Seven Drops and Asphodel Blooms

Summary: When Harry blows up his aunt during the summer, Dumbledore is much quicker to react. Snape finds him far before the Minister does, but his plan of dropping him off with a lecture and half a dozen additional summer assignments doesn't work out.

In which Harry spends the summer at Spinner's End.

Chapter 12

In retrospect, Harry wished he'd never left the castle. He'd been so sure of himself when he'd convinced Ron to come with him to Hogsmeade, but the trip no longer seemed worth it after just under an hour of trudging through muddy snow with a short-tempered best friend and Malfoy ratting him out at the first slip of his invisibility cloak.

It definitely wasn't worth losing the Marauders' map over. Yet, watching Snape's face distort in wordless fury, Harry had a hard time imagining another outcome.

"Professor–"

"How could you have been so careless?" Snape punctuated his words through animated pacing. "Sneaking out of the castle when you've known perfectly well Black has been sighted in the village – is your brain incapable of forming even a single reasonable thought?"

"I don't know what–"

"Spare me," Snape hissed. "With so many people attempting to keep you alive this school year, you ought to do things other than spit into their faces."

Harry balled his hands into fists. "That's not what I was doing." He wouldn't have needed to sneak out if everybody would just stop treating him like he was defenseless.

"Of course not." Snape's eyes glistened furiously. "You were merely of the opinion that a third-year-student could go up against a known mass murderer by himself."

"That's not what this was," Harry protested. He gave up trying to deny what had happened. Snape never listened to him anyway. "Everybody's been treating me like glass all school year!"

"Have they." Snape might as well have rolled his eyes.

"I never asked anyone to keep me safe," Harry said heatedly. "I can take care of myself just fine."

Snape's mocking eyebrow only made his anger well up faster.

"How could we have been so foolish not to see that." Snape's lips pulled into a sneer. "I suppose I shouldn't have expected better judgment from someone who decided to face the Dark Lord at the ripe old age of eleven."

"That's not fair!" Harry snapped. "It's not like I had a choice then."

"Life isn't fair." Snape turned his back dismissively. "Besides, only you could be so arrogant to believe–"

"If I hadn't gone down there to stop him, Voldemort would have gotten the stone! He'd have come back!"

"Do not speak his name."

Harry bristled. Protest heaped up on his tongue, though he couldn't tell whether he was getting riled up on principle or specifically because of Snape's words.

"As I believe nobody has taken the time to correct your immense misperceptions, allow me." Snape's voice had grown quiet. It was the same tone he used when he kept his class in line through sheer power of fear. "Seeing as the stone would have been perfectly safe with Professor Dumbledore's precautions, you were not the hero that day. You've accomplished nothing except to jeopardize your life and that of your friends."

Snape turned back with a sneer. "A feat you've been stubbornly repeating every year you've so far returned to school."

Blood pulsed in Harry's ears. "It's not like I had other options."

"You could have done what any reasonable student would have done and asked for help."

"I did!" Harry exploded. "That's exactly what I did! We told McGonagall everything we knew, and all it got us was a 'it's none of your business, let the adults handle it'."

"Which you would have done, had you half a functioning brain cell in that dull head of yours."

Harry jumped to his feet. "Nobody told us anything," he yelled. "Voldemort was going to come back, and nobody listened to us! Nobody ever does!"

"Do not speak his name!" Snape snarled.

Harry clenched his teeth and forced himself to take a step back. His chest heaved with every breath.

A voice that sounded suspiciously like Hermione urged him to beat a swift retreat before he earned himself a school expulsion for real, so he bit out a tight, "May I be excused."

Snape's lips twisted. Whatever nasty thing he'd been about to say didn't seem worth wasting his breath on, because he cut himself off and jerked his head in dismissal. "I shall inform you of the date and nature of your detention."

Harry headed for the door with a shrill ringing in his ears. If he opened his mouth now, something ugly would come out.

"Famous Harry Potter always knows better than the ordinary people around him, does he not? Whatever would we do without him."

Harry slammed the door on his way out.

Snape kept the map. Its loss stung, but Harry saw no way of making Snape give it back.

Harry didn't feel any better the next day. His anger had shifted overnight: He was no longer solely furious with Snape, but also with himself.

Snape hadn't been wrong about everything. Dumbledore and McGonagall and all the others had only meant to protect him – even though Harry wished they wouldn't go about it in such a smothering way. He'd risked it all, and for what? A pocketful of joke articles and sweets.

He tried to imagine what the other professors must have thought during his first year. Did they all think the same thing Snape did? That he'd been a stupid, attention-seeking first-year, meddling in dangers that would have solved themselves?

