Side Effects

Author: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).
Summary: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.
Rating: R, now. Things are going to explained, and yes, there will be implied violence. I personally would give this chapter a very high PG13, but since I've learned that FFN doesn't like the way I rate, I'm being safe.
Warnings: If you've read this far, you know that there's HPSS slash and I shouldn't need to warn you again. Rating is now R, so please do not disregard it.
Reviews: Very much appreciated, but not required. If you have confusions I will try and resolve them by answering you in the next chapter.
Archive: This is archived here, and on my own site. If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.
Noted: This is a long chapter for this story. Longest yet. Much of it is Harry's point of view, but soon they will be back at Hogwarts and Severus will come into play. (evil grin I have some lovely scenes planned, too.) I have this very strong feeling that Harry is a bit out-of-character in this chapter, and I'm sorry for that. I'll try to get chapter six out within a week. Want to hear back from my beta about eighteen of Switched, and if they don't reply within the next day or so, I think I'll post it. It's been unupdated for far too long. O.o

Katie Lupin Black - Percy won't be a big part of this story for much longer, don't worry - after all, he is not going to be at Hogwarts, and they are back in their sixth year by chapter seven. He is mainly there for plot development - I can't reveal too much of what plot he develops right now, but it will have to do with the current events of the wizarding world and inspiring your (the reader's) emotions towards a particular political figure. And no, there won't be any Harry/Percy in this story. :)

xikum - That's actually what I intend to do... three different plot lines, but they tie in together. At least that's what I'm aiming for. I don't know, while reading the canon books I get weird ideas and they come out in my fan fiction quite a lot. O.o Percy's situation was actually inspired by some book five stuff.

Harry-Snape - Harry doesn't feel any "pull" to Severus because the potion in Severus is not a bond, only a potion meant to make it clear to him who his soulmate is. Don't worry though, Harry will eventually get pulled into the mess. :D

And thank you to the other reviewers who I did not reply to. :)

Note: I have decided, because of several reviews concerning it, that in this story the Marauders will in fact all be Gryffindor - some good points were brought up, and while it is never stated in the canon that they in fact were ALL in Gryffindor (everyone assumed this, but it's never been said - think about prefects. In book five, Ron was the male Gryffindor 5th year prefect. There can't be two in the same year. However, Remus was prefect in Snape's memory - and then James was Head Boy. Who knows, JKR's made mistakes before. ::shrug::), I've rethought it and decided that this story won't be delving into the many possibilities concerning that. Therefore, I've changed it. You may go back and read that if you'd like - no other parts of the text have been edited.

-Chapter Five-

A frown brought creases to Severus' forehead as he recalled the date, checking off his list for Madam Pomfrey. How could a fortnight have gone by so quickly? Time always seemed so... slow in the summer months. Two months without any solid schedule, which many teachers spent at home or on vacation; two months during which one could do anything they wished without having to teach incompetent students or grade sketchy papers. And yet, this summer, or perhaps just these two weeks, had gone in a blur.

This feeling of helplessness as time sped by might be a sign of old age. Raising his cup of coffee to his mouth while he waited five minutes for the potion to simmer, he smirked. Severus certainly wasn't getting old, and he knew it. Albus wasn't dead yet, and he was at least four times older than himself. Perhaps it was a fluke of nature, but it seemed that well-liked or important wizards aged slower than the general populace. Smirk fading at this thought, he decided that he'd better get to writing his will one of these days.

No, more likely it was another random emotion provided to him through his sudden connection–or hyper-awareness?–to Harry's feelings. So many times in the past few weeks he had found himself feeling awed or rather lonely out of nothing. It was all very unusual to him.

But there were still another two weeks and he intended to enjoy them, so best not to think about that particular crisis at the moment.

Leaning his chair on two legs against the wall, he propped his feet up on the desk, next to which his potion was still simmering. A glance at the clock across the room told him that there were still another two minutes before the potion would be ready for the next ingredient. Severus sighed contentedly, eyes half-lidded; this was where he was most comfortable, in his private potions lab where there were no Longbottoms to blow up cauldrons, no Grangers to do the Longbottoms' work, no Potters to....

When he closed his eyes, his seat slammed forward with a jolt. Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Harry.

His eyes flew open, though it did very little. "Damnit, boy, what are you doing here?"

The vision couldn't hear him, of course. With a grunt, he translated the sentence into thought.

I was bored.

Harry was on his knees, leaning on his arms on the opposite side of the desk. He had his glasses on for once, and looked exactly the same as Severus remembered the Gryffindor looking when he left Hogwarts a month and a half ago. Which, he had to admit, was explainable, since the potion apparently projected a mental image of the boy to him.

