he could tell Snape about this all. Just to say the words out loud would mean to betray himself.
"Potter, I asked you a question! What happened?"
Although not having much hope that Snape would fall for this, Harry flashed him his most innocent smile. "Oh nothing, Professor, nothing happened, I was just daydreaming..."
Perhaps he had learned more at Professor Trelawney´s lessons than he had thought, but he actually could have predicted the annoyed sneer that followed this lie. "Ten points from Gryffindor for blatantly lying to a teacher!" the Potions Master snapped, his black eyes glittering angrily. "And if you'd rather talk to Madam Pomfrey or Professor McGonagall, Potter, I can very well arrange it for you."
Feeling terrified of the mere thought of having to deal either with the mediwitch´s attempts to feed him with ill-smelling medicine or with his stern Head of House, Harry lowered his gaze to the floor. "No, I...well..."
Staring at him with an unreadable expression, the older man finally sighed with a great air of exasperation. "Follow me", he ordered shortly and opened the secret entrance to Slytherin by quietly murmuring the password.
Too weak to protest, Harry stumbled after him, thankfully that Snape walked at quite a leisurely pace that allowed him to keep up.
He had never been to Snape's private rooms before, but he knew from rumours that they were located in the Slytherin dungeons, although not too far away from the Great Hall. Nevertheless the way through the dark, labyrinthine corridor seemed endless -probably due to the well-known Slytherin paranoia of having to deal with the unwelcome company of other Houses, the boy thought sarcastically.
Snape finally stopped before an impressive looking stone door, unlocked it with a flick of his wand and waved the boy behind him impatiently inside. In spite of his dizziness, Harry could not suppress an air of curiosity of how Snape's private quarters would look like. Judging from his office, he expected a weird lab full of lots of sickly green pickled things floating in jars all around, but to his surprise the room looked quite normal - apart from the fact that Snape must have robed half of the library for the thousand books that stood neatly in his wooden shelves. In fact, it would be rather comfortable if it were a bit less immaculate... but then somebody who could spent hours complaining about inaccurately pounded scarab beetles just had to be a compulsive neat freak!
But he had not much time to grin at this last thought for Snape indicated him to sit down on one of two impressive armchair in front of the fire place.
As he followed this unspoken order hesitantly, he could feel Snape piercing gaze laying on him. "Once more, Potter, what happened?"
Harry glanced at the floor. "A headache?" he offered shyly.
Snape snorted derisively, then started to rummage through a shelf and dug out a vial of potion which he threw over to the boy so sharply that he just managed to caught it thanks to countless Quidditch trainings.
"Drink." His mouth twisted at Harry's suspicious look. "It's an animating potion for the 'headache' you're suffering. And another ten points from Gryffindor for suspecting a teacher."
Defeated, Harry swallowed the potion in a long, forced gulp. It had a bitter aftertaste, but he had to acknowledge that it made him feel better. However this feeling quickly vanished when Snape repeated his question for the third time, "What happened?"
"It's..." The boy stumbled over his own words and shook his head. How could he explain this to anyone? "I'm sorry, sir, I... I can't talk about it."
"You can't or you don't want to?"
The Professor's voice remained completely bland, and Harry very carefully modulated his to echo the tone. "Both."
Snape's lips thinned. "Even someone as dumbwitted as you, Potter, must understand that I cannot accept this as an answer when I find one of my students in such a state."
Harry had already a scathing retort about men that cared more about blasted cauldrons than about any non-Slytherin students on his tongue, but suddenly decided that it wouldn't be wise to enrage Snape in this particular situation. All the Potions Master had to do was going straight to Dumbledore and Harry would not even think about the endless arguments that would bring about. "It was never before like that", he began with tentative honesty, his gaze on the little vial in his hands. It glittered mesmerizingly in the firelight, its light clear and cold, but warmer than Snape's eyes and much easier to look at. "Not that bad, anyway."
"Fortunate." The black-haired man set down on the other armchair, his dark eyes laying on the boy with frightening intensity. "But what if this ominous ´it´ will be that bad the next time, too? Or worse? You surely don't expect me to waste my precious time with running after you in order to catch you every single time you lose conscience?"
Don't expect and don't want to, Harry affirmed inwardly. "I guess it was the snake", he murmured quietly. "She told me that Salazar Slytherin himself had given her life. She said...well, I guess I just lost my nerves."
Snape seemed to be processing this.. "Since when do you know about her abilities?"
"Oh, since the night when...you know when Professor McGregor..."
