xvi. fire burn and cauldron bubble

Severus was convinced he never got around to growing up.

Not really, at any rate. He often reflected on his immaturity, his suspended evolution, when his mind wandered in the dead hours of the morning—a time of day even the ghosts found themselves drifting through with half-closed eyes and weary yawns. Severus was trapped in a limbo of maturation, not unlike those prepubescent dunderheads he taught, the tangle of a half-lived existence that seemed to have no beginning nor end; just endless, spiraling knots. It was the result of spending his life among children, of never leaving Hogwarts—except for those three horrendous years he submitted himself to the thrall of a madman.

Those three years he would spend the rest of his life atoning for.

He was both too old and too young; too old to be a child and too young to be an adult, constantly under the scrutiny of those who taught him while he attended the school, and Severus often felt as if he'd simply exchanged his class schedule for a lesson plan and continued on without a thought. Dumbledore addressed him as "my dear boy," Minerva chided him to be "kinder, more empathetic," and Filius still called him "Mr. Snape" on occasion, much to the wizard's chagrin.

Memories blurred and echoed in the castle's unchanging halls. The sensation worsened whenever he crossed paths with the relatives or children of those he went to school with. He'd chastise Jacob Rowle and suddenly remember the boy's father, Thorfinn Rowle, crowing about joining the Dark Lord, telling young Severus he'd "better take care of his Gryffindor bullies, before someone took care of him." He'd grade an essay for a Rosier cousin and remember completing assignments for Evan Rosier, just to be paid Knuts from the pure-blood boy's pocket change.

He'd hear girlish laughter and think of red hair in the sunlight, bright like fresh apples.

He'd see pale eyes and think of a haughty boy now rotting in a cell. Good riddance.

The cowardly fear of what nightmares awaited him, unborn until he entered the Potions classroom for his first year Slytherin class, sickened Severus. He didn't want to open the classroom door. Hell no. He wanted to return to his quarters and swill enough Dreamless Sleep to sleep through the next seven years.

Seven years. Merlin, Severus knew he probably wouldn't survive that long.

The door bounced off the stone wall with a clatter when he strolled into the dungeon, startling the first years out of their tentative conversations. Their faces shone ghoulish in the candlelight reflected by the specimen jars and Severus sneered, thrusting his robes aside as he sank onto the chair behind his desk. The first name on the role call lit a fire in his gut and he regretted getting up that fucking morning.

"Elara Black."

He wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen her with his own eyes, hadn't heard the discreet whispers shared between the others in the staffroom. "His daughter," they said as if afraid to use the actual name. "And Marlene's. Poor dear." Severus always thought Black had a thing for the werewolf—but there sat evidence to the contrary in the middle of his classroom, a mirror image to the malicious bastard who almost killed Severus in their youth. He met her eyes and heard Black's voice, "All right there, Snivellus?"

"Present, sir."

Of course she sat by Lily's daughter. Of course.

He dreaded the echoes he would hear when he looked at the girl. Severus had caught a glimpse of that atrocious Potter hair at the Sorting and had looked away—had looked anywhere but at the child he'd sworn on his life to protect. What he hadn't expected, however, was for there to be no echo; Severus glanced at Harriet Potter and realized she only vaguely resembled James or Lily, a palimpsest of two originals blurred to create something other.

She had none of Lily's softness, none of James' arrogance. The girl glanced about at the grim decor with the same tentative curiosity he'd seen Muggles use at crash sites, her expression openly fascinated, but her gaze dark, closed off. Even in the height of war, Lily's eyes had sparked bright as if the witch contained an endless vault of joy in her head she could delve into whenever she wanted—and the girl's eyes reflected none of that.

She was not James, and she was not Lily. She was a girl with hair like a Niffler, eyes like a jackal, and a tie of green and silver cinched about her throat. When the Hat had shouted Slytherin, parts of him rejoiced and parts of him despaired, because he wanted proof that even the good got sent to the snake pit sometimes, but he hadn't wanted that for her. Nothing good could last in Slytherin's hands.

They should check to see if Potter is still spinning in his grave, Severus thought with a snort. He returned his attention to the list before him, marginally relieved, marginally disappointed, and continued to call names.

"Ah, Neville Longbottom." He flicked the parchment, voice thick with sarcasm. "Of course. The Boy Who Lived. It appears, class, our savior has taken leave of his busy traveling schedule to bestow us with his presence. How remarkable."

