unbroken_halo (unbroken_halo) wrote in pornicators, @ 2005-05-01 15:16:00 |
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Original poster: katevalois
SILVER AND BLACK, CHAPTER 8
By Kate Valois
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PAIRING: SS/HP
STATUS: Work in Progress
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Harry Potter lives with a former Hogwarts professor (the former head of Slytherin, no less) between his sixth and seventh years in school after <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />
DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter and Severus Snape are characters belonging to J. K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is intended.
NOTES: I really wanted to upload the entire fic again since I had wonderful feedback for chs1-5, and they are now nicely polished. However, livejournal insisted that the post was too large. :(
Chapter 6:
When Harry reappeared on Roland’s property, he knew he was home.
The sun was setting over the countryside, a brilliant orange that lit the edges of Dantes’ residence and made it seem more utopian than Harry remembered when he apparated earlier that morning. No mothballs, no dust, no confusion here. Only acceptance.
As soon as he walked up the stairs, Roland opened the door and stood above him, glaring, much like the potions master had done earlier that morning.
“I’m not letting you in.” The man folded his arms, temporarily resting against the entrance, his cane propped up under the small doorbell that separated Harry from a warm welcome and a cold night spent under England stars.
Harry thought at first that Dantes was joking and kept climbing.
“I’m not letting you back in here except to floo you out of here.”
Harry stopped halfway up. He started to laugh and then realized the horrible truth. “You...you’re serious.”
“You’re damn right, I’m serious. And no, I don’t want to know what he said or did. Your things are packed.” Roland turned around.
“Why won’t you listen to me, professor?” Harry yelled, marching after Dantes, hoping to stop the man before he tossed Harry’s trunk into the flames. Sure enough, Hedwig’s cage, his bags, and virtually all of his belongings were waiting for him there.
“I’m not a professor anymore.” Dantes’ voice and his expression were detached, his eyes like a dead man’s. “But Severus is. You will not do this to him.”
“Dammit, don’t you see? I don’t CARE IF YOU’RE A TEACHER OR NOT! You’re the only mentor I have!”
“And whose fault is that? Are you so knowledgeable that you can read the minds of other men and know why they don’t play according to your rules?”
Harry’s fist slammed on to the coffee table. “I trusted you!”
“Why don’t you trust yourself, Harry? Am I so naive to think it was possible for you to see the truth? Twelve hours ago you sat in my very kitchen and obsessed over the right answers to questions on a test! And now you’re willing to forget all of that because of a technicality? How much do you want to be a mediwizard anyway? And who taught you that positive reinforcement is the only way to learn?”
Dantes walked with his cane, but that didn’t stop him from pacing and gesticulating wildly, disability or no disability. “Severus is not Dumbledore, Harry. Nor am I. We see greatness in you. But maybe we don’t want to help you cultivate that greatness on your terms anymore.”
“I never said I WANTED you to do anything on my terms! This is not my fault!”
“It’s not about fault, damnit! Don’t you see that? No one cares anymore whose fault it is that we live in times like these. How hard is it just to say two words? Harder than facing dementors or Voldemort?”
“Yes!” Harry sank into the nearest chair and buried his face in his hands.
But Dantes refused to let him get away with it.
Roland knelt and pulled Harry’s hands away from his face. “It’s not, don’t you see? It’s just a different form of strength.” His voice almost sounded gentle now. “It’s a form of surrender.”
Harry let out a disgusted groan, one that seemed to rise from the core of his being.
“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to learn from a man whose mastery of a subject knows no bounds? Can you contemplate the value of an education where you are the only student?”
Roland pressed him further. “And can you imagine, just once, saying ‘I’m sorry’ and having the entire world open up to you in a way I can only dream of?”
All this talk of surrender, of dreams, no boundaries. Harry had a flash of what it must have been like—the two of them, best friends, mixing liquids of cerulean and scarlet, measuring ingredients in a laboratory far removed from the prying eyes of the wizarding world, perhaps falling under each other’s spell for reasons other than just knowledge.
It all made sense now.