"Choose your visit for one of her silly hysteric breakdowns?" Snape continued nastily. When the boy nodded shyly, his lips thinned even more. "You should have told anybody, boy, do you notice that?"
Harry lowered his head. "I forgot about it", he admitted ashamed.
"You FORGOT?" Snape stared at him incredulously as though he thought his most loathed student had gone completely sick of hammers by now and Harry couldn't help but think that the look on his face would be worth to be captured for eternity by Colin's camera. "You find an enchanted emblem and you simply forget about it?"
The boy felt an embarrassing heat on his cheeks. "It's not like nothing else in this school is enchanted!" he shot back defiantly. "I mean, every single bloody portrait can speak, too! What's so special about an enchanted emblem?"
The Potions Master sneered derisively, but did, to Harry's enormous surprise, not comment on this. "What did the thing tell you?" he demanded instead.
Harry sighed defeated. There was nothing he could do about it now; the older man wouldn't release him until he had forced the truth out of him. That was the great thing about good old Snape, he always had to push and push until he got exactly what he wanted. Why couldn't he had run into Flitwick or Sinistra... anybody but the Evil-Potions-Master-from-hell?
"Well?" Snape prompted.
"She spoke about Voldemort", Harry finally began rather reluctantly. "Said that he would always come to speak to her when he was still here at Hogwarts and that the two of them have gotten friends."
"And this revelation made you completely loose your senses so that you did not notice what was going on around you anymore?" the older man shot back, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "Well, if this is what passes as Gryffindor bravery nowadays, it shouldn't be too great a feat to take the House in competition this year."
Harry almost glared. "I am not afraid of telling you, if this is what you think!"
Snape snorted contemptuously. "Well, forgive me, Potter, but I fail to believe this for I don't see a decent reason why a snake speaking about Voldemort should affect you this much."
"Well, that might be because *you* don't have to deal with freaking dreams about Tom every bloody night!" Harry exploded and cursed himself in the same moment as Snape's eyebrows rose at both his outburst and the oddly intimate naming.
"Dreams?" Snape asked in anticipation. "About...Voldemort´s younger self?"
"Yeah", Harry returned through tightly clenched teeth. God, he was so stupid! He was so godforsaken stupid.
Sneaking a quick peek at the older man, he saw a contemplative look on his face as if he were considering things. "What are these dreams about?"
Leave it alone, Harry thought tiredly. Snape would not let him go before he had told him anyway. "We are standing together on a graveyard and he lays down blood-red roses on a grave. I don't know who's buried there, either his or my parents, I never asked. It didn't seem to make any difference in this place. He... he looks very much like myself and he talks to me as if we were... brothers."
"What does he talk about?"
Harry closed his eyes for a moment. "Him and me. About the ´strikening similarities´ between us." Even to himself his voice sounded bitter. "He says that I belong to him and to the darkness and that all my attempts to prove otherwise will be futile in the end."
He lowered his head. There, he had said it. Had told all, as he had thought he never would. Now all he had to worry about was the man he had confided in. Trust was something he had not much of, thanks to his upbringing with the Dursleys, and he never thought that any of it would be invested in Snape. But strangely enough his git of a Potions Master might be the only one in this castle who could understand him.
"Do you agree?"
Harry opened his eyes again in surprise. "What?"
The black eyes were staring at him with frightening intensity. "Do you agree with Voldemort? Do you feel tempted by the dark?"
Damn, was the professor a mind-reader on top of being a sardonic git?!
"A part of me", he heard himself admitting in a voice barely louder than a whisper. "I know that it sounds creepy but I was never afraid of the darkness. It's comforting to me. Somehow I feel at home in it."
"That's nothing to be ashamed of." Snape's tone sounded less biting than usual, almost gentle. He seemed to struggle shortly with himself, before he finally met his eyes again, his expression a painful mixture of sadness and determination. "You know, you're mother once said exactly the same thing to me."
Harry's head jerked. Unbelieving he stared into the familiar black eyes, that suddenly seemed less cold, less hostile. "My mum... liked the dark?"
"One could definitely say so." In spite of his strangely strained voice, a little nostalgic smile graced Snape's thin lips for a moment. "She used to sneak out of the Gryffindor Tower every night to climp up to the top of the Astronomy Tower when we were still at school. It was her favourite place in the world. She could sit endlessly there, staring up to the night sky as if the world around was not real to her, as if she was searching for one perfect setting that she alone could find."
