First Time for Everything Fest: FIC: One Thousand Words Title: One Thousand Words Author:dracofiend Rating: G Word count: ~6,000 words Content/Warning(s): None – Snape and Harry gen. Summary: AU. What is a picture worth? A/N: The first time Harry trusts Snape.
One Thousand Words
“That’s Professor Snape.”
Snape. The word stopped Harry’s heart, travelled down his throat and dropped into the pocket of his brand-new robes where the photograph was pressed stiff and straight to his side. It was the only one he had left of a box of photographs, one he’d found in his aunt and uncle’s closet one day whilst cleaning. He’d been standing on a step-stool and pulled it from the shelf, the feather duster fallen to the carpet, and had opened it to find the smiling auburn-headed girl whose face he didn’t know, her arms around the shoulders of others, equally unknown. He’d stared so hard at them, at the dark-haired boys and the fair-haired girls around her, that he hadn’t heard his aunt coming into the closet.
“Give me that,” she had said, her voice and face terrible. She had snatched the box from his grasp and jammed the dusty cardboard lid closed, whirling away with her lips in a line that meant punishment was soon to follow. Harry had slowly stepped from the stool, picked up the duster, and continued with his chores, and he never found that box again. He spent hours afterward, shut up in his cupboard, studying the photograph he had saved, the one he had been holding when Aunt Petunia had burst in, the one she hadn’t seen curled tight behind his hand.
It was warm now, against the heat of his ribcage, and the creases he had put in it were only faint cracks in the faded colors. His mum’s smile was still bright, a beam of goodness undimmed, directed at the boy in the picture, whose long thin face betrayed a mere hint of a smile, whose skinny arm curved around her shoulder like a shield. Envy and admiration and wonder swirled in Harry’s stomach whenever he looked at this boy. Me and Mr Severus Snape, mucking about as usual, it said on the back in curly writing. 1973.
Harry looked up at the dais, his heart swelling too large beneath his starched shirt. Professor Snape, he thought dizzily, his legs twitching with the urge to run up there this very instant. He watched Professor Snape lean toward Professor Quirrell, watched his lips move as he spoke in reply, and it was like finding a treasure, something familiar in this strange new world of magic and impossibilities. All at once the professor’s eyes found his. They were dark, darker than in the photo, and they glinted across the broad stone hall at him, in recognition.
Harry smiled. Professor Snape’s attention snapped away as the headmaster’s long white beard came into view. Harry turned back to his treacle tart, hardly able to breathe.
***
Professor Snape hated him.
His first Potions class had been like emerging from slumber and stumbling into an icy ocean headlong. The professor’s disdain was bewildering, relentless—it had Harry stuttering I don’t know to each of Professor Snape’s questions about asphodel and wormwood and porcupine quills, I don’t know I don’t know, as Professor Snape’s sneers and eyes grew more pointed, his whispers more sly, until Harry fell quiet in his haze of confusion, his anguish laced with sorrow as he lost his mother’s friend. Our new celebrity,A point from Gryffindor House for your cheek, Professor Snape had said, but Harry, struggling to keep his eyes unfogged on the quill in his hand, on the words that he wrote, barely heard.
***
For all the Dursleys had failed to nurture Harry, that mercurial home, with its volatile tempers and capricious punishments, had given him the double-edged gift of resiliency. How many times had he been locked up by his uncle, only to steal into the kitchen at night, knowing the price to be paid for a second transgression hard on the heels of the first? How many times had he stolen into his cousin’s bedroom to retrieve a toy car, a plastic horse, knowing the consequences if the goods were re-discovered by his cousin’s groping hands? Harry well knew—perseverance could be costly—yet nothing was left to him except to labour on.
And so it was that Harry crept one day into the dungeons, alone. It was a Saturday afternoon, a fine golden day full of brisk autumn air and crunching leaves and ruddy noses—outside. In the bowels of the castle, it was decidedly chilly. Harry wished he had put on his robes or his scarf before seeking out Professor Snape’s office. The portraits were unfamiliar in these drafty corridors, and they glared down at him with grim expressions from their ornately heavy frames. One or two raised an eyebrow in disapproving surprise as he passed; none deigned to utter a single word.
Slowly Harry came to the threshold of a massive wooden door bound in iron; snakes carved from stone undulated around its edges, their bodies coiled, their heads upraised, as if to forbid entry. Harry drew in a deep breath—the coldness rushed to his lungs—and grasped the serpentine knocker. It was fat and metal-scaled in his fingers, as weighty as it seemed, and his knuckles scraped the uneven surface of the door as he lifted it up and dropped it down, twice before he could think.
The ringing of metal was swallowed by the wooden panelling of the door, and it sounded far-off, muffled to Harry’s ears. He might not be in, Harry thought to himself. The photograph in his trousers pocket crinkled softly, bending as he took a step back. Harry hesitated, his breath coming in sharp little jags that he dared not release from the confines of his chest. He stepped forward and stretched his hand out again.
The door opened with an abrupt creaking, swinging inward impatiently. Harry swallowed his startlement and jerked himself across the threshold, into a high-ceilinged chamber that loomed far above him, drafty and lit orange by dozens of steely wall sconces, wrought into twisting shapes that cast snaking shadows along the drapery and stone. Each wall bore shelves; each shelf bore jars. The jars stretched from floor to roof and were of varying height and width—they were round and oblong and slender and squat, they were filled with oils and dried roots and unidentifiable anatomy. Harry’s breath was stolen from him as he surveyed this wealth. It rushed back, nearly choking him, as he glimpsed the professor sitting at the end of the room, bent over a stack of parchment, perfectly still. Professor Snape’s quill flashed white—there came the strike of the nib and his irritated voice.
