---General Ramblings
Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews! You all should do it again after this chapter, savvy?
---Chapter Four: Consuming Darkness
"Potter, did you just say you drank the potion?" McGonagall asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Yes, Professor Snape gave it to me- so I drank it." Snape smiled at Harry with a nasty glint in his eyes.
Harry understood the look. As long as Snape had to be trapped in body, he would make him look bad. Fine. Two could play at that game. The potions teacher would not get away with giving Harry a bad reputation without getting burned himself. The boy who lived would make sure of it.
"Well that's a bit stupid, don't you think, Potter?" The headmistress stated looking from Snape to Harry and back. "Why would you drink a potion just because someone gave it to you?"
"I wasn't thinking, Professor." Snape replied innocently.
"Well obviously you weren't thinking. Honestly! I-"
Harry cut off the transfiguration teacher. "It is solely my fault. I handed the boy the flask and didn't even think what would happen. If Potter dies, I'll claim full responsibility."
"You will not!" Snape exclaimed with dawning comprehension of what Harry was doing.
"I insist, Potter. It will be all my fault. However, you should not worry. I'm sure you will not die." Harry retorted with a smug look.
"Listen Po- rofessor, I do not blame you if I die. If I get killed, I'm sure it will be nobody's fault but my own stupidity." Snape shot back.
Harry laughed. "But you're a smart boy! I don't think you should think so low of yourself! Trust me, I will claim responsibility for death, and no hard feelings, agreed?"
By this point, McGonagall was looking back and forth between them like they were in the middle of playing a tennis game. The look on her face was a range of confusion, to horror. She straightened up as the teacher and student finally settled on glaring at each other once again.
She cleared her throat and look at Snape with only little traces of confusion left on her face. "Potter, the headmaster would like to see you in his office immediately and Severus, I would like to remind you there will be a teacher meeting tomorrow morning in the lounge. Come on, Potter."
Harry didn't care anymore what Snape told him. He was going to go to Dumbledore and tell him what was going on. Being stuck in the body fo his least favorite Professor for three days wasn't fun. It was horrible. He would also be damned if Snape took his finals for him. Knowing the slime ball, he would fail everything just to show how much hatred he had for Potter.
The three days he had already endured were somewhere between annoying, deathly boring, confusing, and amusing. The second day, he had washed his hair and put it up in a ponytail only to see Snape walk into the classroom a couple of hours later with the rest of his Gryffindor class and look livid with fury. Yes, that had been fun. Just to get the Professor's anger up even more, he thought aloud that he had decided to get a haircut while all the students were mixing up their potions.
Yes, he had caused quite a bit of chaos for Snape, but it was self-defense. From everything that he had heard in the teacher's lounge and from passing students, Snape had also been amusing himself by making life for Potter a bit of a joke. When he had spoken to Dumbledore on that first day , he demanded that candy be outlawed inside the castle. Dumbledore willingly did so with a chuckle and a mischievous glittering of his eyes.
The day after, not only had the school been quite annoyed with this rule, Harry heard Draco Malfoy saying, "If I catch who came up with this idiotic rule, I'll throw them into a bottomless pit." Usually that wouldn't have bothered Harry, but Lucius Malfoy's head had appeared in Snape's fireplace later that evening and asked him why his son had contacted him to install the bottomless pit back on the Malfoy grounds.
And even worse, he had driven Hagrid to the point of tears when he started insulting Fwoopers one day in class.
It wasn't quite so easy for Harry to make Snape look bad because everyone already disliked him. SO far the only thing had been washing his hair and as he walked down the halls nearing Dumbledore's office he wondered if he really should give Snape a haircut. That would just be masterful. He would quite possibly end up dead in the long run, but from his point of view, it seemed worth it because after all, he had argued, in front of McGonagall, that the death of Harry Potter would be the fault of none other than the Hogwarts Potions Master. Bloody genius.
Harry grinned as he said the password to the Headmaster's office and went up the stairs. He was still smiling manically when he stepped into the round office. Dumbledore welcomed him and secretly took in that his potions teacher looked a bit insane. He didn't want to question what was the occasion for fear that maybe he had killed a first year for being too curious about a potion ingredient. The old wizard quickly let that thought go although he couldn't help but chuckle slightly causing Harry to give him a strange look.
"Professor Dumbledore." Harry sat down in a comfortably squishy chintz armchair that Dumbledore seemed to like and always appeared wherever the Headmaster went. He'd question the chintz armchair fetish later.
"Severus, what can I do for you?" Dumbledore questioned kindly.
"No, I'm Harry Potter."
Dumbledore gave the teacher a worried look. "Perhaps you have come to ask for some rest? I'm sure Minerva would be kind enough to take your classes tomorrow, or even I would be glad to do so if-"
Harry was tempted to just go with Dumbledore's assumed story that Snape was sick, but decided against it even though it was surely an entertaining thought.
"No, Professor. Three days ago, when there was a huge explosion in the dungeons, Professor Snape and I somehow switched bodies." Harry explained.
"And did you nor Professor Snape not notice this switch until today?" Dumbledore asked slowly trying to get the teacher in front of him to snap out of a possible hallucination.
"No. Well, yes, we did. I wanted to come straight for you, but Professor Snape said he had a potion that would help-" Harry took a breath. "-but it didn't do anything and we're still each other so I decided you should probably know."
Dumbledore nodded in understanding and his expression immediately changed from amused to deeply concerned. "Harry, this is bad news. What potion did you take?"
Harry shrugged. "It was a remedial potion. I'm not sure."
"That could be one of twenty-three different remedial potions. I must know which one. What color was it? Do you remember?"
Harry opened his mouth and closed it thinking back. "I think it was a blue-ish color. But I'm not sure though."
"If it is blue then my guess is that you'll be stuck in each others bodies for perhaps three to four weeks longer than originally intended. So I would say that in a month the potion would wear off." Dumbledore looked at Harry with worry etched in his face again. "Harry, you are not-"
Harry suddenly felt a searing pain in his arm and started gasping in Dumbledore's office looking up with wide eyes. "Professor- it- it- my arm"
As Harry flew off the arm chair, Dumbledore easily caught him and on the opposite side of the castle Severus Snape, in the body of Harry Potter went blind with pain that instantly and without warning exploded in his head. He fell to the ground and was consumed by the welcoming darkness.