“You mean that you . . . fancied him? He isn’t just your friend.” Harry stared back into that deadpan glare, searching for sparks of emotion but afraid to confirm what he already knew to be true.
“We were housemates many years ago. And then we worked together as teachers. It’s a long time to know someone.” Dantes looked as if he would continue but stopped, waiting for Harry’s reaction.
“Harry, you must trust me when I say I know him. When he acts this way, it’s for one reason. He has pinned all of his emotions, albeit mostly negative, on one person. This time that person is you.”
When Roland saw Harry’s face contort, he quickly continued, “It’s not as simple as . . . that. We don’t always have THOSE kinds of feelings for a person who can drive us to extremes. Sometimes it’s just a matter of fate and knowing your destiny is inexplicably bound to another’s life. And since Severus first started saving your life five years ago, he hasn’t been able to release his hold over the value of your existence, no matter how much he belittles it.”
Memories flooded back....whispered countercurses spoken during quidditch in his first year as he flew on a hexed broom, hours spent in “remedial potions,” trying to block out the mysterious halls and doors that Snape so badly wanted him to forget. How easy WOULD it be to unwind after spending all your energy on someone you detested?
Harry didn’t know. And he hoped he would never find out.
Medicine, indeed, was a safer profession than teaching.
Roland stood up, pulling Harry with him.
“Can’t I at least apparate?” Harry begged. Thoughts of sneaking off, perhaps camping out under an oak tree where Dantes wouldn’t know if he made it to Snape’s or not. . . . He couldn’t help but imagine the possibilities. A room at the Leaky Cauldron was looking really appealing right now. It would at least buy him some time to find the courage he needed to face Snape again.
“No, not now. I don’t think he’ll let you in the front door this time.” Roland’s mouth tightened into a wry grin. “Better to use the element of surprise.”
Harry took a deep breath. Roland held out a handful of what Muggles considered harmless dust. The seventeen year old couldn’t help but perceive it as a passport to damnation.
Grabbing the handle of his trunk and Hedwig, he inched ever closer to the fireplace.
“One more thing,” Roland said.
Harry looked into his mentor’s eyes for the last time.
“Happy Birthday,” he said.
The dust crackled into green fire.
Chapter 7:
August was hot, even at midnight. And drought had come once again to England, just as it had two years ago when Harry hid in his aunt’s bushes and waited for news that never came.
In the instant Harry had been flooed to Snape’s living room, he had felt the earth turn slowly toward August and leave July behind, baking his skin as his body was tugged, a bit too leisurely for his tastes, through magical dimensions.
A hand pulled him up.
“You are late,” Snape studied him intently, the same way he had when Harry had uttered his first words in Parseltongue after the disastrous dueling club meeting.
It amazed Harry that Snape and Roland, after weeks of not writing, had now communicated every hour since the boy had left Dantes’ residence that morning.
When Harry glanced around him, he noticed that his test packet was still sitting on the coffee table. But the room was....well, immaculate? Spic and span? He found himself envisioning Muggle cleaning products and television advertisements as his eyes took in a shiny floor and a set of furniture no longer covered in plastic but in forest green throws and fluffy pillows.
“I’m sorry. The floo didn’t work right away.”
“That’s expected. Magic works as well as the sincerity of the spell caster. You didn’t want to be here; the forces transporting you here sensed it.”
“I knew you were angry, and I didn’t want to intrude.”
“The intrusion’s already been made.” Snape eyed the trunk and Hedwig. “Move your things into the guest bedroom on this floor. Then, we’ll talk.” He gestured to the hall on Harry’s left.
Talk? Harry dragged his trunk slowly, silently praying that the floor would swallow him. He still couldn’t imagine himself saying those simple words. Six years of animosity stood between him and maturity.
He saw, first, a brightly lit room, with a lamp whose fringe revealed a glow that was almost red in its hue; the curtains on the large wall-length window were gold, and the chest and mirror were new.
This was...strange.
He picked up Hedwig and set him on the chest. Pulling his trunk farther into the center of the bedroom, Harry noticed a shelf for luggage and a bookcase filled with advanced potions texts and mediwizard anthologies. He ran his finger across the spines.
