Chapter 21

It was the very early hours of the morning. Severus should've been asleep hours ago but the choice of word Harry chose for his password as well as that smirk, Snape needed answers and he needed them now!

Finishing the last few drops of his glass, he delve back into the memories of his interactions between himself and Harry during the boys' first year at Hogwarts. He remembered classes with the boy and how Harry kept looking at him oddly as well as angrily. There were days where his eyes were full of hope and then they were crushed when Snape reinforced his authority by taking points away and baiting Harry Potter, making sure that the boy would hate him as well as fulfilling the pettiness of his own, getting back at the boys' late father through the orphan. Snape looked at his actions in the third person, his interactions with the boy he was seeing, he truly was a bitter and petty man.

He was running out of instances he and Potter had converse which was surprisingly a lot more than he had realized.

The troll in the dungeons had past by him, a few more classes and then there he was, reliving his first day.

There he saw himself reading out the register, marking attendances when he paused halfway down the list. He knew which name he had paused at.

"Ah, yes," he said, "Harry Potter. Our new-celebrity."

Some of the Slytherins giggled at his anecdote. Wait, this is becoming very familiar now. Snape looked at Harry and decided to look at his notes. He had presumed at the time to have been scribbling nonsense or doodling but was surprised to see that he had been taking note of every little thing he had written on the black board prior to the start of class and was ready to continue to write more. He turned back to his memory self to watch how the memory continue. At the end of role call, he began speaking again.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making."

Speaking in barely a whisper.

"As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses… I can teach you to bottle fame, brew glory even stopper death – if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

There was Harry, writing his words onto another parchment. This boy was eager to learn, ready to research to understand what he was talking about. In the boys eyes, hope and interest in the very topic he was passionate about. Those eyes so reminiscent of Lily. He and Granger were the only two students who showed interest in his words. What had gone wrong?

"Potter!"

Both present Snape and little Harry looked at his former self. What had Harry done to earn that bark? Why did he just spit out the boys' name? He can hardly remember why but he can see the anger and coldness in his own eyes. Oh god, he remembers now. He remembers exactly what he was feeling and thinking. He remembers looking down at Potter…Harry…Seeing those eyes so focused on his parchment. He remembers that he saw the boy was taking notes and remembers looking at the boy and remembering his late beloved friend and the boys' mother. He remembered thinking that the last time he was this close to the boy, he was just a babe, wailing for his mother while she lay lifeless on the ground, eyes open and still. He remembers the heart ache, the guilt and how he wished at that moment that he could apologize for his actions which led to the death of Lily Evans.

"What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

The students had no idea what he was talking about, not even the Malfoy boy. Well, almost all the students as he looked at the tiny Granger girls' hand in the air ready to answer. The small Potter spawn shook his head and answered sadly,

"I don't know, sir."

And it continued. He was testing the boy to humiliate him. He could see in the boys' eyes as he made him feel shame, the loss of curiosity for the subject of potions was dying right before his eyes. Within a minute, the wonder the boy had in his eyes about what to expect from Potions was shattered because the reality is, he was about to endure seven long years of torment from a man he had hardly knew.

At the end of that ordeal, he looked back at Harry's notes one last time and he had seen that even after he had ridiculed the boy, he still wrote down: "Asphodel, Wormroot, Bezoar, Monkshood, Wolfsbane…"
He wrote a brief note of each of the ingredients. It seemed that the boy may have continued his research outside of the class room and as his memory began to fade and end, he heard his own words echo…

"You-Potter- why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor."

Without needing the pensive, he remembered that weekend he had seen the boy in the library alone with a few books and not too long after that, the subtle looks began.