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Thank you Iva1201 and InkandPaper for inspiring me to write the next chapter! As you can see, this story is going to be a series of one-shots...
I promise that in future I will not just copy the words from the book...I have not done that here, but I've used a great deal of dialogue, so I would like to "cite"...this is from Harry Potter and the Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone, somewhere around pg. 121 (I think)...and yeah. I own nothing. Except my OCs. Read on!
“Dumbledore.” Snape inclined his head gracefully enough, though he’d never quite gotten the motion down correctly. Bowing to authority, even in the most literal sense, was not something that came easily to him.
Albus Dumbledore smiled as a House-Elf poured light mead into each of the staff’s goblets. “Thank you, Siddie,” he told the creature, who bowed and popped out of sight. “I see our students are here,” he remarked amiably. Snape turned to see the steady stream of young people into the Great Hall and thought to himself that it was ironic how much younger the seventh-years seemed to be each year. When he had been a seventh-year, people had already been engaged...Narcissa Black and her Potions tutor—he smirked at the thought—Lucius Malfoy, the lovely Lily Evans and that Gryffindor prat Potter...
“Severus?” He looked up from his examination of the students to see Dumbledore’s eyes upon him. “I apologize, Headmaster,” he said stiffly.
“Not at all. Apologies are for when one has done another wrong.” It was little things like that which made Dumbledore, in Snape’s opinion, an even greater man than was said of him. The sallow, greasy-haired man gave his employer a rare smile, in which, for just a moment, the little dark-haired boy with bright eyes could be seen.
“They are young, are they not?” Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled as he continued. “Ah, seventeen and still not quite grown up...and then there are the youngest. I remember when you were just a first-year yourself.” He gestured to where the first-years had entered and were standing at the end of the Great Hall, most with terrified expressions on their little faces.
A thought struck Snape. “How—how long has it been...?”
Dumbledore did not need to ask what he meant. “Ten years this Halloween. He received his letter this summer.”
The younger man instantly scanned the sea of nameless young faces. To his annoyance, he saw the unmistakable offspring of Narcissa and Lucius, Draco Malfoy. He hoped the boy would be decent at potion-making; the mother certainly hadn’t been, and had relied on a Gryffindor, Sabrina something, for help, though Lucius had been quite adroit at the subject.
The Sorting Hat began to sing its song, but Snape ignored it. His eyes were still ranging over the first-years.
“You might belong in Gryffindor,
Where dwell the brave at heart,
Their daring, nerve, and chivalry
Set Gryffindors apart...”
Ha. Chivalry. Snape almost snorted. Since when had James Potter ever been—
His gaze rested for a moment on a flash of red in the crowd. He had never actually seen the child, though his nightmares were filled with the dead faces of the parents. Snape had built an image in his mind, one of red hair and green eyes and a bright smile, a little imp like the ones in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. He looked more closely at the redhead, but to his disappointment it turned out to be a gangly boy with freckles, clearly of the Weasley clan. Snape groaned. Not another Weasley...He grudgingly admitted to himself that the older Weasleys—Bill and Charlie and even that little full-of-himself-prick Percy—were all right, but Fred and George were not on his list of favorite people, not that Severus Snape had such a list. They were especially on his “bad list” because they reminded him so strongly of the Marauders. Snape glared at the boy and contemptuously let his gaze drift elsewhere.
“Malfoy, Draco,” called out McGonagall. Snape realized with a start that he hadn’t been paying one whit of attention to the Sorting. He watched with a vague interest as the child swaggered forward—an eleven-year-old knowing how to swagger?—and put the hat on his head; it screamed “SLYTHERIN!” almost instantly. What a surprise, Snape thought dryly.
The next couple of names were not familiar to him, and he watched the mead in his goblet as his thoughts went back to the Weasleys and the Marauders. So similar, the two groups, if groups they could be called...but the Marauders had been far worse, and he had been their number-one target, for reasons he could not explain.
That’s a lie, Severus. They disliked you because you could not deal with their indifference toward you and were openly hostile toward them...
He shook his head, the greasy strands hanging about his face. The Marauders. Even the name was distasteful to him. Lupin...Pettigrew...Black...and—
“Potter, Harry!”
Snape’s head snapped up. A small boy was making his way toward the Sorting Hat.
Beside Snape, Professor Quirrell, the shrinking, scared-of-his-own-shadow new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, jerked in his seat. “Did she say Harry Potter?” he whispered to Snape, who ignored him.