On the bottom shelf of the bookcase, Harry saw black volumes with the name Hogwarts in gold letters on each. There had to be at least four of them. He knelt for a closer inspection—
“Mr. Potter.” Black robes appeared at the door and then moved away from it. He stood up too quickly, hitting his head on the shelf above him. It was time to face the music.
Following Snape into the living room, Harry drank in the new furnishings, the new tapestries, all of it, as the man in black in front of him remained silent and stoic, choosing an armchair beside the fireplace.
Harry sat down on the new couch, sinking into comfort. Perhaps the floo powder had sent him to the wrong place.
Nevertheless, it was time. Humility was the key to his future. He wouldn’t let his pride stand in the way, even if he was belittled or abused.
“Sir, I’m sorry.” There. That hadn’t been so bad.
Snape wasn’t even looking at him but gazing into the ashes where Harry had landed only moments earlier. “No, you most certainly are not.”
“What?”
“You are sorry that Dantes knows how you acted.” Snape waved his hand as if to swat an imaginary fly. He continued in a monotone that was more unnerving that his usual sarcasm: “You are not sorry for your actions toward me, and you never have been.”
“That used to be true. It’s not anymore.” To prove that he was telling the truth, Harry allowed his mind to open, making himself vulnerable to legilimency.
Snape didn’t accept the invitation. He did not meet Harry’s eyes but continued staring into the fireplace, his expression neutral.
The young man sighed, and found himself looking into the ashes, not knowing who or what to focus on. Anger, he expected. Awkward silences, he didn’t.
But the fact remained that the guest bedroom was Harry’s room. And it had gold curtains. His owl sat safely on a new piece of furniture. There were no cupboards here.
“Thank you,” he said.
Snape turned and looked at him. Harry felt the presence of his teacher on the borders of his mind, softly probing. Maybe it had been a while since the man had been thanked for anything.
“The house....it looks...well, beautiful.”
“I didn’t do it,” he responded, his hand grazing the strands of long black hair and pushing them back before he rested his elbow on the chair’s arm and held his chin with the pose of a man deep in his own thoughts.
“Who did?”
No answer. But the eyes returned to him once again, the subtle legilimens accompanying them. What did Snape read there now? Fatigue? Confusion? The midnight hour was wearing on Harry’s nerves.
“You want to be a mediwizard, but your grades in my class are abysmal.”
Harry thought it best not to respond.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
Harry’s eyes went directly to his lap. He studied a fingernail. “When I cooked for my aunt and uncle, I never had trouble brewing anything they asked of me. I made breakfast and dinner plenty of times. I was actually pretty good.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
His eyes flew up in surprise. Had Snape just complimented him, or was the world turning on its head? “But in that room, with Neville, with you, and everyone else, I get nervous. I can’t remember what order to do things in.”
“That was annoyingly vague, Potter.”
“I don’t know what else to say--I want to do well, but it’s like there’s this wall or something that I can’t get past.”
“That wall is your ego. You take your fear of me, your loathing of that cursed tattoo on my arm, your hatred for Draco, and you ponder the unfairness of it all.”
“But I can’t even get my hands to—“
“You lack the muscle memory, the subtlety that is needed once you allow your mind to focus primarily on one task and to dedicate your whole being to that task. There are demons standing in front of that cauldron, and you refuse to slay them.”
Snape yawned as if to telegraph his boredom. He rose from the chair and regarded Harry with little emotion. “Tomorrow we’ll work on slaying those demons. For now, go to sleep. I’ll wake you early.”
Harry nodded, realizing how surreal it was to have Snape, of all people, waking him in the early hours of a morning. Had the Sorting Hat won the battle when he was eleven, Harry guessed that this moment wouldn’t have seemed so bizarre.
He found his way back into the guest bedroom and shut the door quietly, not wanting to disturb the peace, even though he was sure Snape slept somewhere far from Harry's room. When sleep claimed him, his mind was refreshingly empty for the first time in a week.
Chapter 8:
The early morning light bathed the soft comforter in August warmth as Harry drifted toward consciousness. He heard a sharp rap at the door. He sat up, reaching for his glasses on the side table.
