Chapter 3: The Professor

Severus hadn't showered in a week; he hadn't eaten in half as long. He had poured forth his sorrows to the Headmaster until nothing remained but an empty shell, and only then did he return to a silent room on the upper floor of the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, to slump in an old, wooden chair in the corner and await sunrise. He had always been a broken man, but the night Lily, Lily Potter, had died was the night that broken, fragile shell had shattered, and he didn't care to stoop down and pick up the pieces.

Even if he did, he could never put himself back together again when the most vital piece of all was eternally lost to him.

He stared at the ceiling with eyes that appeared devoid of life, a state he would have found preferable if Dumbledore hadn't quashed the notion before it could grow into something more, and as still as he was, it wouldn't take much imagination to believe it. Many hours passed before he stirred, and when he finally did, it was only to rise to his feet and pause as if he wasn't certain where to proceed from there.

His long, black robes hung crooked and tussled as if they had been slept in, and only his coat didn't show quite the amount of wear for how close-fitting it was, how ill-fitting it was the way the collar rose too high beneath his chin and the cuffs encroached beyond his wrists, and few could say if he had chosen to dress in such a manner out of a lack of concern for how he looked or because he wished to clothe himself in something he could more easily hide within.

His eyelids drooped in a slow blink with a lethargy clear even across the dimly lit room. A decision had been made within his mind, and Severus, or simply Snape, as he had more commonly come to be known, apparated to a quiet neighborhood in the tiny village of Godric's Hollow long past bedtime, and it would have appeared as absolutely any other neighborhood if there hadn't been one thing glaringly out of place.

The house he stood before bore a large hole in its roof, a gaping wound which accounted for only a fraction of what damage had really been done, but he wouldn't proceed any further than the empty street that lay outside it. Not tonight. He stared up at the dark and unseeing windows, and he remembered the destruction that had taken place inside, the debris that had littered the ground.

And yet the crib, the crib had remained intact, not one scratch on its surface, not one splinter out of place.

And it wasn't until after his mind was no longer reeling and the numbness had faded to the point that he could begin to think about what had happened that he was filled with countless questions, none of which he had yet to pin down any real answers to.

Why had it never occurred to him that a mother would sacrifice herself for her child? When he had pleaded with Lord Voldemort to spare her, why had it never passed his mind that she wouldn't sit idly by as her husband and son were killed?

Dumbledore had told him it was love that had spared the boy, Lily's love, and nothing more, something so impossible that he had never taken it into consideration, never once imagined in his wildest dreams that such a thing could eclipse even the Dark Lord's power. Her love was so strong that it could counteract the killing curse, while his own love had done absolutely nothing to save her….

In the end, it was as if he had done nothing to save her.

He wasn't strong like her, Snape had realized that night. And as he returned to the inn back in Hogsmeade, with nowhere else he could crawl back to, he wondered if he could ever, would ever, have the strength to sacrifice himself for another.

Now that was a death wish even Dumbledore couldn't deny him.

Professor Snape would never be faulted for trying to hide the fact that he disliked children, making the career choice of "teacher" an exceedingly baffling one. The only redeeming quality they had were the occasions he could disregard their existence. His fellow professors were not children, nor were the goblins he had to deal with at Gringotts, nor the shopkeeper at the Apothecary in Diagon Alley. Unfortunately, being a teacher, that sad fact brought him into contact with a good number of children, all of which he was forced to interact with, and with a horrifying frequency. Daily, as was most often the case.

There was one student in particular, however, that the Potions Master had the greatest disdain for, more so than any other he had been forced to take on as a pupil in the full decade he had been employed at Hogwarts. (Good Lord, had it only been a decade?) The boy had been given the title of "the Boy Who Lived", their very own celebrity, and had been known across the entirety of the wizarding community since he was but an infant, but all Snape heard was that this whelp was the one, the only one, who had lived.

Trust his luck that in the one instance the Dark Lord agrees to spare a life, he spares the wrong one.

It was most fitting that the boy had James' face, as he was just as arrogant as his father was, relishing in the fame that had been awarded him, not due to hard work or a keen intellect, but by sheer, dumb luck. What set the Potions Master's blood boiling most of all, however, was that the boy had been blessed with her eyes, her vibrant, green eyes. That face had no right to have those eyes.

The celebrated and esteemed little vagrant went by the name of Harry Potter, but which he addressed simply as Potter, as he deserved no more than what he had called the boy's father all those many miserable years ago, and as idiotic as the rabble that comprised his students was, Potter was the worst. Lazy and incompetent, he was incapable of following the recipes of even the most mundane of potions or answering the most basic of questions ("Where would you find a bezoar" indeed), thinking he could slide by on his status alone. Frankly, he was half-surprised the boy was even literate, and if it weren't for his know-it-all friend Granger, he wouldn't have made it through his first year.