He felt vicious satisfaction at the thought of his second year. Nothing would have solved itself then. Nobody else would have saved Ginny.

Except they should have known better than to ask Lockhart for help. They'd known he was a scam. They could have asked someone, anyone else... and risked being brushed off, just like the year before? What if they'd been ushered into the common room, told to 'let the adults handle it' and been forced to let Ginny die?

Snape may not have been wrong about everything, but he was wrong about this. Harry never meant to get himself – and especially not his friends – in danger. He didn't go looking for trouble. But what was he supposed to do when he saw a problem he could fix? Let it go and risk someone else getting hurt?

Harry would gladly earn twenty school expulsions before he let that happen.

Ron and Hermione reluctantly buried their argument in the wake of Harry's plummeting mood. He hadn't told them about what they'd been doing during Snape's lessons, much less how much their dynamic continued to shift. He definitely hadn't mentioned to them just how personal their argument felt. They thought his punishment following his forbidden trip to Hogsmeade had been particularly vicious.

Harry had no reason to make them believe otherwise.

"Look at the bright side," Ron said, then faltered as though he couldn't actually think of one.

"You won't be tempted to go to Hogsmeade any longer," Hermione suggested. She pretended not to notice Ron's glare.

Harry may have lost the map – and with it all possibility of returning to Hogsmeade until Black was caught – and instigated Snape's harshest lecture of the school term so far, but at least Ron and Hermione were back to talking.

"Mr. Potter."

Harry stilled. They were the last to exit McGonagall's classroom, as it had been their turn to collect the disgruntled toads, dented bowler hats, and those that fell somewhere in between.

Ron instantly looked guilty, even though he hadn't been the one she'd addressed.

McGonagall gave him a displeased glance over the brim of her glasses. "Report for detention at seven pm in my office."

Harry gaped. "Detention? But– Professor, I didn't do–"

"Not in my class, perhaps." McGonagall's lips thinned. "Professor Snape has informed me of your ill-advised visit to the village. We shall discuss it in depth this evening. Is that understood?"

"But– Professor–"

"Is that understood, Mr. Potter?"

Harry's shoulders slumped. "Yes, Professor."

He made his escape, Ron and Hermione following closely behind. Neither of them said a word until they'd passed a gaggle of Hufflepuffs surrounding a mysteriously upside down tapestry, an invitingly opened box of chocolate frogs none of them were gullible enough to approach, and the third floor staircase that went the opposite direction every second Thursday of the month.

"I can't believe he ratted you out to McGonagall," Ron said at last.

"Of course he did." Hermione's brows were pinched, though she kept her disapproval at bay for the most part. "She's our head of house. He couldn't not tell her."

"He already gave his lecture," Ron protested. "Two is just way overkill."

"I think Harry got lucky."

"Lucky?" Ron gaped at her. "How is any of this lucky?"

Hermione shrugged. "I'd rather serve a detention with Professor McGonagall than Professor Snape."

Ron considered this. "Point," he said. "She probably insisted. There's no way Snape would have passed up the opportunity voluntarily."

But Harry wasn't so sure that's what had happened.

He'd felt nauseous at the thought of being alone with Snape – he would have done him a favor delegating to McGonagall any other time – but for some inexplicable reason, it felt like no punishment could have been worse than this.

Harry couldn't help but feel like their latest Patronus lesson had been the last.

The next Potions classes were agonizing. Snape was meaner than ever; he alternated rapidly between making Harry bear the brunt of his ire and ignoring his presence altogether, reminding Harry uncomfortably of that brief period during the summer when even just breathing had been enough to send him over the edge.

This time at least, Harry knew exactly what he'd done to deserve it.

On one of the days when Snape wouldn't so much as look at him, Harry decided to linger behind after class. He gathered his things obnoxiously slowly until Ron and Hermione got the hint and went ahead without him, too impatient to sneak back to the dungeons as usual.

Snape busied himself at his desk as if pretending hard enough that Harry wasn't there would make it become true.

"Look," Harry said, "about going to Hogsmeade..." He paused, clenching his teeth. "I get it, kind of. I get that it's dangerous, what with Black. And I didn't– I shouldn't have gone. I guess."

That was about as much of an apology as he could force himself uttering. No way would it be enough for Snape. He had no idea why he even bothered.

"I know everybody wants me to be afraid of Black." Harry hated that even more than everybody being afraid for him. "But it's kind of hard when... after everything, I mean."

The frown on Snape's face didn't quite look angry. If anything it looked hesitant. Contemplative. "Quite."