He broke up as if he could not endure the memory any moment longer. For one moment Harry and him just stared at each other, a strange, unnamed energy tackling between them, before the Harry chose to break the silence. "I didn´t mean this sort of darkness", he said hesitantly.
"Neither did I." Snape's eyes were full to bursting with unspoken emotions. "Listen, boy, Voldemort may have left a part of him in you the night he failed to perform the killing curse, but this does not necessarily make you evil. Tom Riddle was innocent once, but chose to follow a bloodstained way full of hatred, vengeance and remorse. You can do otherwise." He paused shortly. "Like your mother did."
"Professor Dumbledore said the same thing to me", the boy acknowledged quietly after a while, returning the dark gaze without wincing. "And Professor McGregor talks on similar lines, too."
A resentful expression appeared on Snape's angular features. "Is that so?" he repeated, his fingers beginning to play in an imaginary rhythm on his chair. He paused for a moment as though not sure how to continue. When he turned his black eyes back to Harry's green ones, a message laid in them, as if he were trying to tell him something without saying the words aloud. "Well, perhaps you should know that your Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher merely copies your mother when she speaks along those lines", he eventually told him with a wrinkled nose. "Lily was the one who believed in freedom without boundaries, she was the one who was convinced that everybody could and should go his own way, regardless of the difficulties. Morrigan on the other hand..."
"What about her, Professor?" the boy prompted when Snape did not speak further, but before he could get an answer, a loud knocking on the door suddenly interrupted him. "Professor Snape?" a young female voice asked. "It's me, Glory. Can I have a word with you?"
Regaining his usual cool composure again, Snape threw a quick glance at Harry, before his jaw set firm. "Come in, Miss Caulfield."
The next moment a slender girl about Harry's age with a wild mane of curly raven-black hair swept in. "Good evening, sir, I...", she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Harry, her violet-blue eyes opening wide in astonishment. "I can come back later if I disturb you..."
Snape waved impatiently "Not at all. Mr Potter and me were just debating on what to do about his abysmal grades, although I fear that even personal assignment, as much as he would surely love that, won't help in this hopeless case."
A little grin appeared on the girl's astonishing pretty features, but she did not comment on this. Looking closer at her, Harry was rather surprised that he never noticed this Glory Caulfield before -for she was stunningly gorgeous!- but then he always tried his best to ignore the Serpents, so perhaps it wasn´t that surprising.
"So what is on your mind, Miss Caulfield?" The Professor eventually asked, his tone not unfriendly. "Knowing your cunning self quite well, I grant that there's a purpose to your visit, or have you simply come to for the pleasure of the company?"
"Considering the fact that the majority of this godforsaken school tends to be boring to no end, the latter might as well be possible", the girl shot back wittily, before batting her eyes in a parody of coquettishness. "And I daresay that most people would describe me as charming rather than cunning."
Snape arched an eyebrow at this. "As you said moments before, Miss Caulfield, most people at this school tend to be morons", he returned dryly although Harry could have sworn to see amusement glittering in the black depths of his eyes.
The girl choose to overhear Snape's last sentence. "Anyway, Lilah´s got birthday and we wanted to ask if we could use the common room for a little party tonight", she explained beaming brightly, while at the same time peering closely at her Head of House. "Please, Professor!"
Settling back in his armchair, Snape's lips curled as he thought this over. "Why don't you try to sneak out of your dorms in the middle of the night and celebrate in a deserted classroom like you usually do when someone of your lot sees fit to a social gathering?"
Glory wrinkled her nose. "Because this always results in you finding us and giving out some gruesome detentions and somehow deja vu just isn't what it used to be", she answered, sounding genuinely annoyed at the memory. Then she flashed him another breathtaking sweet smile. "So are we allowed to use the common room? Come on, Professor, paaaaleeeeez!"
A small smirk appeared on Snape's angular features. "I trust you to behave appropriately", he finally gave his consent. "Do not destroy, burn, disintegrate, transmutate or cause any damage in any way to the common room. The same rules apply to each other. And the rest of the school."
Glory grinned in response. "What about things belonging to Gryffindor or Professor Trelawney?" she asked mischievously.
Harry nearly choked as he saw the grin on Snape's face. He grinned! No smirk, no sneer, but a boyish little smile that made him look about ten years younger. "There you may have free reign."
"You're the best, Professor!" the girl exclaimed heartfully. With that she stepped back to the door. Her beautiful blue eyes glanced back at Harry for a second, before she finally left the room again.
