This is a bit angsty...but developments are not gratuitous and are integral to the plot..honest!
I worked frenziedly that day, allowing myself no time for thought.
Potter trailed around after me in my Potions workroom, casting me occasional worried looks from under his lashes. I gave him as many repulsive tasks as I possibly could. I did not appreciate the way he was staring at me. I did not need or want his concern.
"Potter," I finally snarled in exasperation. "Get out of my way!"
"I'm just trying to help," he mumbled.
"Well, don't. Go for a walk or something. And no riding on your broom without supervision. Is that clear?"
"Fine. Whatever."
He left, slamming the door behind him. I breathed more easily, and allowed myself to sink into the sour pleasure of a really vile mood without the distraction of the boy traipsing at my heels like a bemused puppy dog. Just because I gave the boy a trifling present, which any wizard should expect to receive at their coming of age as of right, he seemed to think he had forged some sort of connection with me. He oozed sympathy and concern. I growled. I did not want sympathy. I wanted to kill something. Almost I wished it was school term. At least then I could share my misery around by intimidating my classes to the verge of cardiac arrest.
Potter sidled back to my dungeons in the late afternoon, obviously wary of my uncertain temper. That put me in an even worse frame of mind. Still, I reminded myself. It was his birthday. Maybe I should make some small effort to be convivial. Or pleasant. Or even perhaps just civil. However, Potter managed to stay unobtrusively in a corner with a book, and slowly my temper simmered down.
Come the evening, it was easier to relax. The house elf with all the socks had realized it was Potter's coming of age. He sent up wine, Butterbeer and Firewhisky with the meal. I took one look at Potter and removed the Firewhisky from his vicinity. From the expression on his face when he saw the bottle, he was not accustomed to drinking alcohol of such strength. And there are few things in life as tedious as a drunken teenager.
With hindsight, drunken professors are perhaps not all that entertaining either.
I poured myself a hefty shot of Firewhisky and slugged it down. This was one day when I really felt a mild alcoholic haze might be rather restful. I had barely drank since the previous Christmas, when Dumbledore had held a staff party and insisted I make some sort of effort to join in the festivities. I had decided that drinking on my own in a corner counted as participation. My dear colleagues had persisted in conjuring paper hats in various disgusting colours and shapes and levitating them onto my head. This seemed to afford them some sort of childish amusement. Dumbledore had finally called them off just before my death glare turned into Avada Kedavra for real.
Potter was drinking wine in gulps. He did not look as if he much liked it. I wondered if I should insist he drank Butterbeer instead, which is barely alcoholic at all. He was of age now, though. And it was not school term. Finally, I shrugged. As long as he didn't drink so much he was ill all over me, my personal belongings or my chambers it was not my concern.
Once the meal finished, with food and whisky sitting warmly in my stomach, my outlook improved. Slightly. At least, I unbent sufficiently to address a few words to Potter which didn't sound as if I were cursing him. He brightened visibly, and took advantage of my less hostile demeanour by challenging me to a game of chess.
"Professor," he said hesitantly. "The Weasleys sent me a chess set for my birthday. The pieces are dying for a game. Do you play?" His cheeks were flushed, whether with wine or at his own daring I do not know.
"I do," I told him. My eyes glinted evilly. This was my opportunity for revenge after the Quidditch fiasco. None of that showy flitting around on broomsticks. Cool strategy, the demands of logic, a game entirely dependent on brainpower. I couldn't possibly lose. "If you are asking me whether I will play with you, Potter, then yes. Why not?"
He looked absurdly pleased, and trotted off to fetch the game. It was rather touching, I supposed, that the perpetually broke Weasleys had scraped together enough money to buy him a decent present for his birthday. It was actually quite a reasonable chess set. I examined the pieces carefully.
They struggled in my grasp. "Put me down, foul knave!" the white rook bawled at me.
"I think I had better play black," I said drily to Potter. "I suspect the pieces will respond better."