Never mind. Dumbledore clearly enjoyed playing favorites. What a fun seven years this would be.

Today, the Potions Master had tasked his group of second-years with the creation of

Tacitus Liberandum, a particular draught he himself had mastered in his first year at Hogwarts, but who was he to expect the same from them? It only involved following a set of directions even a Muggle would understand.

He watched them struggle and fret; one student, Longbottom, was actually chewing his nails in a hopeless desperation, and had this been any other class, they would have resorted to asking their teacher for help long ago, but they were more than familiar with his motto by now. There were no stupid questions. Just stupid students. Scratch that. That first part must've gotten in there by mistake.

And amidst it all was Potter, floundering about as always. He wouldn't be surprised if—

The Professor blinked to clear the obvious inconsistency in his vision, but upon his second perusal, the boy appeared, in fact, to be the most collected in the room, even more so than Granger, who took her apparent vow of perfection far too seriously than was good for her. Surely this calm the boy had taken up during today's assignment stemmed from nothing more than simple apathy than anything else.

The Potions Master strode forward until he had stopped beside the boy, and he hovered over him to stare down into a cauldron which contained a concoction that was the exact shade of chartreuse and which exuded the aroma of almonds, a detail no one but him would notice, but it was there. It was a delicate thing, which would be ruined if it met the slightest disturbance, but in a few short minutes, it would be perfect.

There was only one student, besides himself, who had successfully brewed such a potion on their first try. It was one, in fact, that Lily excelled in.

Snape bumped the table as he turned away to take up his usual spot at the head of the room, and when he looked back, the simmering bubbles at the top of the boy's cauldron had disappeared and the potion's pure color had been reduced to a murky brown.

He arched one eyebrow as Potter looked up at him in clear befuddlement. "My, my, Potter, I would've expected the youngest Griffindor Seeker in century to not be so clumsy. A shame."

Snape had been stricken with the slightest twinge of an inward smirk as he walked away, and it lasted for the remainder of the class period, the rare feeling only growing when he had dismissed them and would have a full several minutes of peace to look forward to until the next group came. But, if he thought that would be all he would have to endure of Potter for the day, he was mistaken when he heard a weak cough from behind him as he organized his notes for the next set of dunderheads he would be facing today.

"Get to class. If you couldn't finish your assignment the first time, I give no second chances."

There was no answer at first, and he began to muse over the sound being imagined, when he heard a soft and unsure, "I-I need to ask you something."

The Professor rounded on the one responsible for the refusal, and sure enough, it was Potter, staring up at him with his ragged mop of black hair falling in his bespectacled eyes.

"Excuse me?" Snape said, and normally that would have been enough to send anyone running, but not Potter, and the boy's jaw opened and closed, choked noises leaving him that had yet to form into words.

"If you have something to say," Professor Snape began, his words short and clipped, "then I suggest. You say it."

Potter licked his lips, and he pulled in a deep breath before asking, "What…what is it about me you hate so much?"

Snape's cold stare remained unchanged, but that hidden smirk was gone as he looked down into those green eyes.

It was insulting that he should have her eyes.

"Everything," was the word that jumped first to his mind, everything, but his heart went cold before that single word passed his lips, for the hurt look he saw not in Potter's eyes, but in Lily's, the same look she had when he called her a…

If Lily knew how he treated her son…

The Potions Master bit back his response, and his next words were too soft for almost even the boy to hear. "Get. To class. Mr. Potter."

Professor Snape turned his back on the boy when Potter continued to stare, and it wasn't long before he heard the retreating sound of footsteps echoing off behind him before it blended into that made by the next group of students as they began to filter into the room, their entrance muted due to a shared dread no other class could inspire.

She would be livid if she knew.

The grim-faced Potions Master never wanted to admit that the nightmares of his youth had come back, that he'd wake up every night yelling and in a cold sweat, for in his nightmares, Lily died by his own hand, and in all honesty, she had.

"Do you get nightmares, Sev?"

"Yes. A-all the time."

Spinner's End hadn't changed much in the few long decades that had passed since a certain boy was born on a particularly frigid January morning, least of all the Snape residence, which remained as cold and imposing as it ever had, even when many believed it abandoned now that the two former owners were long dead. There were occasions during the summers, which managed to seem a few degrees colder here than in any other part of England, that the neighbors swore they saw the curtains move or a dim light in the window, but no one had knocked on the door for a good many years to find out who it could be, and no one was going to do it now.

Professor Snape often returned to the house, the one thing his deceased parents had thought to leave him, how kind of them, by the rather ridiculous, but undeniably effective, means of travel known as flu powder, and it was here he spent his time whenever there was an extended break from the scatterbrained students he had been forced to teach for more years than he cared to count. No one knew that this was where he went, save Dumbledore, the only man he was unable to keep any secrets from; they only knew that he was away and were grateful for it.