So you came to visit. Grinning, the boy nodded.

Severus, however, was not quite as baffled or frustrated as he would have been two weeks or so before; then, he would have demanded that the boy leave. Now, he was simply annoyed.

Then, he realized something peculiar.

Why're you visible even though my eyes are open?

The boy shrugged. Guess you've gotten used to me.

So, what, are you randomly going to start appearing in my classes and demanding attention?

The potion next to him boiled over, and Severus' attention went to the potion, trying to fix it for several minutes before vanishing it. Agitated and prepared to yell at the boy for distracting him, he found that the vision had disappeared when he turned back.

It was true, he mused as he set up a new cauldron to redo the potion, he had grown used to the boy. The random reflection of the vision's counterpart's emotions still sometimes affected him, but for the most part, he'd learned to ignore them. The angry voice in his head that repeated the name tended to flicker or disappear altogether–or drop the Gryffindor's surname. But it was the vision itself that he had most gotten used to, even though it still scared him sometimes–sharing the bed wasn't awkward at all anymore; it was comfortable, even.

And that was the thing that bothered him most about this situation.

Severus had begun to think. Perhaps, since they were soulmates, after all, there would be some way to make the boy understand, after all? It was a horrible and potentially dangerous thought, made worse by the fact that Albus supported it wholeheartedly–so he'd certainly be using any means to put the two in the most awkward and suggesting situations he could manage.

Bastard.

But that thought would have to wait. That would be too much change–too much against him–to even consider risking. Besides, he didn't even want....

He sighed, staring down at his reflection in the Pepperup Potion. Years of potionmaking had given his hair a sort of limpness, the result of being splashed with too many unidentifiable substances. Shaking his head, he smirked down into the potion as he added powdered boomslang skin. Then, he stopped smirking, studying the reflection intently again. He looked like another person when he wasn't smirking. Younger, too. Hmm.

Well, Severus mused, leaning back into his chair, he didn't want to share that discovery with anyone, especially the Potter boy, of all people. If Albus was going to try and get them together, he was going to thwart it as much as possible.

Besides, what good could possibly come from it? he asked himself, sighing.

Your happiness, Severus, came the voice of the vision. He didn't look up to see if Harry was there again or not, feeling suddenly very empty.

-scene switch-

[A/N: Ugh, my dashes between scene/time changes just aren't staying. You'll see something between them, but I have no idea what it will be.]

Harry sighed, looking around the trunk of the tree that he was sitting in the shadow up at the Weasley house. He had taken to sitting under this tree every afternoon, thinking. It was difficult, dividing time between Ron, Hermione, and brief meal-long visits to Percy. He couldn't really understand it... somehow, Percy fascinated him. Maybe it was the thrill of the mystery, but something drew him to defy the twins. He had not been on speaking terms with George since, and since the twins rarely were seen separated, Fred hadn't spoken to him either except for brief words in passing.

But it was tiring. With Ron, he pretended there was nothing wrong with the world. They stuck to safe topics, of Quidditch and girls and Hogwarts. The two would skirt around anything controversial, anything depressing, and he generally felt artificially happy while it lasted.

Hermione's constant talk of success and NEWT classes got tiring, but at least they approached the topic of Voldemort's rising power–and poured through articles on the St. Mungo's break-ins, disappearances, and murders. Brainstorming and approaching it from several viewpoints, Harry had begun to understand something of what was happening around him... and he didn't like it.

It made no sense.

The hospital patients that disappeared were an extremely varied bunch. So many different personalities and types of people were reported missing or murdered that there really was no connection. Though patrols had been stationed around the hospital and security was made much more strict, it changed nothing. There really seemed to be no reason, no connection to it all... just mindless brutality.

Harry kicked out at a garden gnome that was trying to sneak past him, and stood, brushing himself off. Ron and Hermione were on opposite sides of the yard, the former flying around on a broom and the latter reading on the garden porch; the raven-haired boy sighed. Their momentary cooperation had been just for him and for that he was grateful, but this... was so prolonged. And he had yet to hear what had happened to spur such nonsense.

Deciding that he'd take some lunch up to Percy, he made his way to the kitchen, stealing off with two plates of rice and glasses of water. Each stair creaked as he put his weight on it, and by the time he got to Percy's floor, the man had already been standing in the doorway, having heard his noisy way there.

"Hey Percy," he greeted, offering one of the plates. The other boy took it, nodding in thanks, and backed up far enough to allow Harry entrance. This was routine; he'd been visiting every day with a meal or two for the boy. He needed to eat some to rid his skin of its stretched-over-bones appearance. Smiling to the redhead, he took a seat on the desk chair while Percy sat on the bed.

