Harry went to Potions class with Hermione, which meant that he was three minutes early, rather than one. When they neared the classroom itself, he hurried forward, his heart in his mouth. Discretely, he dimmed the sconces, just a bit, his wand up his sleeve. He opened the classroom door with a bang, bowing to Hermione, "If it doth please milady to enter, the lessons will be commencing shortly."
"Harry! I am not your lady!" Hermione said, sounding scandalized.
Harry's eyes found the nearest male in the corridor (which turned out to be Theo Nott), "I told you her wit was equal to her beauty. She won't be won by words alone."
Theo, who seemed momentarily confunded to have been pulled into an argument between two Gryffindors, said dryly, "And deeds of derring-do will do better?"
Harry nodded back at him (his shoulders folded just slightly, so it was more of a very-short bow), "I intend to find out."
Hermione had her hands on her hips, as she sniffed at him. "Harry James Potter! It is time for class. Stop fooling around, and go learn."
Harry responded with another bow, before gesturing towards the door that he was still holding open, "Ladies first."
"Oh! Honestly!" Hermione said before entering, continuing with her screed inside, "I am perfectly capable of opening a door."
Harry entered after her, closing the door. As he turned to find where she was sitting, he could see Snape's blacker-than-black gaze on him. It looked impassive, which was a bad sign. Harry tried to not let his anxiety show.
As expected from a wary Snape, spells started to erupt off of his wand. Detection spells.
Harry wished he had time to study the spells Snape was using - even the order was a useful bit of knowledge. He needed a distraction - casting about, he saw Pansy Parkinson sitting beside Theo Nott.
Perfect.
He took the three required steps to put himself in Pansy Parkinson's personal space, and then grabbed her by the shoulders, roughly kissing her on the lips. It wasn't a good kiss, but then again, it wasn't meant to be. It was meant to be a distraction.
Unfortunately, it might have been slightly more of a distraction than Harry had bargained for. Pansy, for one, had her hands curled into fists, and was breathing roughly through flared nostrils. Theodore Tiberius Nott, beside her, was staring at Harry Potter like he thought the correct answer was space alien. And Harry wasn't exactly sure whether that was "Harry Potter is a space alien. finally confirmed" or "Harry has been replaced by a space alien. News at eleven."
Harry's eyes belatedly saw Snape, whose mouth had dropped open. At least he'd stopped casting detection spells.
"Potter!" Snape barked, "Sit down. I will brook no distractions during class, is that understood?"
Harry, because everyone knew Harry Potter couldn't leave well enough alone, said, "But class hasn't started yet." He tried to sound sulky and not whiny.
Snape's eyes narrowed, and he said, quietly, "One of these days, Potter, your cheek is going to land you in a pit so deep you won't get out of it." Now, if that wasn't ominous, Harry didn't know the definition of the word. Harry would have preferred detention, even complete-waste-of-time detention, to talk like that. For one, he was going to be thinking about that the entire class. Snape knew it too.
Bastard finally decided detentions weren't working, did he?
As Harry got down to work on the skelegro potion, he was aware that Malfoy was glaring at him, heatedly. Shite, what have I done now? Harry wondered, chopping as if he couldn't feel Malfoy's eyes burning holes into his back.
Hermione was helping Harry, and they were doing decently - Harry might not be the best at remembering the exact heats and twirls of the stirrer, but he had long experience chopping, and Malfoy's tips at DA were actually helpful. Of course, Malfoy had to be a decent teacher to have kept Crabbe and Goyle passing Potions. Snape was notoriously demanding, and he wouldn't let standards slip that far.
Harry blinked, wondering suddenly why Goyle was so bad at Potions - he'd seemed to have trouble even in the DA, and Harry didn't think that was at all feigned. He should ask, sometime. Ron would tell him it wasn't any of his bleedin' business, but Harry would prefer to hear that from Goyle, if it was true.
About halfway through class, three spots of skelegro landed on Malfoy's hand and arm, eating through the fabric. He squealed like a girl.
Snape stood from his desk and strode over, right down the middle of the classroom. Doubtless, he wanted to ensure there wasn't any loose potion trying to tunnel to China.
As Malfoy passed Potter's desk, he smirked evilly, and then pretended to stumble. Instead, he splashed a Cheering Solution straight in Harry's face - and kept right on going, nearing the back of the classroom, before half-turning to observe his handiwork.