It was a decaying house, preserved with the same unhappiness it had always bore since before he could remember, as if the feeling had seeped into the very structure itself and was the reason for the paint crumbling from the walls. The damage could be fixed easily enough with a few, simple spells, but the Potions Master knew better than to try and cover up the past with a fresh coat of paint and new curtains.

Every summer without end, he would entomb himself in the cramped sitting room of his childhood home, lined with nothing but dusty books and memories of a past he had stopped trying to run from, his only company the yellowing letters he had hoarded over the years, all of which were written by the same person, and yet none of which were addressed to him, along with aging and torn photographs of the one who had written them, always the same person and no one more.

He could so easily visit her old house and the spot where they used to sit by the river. It was a thought he oft considered, but never acted upon, because a certain part of him argued that it had changed, and he preferred to only see it as his mind did, even if he was well aware that even memories had a way of distorting the truth.

And on no particular evening, when he found himself marveling at the fact that he was only 35, even if he felt so much older, Snape sat listening to the pattering of rain on the window panes as he sipped tea he hadn't even noticed had gone cold, while a newspaper lay unfolded and forgotten on his lap. Today was no different a day than any other, he thought absently to himself, a passing observation that came from nowhere and went the same place.

But any further musings his mind might have travelled were interrupted by a shuffling to his right, and he looked over to find a rat that had inexplicably pulled itself onto one of the shelves, no doubt by using the tattered, old books as purchase. It was the very same rat, he was certain, that he had caught poking about under the table in the corner just under a week ago, and his heartbeat quickened to see that it was currently busy sniffing about the box in which he kept all the letters he had ever accumulated.

Snape reached into his robes with an almost imperceptible movement to draw out his wand, and with one careful motion, he flicked it at the rodent with an "Immobulus" hidden just under his breath, but the rat jerked aside quite unscathed, no doubt a result of his great care to avoid hitting the box, even as a small corona of collected dust burst forth around it from the miniature blast. With no further delay, the wretched creature made to flee, knocking the box down from its shelf in its great haste to escape, and he watched in stunned horror as the two tumbled together to the ground.

The letters scattered before the box even met the floor, countless pages swooping away almost with a mind of their own, and the man dropped to the floor to collect as many as he could before even one could slip beneath the furniture or stray too close to the crackling fireplace, as if he expected the letters to be intent on their own suicides, while the rat scurried away into the kitchen, to be lost again in some forgotten cranny of the house until next it made its presence known.

He remained on his hands and knees until he had gathered them all up, and even when the last of the wayward pages had been returned to the box, any thoughts of closing the lid were halted when his eyes took notice of a page resting atop the pile that he never recalled reading before. And he would remember; he had memorized all her letters, and he would have noticed if one had been soiled with a spot of purple jam in the middle. He could only surmise it had become stuck to the bottom of the page that came before it and had just now been jostled free for the first time since he had obtained it.

He picked it up and brought the wrinkled parchment close to his face as he studied its contents. It was a postscript, addressed to whom, he couldn't remember, and he read it again and again, his lips silently mouthing each and every word of it like a ritual, to ensure he wasn't mistaken.

The letter was about him, that much he knew, and that alone was shocking enough. Though they had been friends for years, not once did he recall finding a letter in which any mention of himself was made. Maybe it was the circumstance in which their friendship ended. Maybe, and which worried him most might be the case, her feelings for Potter had caused her to all but forget about him. He shook this thought away, and his unbelief made him read the contents of the page one more time.

"Looking back on it, I suppose I know why he did what he did, why certain words were exchanged. But, I forgive him for it. And I wish I could have told him that before we finished school. I know he doesn't have the fondest feelings towards James, but it would've been nice if he knew he could have visited from time to time."

Professor Snape, Severus Snape, returned the final page to the box and closed the lid as he resumed his earlier silence, a heaviness settling in his chest that he couldn't explain, and he forced himself to rise and return the box to its shelf with shaking hands.

He fell back into his armchair to take up his reading as if his attention had never strayed from it, while the rain continued its ceaseless patter outside from the dark clouds that hung low like a shroud over Spinner's End, forever grey, like he always remembered it to be, while the mind of a boy once again found it safe to wander to a past he had not dared venture in too long. Even if he hadn't seen it in decades, he knew the river hadn't changed in all that time, and he could imagine a girl still awaited him at its banks.

Always.

I hope you guys enjoyed my collection of shorts. I had fun writing them, particularly that one with Harry, which was written last, but I thought Lily's own son seriously needed a mention.

Please review and tell me what you think! Hopefully I didn't get many details wrong, but "Harry Potter" is a complicated series.