While his stay here had proven that Ron and Hermione could each manage to talk about the same things every time they conversed, Percy was more varied, when he spoke at all. It had indeed taken days to get the man to idly chat, even with the fewest words here and there; and it had been a rather pleasant surprise to Harry that when he ran out of things to talk about, Percy started to take over, saying a bit more, sharing a bit more.

"They getting along again yet?"

Harry laughed. "Of course not. Have you heard them bickering?" he paused a second in thought. "Well, probably not. But bugger–they're at each others' throats. And I still haven't the faintest idea why."

Percy snorted around a mouthful of rice. After swallowing, he spoke. "They haven't told you yet?" At Harry's shaking head, Percy's eyebrows rose. "Ron apparently brought up a relationship of hers from fourth year. She thought it was rather childish of him. I must say, I tend to agree."

The younger boy stared. "That's it? Merlin, they have problems."

"Mmm." Percy stretched, eyes closing, and the sleeve of his loose dress shirt slid down slightly to reveal the faint outline of a bruise that had been much darker the first time Harry had seen it, two weeks ago. Frowning slightly to himself, he decided not to bother Percy about it just yet. When the man looked over at him again, he didn't seem to percept his thoughtful expression, or perhaps ignored it.

-scene switch-

Another week and a half passed in relative monotony. Ron and Hermione had finally begun to make amends after Harry had brought to their attention how stupid they were being. Three days before the start of term, Remus was at the Burrow during breakfast. It was a pleasant surprise, and one that the trio gave little thought to, until Mrs. Weasley told them that it would be Remus accompanying them to Diagon Alley for their supplies. Harry knew that this was only because the Order required that he be watched all the time, but he was glad that they had gotten Remus this time instead of some spy following him invisibly.

Having at last made sense of floo, there were no incidents of appearing in the wrong place, and the four of them got there safely, along with Ginny, who needed to get her own supplies for fifth year. The five of them stuck together much of the time, and Remus had a good time recounting good times from the Marauder days.

"You know that yearbook I gave you, Harry?" At Harry's nod, he continued, holding a few books for the boy as he browsed a shelf of them. "That was our last year at Hogwarts. The yearbooks themselves are only available for seventh years, and I'm not even sure if they're still done anymore. Sirius' had a lot of little notes in it, I think your friend Hermione gave you a revealer eraser, you may need to use that to see some of them."

The teenager felt a stab of guilt for paying his father's friend next to no attention, so he shifted his gaze to the man, taking the books back and letting Remus enchant them to become weightless and follow them as they continued their shopping.

"Sirius was certainly one for dramatics. He always had several girls after him at once, but you know, I don't think he was ever too interested," the man continued, tapping his chin in thought.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked, glancing to his right to see Ginny wandering up to a classmate to say hello.

"Don't really know... he just didn't." He shrugged, and Harry had a feeling that there was quite a lot more too it that he wasn't about to be told of. "Seventh year was a great year, though. The current events of the time were pretty bad, but Hogwarts was very safe. We had a great time. Your father finally managed to win Lily over, you know."

Remus continued to describe his parents' relationship in great detail. Harry had an excellent time laughing along with the older man, and though he knew they would never be as close as Sirius and himself, he knew it was a few steps in that direction. And it passed the time well; they had the shopping done quickly and later the other three joined them and heard some more about the events of twenty years before.

When Harry got home, he went straight to his room–since Bill and Charlie had left, he got the spare bedroom–and picked up the yearbook for the first time since he'd opened it. He'd given it no second thought, hadn't taken the time to realize that this was a piece of his parents and their friends, a piece of the past that he never did get to hear about from them.

The pages seemed crisp and new, as if the book had been put together yesterday. Perhaps Remus had cleaned it, or it had come with magic on it that kept it new. In any case, he flipped right to seventh year Gryffindors.

And there was his father and Sirius, waving at him from the same picture, with a few other boys he didn't recognize immediately. He found himself smiling back; they looked so relaxed there. Sirius had a glimmer in his eyes that he had never seen before; perhaps something that Azkaban had beaten out of him. It was sad, really, the man had been rather attractive. Blinking, he shook his head and glanced across the other boys. One of them, who he realized with a start was Peter, laughed and pointed across the page, to the facing one.

On the opposite page was his mother, and five other girls, the seventh year Gryffindor females. The picture was labeled, and the people who smiled up at him were giggling and sneaking glances back over at the boys. His mother looked rather flushed, and her bright red hair, comparable to the Weasley's, was messily put back in a makeshift ponytail.