Harry squirmed. There'd been a time during those weeks at Spinner's End when silence between them had felt natural. Whatever had changed since then, it made it stretch out in inky tendrils of awkwardness.

"I have had time to reconsider our disagreement." Snape's voice was slow, each word spoken carefully as though he had to deliberately force them over his tongue. "It has occurred to me that some of my accusations have been... misguided."

He'd had some weird conversations with Snape over the summer, but Harry had never come this close to hearing something even remotely resembling 'I was wrong'.

"I've come to realize that there has been a blatant lack of parental figures willing to teach you to come to adults for help."

"Don't say it like–"

"Do not interrupt." Snape somehow managed to keep his voice leveled. "I have the hypothesis that you refuse to seek out help not out of a complete disregard for authority, but for the simple reason that nobody has thus far given you the impression of being willing – or capable – to help."

Snape made him sound so... pathetic. Poor Harry, had never had an adult in his life he could rely on.

But wasn't that exactly the core of the issue? Harry didn't feel able to let someone else shoulder his weight. Why would it occur to him when so far he'd done everything in his life on his own or with the help of his friends? No adult had stepped in before he'd faced Voldemort in his first year, nor when he'd fought the basilisk in his second.

He'd spent twelve years being miserable at the Dursleys, and nobody had ever stepped in then, either. The closest anyone had come had been Ron and the twins in their father's stolen car.

"For all that it is worth," Snape said, his eyes flickering elsewhere. "I no longer wish to be one of the people reinforcing that idea."

Harry hesitated. "No offense, sir. But I never really expected you of all people to... you know."

"I've had the opportunity to recognize this issue in the past, and I've chosen not to." Snape paused. "I do not imagine the secrets being kept from you help the matter."

Harry stiffened. "Yeah. Not really."

Snape's lips narrowed. His knuckles turned white on top of his desk, clenching and unclenching as though he was bracing himself for something. "Which is why I've decided to set a precedent."

"Snape used to be a what?"

Harry punched Ron's arm while frantically looking around the common room. Thank Merlin, nobody seemed to pay them any mind.

"No one can know," he hiss-whispered.

"But don't you see what this means?" Ron leaned forward so enthusiastically, he wobbled in his chair and barely stopped himself from overbalancing. "We were right about him from the start!"

Even though he'd been thinking the exact same thing not half an hour ago, Harry found himself protesting. "I must have missed that conversation."

"Don't be daft," Ron said. "Remember first year, when Hermione caught him cursing your broom?"

"And it turned out he'd been counter-spelling Quirrell's curse? I do remember."

"Or last year," Ron continued, ignoring him, "when we were so sure he was feeding the Slytherins information about the Chamber."

"It was Voldemort, not one of the Slytherins," said Harry, ignoring Ron's flinch. "You know that. You were there."

"I still think he'd have been capable of it."

Harry decided to change tracks. "I wonder what happened to make him switch sides."

"If he switched sides."

"Ron, come on. Dumbledore isn't stupid. Snape wouldn't be here if he wasn't completely sure Snape was on our side now."

"You don't know that," Ron insisted. "He could be playing the long game. Why else would someone like him be teaching?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" came a testy voice from behind Hermione's thick Arithmancy volume.

Ron and Harry shared a glance. With all the caution of poking a blast-ended skrewt, Ron asked, "What is?"

Hermione emerged from behind her homework assignments, looking peeved about the interruption even though she'd been the one to speak up.

"A lot of the more recent history books I've read talk about the aftermath of the war," she said. "Death Eaters were incarcerated everywhere. Some didn't even get a trial."

"Okay," Ron said slowly. "And?"

"And," Hermione said, glaring, "that means not many people would have accepted him switching sides. If Professor Dumbledore trusted him – which he must have – then keeping him close was the only way to shield him from punishment."

Harry remembered his first day at Spinner's End and how odd he'd found it that the Minister had acted so nervous around Snape. Was this why?

"I still think Dumbledore could have made a mistake." Ron crossed his arms. "I'm not saying he's stupid, but he's... you know. Too trusting."

"Seeing the good in people isn't a bad thing, Ron."

"It is if they stab you in the back."

Ron fell silent while Hermione – deeming the conversation plenty to meet her daily quota of human interaction – sunk back into her work. She'd always been an overachiever, but this year her workload was just ridiculous.

"What about Black then?" Ron piped up, doing his best to fold a paper bird using only his wand. "Is he really your... you-know-what?"

"I guess," Harry muttered.

He wasn't just Harry's godfather, according to Snape. He'd been friends with his parents, only to later betray them. He was the reason Harry had grown up without parents.

