Chapter 6
"Ah, Mr. Flamel, you are here!"
Ross Villager, the coach of Chudley Cannons greeted Harry pleasantly as soon as he had placed his foot inside the Cannons' office.
"Good morning, coach!" said Harry enthusiastically.
It was a little presumptous of him to address the man in such manner, but truth be told, he was quite excited about the entire affair.
"Good morning to you too, Mr. Flamel. Let me introduce you to our manager, Ragmar Dorkins," said Ross while motioning towards the man beside him.
"Hello Mr. Dorkins, I am-"
"Harry Flamel, yes I know. Ross has said much about you. Of course, I will have to withhold my opinion until I see your play myself," Ragmar said. With his stoic disposition, the words were meant to be a little intimidating. However, it had the opposite effect on Harry.
"Oh? Then I was mistaken about you spying on the tryouts from the balconies? Apologies," Harry said with mock sincerety.
Ragmar blushed a bit in embarrassment. He had not known that Harry had noticed him in the tryouts. Incidentally, not even Ross had noticed him as Ragmar was supposed to be supervising the remaining applicants in the open tryouts. That was the reason why a chuckle escaped his lips. However, a stern stare from Ragmar was enough for the chuckle to die out.
"Ahem, yes, yes of course, you are correct. I only managed to observe you at the end though," Ragmar said in an attempt to preserve his digntiy. Thankfully, Harry let him.
"Of course, Mr. Dorkins," He said with a smile.
"So, am I correct in presuming that you have read and understood the contract and are willing to sign it?" Ragmar said while doing his utmost to hide his eagerness. He had observed Harry fly and he would be damned before he let him slip from his hands.
"I have read the contract, yes. And I am willing to sign it," Harry began.
"Wonderful!" Ragmar exclaimed despite of himself, "Ahem, I mean, it's wonderful that you agree. I am sure that you would enjoy here at Chudley Cannons."
Harry let out a small smile of amusement on his face. Apparently, the manager was much more excited than he himself.
"As I was saying, I am willing to sign the contract. But I have a very small condition."
Ragmar stiffened. As he had feared, a player like Harry would not settle for the small amounts that the contract offered. He cursed himself for not increasing the price on the first place.
"We will double the-"
"Gold is not the problem, Manager," Harry said with a small smile of amusement, "Although, I will not object if you do decide to double my pay."
One could swear that there was a twinkle in Harry's eyes when he said that.
Ragmar and Ross exchanged an awkward look but before they could communicate further, Harry spoke again,
"No, Manager, my condition.. a request actually, is that I be allowed to keep my appearance a secret."
"Huh?"
Ragmar said eloquently. It took a bit of time for Harry's words to sink in.
"Did I just hear you say that you be allowed to keep your appearance a secret?" Ross, the coach, asked.
"Yes," Harry replied jovially.
"But why?" This time it was Ragmar who had asked, "Mr. Flamel, although I do not swing that way, I assure you that your appearance is quite fetching. At least, there is nothing that you should be ashamed of."
"Yes, yes, in fact, I would wager that before long you would have admirers swooning all over you, especially those of the fairer kind," Ross added.
"And that, gentlemen, is precisely why I want my looks to be a secret. I have a rather bad experience with fame you see. I will play for your club, not only that, I will get you victories.. I just don't want to show myself much," Harry said.
Ragmar excused himself and Ross for a bit and took his coach to a corner.
"Ross, can it be done?" Ragmar asked.
"I don't know boss.. There is no magic allowed on the field except for the brooms, the rules make it pretty clear. That would mean no glamours and no polyjuice. Apart from that, I don't think there is much that prevents what he is asking for." Ross replied.
The two then went back up to Harry.
"As much as your request appalls me, Mr. Flamel, I believe that we can allow for that. Only, we can not use any magic on the field." Ragmar explained.
"So that would mean no polyjuice and no glamours, right?" Harry supplied.
