CHAPTER THREE

Harry Potter had managed to sneak away from Ron Weasley and the rest of his dormmates on the first Saturday morning after arriving at Hogwarts. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy their company - he was just overwhelmed. For as long as he could remember, the most social interaction he ever got was at school during the weekdays, but that was limited given that Dudley threatened to punch anyone who dared to befriend him. Here, that wasn't an issue, and beyond that, he was apparently famous. Everybody wanted to talk to him, it seemed. He'd written his name more times in the last several days - bloody autographs - than he had in his entire life. While he didn't honestly think it was sane that anyone would want his autograph, it seemed the quickest way to get them to leave him alone.

Sitting down under a tree by the lake, appreciating the warming charm that was built into the cloak he'd gotten in Diagon Alley, Harry looked around to make sure nobody else was nearby. With a loud groan, he saw a girl heading his way, although he took some solace in the fact that she appeared to be alone. As she got closer, he recognized Hermione Granger. She was another first year Gryffindor like himself, and while they'd not talked outside of class, since that first day on the train, he couldn't help but feel a pull toward her.

She was quiet like him, when she wasn't busy making it clear she had the answer to every question. She didn't say a word as she sat down across from him, merely seeming content to study his face.

The silence only lasted half a minute before she sighed. "You've broken your glasses again, Harry. Would you like me to teach you the charm to repair them?"

They'd been broken, ironically, in Charms class. Professor Flitwick had offered to repair them but Harry had been embarrassed and shrugged it off, exiting the classroom quickly and borrowing some spell-o-tape from Ron later to patch them together. "Um, yes," he replied sensibly. "That would be great. Thanks."

She showed him the wand movement, and reminded him of the incantation she'd used on the train, and then had him try the spell on his broken glasses. It took three tries, but he got it right.

"Good job, Harry!" Hermione exclaimed.

"Thanks," he grinned. "That was easier than I expected."

"It's not a difficult spell," she mused. "While I don't think Professor Flitwick covers it in First Year material, it very well could be a part of this term's curriculum. That being said, if you break your glasses this often, it might be worth considering corrective potions instead."

"How does that work? Does it just fix my eyes?" Harry asked.

Hermione shook her head. "Corrective Eye Potions work more like Muggle contact lenses, except they are more long term. The potion is brewed to your exact vision needs, and then you are given a bottle with a dropper. You just need to put three drops in each eye, once a month, and you're good to go. The potion is good for a year, which works out well given you ought to have your eyes checked once a year anyway. By the time you run out, you get your eyes checked, a new potion is brewed, and you're set for another year."

"Wicked!"

"I thought so."

"Who would I even talk to about that?" Harry wanted to know.

"Well, I'd expect Madam Pomfrey would need to set everything up, but you'd need Professor McGonagall to arrange for you to see an Occulist, and Professor Snape would be the one brewing the Potion, probably. No reason for the school to send out for a Potions Master to brew a specialty potion like that when he could brew it just as easily," Hermione surmised.

"I hear Snape's a bit of a git," Harry admitted. "You really think he'd go out of his way for a student like that?"

"I think he'd do whatever Professor McGonagall told him to do," she replied. "She is the Deputy Head, after all. In any case, I'm sure Headmaster Dumbledore would support you getting it done as well, and Professor Snape definitely can't say no to him."

Harry was quiet for a moment before he spoke again. "People keep saying how much I look like my Dad," he admitted. "Hagrid says he wore glasses like mine, so I figure that's part of it. I wonder if people will stop talking about it so much if I don't wear the glasses anymore."

"Maybe," Hermione said quietly. "Of course, you've got your Mum's eyes. I've seen pictures of her."

Harry frowned. "How is it you've seen pictures of my Mum?" he asked suspiciously. "You're Muggleborn."

The other Gryffindor winced visibly. "My brother," she let out after a moment. "Your Mum was Muggleborn too, remember? My older brother grew up in the same town as two girls called Lily and Petunia Evans. This was before I was born, when my Mum was still with my brother's father, but my brother and this Lily Evans were good friends when they were kids, before she went off to boarding school after the age of eleven. They'd spend some of summer break together, after that. He knew all about her marrying a man called James, and that they had a son called Harry. When I got my letter for Hogwarts, my brother and I were talking about things, and he got to wondering if his Lily wasn't your Mum. When I saw you on the train, I saw how your eyes were exactly the same as the Lily I'd seen pictures of, and I heard you talking to Ron Weasley about your Aunt Petunia, so I'm pretty sure I'm right."

"Your brother has got to be old enough to be your father, then," Harry figured, after thinking things through a bit.

"Yeah, he's in his early thirties," Hermione admitted. "Mum likes to say he was the silver lining in her early life blunders, and I was her late in life miracle."

"Are you two close?" he asked, wondering what it would be like to have any sibling at all. He didn't figure Dudley much counted.

"Sort of," she shrugged. "I don't get to see him very much, although that's getting better as I get older. He's got a life and job, although I keep telling him how I'd very much like a sister-in-law but he keeps ignoring me."

"So no nieces or nephews then, I guess," Harry laughed.

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Not that he's publicly admitted to. In any case, all of that being said, I suppose I keep thinking that if things had been different, and your Mum hadn't died or your Aunt Petunia wasn't such a tosser, then maybe we would have met a long time ago, you and I. My brother and your Mum, as he tells it, were about as close as two people can be without being romantically involved, so I can't fathom a reality in which she'd lived and you and I never met. I still honestly think he's an idiot for not reaching out to you regardless of her being gone."

