Hiding Under the Ninth Earth
Book 02 : A Bit Of All Right
by I Got Tired of Waiting

Part II : Harry and Severus
Chapter Ten : The Schema of Things

19 June 2003

After a most unfortunate encounter with Draco at St. Mungos, Harry spent the better part of his Thursday morning wandering London. He finally stopped at a small park idly watching the young children playing under the diligent eyes of their mothers and nannies and tried to fathom what had happened.

Yesterday, he'd finally plowed his way through a pile of recent Owls Severus had left on his desk. Several people had written him, some quite gloatingly, with the unwelcome news they'd seen Severus out at the adult book stores and clubs in London. One had been a proposition, the writer postulating that Severus was obviously on a bender and was Harry available?

He was disheartened and ashamed he'd paid so little attention; he'd not really noticed anything amiss because Harry had his own secret. Actually, more than one. While he was being honest with himself, these secrets were ones he knew would upset Severus greatly once Harry told him about them. He knew how much Severus hated dishonesty and although he'd not lied, per se, he was guilty of a lot of omissions, which was almost as bad. And the longer he waited to tell him, the worse it was going to be.

'Caught in my own cleverness,' he thought. 'Won't Severus be impressed?' The thought terrified him in ways he hadn't felt in a long time.

Severus on the prowl? He wanted a lifetime with Severus, but maybe he was just too shallow for him, maybe even boring. Perhaps he was not good-looking enough, not man enough for him, maybe Severus' words of his desirability were just tokens. 'Merlin, I've worked so hard these past four years, no, make that six real years, to make myself equal to him and it's just too damned ironic; I can finally see the end of it and I might actually be losing the one person who has been my main driving force all this time.'

His age never even entered his thoughts; he'd never felt young. Harry was tired. Bone-wearing, arse-dragging tired. Too tired for thought, too tired for work, too tired for play. He was grateful Severus had been so undemanding lately. It was a welcome relief to just come home to their rooms and collapse.

'Could I really be losing him? And even if I'm wrong, what will he do when he finds out what I've been up to the last two years? Gods, when did it all go wrong?'

****

June/July 1996

The whole thing began, to his mind, at the end of his fifth year. Sirius was dead and his whole world was filled with a white hot anger at himself and everyone around him. 'Jolly fellow I was back then,' he thought at the memories. Shunning his friends, yet craving their company had made his life a wasted ball of misery. While he'd hated him with a fury beyond anything he'd ever known at the time, Snape had turned out in the end to be his salvation.

Even though he had gone back to the Dursleys for the summer, Dumbledore had pulled him out before the first week had ended. While surprised to see him, Harry had been grateful when Remus appeared at the front door to take him back to Grimmauld Place, although he'd not been too keen on the phalanx of security surrounding him on the painful broom trip there. For despite the warnings given to him by Moody, Lupin, and the others, Uncle Vernon had decided to use him as more than a verbal whipping boy when he caught Dudley struggling with Harry late one night.

'I never thought I would ever be grateful to Aunt Petunia,' but, according to Remus, she'd orchestrated his rescue. She at least had been afraid of the Order and had secretly gone to Mrs. Figg with the news that Vernon had gone beyond the verbal abuse of previous years. Luckily, his physical injuries were minor. He'd heard his 'friends' at the Order had a few 'chats' with Vernon and Dudley about it afterwards, but they never volunteered what they'd done and he hadn't cared enough to ask. He suspected it was pretty wicked, though.

With Sirius gone, Albus ostensibly made Remus his Guardian whenever Harry was off school grounds. However, knowing the werewolf would not return to Hogwarts until the start of the term and given Harry's recent troubles, he made Snape his other guardian, telling him he was holding him responsible for Harry's well-being while at the school. Snape was not pleased with this turn of events; he argued it would put Potter in more danger should Voldemort ever find out, but Dumbledore had been implacable about the issue.

Harry assumed he could spend the summer with Remus at Grimmauld Place, but he and everyone else soon left on last-minute missions for the Order, so Harry was transferred to Hogwarts. Harry spent the remainder of the summer of his 16th birthday in the castle. Hating the idleness, he got into more trouble than he probably should have and in disgust, when none of the faculty was willing to put up with his sullen anger, Snape put him to work in his potions lab as a permanent detention.

He'd chopped, sliced, diced, pounded, pummeled, and ground ingredients for weeks until Snape's shelves bulged with the bottled fruits of his labour. Tired of Snape's sniping, the work calming him as nothing else had done, he did a credible job of it; even the Potions Master could not find fault. (Although, true to form, he was left to figure that out for himself, more from Snape's lack of comment, than from any real praise.)

