22. Harry Raves

The Headmaster informed his Potions Professor by floo that he'd just told Harry about Sirius Black, and Snape's suspicions.

Professor Snape merely nodded to the news curtly, cut the connection, and went about his business. There was no use in telling the Headmaster that he had intended Potter to have his first Occlumency lesson tonight, and been quite satisfied with the mood the boy had been in lately when approaching him. Dumbledore was sure to know as much anyway.

That of course was not to be now, with Potter in a state of desolate anger, directed against the one who was supposed to teach him.

The Professor wondered if they'd ever manage to get along civilly, if only by half. Even he and Black had, once in a while. Not that he truly cared.

The brat would foreseeably be raging at him in just a few hours, during his detention, which was a nuisance and terrible timing, not making him hate the whole idea less. More detentions were not a way of staving this off, or of handling the matter. Probably Potter would be around to shout at him within the hour.

When he'd given the boy detention, Potter had raged too but, Severus Snape was quite sure, eventually understood the necessity of it, and the grand opportunity there had been in the moment.

Next should have been their first lesson together, 'after the truce'... Could not Albus have waited, if just a couple of days? Well, he'd likely not known they'd finally come to some sort of agreement. He might have postponed the telling of the mutt's story, otherwise.

For a moment, Severus Snape contemplated how it could be that even after his death, Black was still capable of creating pain and trouble for him.

This turn of events would very likely set a stance of a harsh bitterness to their lessons, to the boy's learning, that even the severe Potions Professor had difficulties approving of.

Yet it might be better if Potter knew the worst of it all before they started. It was difficult to fathom what would happen if he knew a lot about the Arts Severus was about to teach him, and then found out about things he needs must hate, and blame his Professor for. By being told in advance, the boy at least could not use his considerable magical powers with that new knowledge.

The Potions master wondered if the Headmaster had meant to render Potter gentle by adverse methods.

When the time for dinner arrived, Severus Snape was a bit surprised to note that Potter had indeed not come down on him in the afternoon. Nor was the boy in the Great Hall. Later, the Potions Professor was annoyed to find that the brat had no intention to be in time for his first lesson, or of honouring the appointment at all, apparently.

When the clock chimed nine, it was obvious that Potter would not come. This was something that puzzled the Potions Master. Even if angered, he could not imagine the brat to dare and stand him up, all circumstances considered. This had not happened ever before. Severus Snape had been convinced that Potter had some understanding of the urgency of the situation, and the boy had indeed shown an amazing presence of mind and grasp of things a couple of times lately. What he'd let Snape know of his thoughts had been amazingly far-sighted and perceptive, but of course that would have been a mere mood and nothing of consequence in the long run: alas, like Snape had feared, it was not to last.

It was not as if he had nothing else to do and was waiting around to execute a duty that he was not fond of anyway, but if he met the boy which he would eventually, or Potter dared to show up still, he have would tell him off sharply, and take some more points from his house, which was something that the Professor did not consider helpful at this stage of events. He would have to order Potter to be back tomorrow, but in the afternoon, right after lessons. In the evening, his Slytherins were due.

It was just like Dumbledore's Golden Boy to mess up his schedule. There even was danger in that, but surely one Harry Potter could not be bothered to consider!

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Stealthily, Harry got up, grabbed his Invisibility Cloak, and sneaked out of the dormitory and through the common room. He did not have to dress, having not bothered to undress in the first place before he lay down.

It being so late had its good sides. Harry felt not at all like explaining to his friends what he was about to do, and was too angry and upset still to feel guilty about not telling them any of his worries. They'd be off better without knowing, and having to take what he had to take, anyway...

Harry was sure that Snape would be furious. With just the faintest feeling of unease, Harry assured himself that he was not only prepared to fight the man, but looking forward to let the greasy git have some piece of his mind, and more, if possible.

Silently, he made his way toward the dungeons.

What if Snape was not awake anymore? Well, Harry would make him wake up. But the Potions Professor was known to be up late anyway, to prowl the corridors and sneak up on unwitting students, for instance.