Harry, as expected, had a stupidly wide grin on his face, as he stepped away from his desk. He walked straight up to Snape (trying not to skip), and proceeded to hug Snape, his arms firmly trapping Snape's arms against Snape's sides. Snape's jaw had come practically unhinged - shock was written all over his face. Understandably, as they hadn't made a cheering solution for years, now.
At that exact moment, the twins tossed their candy in Snape's mouth, a perfect parabola from where they stood in the corner. Snape couldn't even have used his wand if he'd wanted to - Harry had his arms pinned to his sides.
Snape's mouth snapped closed - and then wouldn't open. His face started to turn a mottled red, as Harry belatedly released him, taking a sudden step back. Harry'd only just nowrealized that Snape was not going to take this well... at first. Maybe at all. And that would be the cheering solution wearing off.
Do you think me incapable of assigning punishments simply because you have stolen my voice? Snape's chalk wrote on the blackboard.
"No, sir." Harry said.
Snape gestured sharply, and the Twins lost the protection of the invisibility cloak.
Do you think yourselves invulnerable to punishment, now that you are so-called businessmen? I shall not deem you respectable, whatever you say.
Harry wanted to laugh at that last comment - 'Respectable Men of Business' was the last thing anyone would name the Twins.
"No, sir," the twins said, for once, speaking together.
Snape flung the door to the student Potions Cupboard open. You two miscreants will enter and remain, in the cupboard. Snape paused, and seemed to consider something, casting a quick diagnostic spell, By all means, touch as much as you like.
Malfoy, go to the infirmary. There is nothing to gawk at here. Malfoy left, and a swipe of Snape's wandless hand erased the board.
Snape wrote: As for you, Potter His wanded hand opened the door to his office. Step inside.
Harry did, and heard the door slam behind himself.
At last, he let himself start to think about whether this might work. Anxiety was poison, if you needed to do things, and do them right. Now that he'd tried, he was willing to ask the question: Did it work?
Harry forced himself to not take a gander around Snape's office.
It probably hadn't changed from the last time he'd looked, anyway.
He wasn't sure if Snape had the place warded to hell and back, or had decided he simply didn't care if Harry rearranged everything.
Harry knew better than to do that. If only because it would earn him another double detention - one to fix the mess and the other for making it.
His stomach twisted, as he eyed the hard wooden chair in front of Snape's desk. It was designed to make a child look repentant - if only so that the child would actually be allowed to leave. It was that uncomfortable. Penitence was easier when you were already feeling pain.
Harry didn't sit. He would, if Snape told him to, but at this moment -
Snape had the look of a man who paced, often, while thinking out plans and thoughts.
Harry started to pace, not to plan, but simply to express the abundance of energy that wanted to overflow from his veins. At least it wasn't magical energy - that would be the worst thing, to have exploded Snape's office.
He'd managed to be at least briefly optimistic, until a quick Tempus charm told him that Potions class was nearly over.
How long was Snape planning on making me wait?
Harry wasn't sure if he was merely being saved until Neville was done blowing up his potion (again), or if Snape was trying (possibly unsuccessfully) to let his temper cool off. That last was a disquieting thought. Harry'd worked hard for this plan, and if it hadn't even worked, Harry wasn't completely sure how he could explain himself.
Harry looked at the time again, and then again. Then he started seeing how quickly he could cast the spell, until the afterimage of one lingered onto the start of the next. It was almost distracting enough.
Except that class was now over.
Feeling an upwelling of dread from his stomach (it tasted like bile), Harry pressed his ear to the door.
"Sir, Harry's got to eat lunch, it's not healthy for him, and I think he skipped most of breakfast too." Hermione Granger said. So typical, Harry thought, almost letting himself grin at her constant worrying.
"Miss Granger, your arrogance astounds. Truly, to tell a Head of House for over a dozen years, that he needs to make certain magical children are well fed." Snape said, in a cold sort of way that Harry knew didn't bode well.
Hermione, as usual, tried to stammer out some sort of apology. Harry quickly backed away from the door, darting over to the wooden chair just as Snape entered the room.
It was that extra dose of panic that did it, Harry would think later. He actually managed to overtopple the chair - sideways, landing himself on his arm.
"Mister Potter!" Snape said, in a voice that held more reproach than alarm.
Harry scrambled to his feet and sat on the now wobbly chair. That did nothing to help the uncomfortableness, of course.
"Even Mister Longbottom knows how to sit a chair properly, most days." Snape said snidely.
Harry bit back any of a dozen retorts.