"Yes," said Ross, "But if you can think anything else apart from those two options, we can allow you to use those."
"Brilliant," said Harry.
"But what are you going to do? Surely, you can't think that dying your hair by muggle means would provide you enough disguise? Those fans are a very stubborn bunch and if your flying from yesterday is any indication, you are going to have a ton of them quite easily," Ragmar spoke up.
"You can always wear an eyeshield and then we can call you eyeshield 7," said the coach happily.
Harry, however, was not amused.
"I do not even want to know where you found that idea coach, but I don't think that would do. Besides, it is not like I want to hide my face completely. In fact, the quidditch goggles and helmet would be enough for my purpose. I just don't want to do press conferences and parade myself around," Harry explained.
"Yes yes, of course," Ross said.
"Indeed, Mr. Flamel. Although, it is a club policy to make public outings mandatory for players to promote club's goodwill, I believe we can make that concession for you," Ragmar conceded.
"Excellent! Let's go on with the contract then gentlemen!" said Harry with a cheer.
After that minor bit of adjustment in the contract, Harry signed it. The ecstatic manager and coach then gave him a tour of the Cannons' training facility and introduced him to the various players already present on the team. It was only in the afternoon, that Harry returned from there. He was now officially the seeker of Chudley Cannons and times ahead of him were looking quite interesting.
Apparition is a magical means of transportation where one wills oneself through the world and to one's destination. If one were to explain the phenomenon in a muggle way, one could say that Apparition punches a hole in the space time fabric of the world and squeezes the witch or the wizard through it to his or her destination. Of course, wizards wouldn't really know what space time fabric is and consequently, the former definition would make no sense to them. For an average wizard, Apparition just was a method of transportation, nothing more and nothing less.
Severus Snape, though, disagreed. Snape knew that Apparition wasn't just a phenomenon fuelled by the three Ds. No, it was much complex than that, it was a magic of the highest level. A magic where the world itself catered to the whims of the wizard and thus bend its rules to carry the wizard through space in practically an instant. Snape knew what Apparition was and how Apparition felt.. Precisely why he could tell that this was no Apparition.
There was no uncomfortable feeling of one's body being squeezed through a hole and there was no feeling of one popping out from the other side. No, this was just like travelling from one room to other. Except, there was no movement involved on his part. Actually, he didn't even do anything.
"Ah, welcome Severus!"
Snape recognized that voice. He turned around and saw the owner of that voice, and sure enough, it was the one who he had summoned, Harry Flamel.
"Where am I?" Snape asked in a daze.
The room was brightly lit, with the fireplace crackling before him. There was a sofa on his side which looked quite old fashioned (even from the wizarding standard). The walls had different paintings, none of which were moving. The room was warm and welcoming. In one word, it was quite cosy.
"You are at my place," said Harry.
"And where exactly is your place?"
"Doesn't really matter," Harry dismissed, "So, tell me, how went your job interview with our beloved Headmaster?"
"Before that, how did I come here? I was just outside the Hogwarts castle and.. I was suddenly here," Snape asked in a curious voice.
Harry smiled, "Well, you must have wanted to come here?"
"Not exactly, no," Severus said dryly.
Harry's smile didn't lessen in the least, "At the very least, you should have thought about me then?"
Snape said with disbelief, "I just wondered where you were."
Harry smirked, "And that was enough for you to be here."
"But where exactly is here?" Snape pressed on.
"As I said Severus, that doesn't matter. What matters is you are here and you have news about your job interview that you desperately want to share with me," Harry replied.
"I am not desperate," Snape said.
"Yes you are, you just don't know it," Harry replied.
Sensing that it was pointless to argue with the eccentric wizard, Snape relented.
"I got the job."
And that was it. Snape said no further words to expand on it, to Harry's surprise. After waiting for a full minute with an expectant look on his face and still getting no reaction from Snape at all, Harry swished his hands with a sigh.