"Merlin help us all", Snape murmured amused, though more to himself than to Harry. Then his eyes fell back on the boy and narrowed dangerously. "Potter, will you tell me what makes you stare at me like an idiot?"
Harry nearly jumped. "Well I...", he began, but hesitated as he thought his answer over. He couldn't really tell Snape that he had never considered the Slytherins to be normal people with normal feelings that even threw birthday parties for each other. Nor that he hadn't thought Snape to be such a human Head of House that was even capable of humour. "Nothing", he finally answered unconvincingly.
Snape snorted. "`Nothing´ seems to be something that occupies your mind far often." He paused shortly. "But then I have known this before."
Harry grinned weakly in response. "I wouldn't want to destroy your bad opinion of me."
"I guess it's already too late for that." The return was so quiet that Harry nearly did not understand him. But before the boy had the slightest chance to say something, Snape had already stood up and began to rummage in his shelves again. "Luckily for you, I use to have always some Dreamless Potions here for myself, Potter", the Potions Master explained in a very strained voice that clearly forbid the boy to comment on his last statement in any way. "You will have to take three drops every evening before you go to bed."
"Okay", Harry finally managed to return, staring blankly at the older man's back.
Snape always had Dreamless Potions for himself? Did that mean that the Potions Master suffered of nightmares, too? That he too had to fight with the vague terrors of memories and self-woven horrors? Well, if he thought about it, Snape had definitely seen enough evil to be haunted by it.
He was so deep in his thoughts that he nearly jumped when the Potions Master suddenly addressed him. "Considering your talents with snakes, I am somehow surprised that the Sorting Head did not put you in Slytherin."
Harry shrugged, uncertainty playing over his features at this sudden change of the conversation. "Well, it wanted to", he admitted slowly, remembering what the head had told him on that evening that seemed ages ago. "It said that being in Slytherin would help me to greatness, but I asked it to put me somewhere else."
He heard a distant snort from behind the shelves. "I suppose that my house was not good enough for a celebrity like you?"
"No, it wasn't that", Harry answered hurriedly.
"What was it then?"
The boy hesitated shortly. "I guess I simply did not want to be in the same House the murderer of my parents was", he eventually answered after a long time of silence.
Snape appeared back behind the shelves, a little crystal bottle in his hands, his expression beyond anything the boy could read. "Do you sometimes think you made the wrong choice?"
"Never", Harry answered without hesitation. "I am happy in Gryffindor. Okay, sometimes I feel as if me and the others existed on two completely different levels that stops us from communicating properly, but would never give up what Gryffindor gave to me. Perhaps Slytherin would not have been too bad either, but I'll never regret my decision."
So much for not making him angry. Except, Harry realised, Snape wasn't angry. In fact, he was almost smiling, not a happy smile admittedly, but he definitely wasn't angry. "You take after your father so much and yet sometimes you sound just like Lily", he said, his voice thoughtfully. Then he threw him the bottle. "Come back to me when you finished this one. I grant you stay over Christmas like always?"
The boy nodded. For a moment they stared at each other again, many things between them still unspoken. This time it was Harry who looked away first. "Well, I think I should go now", he suggested hesitantly.
"I certainly won't hinder you from that."
"Professor?"
An exasperated sigh. "What else, Potter?"
"Thank you."
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The darkness was overwhelming and he was lost in it, lost in the frightening silence that was only interrupted by the distant echoes of memories dancing in the shadows, both born of nightmares and of dreams, and somehow he knew that even those quiet reminders of the life that laid behind him would cease in time; they would leave him completely alone and a part of him was sadly relieved at this knowledge. Was life worth its troubles? He did not know. This pain, it was not particularly unusual, this suffering nothing special. He really did not know whether it was worth this...
But then there came another voice, stronger than the distant whispers, its call more urgent: "Harry! Harry! Dammit wake up, foolish boy!"
Harry?
Again and again the name was uttered, driving into his subconscious.
Harry. He was Harry, wasn't he?
"Harry!"
All of a sudden the dark seemed less menacing than it had just moments earlier. Yes, he was Harry. The doubts and misgivings inside him begun to ebb, leaving him with a certainty he had not known since the earliest days of his childhood. Perhaps it was because of the voice that called out to him, that created him a way back to the light, but he was no longer afraid. No, he wouldn't let Voldemort haunt him forever. He had to be strong, because he was himself, Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, son of James, son of Lily, a Gryffindor and not to be beaten by mere dreams.