Snape strode up to Harry, from behind. "What part of 'I will not brook any disruption to my Potions class' was so difficult to understand?" He said this in such an unctuous voice that it made Harry's skin crawl.
"It was perfectly clear, sir." Harry said, sounding repentant, because he was repentant.
"I hardly thought I needed to state that inviting the two-headed dragon of destruction that is the Weasley twins was out of bounds." Snape said, his tone deceptively mild.
"Yes, sir." Harry said, suppressing a smirk. I'll just bet you didn't think of that one!
"Potter, I didn't presume it possible for a child clad in red and gold to dupe one of my own house into being an unwitting accomplice." Snape said, and Harry wasn't quite sure if that sneer was for Draco or for Potter.
"Yes, sir." Harry said, his eyes still staring forward.
"And an assault on my personage and dignity?" Snape said, lifting an eyebrow. "What do you think the appropriate punishment is for all that, in the span of one single class?"
"How about a thank you?" Harry Potter said, at last turning his head to look up at Snape. Harry wasn't certain that the sweet had worked, but he figured if it hadn't, Snape wouldn't be listening - or talking to him.
"...And?" Snape said.
Harry Potter thought, and then started to think out loud, "The twins will have their own punishment, of course, but I take that as a week's worth of detentions - there's no guaranteeing that they haven't started another scheme in motion, and they'll be selling their products regardless... For the interruption itself, I think that's worth a month of detentions. For recruiting Draco Malfoy, I don't believe that deserves a punishment - for me at least. As for the 'assault on your personage and dignity'? I think that's another month of detentions, sir." Harry said, trying to be fair - or at least as fair as Snape would be.
"With that many detentions, you will develop quite a hand at ingredient preparation." Snape said, "You will, of course, serve these detentions with me."
It was at that point, that Snape's belly started to grumble. Harry caught Snape's irritated look - now cast at his own belly, for interrupting. "For now, let's eat!"
It looked as if by magic, but several dozen parchments moved invisibly out of the way on Snape's desk, and a full lunch of beer and cheese soup, sided by grilled cheese, and also half a steaming hot baguette, appeared in an instant.
Several moments later, another serving appeared, on Harry's side of the desk.
They both dove into their food; Harry couldn't help grinning up at Snape, who lowly muttered, 'of all the ridiculous, positively Gryffindor ways to apologize to do...'
Hmph. And here I'd been thinking it was quite Slytherin.
Severus Snape had thoroughly had it with playing 'wait and see.'
Draco Malfoy, as expected, had spun a righteous tale in the Slytherin Common Room of having been hoodwinked by the Weasley Twins - through their agent Potter. It had gotten more elaborate in the telling, until it was Draco who had suggested the 'obvious in hindsight' ruse to get the Twins into the room. He wasn't stupid enough to claim Potter kissing Parkinson was his idea - he'd pinned that on Potter's obviously inferior (Gryffindor) improvisational skills.
At dinner, Draco Malfoy had behaved as if the sword of Damocles itself hung over his head.
Parkinson had glared at Potter, who continued to look baffled. Perhaps at some point someone ought to clue him in? Depend on Draco to do it, Snape firmly decided.
It had been a relatively peaceful night, only two Slytherins had shown up at his door - the first, his head prefect, had a troublesome situation involving The Missing Hairbrush. It wasn't so much that any of the third year girls cared about the hairbrush, but the mere thought that they had a thief sleeping amongst them? They were behaving like chickens. Snape had pulled out a well-worn book of tales, and opened it to Bluebeard. "Read them this, before they go to bed. At the end, remind them that they may be sleeping near a thief, but that is far more reassuring than sleeping beside a murderer." And Snape himself would check on the 'Nightmare Ward' before the morning light.*
Perched atop the high North Tower, Snape watched Potter round the castle. Some subtle part of him wanted to set a few traps - just to keep Potter wary, of course. Dumbledore would never forgive Snape if he hurt the wretched boy. Well, in a permanent sort of way, at any rate. Non-permanent bruises could be passed off as training, or at worst, discipline. Snape knew all about these sorts of excuses, and could only hope he was wielding his power more wisely than those who came before him. Slughorn's example would certainly stand as case closed - Snape knew he'd done better for his students than that slug. Snape still hadn't fixed Emma's scars. She preferred to pretend to be mad, rather than curl into herself as adults stared, and nosy Hufflepuff children hurried up to ask if it hurt. Of course it hurt, every single day.