"Why can you do this without your wand?" Snape said, while eyeing the recentlly conjured table and artifact which he knew to be a pensieve.
"The important question here is," Harry said while motioning him to proceed, "Why can't you?"
Snape groaned. He was rapidly learning to not ask any meaningful question to his summoned. At least not while expecting a meaningful answer. Nonetheless, he did as he was told. A silvery extract from his temple was soon put into the artifact where it swirled, inviting the wizards present to view it.
Harry promptly dipped into the pensieve to watch the interaction between Snape and the Headmaster. Truth be told, he was looking forward to listening to the antics of Albus Dumbledore.
Flashback
Severus Snape walked into the headmaster's office. This was his first time being inside the office of the headmaster. Well, that wasn't particularly true. Some years back, he had walked inside the office in similar fashion. Only, that was because of him nearly dying at the claws of a transformed Remus Lupin. Not the best day of his life, yes, and James Potter saving his life made it twice as bad. So no, this was not the first time he was entering the headmaster's office. Although, this was the first time he entered by himself, which explained the two chocolate frogs on his pockets. Snape thought he was being thoughtful when he brought the sweets, as Dumbledore had mentioned in his letter that he fancied Chocolate Frogs. At least until he reached the gargoyle manning the office. Snape could count on one hand, the times that he had felt truly dumb. Sufficed to say that one more was added to the count this day.
Regardless, he moved towards the headmaster's table, which was unoccupied, and deposited the two sweets there. He then looked around the office. There were multitudes of silver instruments that he couldn't recognize, although, he did notice a handheld mirror. He briefly wondered whether the mirror was yet another artifact or just a simple mirror but didn't fret on it much. He also noticed an empty bird perch which, Severus deduced, belonged to Dumbledore's familiar, Fawkes the phoenix. There were also the portraits of the past headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts but they were sleeping, or at least they were pretending to being asleep, despite of being mid-day. Which reminded him, where was Dumbledore? Surely he didn't forget the interview?
As if on cue, the fireplace activated from where emerged the headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore. The man hadn't aged one bit since Snape had last seen him, which was after the incident with Lily Potter.
"Ah, Severus, I hope that I have not kept you waiting for much?" Dumbledore asked in a jolly manner.
"Of course not, Dumbledore," Snape said carefully. It would not do him much good to point it out that Dumbledore had been fifteen minutes, not an insubstantial amount of time, late.
"Excellent!" Dumbledore went and sat on his chair and motioned Snape to sit as well.
"Now Severus, might I inquire as to where you have been for the past year?"
Snape looked at the man carefully, and said in a very measured voice, "That would be pointless Dumbledore, seeing as you have over a dozen tracking charms placed on my self."
Dumbledore didn't look even a bit perturbed.
"I am not sure what you are talking about Severus," he said with perfect flavor of ignorance.
"Of course," Snape drawled.
It had been quite the revealation when Flamel had pointed out the fact that Snape was tagged with multitudes of tracking charm on his body. The tracking charms had been subtle and Snape had been quite distraught over the year, hence, he had not discovered that little fact. Nevertheless, he had never ventured outside his own living place except to procure necessary ingredients for the ritual at the last hour, the reason why Dumbledore didn't come knocking at his doorsteps before. In retrospect, it was to be expected. Snape would have been a fool to believe that Dumbledore would let a marked Death Eater to roam free on his own.
"So, where have you been?" Dumbledore asked again.
Snape didn't know what the man was playing at, but decided to humor him anyway.
"I was quite busy with one of my research, Dumbledore. I assure you, I was holed up at my own place and not causing murder and mayhem anywhere."
"Oh?" Dumbledore eyed him with genuine curiosity, "Might I inquire about the nature of your research Severus?"
Snape eyed Dumbledore for the greatest of time. Flamel had warned him that Dumbledore would inevitably ask this question and that he would have to be very convincing about his answer, lest Dumbledore get suspicious.