With all his mental strength he concentrated on the real world around him and to his astonishment he found himself partially in Snape's arms, being held up by the older man. His first thought was surprise at the fact how warm the body pressed against his was; he had always assumed that touching Snape would be just like looking in his eyes, cold and hard. Then another, far more shocking fact stroke him: What the hell was he doing in Snape's embrace?! "Professor?" he asked stunned.
A flicker of relief appeared in the dark eyes, but before Harry could say anything, the Potions Master had already disengaged himself roughly from him, the usual sneer around his thin lips again. "So you've finally decided to regain your senses, Potter?" he snarled unfriendly. "I must say that you are developing a fatal tendency to tragedy lately and considering all your other personality flaws, I don't consider this too wisely."
Regain his senses? Harry frowned at these words. But had he passed out?
Flickering his eyes to the snake on the emblem, now dull and lifeless again, he finally understood what must have been happened. The damn thing had somehow managed to freaken him out so much that he had lost himself in the memory of his dream and Snape must have found him here in the dungeons, completely lost in his nightmare world and not knowing who or where he was.
Dammit.
The Potions Master had followed his gaze, his expression grim. "Always full of surprises, Slytherin House", he muttered quietly to himself before he turned his attention back to Harry, his black eyes piercing. "Will you kindly inform me of what had happened here, Potter?"
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again. Staring at the glaring professor, he wondered how he could tell Snape about this all. Just to say the words out loud would mean to betray himself.
"Potter, I asked you a question! What happened?"
Although not having much hope that Snape would fall for this, Harry flashed him his most innocent smile. "Oh nothing, Professor, nothing happened, I was just daydreaming..."
Perhaps he had learned more at Professor Trelawney´s lessons than he had thought, but he actually could have predicted the annoyed sneer that followed this lie. "Ten points from Gryffindor for blatantly lying to a teacher!" the Potions Master snapped, his black eyes glittering angrily. "And if you'd rather talk to Madam Pomfrey or Professor McGonagall, Potter, I can very well arrange it for you."
Feeling terrified of the mere thought of having to deal either with the mediwitch´s attempts to feed him with ill-smelling medicine or with his stern Head of House, Harry lowered his gaze to the floor. "No, I...well..."
Staring at him with an unreadable expression, the older man finally sighed with a great air of exasperation. "Follow me", he ordered shortly and opened the secret entrance to Slytherin by quietly murmuring the password.
Too weak to protest, Harry stumbled after him, thankfully that Snape walked at quite a leisurely pace that allowed him to keep up.
He had never been to Snape's private rooms before, but he knew from rumours that they were located in the Slytherin dungeons, although not too far away from the Great Hall. Nevertheless the way through the dark, labyrinthine corridor seemed endless -probably due to the well-known Slytherin paranoia of having to deal with the unwelcome company of other Houses, the boy thought sarcastically.
Snape finally stopped before an impressive looking stone door, unlocked it with a flick of his wand and waved the boy behind him impatiently inside. In spite of his dizziness, Harry could not suppress an air of curiosity of how Snape's private quarters would look like. Judging from his office, he expected a weird lab full of lots of sickly green pickled things floating in jars all around, but to his surprise the room looked quite normal - apart from the fact that Snape must have robed half of the library for the thousand books that stood neatly in his wooden shelves. In fact, it would be rather comfortable if it were a bit less immaculate... but then somebody who could spent hours complaining about inaccurately pounded scarab beetles just had to be a compulsive neat freak!
But he had not much time to grin at this last thought for Snape indicated him to sit down on one of two impressive armchair in front of the fire place.
As he followed this unspoken order hesitantly, he could feel Snape piercing gaze laying on him. "Once more, Potter, what happened?"
Harry glanced at the floor. "A headache?" he offered shyly.
Snape snorted derisively, then started to rummage through a shelf and dug out a vial of potion which he threw over to the boy so sharply that he just managed to caught it thanks to countless Quidditch trainings.
"Drink." His mouth twisted at Harry's suspicious look. "It's an animating potion for the 'headache' you're suffering. And another ten points from Gryffindor for suspecting a teacher."
Defeated, Harry swallowed the potion in a long, forced gulp. It had a bitter aftertaste, but he had to acknowledge that it made him feel better. However this feeling quickly vanished when Snape repeated his question for the third time, "What happened?"
"It's..." The boy stumbled over his own words and shook his head. How could he explain this to anyone? "I'm sorry, sir, I... I can't talk about it."
"You can't or you don't want to?"
The Professor's voice remained completely bland, and Harry very carefully modulated his to echo the tone. "Both."