He looked back at the boys on the left, and saw, in the back, Remus. He looked tired, but his smile still showed. His hair looked like it was already turning grey–Remus' hair now was much greyer, but it surprised Harry, how early it had begun to change. Smiling back down at the boy's face anyway, he flipped to the next page, out of curiosity, and found a large group of Hufflepuffs, casually chatting amongst themselves.

There weren't very many Ravenclaws compared to Gryffindors or Hufflepuff; while both of the previous houses had seemed to have anywhere from ten to thirteen people, Ravenclaw only had seven. The houses were obviously much larger back then though–after all, Voldemort certainly hadn't wiped out too many families by that point, right?

With that thought in mind, he turned the page again and frowned down at the Slytherins. They leaned against the rock wall, most frowning, some smirking, all looking unimpressed. How many of these people had gone on to become the members of Voldemort's inner circle just a few years after graduation? As he scanned these unknown people, his eyes stopped on a dark-haired boy, dressed in the school uniform, unlike his casually-dressed house members.

Snape, his mind told him, even before he had time to look down at the little rectangular name box and portrait.

Wispy dark hair hung down to his shoulder on one side, while the other was carefully tucked behind an ear. He stood behind the others, a dark figure almost blending in with the stone backdrop; he wasn't one of the tallest, but Harry had a clear view of him from the shoulders up. So this was his wicked teacher, the one that had always been unimpressed by Harry's fame and Harry's father. Of course, since the previous year's accident in Occlumency he should have more reasoning to hate the man, right? But it confused him–was he feeling pity for the teacher he most despised? Making a face, he decided that Lockhart and Umbridge had definitely been worse than Snape, now that he thought about it. As if the boy in the picture knew he was being scrutinized, his black eyes flashed and he half-turned away, taking two steps and walking out of the picture, appearing on the opposite side, leaning against the decorative edge and scratching his rather prominent nose. Harry smiled at the sulky-looking teenager in amusement, then shifted so he was seated rather than lying on his bed.

Shaking his head, he flipped to the very back, looking down at numerous scribbles in different handwritings–notes from Sirius' friends, notes from various other students he'd known. They were mostly the same thing–wishing good luck for the future and expressing the necessity of visiting sometime over the next few months. Scanning them for anything interesting, he decided then to show Percy.

As he slipped out of his door and headed down one flight of steps, he didn't notice the absence of creaking floorboards–and he was so excited that he entered the room without so much as a knock. It was all with good intentions, but what he saw stopped him dead in his tracks in the doorway.

Percy had heard the door open, and had reacted jumpily, knocking a bowl full of something thick and odorless to the floor, where it shattered. He had his shirt off, and though he attempted to hide his chest with his arms as he dove towards the bed, Harry still saw what was there. An intricate pattern of bruises and scars, of cut marks and whip boils; he cringed, closing the door with his foot and staring at the man before him.

"Percy...?"

"Knock," the man told him, not meeting his eyes and hiding under the blanket he had wrapped around his shoulders. "Always knock."

"Percy," Harry repeated, stopping at the edge of the bed and startled by the way Percy recoiled as though he'd been slapped, shrinking into the corner of the bed that was against the wall. "What–what's this? Who did this? What happened to you?"

"No–"

There was silence in which neither moved, Harry staring down at the man and the man staring down into the mattress. The younger of the two was almost afraid to move, afraid to scare the man–the broken man before him, who had so many secrets that he'd kept from his family and those he trusted–if he even could trust–for far too long.

"Please," Harry whispered, carefully taking a seat on the bed near to but not too close to Percy. "You shouldn't have to suffer alone like this. You could–you can make your family understand. They will forgive you, you know. They've done it before among themselves and there's no reason why they can't for you."

"I don't deserve them," Percy muttered. It seemed to be a pre-recorded line, one that he had to recite.

"I disagree," Harry said, tugging away the blanket and leaning in slightly to stare at the battered chest. "These are from recently. My god, Percy–George isn't–?"

"Of course not," the man told him, forcibly turning his head away.

"Then who...."

"I can't tell you," Percy told him, choking.

"Yes you can," Harry insisted, leaning back and offering the blanket back, but Percy seemed to not notice. "The world isn't out to get you–"

"Leave," Percy told him. He sounded like an extremely passive person trying to demand something ludicrous, but after a long moment of hesitation Harry decided he respected him enough to get off the bed, sighing and throwing him a look before he closed the door behind him on the way out.

That night, he started writing in Hermione's gifted journal.