The maker of the chess set had obviously been a Gryffindor by inclination, if nothing else. The knights had to be bullied into taking the pawns, which they obviously considered to be unworthy prey for chessmen of their nobility. The Queens insisted on giving fair warning to their opponents if you moved them into a threatening position. I finally stopped my pieces babbling my battleplans by threatening to gag them. I had no intention of losing at chess to Potter. I sipped at my Firewhisky as I watched him frowning over the board, deciding on his next moves.
Actually Potter didn't play all that badly. His main problem was that he played chess like he played life. He did not want to make sacrifices. He wanted to save and protect his pieces: all of them, all of the time. I was reminded of all the reasons why I did not like the foolish boy opposite me.
I pointed out to him that a saviour complex was the fatal flaw in his game. To my surprise, it seemed to upset him.
"Now what?" I demanded irritably. The Firewhisky burned down my throat. I refilled the glass.
"Oh," he mumbled. "It's just…it's what Hermione said to me. Last year. Before Sirius died, you know? That I had a saving-people-thing…."
I had not realized Granger had so much sense.
"Well? You do. Truth hurts, does it? Always the little hero, our Mr Potter." I raised my glass in an ironic flourish, and took another gulp.
Something flared in his face. It might have been anger. Or equally, it could have been hurt. I found that in my current mood I didn't much care either way. "Don't say that!" he said then. There was an edge to his voice which was almost pleading. "Why do you always keep saying that?"
Was he serious?
"Let me see," I drawled, taking another slug of Firewhisky. I leaned back in my chair and cast my eyes towards the ceiling as I counted the occasions off on my hands. "There would be the time in your first year when you endangered yourself and your friends by going after an item of which you should have known nothing, but made it your business to find out about. The time in your second year when you decided it was your personal task to solve the riddle of the Chamber of Secrets. The time in your third year-"
"I didn't ask for any of that to happen!" he interrupted, flushing.
"Oh come now, Potter. Of course you did. You had choices. You did not have to ferret out dangerous secrets, sneaking around the castle out of hours in your invisibility cloak –"
"It's a good thing I did though, isn't it! I mean Ginny might have died, and S-S-Sirius would certainly have been caught by the Dementors – and…"
"Quite. It is just as I said, Mr Potter. You like to play the hero. If you truly do not, why do you attempt to do it so – damned – often?" I finished with something of a snap. The anger swirling not far below the surface of my thoughts was intensifying.
"You don't think I wanted any of this, do you?" He was bright red now. You've got no idea what it's like, being the Boy Who Lived, having this scar –"
Well now. The scar. The 'oh-my-god-it's-Harry-Potter' scar. I gulped back some more Firewhisky and leaned forward across the table, so that my eyes bore into his own.
"You think you are so special, don't you, Mr Potter? With that little scar on your forehead?" I was baiting him now. The distress I was inflicting somehow seemed to ease the mass of pain burning in my own chest.
"No! No, I don't, but everyone else does, they expect things of me, they –"
"Come off it, Potter. Face up to it. Of course you think you are special. I have heard you. There is nobody so ill-used as you, nobody who shoulders such burdens…"
"Well there isn't!" he shouted. "Have you got a prophecy made before you were born saying you have to kill the darkest lord of the time or die trying?"
I leaned back in my chair, cradling my drink. Something swung unpleasantly in the pit of my stomach. I did not really want to think about the relationship between the Dark Lord and myself. I could feel the abyss opening at my feet.
"Me?" I said softly. "I think you should consider very carefully what you are saying, Mr Potter. You know nothing about me, and the burdens I carry. Do not even presume to suppose you do."
"Oh, right, so now it's you everyone should feel sorry for, is it? You seem to have done all right out of it! You're still here, aren't you? You've got a job at Hogwarts, you don't even have to spy any more…"
I hissed in fury. "Mr Potter, I repeat. If you do not shut up you will regret it."
"No I bloody well won't shut up! You insult me all the time, with all those cracks about being a boy hero and so on. It's about time you thought what it might actually be like for m-me, Voldemort killing my parents, and then c-coming after me year after year…." His voice was shaking.
"So the Dark Lord is after you, is he? Poor little Harry Potter," I snarled at him, slugging back more of my drink.
That was rather too close to home at the moment.