Snape's lips thinned. "Even someone as dumbwitted as you, Potter, must understand that I cannot accept this as an answer when I find one of my students in such a state."
Harry had already a scathing retort about men that cared more about blasted cauldrons than about any non-Slytherin students on his tongue, but suddenly decided that it wouldn't be wise to enrage Snape in this particular situation. All the Potions Master had to do was going straight to Dumbledore and Harry would not even think about the endless arguments that would bring about. "It was never before like that", he began with tentative honesty, his gaze on the little vial in his hands. It glittered mesmerizingly in the firelight, its light clear and cold, but warmer than Snape's eyes and much easier to look at. "Not that bad, anyway."
"Fortunate." The black-haired man set down on the other armchair, his dark eyes laying on the boy with frightening intensity. "But what if this ominous ´it´ will be that bad the next time, too? Or worse? You surely don't expect me to waste my precious time with running after you in order to catch you every single time you lose conscience?"
Don't expect and don't want to, Harry affirmed inwardly. "I guess it was the snake", he murmured quietly. "She told me that Salazar Slytherin himself had given her life. She said...well, I guess I just lost my nerves."
Snape seemed to be processing this.. "Since when do you know about her abilities?"
"Oh, since the night when...you know when Professor McGregor..."
"Choose your visit for one of her silly hysteric breakdowns?" Snape continued nastily. When the boy nodded shyly, his lips thinned even more. "You should have told anybody, boy, do you notice that?"
Harry lowered his head. "I forgot about it", he admitted ashamed.
"You FORGOT?" Snape stared at him incredulously as though he thought his most loathed student had gone completely sick of hammers by now and Harry couldn't help but think that the look on his face would be worth to be captured for eternity by Colin's camera. "You find an enchanted emblem and you simply forget about it?"
The boy felt an embarrassing heat on his cheeks. "It's not like nothing else in this school is enchanted!" he shot back defiantly. "I mean, every single bloody portrait can speak, too! What's so special about an enchanted emblem?"
The Potions Master sneered derisively, but did, to Harry's enormous surprise, not comment on this. "What did the thing tell you?" he demanded instead.
Harry sighed defeated. There was nothing he could do about it now; the older man wouldn't release him until he had forced the truth out of him. That was the great thing about good old Snape, he always had to push and push until he got exactly what he wanted. Why couldn't he had run into Flitwick or Sinistra... anybody but the Evil-Potions-Master-from-hell?
"Well?" Snape prompted.
"She spoke about Voldemort", Harry finally began rather reluctantly. "Said that he would always come to speak to her when he was still here at Hogwarts and that the two of them have gotten friends."
"And this revelation made you completely loose your senses so that you did not notice what was going on around you anymore?" the older man shot back, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "Well, if this is what passes as Gryffindor bravery nowadays, it shouldn't be too great a feat to take the House in competition this year."
Harry almost glared. "I am not afraid of telling you, if this is what you think!"
Snape snorted contemptuously. "Well, forgive me, Potter, but I fail to believe this for I don't see a decent reason why a snake speaking about Voldemort should affect you this much."
"Well, that might be because *you* don't have to deal with freaking dreams about Tom every bloody night!" Harry exploded and cursed himself in the same moment as Snape's eyebrows rose at both his outburst and the oddly intimate naming.
"Dreams?" Snape asked in anticipation. "About...Voldemort´s younger self?"
"Yeah", Harry returned through tightly clenched teeth. God, he was so stupid! He was so godforsaken stupid.
Sneaking a quick peek at the older man, he saw a contemplative look on his face as if he were considering things. "What are these dreams about?"
Leave it alone, Harry thought tiredly. Snape would not let him go before he had told him anyway. "We are standing together on a graveyard and he lays down blood-red roses on a grave. I don't know who's buried there, either his or my parents, I never asked. It didn't seem to make any difference in this place. He... he looks very much like myself and he talks to me as if we were... brothers."
"What does he talk about?"
Harry closed his eyes for a moment. "Him and me. About the ´strikening similarities´ between us." Even to himself his voice sounded bitter. "He says that I belong to him and to the darkness and that all my attempts to prove otherwise will be futile in the end."
He lowered his head. There, he had said it. Had told all, as he had thought he never would. Now all he had to worry about was the man he had confided in. Trust was something he had not much of, thanks to his upbringing with the Dursleys, and he never thought that any of it would be invested in Snape. But strangely enough his git of a Potions Master might be the only one in this castle who could understand him.