Harry wondered what he would do if he met Snape right around the next corner, but that was unlikely. A look on the Marauder's Map before leaving Gryffindor tower had shown Snape to be at his desk in his office. After he'd gotten it back the last time, Harry had taken care not to carry it around with him if he could help it.

To make sure he was a match for Snape, Harry tried to muster the rage he'd felt against the Headmaster. Snape would be livid and try to get at Harry when confronted with his guilt and the absurd accusations he'd raised against Sirius – if it hadn't been for him, Dumbledore would probably have looked into the death of Peter Pettigrew and a dozen Muggles more closely, and with different eyes!

But the memory of this afternoon's events did nothing to get Harry into a more confrontative mood. On the opposite, it put him out entirely, making him feel indescribably sad and wanting to rush to the Headmaster's office to apologise to the old wizard right away, so he pushed it aside.

What other events were there, then? Snape, putting down Neville… His sneering face when he'd said to Hermione that he could detect no difference after Malfoy had hexed her teeth, two years ago… The Slytherins' laughter… That was better!

Somehow though, Harry could not really feel the anger anymore. He blinked. There were splinters getting between it and his thoughts – the shards of a small mirror that had lain in Harry's trunk unused when it would have been the solution to his communication problems, and very likely have answered his questions as to Sirius's whereabouts... Harry would never have needed to bother to slip into Umbridge's Office and... Voldemort would not have been able to deceive him into going to the Ministry at all. Harry felt tears well up in his eyes. Sirius might still live! This was suffocating! He swallowed hard.

Harry trudged on stubbornly, refusing to dwell on that train of thoughts either.

Snape, the liar, the spy, the traitor; he who dared to blame his father and godfather for deeds that surely were more than matched by his own crimes… Had Snape not informed the Headmaster, Sirius would never have entered the Ministry of magic… Dumbledore had said nothing about Snape's actions for Voldemort, and probably would refuse any questions on the subject, but Harry was sure that Snape had killed for the Dark Lord.

Oddly, still nothing of that raised his anger... The derision came with strong words and thoughts, and Harry felt nothing but… that sadness. Yet he wanted and needed to make a clean breast of this.

He desperately needed to shout at Snape!

Knowing that Snape could perceive him through the dungeon door, he stopped in a corner away from it, and gathered his resolve.

Why had he come here anyway? It was not as if he was going to kill the Potions master, as much as he deserved death.

He wanted an apology, he decided, for Snape's wrong accusation of Black as a Death Eater.

After making sure that he was all by himself, Harry dropped his Invisibility Cloak, folded it, and stuffed into the waistband of his trousers behind the small of his back.

He stepped forward, knocked, and entered, without waiting to be called in.

Snape sat at his desk as usual, not appearing to be surprised to see him at all even at this late an hour.

The Professor asked coldly: "What is it, Potter? It can't be your appointed detention now, as it is well beyond curfew. You do realise that points will be taken, and the date has to be made up for?"

Harry ignored those words and stepped closer to the desk, staring at the man before him whose eyes were glittering impenetrably in the candlelight. He felt his hackles rise. Finally, his anger welled up. Harry hated that man before him!

When the boy said nothing, Snape resumed his writing, unperturbed, ignoring him.

Treacherously calm, Harry greeted him: "Good evening, Professor. I need to talk to you about an… issue... of your past..."

He was not at all sure how to put this, but was beyond caring, too – they would get to the point NOW.

Snape looked up at him over his quill and back right away, to resume his writing. He scribbled a few lines, then said:

"Is that so, Potter. Now what could that possibly be, and what concern of yours would my past be?"

He sounded utterly disinterested, like surprising himself by asking at all.

Harry just stared.

"I see. Surely, it would be that Professor Dumbledore has told you about the well-founded suspicions I held against that mutt of a godfather of yours? And likely, what good reasons there were for it, too...?"

Apparently, Snape had foregone all pretence of not knowing what this would be about. Surely, too, Dumbledore would have informed him of their exchange. Harry did not bother to feel betrayed.