Harry could feel anger ripping through his skin. Snape was just so infuriating. He had never been fair to him. He had always assumed the worst, and goaded him, and made thoroughly unjust judgements about him.
"So the Dark Lord is after you, is he? Poor little Harry Potter."
Harry's ire swelled. Snape was lounging back in his chair, eyeing Harry as if he were a piece of dirt. Snape, who had once been a Death Eater, and thought it was just fine to take his foul temper out on the entire world. Or at least the Gryffindors. Harry switched tactics and went onto the offensive."All right, then! If I'm so shallow and arrogant and selfish, what about you? Why do you think you have the right to be so damned horrible to people most of the time?"
Snape's face twisted. He was swallowing Firewhisky as if it were pumpkin juice. He regarded Harry for a long moment. His features were contorted, with rage and bitterness and something that might even have been fear.
"You want to know, Potter?" His voice was deadly.
"Yes, I do," Harry said defiantly. His heart was beating very fast. A small voice in his head was pointing out to him that he would almost certainly regret pushing Snape in this way. "I'm sick of you swooping about your classroom being so nasty to everybody. What makes it all right for you to do that?"
"Perhaps you are not the only person with difficult things in their past, Potter. Did that ever occur to you? No. I doubt it. The world revolves around Harry Potter, after all. Potter and his tiny little scar."
"So you've got bigger scars, have you? Wow. That makes it fine then for you to sneer at me, and frighten Neville to death, and –"
"Yes, Potter." Snape's face was flushed now, and the glass in his hand was empty. "I do have bigger scars. Do you really want to know? Do you?" He leaned across the table again.
Harry had an uneasy feeling that things might have gone too far. Snape looked as if he might expire from apoplexy at any moment. His own anger began to slip away from him. Snape was obviously under some sort of stress at the moment, and he probably shouldn't have picked this time to provoke him.
"No," Harry muttered, turning away. "It doesn't matter. I'm going to bed."
Snape's hand shot out and imprisoned Harry's wrist. Harry jumped, and stared indignantly.
"Let me go!" He shrank back. His heart thudded even more violently. Snape won't hit me, he told himself. He's really angry, but he won't hit me. The murderous glint in Snape's eyes was not, however, reassuring. Harry found himself gulping nervously and biting his lip in fearful anticipation.
"Not until you have heard, Potter. You think you are so badly done to. You have no idea. You are clueless. The dark lord takes everything, from everyone. You are scarcely unique in that."
"So what did he do to you then?" Harry snapped, his temper rising again. Harry, be quiet! his inner voice cautioned him. But he had never been good at keeping his head down and his mouth shut, even when being beaten to a pulp by his uncle or having his hand carved open by Umbridge."You look all right to me!"
"Really, Potter. Really. You know nothing. The Dark Lord hasn't murdered your cousins in front of you when you are old enough to remember it, has he? He hasn't taken a knife and carved up your flesh, has he? - holding you down with the immobilising jinx whilst he takes his blade and slashes at the most intimate parts of your body, mutilating and destroying, as if you were a dog having its balls chopped off at the Muggle vet…"
Harry gaped. The room froze into a stretched-out silence. Harry and Snape simply stared at each other, with intensity. "V…Voldemort did that to you?"
Snape suddenly seemed to come back to himself. He looked away. His mouth was twitching.
"Yes," he muttered. "A little reminder from the Dark Lord about the value of obedience. Oh, don't look so appalled, Potter. What do you think the Dark Lord does to his minions when he is displeased with them? Puts them in detention? I assure you, a bit of mutilation and losing a testicle is not the worst that could happen. In fact, it wasn't..."
He scoured Harry with the fierceness of his stare. "Since, regrettably, I cannot throw you out of my chambers I am leaving myself."
Snape strode through the door, and slammed it viciously behind him.
Harry gazed after him for a long, shocked moment. He had hung the Fireheart stone Snape gave him for his birthday around his neck. He rolled it slowly in his hand. It was cool and smooth to the touch.
Harry realized he was still quivering with emotion. He took a tremulous breath, and discovered in himself an overwhelming urge to weep.