"I was researching about the Staff of Asclepius," Snape answered.
That was not the truth, but that was not a complete lie. Snape had indeed researched about the staff but had soon dropped it off in favor of the summoning ritual.
Comprehension dawned on Dumbledore's face, "Ah.. the mythical staff of healing. No doubt to heal your childhood friend? A noble endeavor."
"A foolish one. Seeing as my efforts were unneeded at the end," Snape lied with ease.
"I think you should not measure your actions with its success alone, Severus. Intents too count. And yours was a noble one. Although, one would say that what you searched for the last year is something only mentioned in fictions."
"And what would you say Dumbledore?" Snape asked.
"Me? Well I happen to have a penchant for believing in the fictitious," Dumbledore subtly glanced towards his wand which went unseen by Snape, "Call it an old man's folly.
"Moving on to the reason of your visit here, I do still happen to have the post open for you Severus," said Dumbledore.
"I accept it then," Snape answered without missing a beat.
"Just like that Severus?"
Snape sighed, why did people have to make it so difficult, "I am delighted that you find me worthy of the responsibility of training young minds under your care. I shall do my best to impart my knowledge to the students here." should they not happen to be dunderheads.
"Err.. a bit of politeness is a good thing, of course, but what I meant was, don't you have any questions regarding your station? Like your pay for instance?"
"Headmaster, I am confident that you would pay me fairly. And I know for a fact that Hogwarts' teachers are required to be in the castle itself. Apart from that, I have no other questions regarding my post," Snape said with a hint of irritation.
He was desperate to cut the conversation short and was hoping that Dumbledore would take the hint, which he did.
"Of course Severus. Anything else you want to ask?" Dumbledore offered.
"When do I start?" Snape asked.
"From the next week. In fact, I would have you start right now if not for your need to review the lesson plans. Horace is getting desperate to continue his retirement, you see," Dumbledore said in a delightful mood. It was almost appalling seeing the headmaster swing from one mood to another with such ease.
"I will take my leave then," Snape got up and proceeded towards the door. Right in the middle of his walk, he paused.
Turning towards the headmaster once again, he spoke, "Pass on my congratulations to the Potters.. and don't mention my name if possible. James Potter wouldn't really take it in a good way."
Without waiting for the headmaster's reply, Severus turned and left.
Harry emerged out from the memory.
"Well, it went with unexpected ease. You are a scary liar Severus," Harry said with a touch of respect.
"Spying on the Dark Lord requires that," Snape said with almost a hint of pride, "And skilled leglimens the headmaster may be, he isn't half as scary as the Dark Lord."
"Yes, yes, I get it, your Dark Lord is scary and an amazing leglimens and children quaver when his name is uttered and whatnot."
"I did not mean that!" Snape protested, "But you will have to admit, the man was quite powerful."
"Is," Harry corrected.
"Pardon?" Snape said in confusion.
"The man is quite powerful. He is not gone. Not completely."
"So you say."
"So I say indeed."
Harry went and sit on the sofa and procured a drink, Butterbeers, to be specific, and offered some to Snape.
"I see you acquired some gold?" Snape asked while accepting the drink.
Harry shrugged, "The Cannons gave me some spending money. In fact, I acquired something else too."
Harry snapped his fingers and with a pop, a house elf appeared in front of him.
"Master is summoning Tippy?"
A house elf, dressed in red and gold robes with a phoenix emblemb, asked in a humble fashion.
Harry motioned towards Snape, "Tippy, this is Severus Snape. He would be living here for a few days. Afterwards, he is going to Hogwarts to teach. I want you to go with him as his personal house elf and work in the Hogwarts kitchens."
Tippy nodded and disappeared.
Snape looked at him in disbelief. House elves didn't exactly come cheap and yet the man was giving him a personal house elf.
"If this is to spy on me then you are doing a pretty terrible job of it," Snape said accusingly.