"Do you agree?"
Harry opened his eyes again in surprise. "What?"
The black eyes were staring at him with frightening intensity. "Do you agree with Voldemort? Do you feel tempted by the dark?"
Damn, was the professor a mind-reader on top of being a sardonic git?!
"A part of me", he heard himself admitting in a voice barely louder than a whisper. "I know that it sounds creepy but I was never afraid of the darkness. It's comforting to me. Somehow I feel at home in it."
"That's nothing to be ashamed of." Snape's tone sounded less biting than usual, almost gentle. He seemed to struggle shortly with himself, before he finally met his eyes again, his expression a painful mixture of sadness and determination. "You know, you're mother once said exactly the same thing to me."
Harry's head jerked. Unbelieving he stared into the familiar black eyes, that suddenly seemed less cold, less hostile. "My mum... liked the dark?"
"One could definitely say so." In spite of his strangely strained voice, a little nostalgic smile graced Snape's thin lips for a moment. "She used to sneak out of the Gryffindor Tower every night to climp up to the top of the Astronomy Tower when we were still at school. It was her favourite place in the world. She could sit endlessly there, staring up to the night sky as if the world around was not real to her, as if she was searching for one perfect setting that she alone could find."
He broke up as if he could not endure the memory any moment longer. For one moment Harry and him just stared at each other, a strange, unnamed energy tackling between them, before the Harry chose to break the silence. "I didn´t mean this sort of darkness", he said hesitantly.
"Neither did I." Snape's eyes were full to bursting with unspoken emotions. "Listen, boy, Voldemort may have left a part of him in you the night he failed to perform the killing curse, but this does not necessarily make you evil. Tom Riddle was innocent once, but chose to follow a bloodstained way full of hatred, vengeance and remorse. You can do otherwise." He paused shortly. "Like your mother did."
"Professor Dumbledore said the same thing to me", the boy acknowledged quietly after a while, returning the dark gaze without wincing. "And Professor McGregor talks on similar lines, too."
A resentful expression appeared on Snape's angular features. "Is that so?" he repeated, his fingers beginning to play in an imaginary rhythm on his chair. He paused for a moment as though not sure how to continue. When he turned his black eyes back to Harry's green ones, a message laid in them, as if he were trying to tell him something without saying the words aloud. "Well, perhaps you should know that your Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher merely copies your mother when she speaks along those lines", he eventually told him with a wrinkled nose. "Lily was the one who believed in freedom without boundaries, she was the one who was convinced that everybody could and should go his own way, regardless of the difficulties. Morrigan on the other hand..."
"What about her, Professor?" the boy prompted when Snape did not speak further, but before he could get an answer, a loud knocking on the door suddenly interrupted him. "Professor Snape?" a young female voice asked. "It's me, Glory. Can I have a word with you?"
Regaining his usual cool composure again, Snape threw a quick glance at Harry, before his jaw set firm. "Come in, Miss Caulfield."
The next moment a slender girl about Harry's age with a wild mane of curly raven-black hair swept in. "Good evening, sir, I...", she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Harry, her violet-blue eyes opening wide in astonishment. "I can come back later if I disturb you..."
Snape waved impatiently "Not at all. Mr Potter and me were just debating on what to do about his abysmal grades, although I fear that even personal assignment, as much as he would surely love that, won't help in this hopeless case."
A little grin appeared on the girl's astonishing pretty features, but she did not comment on this. Looking closer at her, Harry was rather surprised that he never noticed this Glory Caulfield before -for she was stunningly gorgeous!- but then he always tried his best to ignore the Serpents, so perhaps it wasn´t that surprising.
"So what is on your mind, Miss Caulfield?" The Professor eventually asked, his tone not unfriendly. "Knowing your cunning self quite well, I grant that there's a purpose to your visit, or have you simply come to for the pleasure of the company?"
"Considering the fact that the majority of this godforsaken school tends to be boring to no end, the latter might as well be possible", the girl shot back wittily, before batting her eyes in a parody of coquettishness. "And I daresay that most people would describe me as charming rather than cunning."
Snape arched an eyebrow at this. "As you said moments before, Miss Caulfield, most people at this school tend to be morons", he returned dryly although Harry could have sworn to see amusement glittering in the black depths of his eyes.
The girl choose to overhear Snape's last sentence. "Anyway, Lilah´s got birthday and we wanted to ask if we could use the common room for a little party tonight", she explained beaming brightly, while at the same time peering closely at her Head of House. "Please, Professor!"