Severus had a role to play. He knew this—and yet it came so easily, as if it wasn't a role at all, Slytherins chortling like their fatuous fucking parents used to do whenever the Dark Lord tortured the "unworthy," and Severus gloried in the vitriol bubbling in his veins like poison. The Boy Who Lived To Do Fuck All, his mind snarled, even as a very small voice murmured, It's not his fault. No, no it wasn't Longbottom's fault the world was filled with idiots, but that didn't make it simpler for Severus to swallow. The boy's ignorance chaffed.

Longbottom played poster boy for the Ministry, said, "The Dark Lord's dead,"and the public cheered, all while men like Severus and Dumbledore knew better. Oh, how they knew better. The Dark Lord was anything but dead.

"Tell me, Longbottom: what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

An unfair question, but a plausible one for a brat like Longbottom, inundated with tutors since he'd first worn swaddling clothes. "I don't know, sir," the boy said with an unaffected shrug.

"No?" Severus replied in a voice barely above a whisper. He rose from his behind his desk, walking slowly between the tables, arms crossed. A deathly hush encumbered the dungeon. "Let's try again, shall we? Where, Mr Longbottom, would you find a bezoar?"

"I don't know."

From the corner of his eye, Severus saw one of the bushy-haired Slytherin girls raise her hand, the motion determined. Who was she? Not a Death Eater's kid, and there'd been only two names on the register that he didn't recognize. Either Davis or Granger, Lucius' ward. Severus tipped his dark gaze in her direction and gave his head a definite jerk to the side. Paling, she dropped her arm again.

"Do you even know what a bezoar is, Longbottom?"

"No." Longbottom gave him a peeved look and most of the Gryffindors fumed as Severus belittled their golden scion.

"What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

The tension shifted in the boy's round face, his mouth quirking into a grin. "Nothing. They're both the same plant, called aconite."

"My, my," Severus sneered. "One in three. Please forgive if I don't hold my breath for those odds in your marks, Longbottom."

Malfoy laughed loudest. At her table near the front, Severus spotted the Potter girl discreetly flipping through the back of the textbook, terrified of being called on next. He ignored her and Black's spawn sitting at her side.

He didn't know which one the bushy-haired girl at the front table was, so he said, "Granger," aloud, and was rewarded for the lucky guess when she lifted her gaze from her notes. "What is the result of adding powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

"The Draught of Living Death, sir."

"Where is a bezoar found?"

"In the stomach of a goat, sir."

"What is it used for?"

"An antidote for most poisons, and several kinds of venom, including those man-made and those that occur naturally—."

Severus cut her off. "Name one potion that uses aconite."

Here she paused and gave his question thought, brow furrowed in concentration. "The—the Wideye Potion, sir?"

"Are you asking me, Miss Granger?"

"No, sir."

"Then you would be correct." He swept past the table toward his desk again. "That'll be ten points to Slytherin…and ten points from Gryffindor."

Minerva's little lions gasped, outraged. Longbottom scoffed and curled his lip. "That's hardly fair, sir."

Severus only smiled. "Let me be the first to inform you, Longbottom; life isn't fair."

xXxXx

His hand began to itch as he stood over Longbottom's cauldron and sneered at the contents.

Severus scratched at his palm without thought as he berated the boy and his partner, Weasley, for the globular mess they'd concocted—and for nearly exploding a perfectly simple Cure for Boils by not taking the cauldron from the flames before adding the porcupine quills. He'd caught them in time, if only just, smacking the quills from Weasley's fingers an instant before he'd dumped them into the stew.

Of course, not a moment later, acrid smoke billowed through the dungeon as a cauldron near the front of the room collapsed, and Severus almost swore aloud.

The Potter girl had quick reflexes, as she managed to shove herself and Black aside before the main deluge doused them, though part of her leg was already breaking out in furious boils. Black, wringing her hands, was apologizing profusely to Potter as Severus swept over them and Vanished the botched potion, his temper close to snapping.

"What are you idiots doing?" he hissed in an undertone. The Gryffindors were plainly enjoying their failure and Severus couldn't have that kind of dissension in his dungeon. Gryffindors couldn't leave his class looking pleased, for Merlin's sake. "Did you not just hear me tell off Longbottom and Weasley for almost doing the same exact thing?!"

"We took the cauldron off the heat," Black argued, her face red and flustered. Angry as he was, Severus did, in fact, see that the ruin of Potter's cauldron had been lifted from flame and set upon the proper cooling rack so it wouldn't scorch the tabletop. "I was—I was just stirring it, like the instruction said—sir." Her tone corrected itself when she remembered to whom she spoke.

Severus glared at the mess. "You must have not paid attention to the temperature then. Idiots." He wasn't sure what'd gone wrong, but in a decade of teaching Potions, Severus had never seen a Cure for Boils combust when someone was "just stirring it." They did something to it, foolish brats.