“Coming...” he yawned, and he padded to the door.
“Good morning,” Snape said as Harry attempted to look dignified. It was quite a task when one was wearing a ratty t-shirt and pajama bottoms left over from Dudley’s obsession with Sponge Bob Square Pants.
“Sir,” Harry started to yawn again but stopped himself before rudely opening his mouth fully in front of his professor.
“After you finish your breakfast, join me in the living room for your first lesson. There is coffee in the kitchen, and you may help yourself to whatever you find there.”
Throwing on some dress pants and his black Hogwarts robes, Harry wolfed down some wheat toast and drank some coffee, and he joined his teacher, who had changed of robes and was now casually dressed in...dear Merlin, was it jeans?
“You may wish to change, Mr. Potter.”
He ran back to his bedroom and found jeans of his own. Harry returned to see Snape standing at the long glass windows that provided an almost panoramic view of his landscape. He turned around to face his student.
“Now that it is August, and drought is upon us, we are going to gather the dead roots needed to make Liquidium, a potion used to treat dehydration. The idea is to make something out of nothing or rather, something living out of something that is dying. Once you master this simple potion, you can branch out into the more advanced remedies that can, as I told you on the first day of Potions, put a stopper in death.”
Harry followed Snape out on the lawn, where the sun was already beating down hard on the barren soil. It seemed like this land had not known sustenance since June. He found himself missing the hedges and the flowers that carefully adorned Roland’s own property; after all, Dantes never failed to irrigate and water what Snape would leave bone dry.
“This seems more like Herbology than Potions,” he commented, hoping that the remark would pass for polite conversation and not for a critique of the man’s teaching methods.
“Indeed, many aspects of herbology are found in this branch of the medi-sciences, Potter. If your friend Mr. Longbottom could remember that, he would save your house many lost points this coming term.”
Snape leaned down, extending a gloved hand through the dry dirt and sifting it through his fingers. The thirsty ground offered little that Harry could see, but Snape was hypnotized by it, running his fingers carefully through the particles.
Finally, his teacher found one small twig and held it up to the sunlight. “You can tell it’s a root by the slight curve in the final section. Find me at least six of these on the other side of the lawn,” Snape waved a hand, “and I’ll look in this area. Once we find a dozen, we’ll be ready to prepare the mixture.”
Drought, for Harry, would always have negative connotations. It reminded him of Dementors in Little Whinging and of Sirius trapped in Grimmauld Place. Still, with his hands in the dirt and his face turned toward the sun, he could almost imagine that life was. . . normal.
Of course, then his eyes would fall on Snape’s figure, just several meters away from him, and the feeling of normalcy quickly evaporated.
His mind kept returning to Roland’s admission of intimacy for Snape, and he had to consider that the only reason he was here was because Dantes wanted it. But when had Snape ever done what others wanted him to do?
After an hour of careful digging, Harry brought his instructor the six roots. Snape took them from his hands and held them up to validate their identity. He then slipped all of Harry’s roots in his shirt pocket with a quick nod.
“Do we have all twelve now, sir?” Harry asked.
“Yes, we are finished. The heat will soon be unbearable. It’s time to go inside.”
Both Harry and Snape had dirt on their jeans where they had been searching the dirt, and there was a fair amount of perspiration on their foreheads by the time they finished walking back up the stairs to the house.
Snape set the dozen roots in a small box that he found in the kitchen and returned to the living room with a packet of papers.
“Before we begin the mixing process, Potter, we’ll review your answers to the first questions on your assessment from yesterday.”
Harry sat down beside Snape, his fingers trembling from repeated digging and from the nerves his stomach felt at returning to the scene of the crime. He had hoped they would forget the test and start over.
“Your answers are fair, at least on the first three pages, but then on page four you begin to create your typical red herring response.”
“Uh...what’s that?” Harry shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, wishing he could channel Hermione the way he had once channeled Voldemort.
A sharp turn of the head from Snape was all it took for Harry to remember how much his Potions Master could read of his thoughts. He tried to remain a blank slate.
