A/N: I stretched and wriggled with the sequence of events in this chapter a bit, mainly because I needed some space to get the talking done, but also because I wrote part of it while I was away from both the internet and "Harry Potter II". Hope you don't mind that!
I also apologize – again – for the delay. I'll try to do better, but I honestly can't promise you regular updates. What I do promise however is to finish the story! Slowly, but definitely…
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Snakes and Slytherins
The next morning, they entered the pensieve to watch the memory of Potter's second year. From what Snape had heard, he expected it to be at least as dramatic as the last one.
What he hadn't expected, however, was the fanged face of a gigantic snake, racing towards him as soon as the fogs cleared enough for him to see. Snape could make out two gigantic, yellow eyes, teeth as long as his arm with poison dripping from them and an unbearable stench before the monster had reached him, and, with the feeling of an ice storm shaking his very bones, slithered through him.
It was a very long monster. It took half a minute to press his length through Snape's body, and by the time it was gone, Snape was shivering and trembling like a man half frozen to death.
„Good Gods, Potter, what the hell was that?"
„The basilisk, Professor," Potter answered with more than a little surprise. „I thought Potions Masters must know about magical beasts?"
„Believe it or not, it's difficult to determine a species when it is travelling through you! This is huge!"
„Quite," Potter agreed happily. „But I thought the dragon in fourth year even more impressive. Now that was a fascinating beast."
"I hate animals," Snape answered darkly, feeling his mood sinking to a record low. "Especially when they go through me like ghosts."
"I must admit that I didn't like the basilisk very much, either," Potter answered pleasantly and walked towards the far end of the columned hall they were standing in. After a moment of hesitation and a poisonous glare at the slithering beast behind them, Snape stalked after him.
Only now did he take in their surroundings. Silently, he admitted that the beast had adapted perfectly to his habitation: this place was as huge as the giant snake. Though hopefully a little less deadly.
"So this is the chamber of secrets", he said half-aloud and was rewarded with a grin from Potter.
"Impressive, isn't it?" The other man asked. "I was scared dead when I came here for the first time. Never really saw the beauty of it, but back then I still thought all Slytherins and everything they created was evil by definition."
Snape had just formulated and exquisitely acid comment about Gryffindors and their unique perception of reality, when they stepped out of the shadow of a column and towards the statue of a huge, bearded version of Salazar Slytherin himself. In front of it, a young man was standing besides the fallen body of a small girl.
Even if he had tried, Snape couldn't have suppressed the gasp that made his lungs contract painful and echoed through the hall of stone.
"Who's this?" He asked, but he knew the answer already, knew it in the painful way his heart pounded in his chest.
"The girl is Ginny Weasley, currently running out of life energy very fast, and the boy is Tom Riddle, soon to become the nightmare of the civilized wizarding world," Potter answered calmly.
Tom Riddle. The name sounded so simple, much like Potter's name, but like the young man currently standing beside him, the person who had shed it was a chaos of emotions, thoughts and unpleasant memories to Snape.
He had loved this man once, like a father, had adored him with the fervent admiration only a young, attention seeking Slytherin could muster.
It had been easy to forget this fact with the snakelike monster that had been reborn on the cemetery of Little Hangleton, had been too easy to believe that he had only done it for the knowledge or his pride as a pureblood, or even the hidden prospect of turning spy.
But now, watching that angelic face, those seemingly innocent eyes and the slim figure of a boy commanding powers beyond his age, Snape remembered. He had done it for him, and for some time, the Dark Lord's pride had been his own pride, Voldemort's wishes his own wishes.
He remembered how it had felt to kneel before this man, much older than the memory he was now staring at, but still with that charismatic aura of power and righteousness that had made them all believe in him and his war, no matter what their brains had screamed at them.
Part of him longed for that feeling even now.
And one tiny little part of him, shushed and hidden away as soon as Snape became aware of its existence, acknowledged the striking similarities between this young Tom Riddle and the Potter who was standing by his side, calm, confident, and with an ability to tie people to his own fate like Snape had seldom seen it before.
"Where are you then?" He asked after he had silenced that treacherous little voice. "Shouldn't you stand guard over her defenceless body or something heroic like that?"
"I'm back there somewhere," Potter vaguely gestured in the direction they had come from. "Being chased by the basilisk, you know?"
"I should have known," Snape answered with a sigh, though the idea of that huge monster chasing a twelve year old boy made his insides go cold.
