Disclaimer: As you would undoubtedly guess, seeing as this is posted on , I do not own Harry Potter. You know who owns that. Nor do I own Cowboy Bebop. That wonderful show is owned by Sunrise, Inc. All titles (fic and chapter) are songs from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack and are therefore property of Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts.
Author's Notes: Points to whoever can identify the Bebop quotes and references. Those who can identify the episodes from which they come might even come away with a Peking Duck or aGanymede Rock Lobster.
Chapter 1: Diggin'
As Harry sat next to Ron, stirring his potion, he mused on the overgrown git that was Professor Snape. Said git was at the moment ignoring Harry in favor of his other favorite victim, Neville Longbottom, who was fairly quaking under the glare Snape was sending him upon seeing that Neville's potion was a sickly green color—it was supposed to be a pale blue.
Shaking his head, Harry looked at his own potion and added two ounces of powdered moonstone.
Though it would have cost him the chance at being an auror, Harry almost wished that he hadn't made it into NEWT Potions, because then he wouldn't have to deal with the grouchy bastard so often.
Unfortunately, not only had he been placed in NEWT Potions, but Professor Dumbledore had ordered that occlumency lessons be resumed, so Harry was seeing much more of the Potions Master than he wanted to. This year, the lessons had actually been somewhat of an improvement—not because Snape had suddenly decided to develop a soul, but rather because the Headmaster had come up with a way to monitor the lessons closely to make sure the pair remained civil, without attending the lessons in person. Presumably under the threat of Dumbledore's ire, Snape had finally gotten around to teaching Harry actual methods people used to build up mental shields. It was amazing how far one could progress with actual instruction. Knowing what he should be doing had made a vast improvement in the lessons, and Harry was consistently getting better at keeping Snape's greasy mind out of his own.
Glancing at Snape, who was now sneering at Terry Boot, he noticed that Snape was acting oddly. While Harry observed that he looked very irritable about something (what a surprise), he also seemed to be doing his level best to completely ignore Harry. This behavior completely defied the way he had acted in the past, and Harry could not think of a possible explanation. Strange, that.
Soon, Harry heard bell signaling the end of the period, and rushed to bottle his potion and collect all his books and supplies. Just as he was about to leave the classroom with Ron and Hermione, he found himself under Snape's overly large nose.
"Potter," he spat, "do not forget your remedial potions tonight."
Yeah, thought Harry, because I still need reminding after weeks of bi-weekly lessons…
Harry heard Malfoy sniggering from where he was lurking behind the door, and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The ferret really needed to get himself a hobby.
"You will not be late," Snape growled, glaring at him.
Though he had not been late to a single lesson, Harry suddenly saw a vision of Snape coming to hunt him down for daring to commit the unforgivable sin of tardiness. For some reason, assassin Snape was wearing a top hat, a coat with long tails, and was carrying a cane. He was also sporting a maniacal grin.
"Hello, boy," he was saying, "I've journeyed here tonight in order to take your life…"
Harry snapped out of his daydream as Snape stalked away, and shook his head, trying to clear it. As he walked away from the Potions classroom with Ron and Hermione—Hermione now a bit more tolerant of Ron now that she'd spent a class period with not one snore from his direction—Harry wondered if he'd been inhaling a few too many potions fumes.
That evening, Ron slouched back in a large, overstuffed chair in front of the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room. Though Hermione had remained civil to him for the rest of the day, she was also maintaining an air of coolness towards him. Ron knew he needed to do something to rectify the situation, and as quickly as possible. It would no doubt come as a surprise to, well, the entire population of Hogwarts, but Ron was actually aware of the charged feelings between him and Hermione, and exactly what they meant; he was simply very nervous about the prospect of acting upon them. But however nervous he was, he had been planning to make a move fairly soon—until the History of Magic incident that morning, where everything suddenly went utterly pear shaped.
Ron Weasley was at least a little bit smarter than how he was conceived by most of Hogwarts, and realized that really, this morning's incident would not be all that important if isolated, but it was really just the icing on the cake. It was the icing on Hermione's cake, which was made up of layers upon layers of Ron's past mistakes blended together with huge amounts of incomprehensible girl-logic, and Ron knew that that cake needed to be obliterated if he wanted to have any chance with Hermione at all.
But how does one go about obliterating cakes of girl-logic, he wondered, somehow not realizing just how odd his inner metaphor had gotten.
"Damn," he muttered, "she really should have written that book…"
Ron needed help. And as his best friend had made perfectly clear he wouldn't be offering any—and as he was currently in 'remedial potions' (though really, how many people actually believed a NEWT Potions student was still receiving remedial lessons?)—Ron would have to find help elsewhere. But who was he to go to? Quite obviously he couldn't talk to either of his best friends… and he was sure no answers would be forthcoming from Parvati or Lavender. Besides the fact that he would have to spend half the conversation translating giggles and squeals into actual words, he was very skeptical that they wouldn't have anything useful to tell him about Hermione—she was so completely different from them. So, he decided, he'd start by asking the other Sixth Year boys. They might have some advice, right?
Right.
Squaring his shoulders for what he was sure would be an uncomfortable and embarrassing conversation, Ron steeled himself and marched up the stairs to his dorm.
Meanwhile, down in the Potions dungeon, Harry found himself facing the business end of Snape's wand for the umpteenth time in an hour. The lesson had actually been going quite well, if Harry could say so himself. So far, Snape had not been able to get through Harry's block once—though, of course, Snape had become more and more irritable as the lesson wore on.
Now, however, Harry was getting tired and worn down from Snape's constant mental attacks, and it was getting much harder to keep his barriers up. He knew that Snape would be casting legilimens within the next couple of moments, and he tried to brace himself; it was a no go.
Snape was attacking Harry's mental walls viciously, and though Harry was sweating bullets and putting all his power into keeping his barriers up, they were crumbling; he knew Snape would be in his mind very shortly. On a stray and very random thought, Harry wondered if one might classify the case as one of Occlumentile Dysfunction.
That one stray, unfocused, thought was apparently all Snape needed, because at that precise moment, Harry's walls were shattered and he began seeing some of his own memories flashing in his mind's eye.
He saw an image of Ron snoring away in History of Magic, and then a recent Quidditch practice, and then Sirius falling through the veil…
"No!" screamed Harry's thoughts, and he registered vaguely that he heard himself shouting it out loud as well. Sirius was one thing he'd never allow Snape to taint. Though Harry had made great strides in getting over his godfather's death, it was still a huge sore spot, and one he would not allow Snape to poke into.
Harry focused all his energy into forcing Snape out, and within a couple moments, he was seeing a very different image—though it still involved Sirius.
Sirius was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a man who looked exactly like the pictures Harry had seen of his father, grinning and looking younger and happier than Harry had ever seen him. Both men were wearing flowing white robes, cheap and fake wings you could find in any muggle costume shop, and plastic halos that were clearly being held above their heads by another piece of plastic.
The two men exchanged grins, and then looked back to Snape.
"You look surprised," Sirius commented, still grinning like a Cheshire cat.
"You look ridiculous in that outfit," Snape quickly spat back, "I thought you—"
Before Harry could see anymore, he found himself back in the dungeon, and facing a very irritated Snape. Expecting his greasy Potions Professor to attack his mind even more violently Harry tried to ready himself. When no attack was forthcoming, he glanced back at the Potions Master.
"Sir?"
"This lesson is over," Snape ground out, and pointed at the door.
Harry didn't need telling twice.
Author's Notes:
Thank you to Insanity-of-the-owl, BuckNC, and Augurey Song for reviewing.