Mutt! That did it, much as had been the Potions Master's intention.

Even before Snape was finished with this poison-laced reply, Harry grabbed the quill from him and started to tear apart papers and books, smashing vials that were standing on Snape's desk. He did not attack the Professor though.

This time, Harry's anger did not feel like a wave, cold and strong, like it had when the Slytherins attacked him, but hot, desperate, and helpless... like tears. He could not think what to do, and only wanted to see damage done, to hear the crashing and smashing of things, to ease his pain.

Oddly enough, Severus Snape noted, the boy did not have his wand out. He was merely bashing things by hand. Snape put this down to his Muggle upbringing. A dangerous habit that he'd have to deal with as well. What if there were poisons or acids about? Gryffindors! Never think, act first…

The Potions master in his turn, anticipating events, had had his wand out inconspicuously the moment Potter entered. So he calmly said: "Accio wand! Impedimenta! Silencio!", thus stopping Harry before he'd managed to floor and destroy the first year's papers Snape had been grading altogether.

Next, Snape pointed his wand at the door with a silencing spell.

The Professor went over to Harry and searched his sleeves. Putting the boy's wand away in a pocket of his waistcoat and returning his attention to the torn and broken things on the floor, he started repairing and cleaning up efficiently.

Only after he was finished with this, Severus Snape said: "I will not have you vandalise my office. The Headmaster might not mind such shows of adolescent disturbance, but I do. There are dangerous substances around. Scream all you like, but do not expect me to have you rampaging about, or do damage to yourself here! Vocare!"

Harry, prevented from more destructive action by the upheld jinx, needed no invitation of any sort to spit and curse and rail, spilling all his pain and anger over the black-cloaked man in front of him.

He accused his Professor of treason and murder, blamed torture and suicide on him... Harry called him all the names students had ever come up with for the Potions master in his time, and shouted at him the kinds of pain and riddance they had wished on him over the years. All that the Headmaster had told him came out in a jumble of anger, grief, and invective.

Snape, having finished Harry's cleaning business, merely stood observing the boy without appearing to listen, and quite unperturbed by that tidal wave of abuse, accusations, and remorse. He endured the barrage of hatred with untypical patience.

When Harry ended, breathless and in tears, proclaiming "I HATE YOU, YOU BASTARD!" in a roar fit for a stadium, the Professor looked at him quietly and in a probing manner, as if expecting more to come.

Snape did not need to use Legilmency on Harry to read him and, when nothing else came out, did not ask in his usual acerbic manner: 'Are you finished, Potter?' or some such thing but, after a few moments of regarding the exhausted boy, said quietly: "Why?"

Harry was perplexed. That was not a reaction, or question, he'd expected! He ranted on: "Why on earth not? Why not kill you? You are a mean git, and you betrayed Sirius, my godfather, and my parents... you… No..."

He almost howled by then, tears now flowing abundantly.

It was obvious to the Potions Master that Potter was dangerously close to the edge, and that he did confuse things. He'd insulted Snape's ancestors and his propensity as a teacher, called him names, and threatened murder; and not only hoped for, but been sure of a flaring counter-attack, since he knew oh so well which buttons to push with the Potions Master, but no...

Severus Snape always gave as good as he got, didn't he? Harry had not needed Dumbledore to tell him that.

Harry had fully expected to be thrown out of the dungeons physically, with at least 50 points off Gryffindor House, and a month's worth of cleaning duty with Filch.

He'd planned on going to the dormitory once that was settled, intending to hide in his bed and to cry about the injustice of it all, about the greasy git that the Headmaster wanted him to pair up with, and to wallop in his guilt... He had planned on missing out school tomorrow, to find some rest and think about his future. Harry had dared to think, only in passing though, that he might leave school just like Fred and George had. That he might even find work with them…

All this, of course, to avoid the issue of Sirius and his gift... Well, he'd cry for Sirius, and maybe feel a tiny bit of relief...

"That blasted mirror!" he sobbed.