He chanced another look at the young Riddle, and this time he coulnd't help noticing the cold triumph in the young man's eyes, the arrogant set of his shoulders and the hate that screamed from every cell of his body.
He turned back to Potter, who was concentrating on the prone body of Ginny Weasley, standing tall but not stiffly, his face a little sad and drawn, whether with exhaustion or the tension of this memory Snape couldn't tell.
Yes, they were eerily alike each other, but at the same time the difference between them was even more striking. Where Voldemort was concentrating all his strength and power outward, to dominate or charm whoever came across him, where hate twisted his face in a mask of coldness and arrogance, Potter seemed to be turned inward.
If Voldemort was a raging fire, drawing everything towards him with his warmth and light yet consuming those that believed in him, Potter was a candle, sitting in a darkened window all by its own. Waiting for those who would see the light and decide to enter the house, but never openly drawing them to him. Having the strength to set everything around him on fire, but containing himself inside the small waxen cylinder, content with what he had.
And for the first time, Snape understood what Potter had told him about hate and the need to let go of it.
"We should stay with your body," He said absently, still eyeing the gloating memory of his former Lord. "In case the fading was initiated while you ran away."
"Not very likely," Potter disagreed. "Besides," He shrugged again, and grinned. "I'm running very fast right now, what with a giant snake wanting to kill me and all that. I doubt that I would be able to keep up with myself. But you are welcome to try."
Without sparing af further glance towards Tom Riddle and his prey, Potter walked over to one of the towering marble columns and sat down with a contented sigh, leaning against the cold stone like one would against a tree during a picnic on a fine summer's day.
From the inner pocket of his robes he took something silver that was shining dully in the flickering light of the torches. Snape swept a passing glance over it, then frowned and returned his eyes to the silver object.
A thermos flask?
"What the hell are you doing there, Potter?" He spat, his eyes darting from the sitting figure to the gigantic snake that was still chasing a screaming Gryffindor in the dimly lit back areas of the chamber.
"Why, having a cup of tea, Professor," Potter answered pleasantly. "Would you like to join me? I brough a spare cup," And he began patting his robes as if in search of said cup.
"Drinking tea in Slytherin's great hidden chamber, the one place every young Slytherin dreams about?" Snape asked. "You do realize that this is a palce of legends and myths, don't you?"
Potter shrugged. "Saw quite a lot of those places, actually," He answered, producing an old fashioned porcelain cup adorned with a pattern of flowers and polishing it with the sleeve of his robes. "To be honest, I would always prefer my cottage. Mythical palces are usually wet, drafting, or full of things you have to run away from. In this case, it seems to be all three. Tea?"
Snape hesitated. Then he sighed and mirrored Potter's shrug. "Why not?" He answered, walked over to the huge column and sat down at its base, about an arm length away from Potter. He accepted the offered cup with a grunt.
"So what's going to happen?" He finally asked, sipping his tea and watching the young boy stumbling once more across the hall with barely enough strength to move by now.
"A lot of dramatic nonsense, on the whole," Potter answered. "Fawkes should arrive any moment…Ah, there he his," He pointed at the red and gold bird that had suddenly popped into existence. "He picks out the basilisk's eyes – look at it, isn't he brilliant? – and carries Gryffindor's hat from which very soon the Founder's venerable old sword will drop onto my poor head. I must admit that this part seemed cheesy even when I was twelve. Really, pull a sword out of a hat? If Dumbledore had to go for the whole Arthurian stuff, he could at least have provided a real stone, couldn't he?"
"You're mad, Potter," Snape answered. "And the fact that you have finally developed something remotely similar to education doesn't change your madness. If you aimed for eccentricity like Dum… Albus, you should wait a few more years."
If Potter had noticed his slip of the tongue, he gave no sign of it. "I always spent much time around older and slightly mad people," He said. "It seems to rub off. But thank you for the compliment!"
He sounded genually pleased that Snape had deemed him educated.
Snape thought about those who had influenced Potter's life – the Dursleys, Dumbledore, Hagrid and Black. Ayda and Shadow. He had to admit that none of them appeared to be entirely sane.
If it rubs off, what's with you after years between Voldemort and Dumbledore, he thought for a moment, then decided to ignore the thought.
He turned his eyes back on the young Potter, the one person he should concentrate on in all this madness.