This cannot be happening.
The boy did not have red hair. Snape watched with horror as a miniature James Potter sat on the stool and put the Sorting Hat over his head.
-
Snape sat glaring at the table after everything had been cleared away. The other teachers, used to his rather sour demeanor, left him there and went to go ready their classrooms for the next day’s opening lesson. Snape stared at the place where the Sorting Hat had been, and clenched one fist.
“Severus.” Dumbledore sat down beside him. Snape did not reply at first, finally gritting out, “You did not tell me that he looked like bloody Potter!”
Dumbledore sighed. “I know, Severus. I must admit, though, I am somewhat surprised that you are more troubled by his appearance than by his family name.”
Snape looked at him. “I had always thought of him,” he said stiffly, “as Lily’s son.”
“And indeed you should still.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Snape glared at the table.
“Harry,” said Dumbledore gently, “is half James, but he is also half Lily Evans. I know James and his friends were not—kind to you, but...” He stopped, then said delicately, “Do remember that Harry is not James, Severus.”
As the Headmaster walked away, Snape looked at his hands. I don’t believe that is possible.
-
Snape’s class looked terrified as he let his eyes travel lazily over them. He nearly smirked. This was the usual reaction, and it gave him satisfaction each year to know that he still made an impression on the nasty little buggers. Harry Potter was sitting at a desk with the Weasley boy—Ronald Bilius Weasley, according to Snape’s scroll—and the irony of situation was not lost on him. Two blood-traitors; that had been how Potter and Black’s little gang had begun.
He began calling names. When he reached Potter’s, he smirked openly. Forget what Dumbledore had said; the boy was the spitting image of his father, even if he did have Lily’s eyes. Even had Snape been in a good mood—less rare than his colleagues believed—he would not have ascribed that facial expression to anyone but James. No calling the boy “Harry”; it was and always would be “Potter.”
“Ah, yes. Harry Potter. Our new—celebrity.”
Malfoy and his minions sniggered. Snape watched for a moment, mood souring further, as the boy’s face colored in a way that reminded him strongly of Lily. He finished the roll-call and set the scroll on his desk, turning to the class.
“You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making.” The class watched him on tenterhooks, and he regarded them coldly, particularly the girl—Granger?—who sat near Potter and who was watching him with sickening eagerness, almost literally hanging on his every word. “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...” He put his hands behind his back. “I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.”
Silence.
Potter looked at the Weasley boy, confusion on both their faces. Snape’s opinion of the boy fell even lower. Lily had told him that she had played with Muggle chemistry sets—the Muggle equivalent of potion-making—as a child. Her son clearly had done no such thing. “Potter!” he barked. “What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”
Potter blanched and turned quickly to Weasley and Granger, whose hand shot into the air. Weasley offered no help, and Granger seemed intent upon proving herself, not helping Potter.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said quietly. Snape sneered. Not the brash answer he had expected, but the ignorance was the same. How James Potter had made it to Head Boy he’d never understood. Hadn’t it been obvious to Dumbledore that the boy had copied off Lupin all those years? “Tut, tut—fame clearly isn’t everything.” The sneer grew wider as he remembered how James had always tried to show off for Lily in Potions...perhaps the boy had some sense of propriety after all.
But he doubted it.
He asked another question. It wasn’t a simple one, but neither had the other been. He ignored the little voice in the back of his head that told him he was being unfair; the look on miniature-James’s face was too good to pass up.
“Thought you wouldn’t open a book before coming, eh, Potter?”
Lily’s eyes glared at him. He viciously squashed the little voice in his head. “What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said quietly. “I think Hermione does, though, why don’t you try her?”
Snape glared at his victim and took a point from Gryffindor, but inside he was grinning. Harry Potter’s disrespect had once and for all marked him in Snape’s mind as James Potter’s son.
Snape would take full advantage of that fact.
He got his first real opportunity when Neville Longbottom—who clearly had not inherited the talent of his Auror parents—destroyed Finnigan’s cauldron, spilling acidic potion all over himself.
“Take him to the hospital wing,” he snarled at Finnigan. “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, did you? That’s another point you’ve lost for Gryffindor.”
At that moment, Potter looked so much like his father that it took all Snape’s considerable willpower not to laugh triumphantly. This was going to be an interesting year indeed.
Ivy