Snape was rather pleased that Potter hadn't attempted to apologize with words. Snape had heard his father say the same apologies so many times, he no longer had much truck with words. You either changed, or you didn't. Potter had clearly noticed Snape's disappearances (the wonder was that he hadn't belligerently barged in before now), but, instead of investigating, and making a ruddy, obliviated nuisance of himself, he'd found a problem that he could solve - and neatly, at that.
Snape would have a five year supply of that sweet before the end of the week. Assuming the Weasleys were reasonable fellows, of course. He'd have it cached in a dozen different places around the castle and in the Forbidden Forest. If you were going to be prepared, you might as well prepare for more than one contingency.
It was still before breakfast, and Snape had already eaten about a day's worth of food. The twins had sung like canaries, and had been willing to donate a few more sweets to Order Business. Snape still didn't want them to know how many he wanted, but just six would have him shipshape this month.
Snape sat behind his desk in his office, waiting for Draco Malfoy to appear. As prefect, Draco would see that Snape wanted to see him - before he'd even left his bed. Snape had placed a small, green-and-silver flecked chit on a silver cord at the top of one of the four posts, right where Draco would see it.
He'd know why he'd been summoned, too, no doubt.
With a knock, Draco Malfoy entered, responding gracefully to Snape's belted and blaise "Enter." He sat gracefully, straight-backed on the hard wooden chair in front of Snape's desk. Snape's chair behind the desk looked, to all appearances, like it was leatherbound and stuffed. That was a careful illusion, of course. Snape liked his seat firm as the students sat. He wasn't a man for relaxation, even in his own office.
"Was that fiasco in my Potions class your idea?" Snape asked, as he laced his hands together, leaning forward above them.
"No, sir," Draco Malfoy said, just short of snorting, "No plan of mine would involve the Weasley Twins. There is simply no way that I could guarantee that they would do as told." That response told Snape more than Draco undoubtedly thought it did. Malfoy was on one level or another jealous of the Twins' ability at stealthy reconnaissance, and would have used them in a heartbeat if they could only be trusted - and had even considered ways to bind them to himself. That was futile, as Snape well knew, though he'd long had a quiet rapprochement with the Twins. They didn't act up in Potions Class (which would be deuced dangerous, even if they weren't touching the cauldrons), and he didn't demolish their irregularly occupied potions lab. The scent alone had told him where it was, from the first day.
"Potter's then." Snape said, after letting Malfoy squirm long enough.
"Yes, sir, though I've said loud and long that it was the Twin's idea and fault." Draco Malfoy reiterated.
"You'll deal with Potter in your own time, no doubt." Snape said, the very picture of confidence.
"Of course, sir. Perhaps sooner, since he had the clueless clumsiness to kiss my former betrothed."
"Don't disgrace your House with fighting in the halls, no matter who is the cause." Snape cautioned.
Draco nodded. Time would only tell whether he'd follow the instructions, but at least he'd heard them.
"I need you to take two messages to the Weasley Twins." Snape said, leaning forward again.
"First, if they are willing to act like responsible adults, and give me the list of which students have procured goods - legal and not - from them, they will have one day's detention with Filch. If they are not going to act like responsible adults, I'm certain Filch will take great pleasure in hanging them from their wrists in the dungeons for a week. Perhaps he or I will remember to free them at the end of the week, you never can tell." Snape enjoyed using his voice and unaffected manner to intimidate, and he could count on Draco to use enough of the emphasis that the Twins would get the point.
"Second, I want a fifty percent cut of any proceeds that they make while purveying their wares inside the castle or on Hogwarts grounds. You may tell them, though you didn't hear it from me, that I'll be splitting my take with Filch. We can even call it hazard pay. They can bill our cut as 'Free Advertising,' if they'd prefer."
Draco nodded, looking solemn. No matter how amusing or vindictive Malfoy felt, he'd keep it professional.
Unless, of course...
Snape said, "I want you to make it hurt." That was, after all, why Snape had given these demands to Malfoy and not Potter. Malfoy would deliver them with the same polished arrogance that he always used. It was virtually guaranteed to set the Weasleys off, in anger if not in vengeance. He hoped the Twins knew better than their youngest brother.
Draco Malfoy had never been properly in Professor Rubeus Hagrid's domicile (was it really properly called a hut?). Oh, sure, when he'd been younger and incessantly curious about daring Gryffindors - he'd peeked in.