Not much had changed. They boy was still running away from the recently blinded basilisk, only that he was now waving a sword about, more than once in acute danger of cutting his own ear or nose off.
Really, sharp things like swords were no playthings for children. But neither were, he had to admit, basilisks.
"Were you seriously hoping to kill Slytherin's monster with that? Completely untrained? Hell, you can barely lift the sword," Snape commented, his eyes still on the fleeing boy.
"Well, it worked in the end, didn't it?" Potter asked pleasantly, refilling his tea cup. "And it was the only option left to me. I wasn't exactly used to situations like these, at least not back then."
"So you are used to monsters that are chasing you by now?" Snape inquired silkily. If he were to judge from the experience of the last week, monsters probably discovered their doggy side around Potter and settled for throwing sticks instead. He still couldn't get the image of all those vampires happily embracing him out of his mind.
"Let's just say that I developed a certain expertise for surviving situations like these, yes?" Potter answered vaguely. "More tea?"
Snape sighed again and handed his cup over for the refill, but a movement to their left made Potter stop in his task, carefully closing the flask instead and putting the cup back where it had come from.
"On second thought, we had better stand up," He informed his former Professor. "I will kill the basilisk any minute now, and if my magical core split during this memory, it must have happened then. Quite a nasty experience it was."
Snape opened his mouth to ask of what experience exactly Potter was talking when the basilisk suddenly lunged forward to attack the boy, his mouth wide open, his fangs glittering eerily in the torch light.
Somehow, perhaps drawing from some hidden reserves of strength, the Potter boy had managed to raise the sword high and hold onto it, even though his face was pale with exhaustion and pain. Snape gasped when the sword made contact with the roof of the serpent's mouth and, in a sudden gush of blood and saliva, drove through it.
"Ouch," Potter the man commented, but only when the boy finally let go of the sword hilt and stumbled to the side, his face twisted with pain and his whole body trembling did Snape see the huge fang that protruded from his arm.
Unbelievable as it was, the boy had slain a grown basilisk.
But he had paid a terrible prize for it. Already Snape's trained eye could make out the trace of poison that was coursing through Potter's veins, taking over the control of his body and flooding his nerves with a pain too intense to be expressed.
Silently, Snape had to agree. If there was anything that could bring about the splitting of a magical core, it was the excruciating pain of the basilisk's poison. Combined with the knowledge that he had failed, that he would die and a second Riddle would be unleashed into the world.
But watch as he may, he couldn't see any evidence of the splitting, neither the bluish light he had read so much about, nor the pulsing of Potter's aura. Only the small shape of a boy, clutching his wounded arm and peering up at his nemesis through dirty glasses.
"You know, the most annoying thing about the whole situation was that damned Riddle. He just wouldn't stop talking!" Potter said crossly, his eyes resting not on the memory of his own body but on the dying basilisk.
"Up to this day I was always sure that you survived your second year, Potter," Snape commented absently and watched the effects of the poison spreading through the child.
"Mostly I did, and you've got to thank Fawkes for that," Potter answered and gestured to the phoenix who had landed by the boy's side, huge tears dropping from his eyes onto the wound.
Potter chuckled when he saw Snape grimace in reply. Snape wondered for a moment if he should worry about the fact that Potter had managed to read his nonverbal doubts about the value of such rescue, but decided not to bother.
The tears cleaned and healed the wound while they were watching, but still Potter-the-child's face was a grimace of pain, for there was too much poison in his blood to let the tears work their magic quickly.
Neither the young Potter nor the man who was to become the Dark Lord seemed to understand the significance of phoenix tears, and Snape found himself questioning slightly vexed if it was a prerequisite of greatness to know nothing about Potions. A good thing he had turned spy. One simply couldn't serve a man who didn't even know the healing properties of the phoenix!
Snape's indignant thoughts were interrupted by the silky voice of Tom Riddle, who had stepped closer to the twitching and shivering Potter-boy, now looming over him, his face half hidden in the dark.
"So ends the famous Harry Potter," He announced, and the ugly gloating in his stance destroyed even the last shred of attraction he had held. Braggart, Snape thought, disgusted, At least he improved his rhetoric abilities a bit over the years. "Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends, defeated at last by the Dark Lord he so unwisely challenged. You'll be back with your dear Mudblood mother soon, Harry… She bought you twelve years of borrowed time… but Lord Voldemort got you in the end, as you knew he must."