Snape never mentioned the incident with the Pensieve, either by allusion or outright comment. At first Harry thought Snape was just being mean because of his prior actions, but after the first two weeks, conceded he'd always been like this.

If anything he was more silent. Harry'd had to adjust to the quiet way Snape worked: concentrated with no chit chat, words being used for instructions or criticism and nothing more. It was frustrating at first--Harry was used to a lot of background noise, whether it be from his mates in the Gryffindor Common Room or the telly in the Dursley's living room. The dungeons were silent. The crisp thunk of his knife slicing crunchy roots, the faint whisper of Snape's robes as he moved, the quiet pop of potions on a slow boil, and the infrequent terse instructions spoken in Snape's low, dulcet tones, all became preternaturally loud in the dank silence. He was still restless, but the soporific calm of Snape's lair helped him hide it better.

The infrequent letters from his friends had not helped--their misguided cheerfulness and deliberate lack of comment on the events of the previous school year set his teeth on edge. On one hand, it reminded him of his imprisonment (as he saw it). On the other, he found it irritating no one was willing to wallow in his self pity with him.

Snape was grossly unsympathetic; the one time Harry tried to talk to him about his frustrations, he'd stared at him, told him to "stop whinging about it" and "mind the mandrake roots, if you please." Totally infuriated, he'd mangled some of the roots. Snape had calmly (for him anyway) made him stay the night until, at 4:00 am, he'd finally done it right. However, before allowing Harry to retire, he adjured him to write a letter of apology to Professor Sprout for undoing her work of months with his incompetent mishandling of the mature roots. Harry had been ready to kill for his bed when at sunrise, he finally staggered into the common room released from service for the weekend.

The summer passed quickly in the same manner, with Harry helping Snape in the lab during the days and evenings and falling asleep at night so exhausted he'd no time to really think. Before he knew what was happening, it was a mere three weeks before school was to start. He felt more even-tempered, more under control. He grudgingly acknowledged it had been Snape's utter lack of regard that had helped the most. He never treated Harry any differently before than after, that is to say, he was perfectly awful but in a consistent Snape-ish way.

Two weeks before school started marked the beginning of their relationship.

****

14 August 1996

Harry had been in the lab labelling the last of the ingredients on a long list Snape had given him before he'd left for parts unknown on Dumbledore's behalf. He'd been gone a week. Harry had put the jars on the shelves and was beginning to sweep up the bits of debris, thankful Snape wasn't there to pin him with his hateful sarcasm for the small waste.

He'd just finished cleaning up and had removed the old work cloak he wore and usually hung by the door, when Dumbledore came sweeping into the room, a sense of urgency following in his wake. "Harry, do you know where Professor Snape keeps his personal potions book?" He eyed Harry's hesitancy. "It's all right, Harry. I just need to see it."

Harry took him back to Snape's office behind the lab and pointed at his desk. "He keeps it locked in the bottom drawer, but I'm not supposed to know that."

Dumbledore chuckled as he sat down in the chair and placed his hand on the drawer. "Come here Harry, I think this might be the time for an impromptu lesson." Harry walked over and stood by his side. "Put your hand next to mine (but not touching) on the drawer front. Close your eyes and tell me what you feel."

Harry did as he was asked. When he placed his palm on the face of the drawer, his scar tingled and he could feel the magic woven into the old wood. Feeling it, he could also sense the type of magic involved and without thought he spoke the word "Patefacio" out loud. He jumped back when the drawer popped open.

Dumbledore laughed out loud, "Remind me to tell Severus to place a stronger lock on his drawer." His eyes twinkled with his amusement. "Very good, Harry. I had a feeling you would be able to sense the magic. We call it a Schema--the identifier and logic to a spell. It's a useful tool if you want to get into things, break wards, or reverse spells. Not many have the talent to do so." He rummaged in the drawer and pulled out a worn volume with bits of paper stuck out at odd angles. "This, however, I will do myself. While I have no doubt you could open it, it's a little too personal to let you try. You do understand?"

Harry was still in shock over the drawer. "Ye-yes, sir. Professor Snape's going to be upset enough over me opening his drawer."

Dumbledore laughed again, his eyes wicked. "Then I guess we'll just not tell him then, now will we?" he asked slyly.

Suspicious, Harry considered his words. This was NOT like the Dumbledore he knew. He grabbed his wand and before Dumbledore could react, he called out "Aperio!". The spell, reveal yourself, hit Dumbledore full in the chest, knocking him back into the chair but nothing else. Harry felt sheepish.