Harry smirked, "Rest assured Severus, Tippy will not spy on you. Well, a little bit perhaps but you need not be paranoid about it."
"So why are you giving her to me then?" Snape asked curiously.
"Call it a gift, or make whatever you think of it," Harry said nonchalantly.
Snape thought for a moment. It didn't make sense. Why would anyone in their right mind do so much for a stranger? Indeed, there must be some reason for the house elf tagging along with him but what could it possibly be? In the end, Harry Flamel was too complex for him to figure out, so he let it be.
"Anyways, it is a good thing that you got accepted into Hogwarts," Harry said.
"You make it sound as if my first year Hogwarts letter just arrived."
Harry eyed him as if to say, 'really?'
"As I was saying, Dumbledore trusted you the position so I would expect you to teach the young minds quite sincerely."
"I will, of course.. Provided that they are not empty in their heads.. or do not possess the attention span of a toad." Snape said with a sneer.
"How much is the attention span of a toad really?" Harry asked with amusement.
"Not enough."
Harry sighed, "You are a man of many talents, Severus but clearly teaching isn't one of them. Let's just take baby steps then. Let's start with not giving the children nightmare. We will then improve upon that later, agreed?"
"I will try," Snape scoffed.
"Excellent! Now moving onto other matters, try not to let your fondness for me (Snape coughed, throwing up the butterbeer that he was in the process of drinking), overpower your sense of caution. Which is to say, try not to appear here so frequently."
Snape hadn't still gotten over his earlier indignation, but Harry pressed on.
"Albus Dumbledore is a very powerful and observant wizard. A dangerous combination. He has already taken steps to keep tabs on you with the tracking charms and you can only consider yourself lucky that he hasn't discovered yet that you were present on the site of magical concentration during that night on Samhain. So don't try and take unnecessary risks."
Snape looked at him with a still indignant look before saying, "First of all, I am not fond of you! No, don't interrupt. Second, one can't disappear from Hogwarts just like that (Harry smiled!). No, they can't. And even if one could, I will not! And you do not have to remind be about cautious, I am a Slytherin!"
"Jeez.. No need to get so petulant about it! I was just saying.."
"No... Just don't!"
"Okay Severus, easy there," Harry said, an idiotic smile still gracing his features.
Snape frowned at the wizard. Flamel's capability of unsettling him was proving to be very very inconvenient. Ah well, at least he won't have to put up with him much longer.
Severus Snape was perplexed. He had apparated out from whereever Flamel's residence had been to Diagon Alley to procure some ingredients for a new recipe of Blood Replenishing potion that had just been published in the Potions monthly. The shopping went well enough using Flamel's money. But as he thought of returning to Flamel's place, he couldn't recall where it was. Of course, Flamel had never answered where his place was in the first place. But still, he should have been able to apparate to the place. Evidently, he could not.
The way Apparition worked was using the three Ds, one of which was Destination. And he had the Destination part figured out as Flamel's room even if he didn't exactly know where it was and last he checked, the Flamel residence had not been under Anti-Apparition ward or he wouldn't have been able to Disapparate from there in the first place. But still he couldn't apparate there. Which left him with another option,
Portus
He pointed his wand to a knut and whispered. The knut glowed.. and then fizzled out, indicating that the spell was a failure, which only added to Snape's confusion.
Portkeys took the reference of a wizard's magical signature. A wizard could deliberately tag some place with his own magic leaving a magical residue or even if he did not tag it, the place he had been to in the last few hours still retained his signature. Allowing the wizard to create portkey to the place, which essentially meant that Snape's spell should have succeeded. But it did not.
So, he couldn't apparate there and he couldn't portkey there and he was pretty sure that the place was not registered in the Floo network and he couldn't even take a bus to the place as he did not know its location. How was he supposed to get there then?
Just as he was racking his brain on this latest problem, a figure in the crowd hailed him.