A gift? A mirror? The words had not been very distinct. He decided to use Legilmency on the boy, who did not notice the quietly whispered spell due to the state he was in.

When Dumbledore had told Harry in the afternoon about Snape's suspicion, and the impossibility to clear Sirius's name right now, Harry had been aware, even through the haze of his own pain and rage, how difficult saying this had been for the Headmaster, and the memory of his own utter failure of Sirius, the more so because of the forgotten gift, had returned to him with a vengeance. Harry had still managed to push it away, and slept rather well.

Now it came back with full force.

The pain Harry had felt when he'd held the little sliver of glass in the dormitory, last year... No-one besides himself appearing in it, regardless of his imploring... The cracking, tinkling sound when it broke in a corner of the trunk... The cuts it had given him when he collected the shards, later, at the Dursley's, and how he had eventually tried to cut himself with each one of them, trying to cover them with his blood, to atone for... for...

His eventual attempts at repair, and the blinding tears... Every night… No more nightmares of Voldemort, as there ought not to be in the Dursley's home, not that there was any need for additional horrors for Harry, that summer…

The Dursley's fear of an Order visit, when he continually refused to eat now that they offered him everything, their muttering about ingrates whenever they thought he didn't listen, would have been comical, if it hadn't been for the reasons of the refusal. They had buzzed around him like fat flies, trying to find out what they could do to avoid further magical incidents from happening in their home. Aunt petunia had been more like a thin moth rather, but the absurd notion did nothing just now to cheer Harry up or distract him.

Finally, he'd been picked up by Moody, Tonks, and others, to be taken to the Weasleys. The Burrow had been charmed unplottable by the Order and put under Ministerial guard, so they all should be safe from surprise attacks at least: Bill and Tonks had been around all holiday, and Moody came in every other day.

Harry had asked him to see the photograph of the Order meeting again, and to hear the stories... Moody had promised him a copy if he ever found the time, and indeed managed to give him one before the holidays were over.

Snape saw all this in images flashing past, most of which did not add up to anything much for him. Potter was confused as was usual, by now only mumbling. He seemed far gone. Snape was wondering whether he should call Madame Pomfrey.

The image that was most prevalent was that of a mirror, in shards. What was that about?

The Professor watched the crying boy who seemed, momentarily, to have lost his speech completely. This was an improvement, Severus Snape thought. Potter was writhing on the floor, swaying slightly and rolling his head with some unfathomable emotion.

He had been quite impressed by Harry's fluency in insults. So, this was out. He knew more now about how he was looked upon by the students of houses other than Slytherin than he had ever before, not that he cared.

Right now, the Potions Master could see a range of emotions move across the boy's face like cloud shadows, and did realise that they had to do with his old enemy, and feelings of guilt Potter himself harboured because of Black's demise.

He would not push his finger into that wound now.

Harry hated Snape with a passion because the Professor dared to confess to his hate of Black, and had given the boy an initial reason to review the idealised images of his godfather, and father, by that transgression with the Pensieve...

Severus Snape knew he ought to have guessed what kind of effect those memories would have on a boy like Harry who had never really known any of those involved in them, but the old pain and humiliation, his own rage about the outrageous trespassing on his privacy, had been too strong. And again, why should he have cared?

Looking at the prone boy whose face was covered in tears, Snape also realised that today, after more than 20 years, it was probably time for himself to rethink: to get over these events, over his old injuries.

Another reason to despise Potter jr.: he made him feel old and outdated, and realise how very long ago these things had taken place.

Snape could not recover them now, neither the memory, crisp and fresh as a newly-painted picture still in the Pensieve, nor his anger... Was that a twinge of pity in him, on seeing a distraught boy on the floor, humiliated so much like he himself had been humiliated, if only by his own doings? No way would he admit to any similarities to the Gryffindor golden boy!

Snape's methodical mind returned to more present matters at hand. There seemed to be more to this. Objectively, something had wounded Harry Potter badly, almost to the core, and this was connected with the feelings of guilt he tended, but apparently pertained neither to the event of death and loss of his godfather as such, nor to the rash carelessness of Potter's actions in the matter, nor, apparently, to anything Dumbledore had told the boy, but to the image of the broken mirror. This was odd, and validated investigation.