The Headmaster looked puzzled for a moment and then a slow smile lit his face. "You'll do, Harry. Very well done. I meant no harm by my words, but I can see where you would think that they were out of character for me. After all, you've never seen this side." He chuckled, "I think, maybe, you're more paranoid than Severus."

"I didn't know anybody could be more paranoid than Professor Snape," Harry said dryly.

Dumbledore shook his head. "I wish we had time to--Come, we've work to do."

Mystified, Harry followed him out into the lab. "You're going to have to gather the materials and set this up; it's been decades since I tried my hand at a potion. Used to be pretty good at it, though." He thumbed through the now unlocked book and, finding what he wanted, started to read off for Harry a long list of ingredients and materials. Harry got Snape's prized pewter cauldron, the one he kept locked up in the cabinet in his office. In fact, most of the ingredients were in the locked cabinets and in each case Dumbledore had him break into them using his newly discovered talent until he could do it quickly and efficiently even though no two locks were the same. Harry thought Snape a paranoid bugger after opening a particularly stubborn cabinet containing the small gold and glass cauldrons; there had been three separate locks on it.

Once they had filled two tables with all the ingredients and had three differently prepared cauldrons out, Dumbledore began to instruct him in what he wanted him to do. Harry set the fires under two of them and when Dumbledore told him which herb was the first, a cold piece of advice from Snape came floating into his head. Harry stopped him saying, "Sir, if you want me to make this, that's all right, but it would be better if you would either let me read through it all the way or do so out loud first, so I know what to expect. Sir."

"Very well," he said with a nod, reading through the entire potion. It was quite complex; they would be at it for several hours. When he was done, without prompting, Harry went over to the tables and rearranged the ingredients in the proper order and placed the first four in front of him. He added them in the correct order, with the correct type of fire. Soon they had three bubbling cauldrons going at once and Harry began to relax. This was actually fun.

Harry could feel Dumbledore's speculative regard. As he watched the cauldrons softly bubble, he thought with inner amusement and some trepidation, 'He'll probably tell Snape about this--I wish I could see his face when he does. He'll probably expire on the spot--or else hex me.'

"While we wait, could you please go over the next bit?" he asked Dumbledore, who obliged him. They waited in companionable silence, Dumbledore not wanting to break Harry's concentration. All too soon, Harry was busy with the next stages with Dumbledore taking over the pewter cauldron while Harry managed the other two. When they had distilled the two cauldrons into one and were waiting for the contents of the third to finish, Harry commented, "I don't know how he runs so many cauldrons at once. We only had three and that was quite enough. I've seen him with as many as seven at once."

"Severus is the best in England. Possibly the best in Europe. When he prepares the Wolfsbane Potion is when you should watch him. It's not the just the number of cauldrons he uses that makes it so difficult--it's the precise timing as well. He moves like good poetry when he puts it together," Dumbledore said with a smile.

"If I might ask, sir? Who's hurt?" Harry asked hesitantly.

Dumbledore stared at him over the rim of his half-moon spectacles. "What makes you think someone is hurt?" he asked cagily.

"The ingredients, sir, and the pewter cauldron. I remember Professor Snape saying, for the most part, pewter is normally reserved for medicines. Some of the herbs and other things here are used primarily for serious wounds and internal injuries. The rest are used for pain. We prepared them for their separate properties, the analgesic portion is particularly strong, and we are now getting ready to combine them all into one, potent potion. The rest is pure conjecture, especially since this is one of Professor Snape's personal potions."

"You're full of surprises this evening, aren't you Harry?" He thought about it a moment. "You're correct, but who is unimportant right now. I'll let you bring the finished potion up with me and you can satisfy your curiosity then."

Harry nodded even as he eyed the last cauldron. It was almost ready. Precisely at the timer, he decanted the last cauldron into the pewter one and as instructed, stood well back. It hissed and a thick column of vapor appeared, red, the exact color of old red roses just as the instructions had said. They'd done it. He stirred it five times clockwise and six times anticlockwise, held the spoon up in the air and let it drip three drops and then removed it quickly, setting it on a special surface of the worktable where it hissed. The tingling in his scar was felt only when it stopped; the silence behind it, glaring.

He prepared and labeled the 24 bottles it would fill and began to ladle the cooling contents into the glass containers, setting each sealed bottle into the carrier he'd set up. Measuring the correct doses of the thick green potion was hard but between the two of them, they managed with no spills and no waste. 'Snape should at least be happy with that,' Harry thought as he started to clean up.

"Here, Harry, let me do that, we've little time to waste, although I know Severus would throw a wobbly if we just left it like this." With a wave of his wand and a whispered spell, everything was clean and back in its proper place. "We'll just have to wait until he gets back to lock everything up proper," he said as he warded the door on their way out.