But he'd never actually been inside. Perhaps that, among other reasons, was why the Twins were abiding within it. They had needed someplace to stay, and they'd be more invisible in the 'Hut' than sleeping outside. It wasn't as if smuggling them up to Gryffindor Tower was a possibility. (Draco knew several dungeon rooms with desks that could pass for a bed, and as a prefect, he could conduct nearly anyone there. his next thought tried to lap his previous one: So Granger wasn't involved.)
Draco Malfoy straightened his black robes, and rapped firmly on the door. There was no answer, not even the swoosh of curtains. Not that the some-fraction-giant professor appeared to have curtains, so whatever. Draco drew in a deep breath, and pounded on the door.
BOOM BOOM BOOM.
"COMING!" Hagrid cried, even in narration escaping the title 'professor.' His pounding footsteps made the dried vegetation nearby shake. "Why, if it isn't Draco Malfoy! Join me for tea - everyone loves a good biscuit."
Draco found himself nodding, swept away less by the cheerfulness of the professor (though that itself was disquieting - he'd tried to have the man sacked, for god's sake! Holding a grudge would be sensible and prudent. People who were neither were best avoided.) and more by the boom of his excessively loud voice.
Hagrid flung open the door to his... it really looked like a hut... home.
Draco Malfoy strode inside the one-room...dwelling, turning to Hagrid, who was already shutting the door. "I've got a message from Professor Snape."
Hagrid nodded, "Sounds important. Best hear it out before tea, then."
Draco scrambled to recall when he'd actually agreed to tea. Then, a full five seconds of silence later, he realized that it was his turn to speak. "It's not for you. It's for the maniacal disruptions to his classroom yesterday. I have reliable intelligence that they've been drowsing here."
Draco blinked, and the two redheaded terrors had appeared. Unfortunately for him, they'd appeared to his sides. He had only a moment to gape, before they lifted him onto their shoulders (Draco was suddenly glad he was slender, otherwise his head would be hitting the rafters***).
"Honored messenger from the Potions Master," the twins said, "Allow us to convey you to the recipient of your knowledge."
"Let me down!" Draco said irritably. "You're the intended recipients, so I'm already there." It was nowhere near how spookily good Snape was, but at least they set him down - and then kneeled in front of him. It was a good thing Draco really was on messenger duty - there were so many possibilities to taking advantage of these two charlatans kneeling in front of him.
"He must be an angel..." One whispered to the other.
"Are you going to wrestle him, or am I?" the second whispered to the first.
"Enough!" Draco belted, the word less of a shout than a classroom voice designed for the Great Outdoors. It echoed in the single room. "I bear a message from the personage most harmed by your willful prank. Our potion master says that if you are willing to be responsible adults, and provide him with a list of which student buys what from you while you are at Hogwarts, you may spend a day's worth of detention with Filch. If you are not willing to be responsible adults, Filch will be most pleased to hand you in the dungeons by your hands for a week. At some point, someone may even remember to fetch you out." Draco made sure the last sentence sounded like this was a remote possibility. That, and he was entirely smug about it. "Furthermore, while you are on Hogwarts' soil, inside the castle or out, you will give fifty percent of your proceeds to Professor Snape."
Draco cocked his head, and then drawled, in a confiding tone. "I have it on good authority that Snape will be splitting his share with Filch, fifty fifty."
The twins exchanged a look. "We aren't responsible adults!" One said, protestingly.
The other, somberly said, "But we can pretend to be." And they gave a most satisfyingly Slytherin smirk, the lot of them.
"You'll find Filch in the castle. Best be quick, so he doesn't think he can keep you working all night." Draco said, smiling.
As the twins departed, Hagrid smiled (a wide, gaptoothed grin, actually, but that sounded far less dignified), "Time for Tea!" he said, and managed the whip-poor-will accent. Draco considered that this was his idea of a joke, probably.
With an internalized sigh, Draco perched himself on one of Hagrid's rough-hewn chairs. He supposed they had a rustic sort of ... familiarity to them.
After he'd poured the steaming tea, Professor Hagrid seemed to hunch down, to talk with Draco Malfoy. It was almost like... no, it was Hagrid trying to be on a level with Draco's eyes. That was the sort of courtesy few tall people seemed to ever think of, let alone do. Certainly Snape had never considered it, in his entire life.
Draco wasn't about to make the first move - sometimes, it was true, offense made a fine, if aggressive, defense, but that was rarely the case with conversations, and at any rate, it would be a questionable decision to do that to any Professor, let alone one who seemed (in a daft sort of way) to be willing to let bygones be bygones.