“A red herring is a fallacy, or mistake, in logic. You attempt to answer my query, but in that attempt you blunder on about an unrelated matter in the hope that I won’t become aware of your ignorance.”
Snape turned to face him, with a jeans covered leg crossed in front of him; he reminded Harry of a Muggle on vacation rather than a teacher at Hogwarts.
“What is so humorous?” Snape looked closer at him, attempting to read him, Harry was sure.
“I...well, it’s just that seeing you dressed like this is a bit odd. I’m not used to it.”
The Slytherin master scowled. “I have little time for your adjustments on such trivial matters as dress code. You live here with me, and I will not be transforming my daily wardrobe to suit your Gryffindor sensibilities. Besides, the pajamas you had on this morning left much to be desired as well.”
Harry felt a blush creeping up his neck and decided not to bring up the topic of clothes again.
“The issue at hand is not my pants, Potter, but why you insist on using red herrings to disguise your ignorance.”
“You always get mad when I say ‘I don’t know.’ You would have killed me if I left any of the test blank. I know you.”
“Do you?”
Harry looked away.
“Tomorrow you will take the test again, but the format will be different. It will be oral, and you will be required to maintain eye contact when answering the exam questions.”
Harry tried to remain composed but his face quickly contorted in shock. “As in, with you having full access to my head and all that stuff?”
“Yes, with me having access to your head and all that stuff.” Snape rolled his eyes. “I can’t break down the barriers you have erected between us without knowing EXACTLY what you KNOW and DON’T know about potions. I’m not going to waste my time this month because you are not honest enough to admit your strengths and weaknesses.”
“Now that you’ve handled that surprise in your usual mature fashion, it is time to prepare the roots. While we prepare the mixture, you will practice for tomorrow. I will not be touching the cauldron when or if you make a mistake, and I will be watching you carefully. You’ll have to withstand the pressure if you want to learn.”
Harry followed Snape into the kitchen. He felt his stomach churning, and he distinctly visualized throwing up the wheat toast.
In the middle of Snape’s kitchen was a large black cauldron, sitting on top of a stove that seemed to be built within the floor. Unlike most Muggle kitchens, Snape’s was the shape of a dome, with shelves and pots adorning the sides of the vast cylindrical room. Harry guessed that as a Potions teacher the kitchen must be the hub of Snape’s work. In Roland’s home, the house had been structured much like Hogwarts, where rectangular halls with shifting stairs had been the norm.
Harry couldn’t help wonder if architecture didn’t speak volumes about a wizard’s skills in one particular arena. After all, hidden corridors and shifting steps indicated a love for defense, not a love of potion making. These two men were foils to each other in more ways than one.
Snape handed him the box with the twelve roots. “Let’s see what you’re really made of now, Potter.” He stepped back from the center of the room, but his eyes never left Harry’s. He remained standing on the other side of the cauldron where he could watch the Gryffindor’s every move.
“The first step toward making Liquidium is obviously to boil plenty of water.”
Harry stepped forward and adjusted the controls on the cauldron’s side.
“You’ll need water first, Mr.Potter.” Snape shook his head and pointed to the corner of the kitchen, where a pump and a bucket stood. “And you’ll need to make sure you have the water before beginning.”
Harry turned off the controls. He pumped water and returned to the cauldron, spilling a few drops as he dumped the gallons of it into the dark abyss.
He adjusted the controls again. The water he spilled on the sides of the pot sizzled when the fire leapt up in a blue flame.
“Take these two jars of belladonna and hellebore,” Snape handed him two large vials. “Measure out the amount needed to poison herbs.”
“But you said we were hydrating, not kill--.” At that precise moment Harry’s memory flashed back to the statement Snape had made that morning, the one in which he told Harry that one could use death itself to conjure life. He took the stoppers out of the vials quickly and measured the proper amount.
Snape had seemed on the verge of shouting, but his professor had looked deeper into Harry’s eyes and seen the memory return. He seemed satisfied.
As Harry poured in the poisonous mixture, Snape did not even look inside the cauldron. He kept his eyes on Harry.
The potion simmered.