"I always thought him too melodramatic," Snape commented lightly to take his mind away from the small boy at their feet whose situation Riddle had so aptly summarized.
Potter grinned in answer, but the smile changed into a thoughtful frown. "Besides, he was wrong about it all," He added. "Dying didn't seem such a bad idea back then. It was easy to accept. No more pain, see my parents again. You know, in a way the memory of Voldemort prepared his own downfall with this little scene."
When Potter fell silent, Snape sent him a glare, a silent order to explain himself, and Potter smiled again in that infuriating way of his.
"He taught me that there were worse things than death," He simply said. "That death was something that would happen to me eventually, and that every hour of my life was already "borrowed", as he put it. I've known that fact since my second year. It makes it easier to let go."
Snape turned back to Potter-the-child, not knowing how to react to the other man's words. The boy was already recovering from the poison, but Snape could see that something was changed about him, as if the basilisk had left some residue in his blood and flesh. There was a new expression in his eyes, and Snape wouldn't have needed Potter-the-man's explanation to understand it.
Since their journey through these memories had begun, Snape had seen many things in this child's eyes, pain and worry and despair, determination and anger. What he now saw, however, was of another quality.
Death had visited the boy, had claimed his future and withdrawn only unwillingly. What he had left was a knowledge usually granted only to much older men, to those who had survived the contact with death and realized that their lives would, finally end.
It was the knowledge of mortality that darkened Potter's eyes, the knowledge that he had taken life and would take life again. The knowledge that he would die one day and that until then he would wander in the shade of death.
It was a knowledge Snape wouldn't have ever wished for a child.
"One could argue whether I could still be called a child after I understood, couldn't one?" Potter asked quietly, his words merging with Snape's thoughts in such a way that it took the Potions Master time to notice that the other man had spoken them.
A week ago he would have argued against Potter's words, would have unleashed a stream of insults about Potter's stupidity, his recklessness and insufficient maturity. But he knew enough grown men who had been all that, and more. Maturity didn't make a man. It was the knowledge of his own, finite nature.
So he nodded silently. They watched on as Tom Riddle finally realized his mistake and threatened first the phoenix, then Potter-the-child. They watched in silence as Fawkes dropped the diary into Potter's lab and the child, driven by some sudden flash of understanding, drove the broken tooth of the giant snake into soft leather and paper.
Someone screamed, but Snape wasn't sure if it was Riddle or the diary itself and then, when the noise had become nearly unbearable, sudden silence descended onto them.
"I think we can leave now," Potter-the-man finally said when his younger counterpart shakily rose from the floor.
Snape however didn't move. "What did you do?" He asked quietly, still concentrating on the boy before him. He seemed terribly lonely as he stood there, swaying slightly, and in a pang of emotions, Snape realized that he didn't want to leave the boy on his own, not here, in this dark and dreary chamber.
"Pardon me?" Potter asked, bemused.
"You just survived a basilisk, its poison and another Dark Lord, Potter. You look terrible. What did you do?"
Potter-the-man shrugged, and a small smile grazed his lips. Perhaps it was a bit sad, but it also held a tiny grain of pride.
"What I always did," He answered as quietly. "I cleaned up, I collected my stuff, and then I took care of the others. What else was there?"
"You could have sat down," Snape suggested while he watched Potter-the-child, who moved like an old man, extract the sword from the dead basilisk. "Let others take care of this mess. Let your friend Weasley get help, or Fawkes."
"Oh, please, Professor," Potter answered, and still there wasn't a hint of anger in his voice, only quiet acceptance and soft amusement. "You saw my memories. Do you really think I would have expected anyone to help me? Besides, I had learned by then that things like these would happen to me all my life. Everybody had been telling me how special I was for more than a year by then."
Or that you were worth nothing at all, Snape thought guiltily, then shrugged that thought away quickly.
"But you were just a boy," He snapped, at the same time not knowing what point he wanted to make. All he felt was the terrible loneliness, the pain that emanated from Potter-the-child, the resignation that spoke from his very movement.
"No," Potter smiled. "I was never just a boy, Professor. I was the Boy Who Lived."
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A/N: Revieeeeeew! Next chapter will see them in Hogwarts. It should be a lot of fun to watch Snape's changed behaviour towards the Boy Who Lived and the Headmaster Who Lived Even Longer, shouldn't it?
I will post a preview to the next chapter in my forum (access it via my profile page) and I will also start to answer review questions there...