"Sir?" Potter asked, and Severus forced himself to look down—down all the way at girl he loomed above. Potter was thin; short and thin and fine-boned like a mottled fledgling, not at all like her tall, winsome mother, or James Potter, who had been athletic and statuesque—for all that he was a great ruddy fathead. "Can I go to the infirmary?"

"No," Severus snapped. Ignoring her flabbergasted expression, he pointed his wand toward the storage cupboard and waited, hand extended, until the door banged open and jar of ointment smacked into his palm. "There's no need to bother Madam Pomfrey with something so imbecilic." Severus had no wish for details of this incident to find a home in the wrong ears.

He shoved the medicine at her, then glowered at Black. The contrite expression the girl wore when glancing toward Potter worried him more than any arrogance or malice he might have seen written in her face. With his luck, it would figure the bloody traitor's heir would befriend Lily's daughter. As if Black Senior hadn't done enough to the Potters.

Another problem for another day.

Severus turned then and found every eye in the dungeon upon him. He bore his teeth. "Get back to work."

The lesson ended soon afterward, potions divided into slender vials and neatly sorted into the rack waiting on his desk. Severus ordered them to clean their stations but inevitably found himself lingering after the students ran from the dungeon, using his wand to Scourgify the tables, chairs, and floor, repairing knife marks gouged into the wood, muttering darkly over the residual damage wrought by inconsiderate children wielding scalpels and fire and acidic concoctions. Lunch had started by the time he could finally leave.

Which was why Severus wasn't prepared for the voice that came slithering out from the shadows when he opened the classroom door.

"Find any potential among the dregs, Severus?"

Tom Slytherin, he knew, was not actually a Slytherin—no more than Severus was a Prince, or their bigoted Minister a Gaunt, or the Dark Lord named Voldemort. He also knew that Slytherin was and was not Tom Riddle, not exactly, and the only person who fully understood how that phenomenon came to pass was Dumbledore himself. Severus had given up questioning the Headmaster on the matter years ago. All that mattered was that no Ministry law in existence, be it old or new, could draw a connection between the seemingly youthful wizard before him and the twisted wretch Severus had served in his youth.

All attempts to oust Slytherin from the school—both bodily and judicially—had been met with the kind of legal fluidity that came from years and years of blackmailing school governors and Ministry officials, whispering the right words into the ears of bylaw creators, watching and waiting with the kind of uncanny patience Severus had never thought possible for the Dark Lord. Albus had tried to duel him and lost his arm. Severus had tried to poison him and lost his eye.

"No," he replied to the shorter wizard stepping into the wavering torchlight. Tom had a sense of melodrama just like the Dark Lord; he always dressed in robes tooled with his House colors, snakes on the hem and silver buttons on the waistcoat. His appearance gave him effortless charm, sharp cheekbones and symmetrical features, tidy hair and a guileless smile. Severus often pondered the number of witches—and wizards—who had been lured to their doom by that young face. "They are as insipid as ever and singularly dull. Though, Nott showed some instinct with the skill."

Had he been speaking to the Minister, he would have put on airs about Lucius' son or the Runcorn girl or Parkinson, but the running tally of which master the Death Eaters served was always shifting, and so he praised Nott Junior—well, as much as Severus ever praised anyone. There was a kind of sick irony in the illusions cast by these men who were and were not Voldemort; in the open, they presented themselves as pure-blood lords of particular talents, and behind closed doors they one and all claimed to be the Dark Lord and demanded submission, leaving the Death Eaters to play a game of confused musical chairs with their loyalty.

"Oh?" Slytherin said, head tipping. "A pity—though you are ruthless in your artistry, aren't you? A few showed promise in Darks Arts." When speaking to Severus or to that churlish bastard Selwyn he referred to the Defense class solely as "Dark Arts." Tom'd been doing so for years, and if that wasn't sign of ominous portents, Severus didn't know what was. "The Potter girl, for instance."

The sudden urge to ram Slytherin's sodding head into the stones scoured through Severus and he would have done so, had he thought it'd do anything. He'd watched the wizard drink a glass of pumpkin juice laced with enough nightshade and aconite to take down an Erumpent without flinching. Slytherin would undoubtedly survive a good head bashing.

"Miss Potter," he said with uncaring ice in his voice. "Is as perfectly average as the rest."

Slytherin just smiled.

A/N: Fun fact, but the majority of Harriet's classes would be taught by Slytherins, if you believe the fanon of Professor Sinistra being in Slytherin. I try to avoid repeating canon dialog, especially since we've all most likely read it a million times in different fics, but a few lines are rather iconic. If I use them, I paraphrase.