"Why do you think he hasn't?" Harry wanted to know, half feeling hurt and rejected by a man with whom he had no family ties, but who had supposedly known his mother well, and had a strong enough connection to her that it had held even after she'd gone to Hogwarts, and he'd remained in the Muggle world.

"I think maybe he was asked to stay away," Hermione sighed. "He's never said for sure, but he's big on keeping promises. If he'd promised to not interfere in your Aunt's efforts to raise you, for example, that would be a promise he'd stick to, regardless of how he might have felt about it."

Harry felt this urge to scream at the top of his lungs about how exactly his Aunt and Uncle were going about raising him, and how much he wished that anyone would interfere, promises be bloody damned. Still, he barely knew Hermione Granger, even if she was proving to be someone a bit interesting and seemingly disinterested in his fame. It hadn't taken him long to notice that while she clearly did want to talk to him, she was not in the slightest interested in talking about the scar on his forehead or how it got there. That pleased him immensely. Family connection aside, it seemed to be that a lack of interest in his fame was something the two First Years had in common. It was something to build off of.

Now how on earth was he going to break it to Ron?

By the time Severus met his baby sister, she was just over two years old. His mother had sent him word of Siobhan's birth, but in September of seventy-nine he'd still been a loyal Death Eater, and bitter at the thought that his Grandmother would approve of a child born of a Squib but not one born of a Muggle. He had been so self righteous in thinking that it was beyond ludicrous that he'd be passed up for the Prince titles, but that this squalling little girl should be given those titles freely, with nothing but a marriage contract between her and the inheritance.

That had been before James Potter had contacted him and asked if he'd facilitate Lily's desire to have a child. It had been before the night at the Hog's Head; before the Dark Lord had put a price on he and Lily's son's life. It had been before he defected and sold his life to Albus Dumbledore, too prideful to go to his Grandmother for help, and it had been before he'd buried the one woman he'd ever truly loved. They say that it sometimes takes the smallest thing to change a man, but by the time the hits stopped coming for Severus, he'd been chiseled into nothing but brokenness; a far cry from a man on the other side of a past full of regret. He might have just wallowed in his misery for gods knew how many years, if not for his mother's invitation to come meet his sister.

It had seemed like an obligatory thing, at the time, and it quickly grew to be an addiction. The first time Siobhan was placed in arms, he was hit with the notion that his own son was only a few months younger, and that little Harry was now an orphan. He'd felt like an arse for not thinking of the child sooner, so wrapped up in his grief over Lily. He'd held Siobhan as he cried, and when he managed to pull himself together, he'd gone to Hogwarts, hell bent on telling Dumbledore where he could shove his wand before packing his things, going to get his son, and then leaving the bloody country.

Dumbledore assured him that the boy was best left in the care of his Aunt and Uncle, and Severus had no shortage of inadequacy issues. While he and Minerva would argue about it, year after year, he'd lean on his promise to Lily that he'd allow her and James to raise Harry properly without his hovering; that he'd not interfere, and the assurance Dumbledore gave him that the child was well cared for with Lily's sister. Petunia had been a bit of a brat as a girl, but children grew up. Surely she was not as petty now as she had been then, and surely having a child of her own to raise alongside Harry had cured her of her self centered tendencies.

Severus looked up at the clock, and with a sigh, began his movement toward the Potions classroom. It was time for his first class with the first year Gryffindors and Slytherins. That meant his sister, his son, and his godson were all in the same room together, and Merlin knew how that was a cauldron looking to explode. In his typical show of dramatic flair for a first year class, he blasted open the door to the room and after the predictable gasps, began his start of year speech. "There will be no foolish wand waving, or silly incantations in this class. As such, I don't expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion making. However, for those select few…"

His eye caught his godson's, and Draco smirked at him. Severus resisted the urge to sigh in exasperation. "...who possess the predisposition, I can teach you how to bewitch the mind, and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death."

Severus paused, eyes on his son, who was clearly taking notes on his speech. He wanted so badly to just tell the boy he was doing the right thing by taking notes, even if his speech was hardly important in the grand scheme, but he knew what his role to play was, and knew he needed to actively drive a wedge between himself and the young Mister Potter. The simplest way to do that was to antagonize him. Merlin, it was so obvious, just by looking at his body language, that he thought himself no better than any other student. Severus had to mentally give Petunia some credit for raising the boy to not let his fame go to his head, if that was his attitude, but task at hand in mind, he opted to jab at Harry's fame as a means to, for want of a better word, bully the child.

It went downhill from there, and he was absolutely going to pay for calling his sister a silly girl in front of her classmates, when asking her to stop waving her bloody hand around. No kidding she knew the answers! Her brother was a damn Potions Master. Hardly fair to let her answer any questions, now was it? But no, she just had to keep waving her hand around like she was a toddler who had to go piss urgently.

He had just made it to his office when the Howler arrived. "I AM NOT A SILLY GIRL YOU MEAN GIT!" the exploding letter exclaimed. "Oh, and by the way, it only took me a half hour to learn how to send one of these. I figured it out over lunch. Love you Sev. See you at supper!"

Severus sat at his desk and groaned. Gone were his days of peace. Hell had come to Hogwarts in a pint sized package, and it was gunning for him. It wasn't the Dark Lord or Dumbledore who was going to do him in, it was his annoying little sister. Bugger!

Well folks, that should be enough to get your appetites worked up. As always, I covet your thoughts on things. Next chapters coming soon! PLEASE REVIEW!