"Mr. Snape!" The voice chirped.
Snape groaned. It had only been a few days since he had last heard the voice and he wasn't too keen on hearing it again.
"Amber," he said in a tired voice.
"Oh Mr. Snape.. Severus, I can call you Severus right? It's really you! I never thought I would be meeting you so soon! Oh, what's this? Shopping for potions ingredients? Spinach seeds? Don't tell me, you are here for that new recipe? What a coincidence! I was here for the same!"
"Miss.."
"Lynn. My full name is Amber Lynn," she supplied with exuberance.
"Miss Lynn.. please breathe. It won't do for you to faint on me. And yes, you can call me Severus and as you mentioned, I am indeed here to shop for Volansky's new recipe." Snape said with pronounced indifference. He simply did not have the energy to deal with the overly excited bundle of energy in front of him. Alas, Amber didn't take the hint.
"It's amazing isn't it?" She clapped her hand, "Just how much the mere addition of Spinach seeds could increase the potency! Besides, it also cures the mild indigestion issues of Borak's recipe."
"I am well aware of the fact," Snape said, annoyed. The girl was ten years too early to inform any potions related fact to him. Only, the said girl was too busy to hear him.
"Of course, many speculate that Volansky just found the recipe due to an accident. Now I know that he is not exactly the best potioneer in the country but it sounds so rude to accuse him like that.. as if half of the discoveries in potions are not due to accidents. Why, even Skelegrow was designed to revitalize the nerves, and of course it does its work, hence the pain, but nobody even thought that it would end up being a bone growing potion at the end."
Amber explained in an animated fashion making Snape sigh in frustration. Why exactly was the girl chattering mundane potions facts to him again?
"Miss Lynn.."
"And the Animagus revealing potion was meant to be a hallucinating agent.."
"Amber.."
"And it does gives hallucinations, yes, but the hallucinations turn out to be of one's Animagus form. If Kiera didn't put Unicorn's tail hair accidentally.."
"..."
"And as if the hypocrites do not dream deep down that they'd someday put some ingredients in reverse order and come up with a Felix Felicius.. Err.. I spoke a bit too much right?"
Apparently, Amber had finished her rant as she took notice of Snape's face for the first time in the last ten minutes, to find an almost impossible mixture of irritation, annoyance, indignation, and a strange look that one could loosely interpret as "go-away!" or "stop-talking!".
"Indeed.. I must be honest, prior to meeting you, I had never thought it possible that one person could find it in him or herself to drivel so much."
Amber flushed in embarrassment. She always did have a knack for rambling too much when she was nervous and meeting Severus Snape face to face was one of the few things that could make her lose her nerves.
She muttered something weakly which sounded suspiciously like "I am sorry".
"Anyways," said Snape, "I congratulate you on your recipe Miss Lynn.. or should I say, Mr. Volansky?"
"H-H-How..," she spluttered.
Of course, Snape wasn't really going to say that his attempts at learning Legilimency were finally starting to pay off.. so he made a quick excuse,
"Please, the passion with which you were defending him? I would have to be a dunderhead to not get it. By the way, congratulations on your.. accidental discovery," Snape said with a smirk.
Amber still hadn't gotten over her earlier surprise at Snape figuring her alter ego, so her attempts at looking indignant were awfully unsuccessful.
"Now if there isn't anything else, I would take my leave. A very good day to you, Miss Lynn."
With those words, Snape left Amber on the streets of the Diagon Alley and disapparated with a audible pop, leaving a very confused Amber behind.
Severus was dazed. One moment he was disapparating away from that awfully troublesome girl and the next moment he was at a totally unexpected destination. Had it not been for his talents at Occlumency, he would have undoubtedly jumped up in fright.
A sense of deja vu came over him. Hadn't something similar happened to him in the past? And then it hit him.
"Flamel," after a moment of disorientation, he had finally noticed another presence in the room.