Settling back in his armchair, Snape's lips curled as he thought this over. "Why don't you try to sneak out of your dorms in the middle of the night and celebrate in a deserted classroom like you usually do when someone of your lot sees fit to a social gathering?"
Glory wrinkled her nose. "Because this always results in you finding us and giving out some gruesome detentions and somehow deja vu just isn't what it used to be", she answered, sounding genuinely annoyed at the memory. Then she flashed him another breathtaking sweet smile. "So are we allowed to use the common room? Come on, Professor, paaaaleeeeez!"
A small smirk appeared on Snape's angular features. "I trust you to behave appropriately", he finally gave his consent. "Do not destroy, burn, disintegrate, transmutate or cause any damage in any way to the common room. The same rules apply to each other. And the rest of the school."
Glory grinned in response. "What about things belonging to Gryffindor or Professor Trelawney?" she asked mischievously.
Harry nearly choked as he saw the grin on Snape's face. He grinned! No smirk, no sneer, but a boyish little smile that made him look about ten years younger. "There you may have free reign."
"You're the best, Professor!" the girl exclaimed heartfully. With that she stepped back to the door. Her beautiful blue eyes glanced back at Harry for a second, before she finally left the room again.
"Merlin help us all", Snape murmured amused, though more to himself than to Harry. Then his eyes fell back on the boy and narrowed dangerously. "Potter, will you tell me what makes you stare at me like an idiot?"
Harry nearly jumped. "Well I...", he began, but hesitated as he thought his answer over. He couldn't really tell Snape that he had never considered the Slytherins to be normal people with normal feelings that even threw birthday parties for each other. Nor that he hadn't thought Snape to be such a human Head of House that was even capable of humour. "Nothing", he finally answered unconvincingly.
Snape snorted. "`Nothing´ seems to be something that occupies your mind far often." He paused shortly. "But then I have known this before."
Harry grinned weakly in response. "I wouldn't want to destroy your bad opinion of me."
"I guess it's already too late for that." The return was so quiet that Harry nearly did not understand him. But before the boy had the slightest chance to say something, Snape had already stood up and began to rummage in his shelves again. "Luckily for you, I use to have always some Dreamless Potions here for myself, Potter", the Potions Master explained in a very strained voice that clearly forbid the boy to comment on his last statement in any way. "You will have to take three drops every evening before you go to bed."
"Okay", Harry finally managed to return, staring blankly at the older man's back.
Snape always had Dreamless Potions for himself? Did that mean that the Potions Master suffered of nightmares, too? That he too had to fight with the vague terrors of memories and self-woven horrors? Well, if he thought about it, Snape had definitely seen enough evil to be haunted by it.
He was so deep in his thoughts that he nearly jumped when the Potions Master suddenly addressed him. "Considering your talents with snakes, I am somehow surprised that the Sorting Head did not put you in Slytherin."
Harry shrugged, uncertainty playing over his features at this sudden change of the conversation. "Well, it wanted to", he admitted slowly, remembering what the head had told him on that evening that seemed ages ago. "It said that being in Slytherin would help me to greatness, but I asked it to put me somewhere else."
He heard a distant snort from behind the shelves. "I suppose that my house was not good enough for a celebrity like you?"
"No, it wasn't that", Harry answered hurriedly.
"What was it then?"
The boy hesitated shortly. "I guess I simply did not want to be in the same House the murderer of my parents was", he eventually answered after a long time of silence.
Snape appeared back behind the shelves, a little crystal bottle in his hands, his expression beyond anything the boy could read. "Do you sometimes think you made the wrong choice?"
"Never", Harry answered without hesitation. "I am happy in Gryffindor. Okay, sometimes I feel as if me and the others existed on two completely different levels that stops us from communicating properly, but would never give up what Gryffindor gave to me. Perhaps Slytherin would not have been too bad either, but I'll never regret my decision."
So much for not making him angry. Except, Harry realised, Snape wasn't angry. In fact, he was almost smiling, not a happy smile admittedly, but he definitely wasn't angry. "You take after your father so much and yet sometimes you sound just like Lily", he said, his voice thoughtfully. Then he threw him the bottle. "Come back to me when you finished this one. I grant you stay over Christmas like always?"
The boy nodded. For a moment they stared at each other again, many things between them still unspoken. This time it was Harry who looked away first. "Well, I think I should go now", he suggested hesitantly.
"I certainly won't hinder you from that."
"Professor?"
An exasperated sigh. "What else, Potter?"
"Thank you."
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