Tears started to roll from half-closed eyes again, as was often the case with the boy these days.

It was far from the Potions Master to make fun of that; on the contrary, he envied the capability to find such release as it was not a gift he himself possessed. It did come easier with the young ones, of course.

Surely, he himself would never be honoured with Potter's trust, nor was he sorry about that.

But this obviously had to be out, and soon. Whatever it was, was visibly eating at the boy's substance and health. Snape knew about devouring pain, and also about the need to release it, to shake it off and carry on regardless.

After that, they would have to get to work.

Albus had done a good job so far, unearthing pain after pain and scar after scar, to enable Potter to rid himself of such impediments... He did not seem to have seen this one, though.

That blasted boy needed a lot of attention. The Professor had come to the conclusion, some time ago now, that the childhood of his enemy's son had not been all that enviable after all.

To be sure, what was doing the damage here would be revealed eventually, and very likely soon. Then, someone would have to do the catching of a falling star.

Snape hoped that the Headmaster was up to it, then thought of his sister – a line of thought he generally avoided – and felt quite sure that she would be the one left with the pieces to pick up. For all he knew, Dumbledore had informed her even before he'd bothered to tell him that Potter was on the prowl.

Pity her! Why did she have to come back?

Severus Snape had to admit that his estimation of the boy had been wrong in parts. Potter's arrogance was obviously a mechanism of self-defence and, as such, not one employed by the weak.

What he'd heard from the Headmaster and Order members by now about the treatment those Muggle relatives of Potter's had afforded the boy had led him to being impressed, rather against his own will, that Potter had not taken more harm from it.

Apparently, the Order had only come to know this during the last year, when Potter had returned to school half-starved. Another mistake of Albus's…

It had, however, apparently imbued Potter with a desperate longing – well, to belong, that would be very dangerous to their aims, if only Voldemort was capable of the faintest show of sympathy.

Snape wondered whether he should play that string, or whether he could at all, then decided that he, the greasy Potions master of abrasive manners was, of all people, definitely safe from a bestowal of affection on the side of the boy regardless of what he would do.

Still, Potter was lying on the floor, impedimented. He said nothing any more, but cried harder and harder, making no sound.

Snape knelt down by the prone boy's body.

The boy tried to flinch.

"Finite incantatum!"

Lifting the jinx, Snape threw a fresh handkerchief at Potter.

Harry sat up slowly, avoiding to look at his Professor, and blew his nose.

He scrambled up.

The Potions master watched him closely, scrutinising for any sign of attack, but there was none. He had Potter's wand anyway, but the wind seemed to have gone out of the boy, he was utterly done for.

Snape said coldly: "As it seems that you are finished insulting me, and have nothing more to say, I suggest you leave my office. You are in no state to work tonight."

He'd not taught him at this hour either had he been in any case, but Snape wanted Potter to know that now that he had been forced to teach him, there was no escaping his lessons anymore, and that anytime Potter was free would do. Also, he would not take points or apply detentions just now if he could help it.

"I expect to see you here tomorrow at five, in a state fit to work. Should that prove impossible, I expect you to notify me in advance, giving a plausible reason! Do not expect me to let you go off unpunished should you ever dare put up such a show again, or miss out a detention! Have I made myself clear? Now get to bed, Potter!"

Potter stared at him through fogged glasses, unreadable, turned on his heels, and ran for it. The door banged, and Snape wondered when that little moron would remember his wand.

Snape flooed the Headmaster right after Potter had left. Dumbledore was still working in his office, no surprise there. The Potions master told him that there must be more to Potter's pain than they had known so far. He also expected the boy to run for the old wizard, unless he went to see Silva.

"He rambled incoherently about a mirror. He's in no state to be left alone tonight, Albus, and you should probably warn my sister, and inform her about what has taken place today."

"Why don't you…"

"No, Albus. Have a good night."

Snape cut the connection.