"How are your classes coming?" Hagrid asked, somehow managing to put on an 'I really care about this' face.
Draco didn't believe it for a second, but he still answered, "Quite well. I'm particularly enjoying Potions this year - we're doing poisons and antidotes."
Hagrid chuckled, "Hence Snape's need for my snake collection."
"You-" Draco nearly choked on his tea, "have a snake collection?" It was less that Hagrid had a collection, he seemed the type, and more that it consisted of poisonous snakes. Draco's astounded glance looked around the simple hut (there was really no better way to put it), and saw that there was precisely no place to put a snake collection.
"Of course I do!" Hagrid smiled - and changed the conversational topic before Malfoy could inquire further. "How's your assignment for the Dark Lord going?"
Draco carefully set down the biscuit that he'd been holding in his hand. It plinked as it hit the wooden saucer - how hard were these things? Were they even edible to Hagrid? Draco kept his face straight, and said, calmly and clearly, "I don't have any idea what you're talking about. Perhaps you have me confused with someone else?"
Hagrid laughed, "That's a good Snape-impression right there." Draco hadn't thought it was that good, honestly. "But you'd pull off righteous indignation a lot better than he ever could, what with your father being an Honorable Pureblood and all that rot." Hagrid grinned, saying, "Lay it on thick, and anyone who wants to believe you, will. The people who won't believe you, won't believe a word you say." Draco had to agree with that last sentiment - most of the Wizarding World knew Lucius Malfoy and his silver tongue.
That was good advice. From Hagrid? Draco looked at the Professor like the Professor had suddenly donned Muggle clothing and announced that all eight feet of him could pass as a Muggle ballerina. And a female one at that.
"Oh, come on now, I've been working beside a Death Eater for over a dozen years." Hagrid leaned forward, his eyes twinkling, "or so the rumor goes."
Then, Hagrid smirked.
Draco quietly glared at Hagrid, simmering more than boiling over, "You were a Gryffindor," he whispered, hoping Hagrid would hear anger, and not raw betrayal.
"Aye," Hagrid said, "But you dinna take care of sick animals without knowin' sumtin of Slytherin."
Draco looked quietly at Hagrid, letting the silence demand for Hagrid to continue.
"All animals act Slytherin when they're hurt - they slink away, conceal their pain, and try to get better on their own." Hagrid said, "To help them, you need a bit of Slytherin smarts too."
Draco shook his head, saying softly, "Have you been acting, all this time?"
Hagrid laughed, that big booming one that echoed even louder inside the hut. "Hat put me in Gryffindor because I don't lie and I don't play games."
Draco didn't believe that for a second, but he turned the talk to Quiddich, and immersed both of them in enough details that it was soon time for him to leave. He just wished he didn't feel so much like a sailor touching land for the first time in a year - everything swaying around him.
Tonight, in his quarters, Severus Snape poured two measures of firewhiskey, into two identical shot glasses.
He could still hear her voice, saying, "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is for the strong, and from the strong." Instinctively, his head titled upward, his eyes glinting in remembered fury. That had been the year Lily had (briefly) been taller than him. He remembered, quite clearly, because he'd always gotten a crick in his neck while talking with her.
Snape quoted, aloud, "Forgive your enemies. Nothing else irritates them quite so much." That had been the year Lily had found an anodyne book on quotations, and had insisted on using them instead of Actual Thought. Snape far preferred Oscar Wilde's book, that he'd taken out of the library in response.
He hadn't lived that quote very well. Not that Potter was his enemy - he had scores of enemies, and wasn't about to look into making another. It didn't matter - Potter didn't know enough, wasn't powerful enough to be an enemy. Time would tell on that front, but the outlook looked promising - Potter was no longer purely a pawn.
For someone who so often wore confidence as a proxy for competence, Snape wondered, in a quieter part of his mind, if he could actually be decent at forgiveness. It was a quality he'd so rarely offered to anyone, and even more rarely been of a mind to.
Snape finished his drink, poured the other on the cold and stony ground, and then tossed the glass straight through where Lily's face would have been.
It never did to dwell on mistakes. You either capitalized on them, or you let them run under the bridge, like water being passed.
* This is a sound based ward, designed to warn Snape of impending trouble, either nighttime fights or nightmares.
** Snape has some latitude based on the Unbreakable Vow he took to Dumbledore. It's not the one in canon.
***Draco says slender. He really means tiny and dainty.
[a/n: These are the chapters you may want to read in the bite-sized bits, simply for the author's notes.
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