"Severus," said Harry without taking his eyes off from a book that he was perusing.
"Don't you Severus me Flamel! Answer me, how am I here? Wait, before that, tell me where exactly is this place and how come I could not apparate or portkey to here?"
Harry sighed and closed the book that he had been reading, "We are at my place Severus and where this is does not really matter. As for apparating or portkeying here, it is impossible."
Snape was not satisfied with that answer, "So how did I come here then?"
"Was that not obvious Severus?" Harry asked rhetorically, "You are here because you wanted to be here."
"That doesn't make any sense!"
"On the contrary, I think it makes plenty of sense, now tell me, how went your visit to the Diagon Alley?"
Sensing that Harry was diverting the flow of conversation, Snape tried to argue but after a moment's thought, decided against it. He was not going to get his answers so he might as well save his breath.
"It went fine," he mumbled.
"Oh? I see that it went better than fine?" Harry commented with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
"Are you using leglimency on me?" Snape said with disbelief.
"Come now Severus, do you think that I can divine answers with leglimency from a master Occlumens such as you?" Harry asked.
"Yes," Severus replied.
"Yes, indeed," Harry said back with a smirk, "However, that doesn't mean that I used it this time.. I just happened to catch a familiar scent on you."
"What are you? A werewolf?" Snape said with a sneer.
"Not exactly, no.. But there are many other ways to enhance your senses and some of them much more preferable than lycanthropy. Coming back to my question, I see that you had the honors of stumbling upon dear Miss Amber?"
"Honors," Snape scoffed, "More like bad luck. The girl is obviously touched in head. Had it not been for her potions skills, I would have dismissed a blabbermouth such as her as a dunderhead."
Harry raised an eyebrow, "So you are saying that you acknowledge her potions skills?"
"She is good," Snape grudgingly accepted, "She published a new recipe on blood-replenishing potion which yields higher volume of the said potion while increasing its potency."
"Severus! Is this respect I hear? Are you fine? Or perhaps you caught some cold on your way back?" Harry said with mock concern.
"No need to blow it out of proportions, she is just an ordinary girl who happens to have a talent in brewing."
"You say it now but come another year, you would be going on dates with the girl," Harry said in a teasing tone.
"It would take an Imperius from Merlin himself for that," Snape scoffed.
"I happen to disagree. This is what, your second time meeting her? You know how they say, first time is accident, second time is co-incidence, but the third time is destiny. Be careful when you next stumble upon her Severus, she just might be your destiny!"
Harry turned back and disappeared into his room before Snape could protest vehemently.
Snape, meanwhile, was quite stunned. Not only because of the conversation that had transpired between the two of them but also due to the peculiarity of Harry Flamel. In addition to the fact that he lived in a place where one could only appear due to some glitch in the universe, Flamel happened to have a sense of smell that rivalled werewolves themselves. Apart from that, he also happened to have a disastrous sense of humor. Which was to say, he was mad. Really, what adjective to better define a person who could even suggest something as idiotic as Severus Snape going on dates with a babbling Hufflepuff (for what else could the girl have been? Slytherin?).
In the end, Snape was honestly quite glad at moving to Hogwarts. At least then he would not have to deal with mad wizards. Oh who was he kidding? If anything, he would have to deal with someone even mad than Flamel himself. At that moment, Snape realized that he was cursed forever to be under the shadows of powerful and equally barmy wizards. Well, barmy usually didn't apply to the Dark Lord as much as insane but that was merely a technicality of linguistics, as Flamel would say. And that was it, he was even starting to quote Flamel of all person! Next he would be spouting about how once was accident, twice was co-incidence and thrice was destiny.
A cold feeling washed inside of him. Honestly, it could not possibly be true? Snape, with that girl? Impossible! But.. What if..? No! It was absolutely impossible! Even if Merlin and Morgana both came back from the dead to Imperius him, Snape would not concede! Never!