The teachers – McGonagall, Dumbledore, even the Minister – everybody had kept the secret from him for years. They'd known what Black had done, and still they'd kept him in the dark. For what? To keep him obedient? To stop him from going after Black?

Ron's eyes were bright and his expression oddly serious when he asked, "Are you going to do anything about him?"

"Don't be stupid," Hermione muttered without looking up. "Of course he isn't."

Hermione sounded quite sure. Harry didn't know he agreed with her, so he said nothing.

It was easier to loathe a man he'd never met than try to figure out how he felt about Snape these days, so for the most part Harry concentrated his ire on Black. A part of him wanted to jump at the chance to bury his and Snape's argument, while the larger, more hot-blooded part parroted Ron's words and told him he'd always been right about Snape after all.

The school year marched on. Snape made him scrub cauldrons additionally to McGonagall's detention of untransfiguring the second years' yarn back into worms, which Harry didn't say a word about, even though he found it incredibly unfair.

If nothing else, it at least gave him the chance to ask all the follow-up questions he hadn't been able to think of when Snape had first dropped his bomb of information.

"Why do you think he did it?" Harry scrubbed vigorously at a brightly colored stain, wondering just how badly a student had screwed up to make it this durable. "If he was friends with my parents, how could he betray them?"

Snape never looked up from his work. Somehow, the illusion of distance helped. "I cannot presume to know what goes on in a madman's head," Snape said. "It must have been a spontaneous development."

"Why?"

"I would have known of his new loyalties otherwise."

Harry's hand slowed, the stain forgotten. "You were still working for Voldemort."

It spoke of the severity of the topic that Snape didn't chide Harry for using Voldemort's name.

Snape had once told him that he'd been there on the day Harry's parents had died. Back then Harry had imagined Lily's childhood friend rushing to their aid, too late to save them. But Snape hadn't been on their side at all. He'd been on Voldemort's.

"Were you..." Harry's throat was dry. "Did you..."

Snape laid down the journal he'd been busying himself with, eliminating all illusion of distraction. "I would have never knowingly put your mother in danger."

Knowingly. Not knowingly. "You said it was Black's fault. You said... You said he's the reason Vol– You-Know-Who killed them."

"There were many factors–"

"Just tell me!"

Snape closed his eyes. He said nothing.

Harry reminded himself that losing his temper had never gotten him anywhere with Snape. "You said you'd tell me the truth," he said. "That you wouldn't keep secrets anymore."

"I believe you will find that I do not give promises that vague."

"You said you'd tell me if it concerned me," he said, gritting his teeth. "This is about me. About my parents."

Snape owed him. He couldn't just admit to what he had without telling Harry the whole story. He couldn't expect Harry to go on and pretend like everything was alright as long as he didn't have the whole picture.

For all Harry knew, Snape might have helped Voldemort break into his parents' house, before he'd realized whose home it was they were invading. Nobody had ever told him what exactly had happened that day. According to Dumbledore, nobody could know for sure.

Snape kept his eyes aimed at nothing. "There was a prophecy," he whispered, his voice so faint that Harry was forced to lean closer. "A prophecy with the potential to spell the Dark Lord's fall. I did not know who it referred to, and I did not care."

Bile rose in Harry's throat. He had the strange urge to bolt out of his chair before Snape could utter another word.

"Due to my own foolishness and... lack of regard..." Snape cut himself off. He took in a short breath and slowly, painstakingly met Harry's gaze.

Harry had never seen him like this.

"I told him what little I'd heard. It gave him the motivation to seek out your family home. He believed– The prophecy suggested you were destined to be his downfall." He paused. "Your parents would not hand you over."

Harry's mouth opened and closed. He blinked rapidly against a building pressure. "That's why he killed them."

Snape gave a slow nod.

"The prophecy. That's why he meant to kill me."

"There is nothing in my life I regret more."

"Because of my mom."

Snape didn't need to say anything. Harry already knew the answer.

He wanted to scream. His father had died too. It was a miracle that Harry hadn't died alongside them, so how come the only one who mattered was Harry's mother?

The words wouldn't come. Trepidation bubbled up in Harry's throat, matching the prickling sensation behind his eyes.

Snape looked like he wanted to say more. Harry pushed himself to his feet before he had the chance.

"May I go?" he croaked out, heading for the door without waiting for an answer.

Snape didn't call him back. Harry wouldn't have stopped if he had.

A/N:

In which Harry finds out about the prophecy two books early and, frankly, has far more important things to worry about.

It wouldn't be a redemption if it were easy, now would it? Sorry to anyone who thought it'd be smooth sailing from here!

Many thanks to To Mockingbird, Igornerd, JustAnotherOutcast and flyingcat!

~Gwen