“What is it?”
Harry jumped. Professor Snape flicked the marked essay atop the rest, set in a haphazard pile to one side. He began reading the next one in his stack.
“Sorry to bother you,” Harry began, swallowing to moisten his throat. He pressed his hands into the sides of his legs and straightened, as his aunt always commanded. The photo he could feel through the lining of his robes, where its corners jutted into his waist. “I just—I had a question.”
The professor’s brow arched; he didn’t raise his head.
“Have you consulted your textbook?”
Harry hesitated—he wanted to explain, but the professor spoke into the silence too soon.
“I thought not,” Professor Snape said, over the scratch of his quill. “No doubt it has escaped your notice, but one finds so many foolish questions need never be asked if one simply reads his textbook.”
The cold emphasis on these last words had Harry blurting, “It’s not about Potions!” Professor Snape’s ruthless quill didn’t pause. He scribbled something at the top of the parchment and tossed it to the pile, his brow darkening momentarily before easing into its usual creases.
“No?” he asked, reaching for the next scroll. He had yet to raise his eyes to Harry. “Then I’m at a loss as to what you’re doing here, Potter. Professor McGonagall’s office isn’t remotely near mine—surely even you couldn’t have mistaken the two.”
“No, it’s—” Harry stuttered, more unsure than ever. He edged unconsciously toward the door. “It’s about my mum,” he managed. “Er, Lily Evans?”
It stopped the quill at once. For an instant.
“Er, did you know her? Sir?” Harry asked, when Professor Snape resumed his marking as if he hadn’t heard.
“I thought you knew her and I wanted to ask—” Harry tried again, finding it easier to make the words come with each attempt.
“What gives you the impression that I ever had anything to do with your mother?” the professor suddenly asked, in that casual manner that had Harry’s pulse racing, filling his throat. Uncle Vernon did this too, sometimes, and it never meant well. For a fleeting moment Harry considered lying, retreating from this terrifying chamber with its terrifying man, restoring the photo to its hiding place at the bottom of his trunk. But he was in the dungeon now, with Severus Snape before him—Severus Snape, whom he had gazed at and imagined for so long, his mother’s best friend. Harry had dreamed of meeting the boy in the picture, the one his mother so plainly adored—he hadn’t thought it could happen, but here he was.
“I have this photo.” Harry reached into his pocket, thinking at least Professor Snape wouldn’t accuse him of making things up the way Uncle Vernon did. “I’m not sure where she took it, but it’s my mum.” He felt an edge snag and he eased it out more carefully with both hands—it was all he had of his mother and he couldn’t let it tear. When he looked up again, Professor Snape was staring at him intensely, brows beetled like black clouds over his glittering eyes.
“Give it to me.”
Harry took a step forward, and another, moving silently across the well-trod rug to where the professor sat behind his great desk. It was dark carved wood, immense, and Harry could see only sheaves of parchment, books, quills and inkstands, a row of golden hourglasses, and Professor Snape, with a sallow hand outstretched, protruding from a buttoned sleeve.
Harry inhaled and held out the photograph.
“I think—it’s you there with her, isn’t it, sir?” He had seen the way photos in the wizarding world move—every morning the Daily Prophet’s front page is just like old-fashioned black-and-white cartoons. “It doesn’t move,” Harry said, his eyes fixed on the back of the photo as the professor took it from him. “It’s too bad.” He felt oddly apologetic. There was a long pause next, as Professor Snape stared down at the photograph, and Harry stared at him. His expression revealed nothing.
Harry was about to ask where the picture had been taken—he’d often guessed at it. Never could he have guessed it might be somewhere like Hogwarts.
“You may go.” Professor Snape spoke abruptly, in a tight, strange voice.
Harry blinked, uncertain. “Professor, I wanted to ask—”
“Get out!” Professor Snape barked all at once. His shout rang loudly and Harry saw, with a leap in his chest, Professor Snape’s fingers close on his picture, crushing it in his hand and Harry lunged forward to save it, save it—he flung his arms over the desk, toppling quills and a book that landed with a sharp smack but Professor Snape had pushed back his chair and risen to his feet. He towered over Harry, his eyes wide and black and he thundered, one finger jabbing at the door behind Harry, “OUT! And not a word of this to a soul or you will regret it!”
Harry tried to reach for the photograph, still clutched in the professor’s fingers (it was bent, there in the middle, the bottom right corner, stop it, stop it)—he opened his mouth in a wild protest, felt his heart jostle his ribs.
“I said get out!” Professor Snape snarled, and an invisible force pushed at Harry, pushed him away from the professor’s desk, his photograph, from that pale fearsome face. Unable to resist, Harry stumbled backward a few steps, nearly fell to the stone, then somehow, something turned him around and he fled from the room. He didn’t stop running until he was halfway up the Gryffindor tower, and there he stopped to breathe, to cough back tears, to breathe, to wonder desperately why it had all gone wrong.
***
During the second week of classes, Harry struggled to do everything right in Potions. He diced instead of chopped, simmered instead of boiled, counted out winglets and measured powdered scales to exacting degree. He would make Professor Snape stop hating him, he thought, as he gently skinned his shrivelfigs. The professor had berated Seamus Finnegan earlier for massacring his shrivelfigs, and Harry had determined it would not happen to him. Once Professor Snape saw that Harry wasn’t a dunderhead, that he was, in fact, paying very close attention to every word in every class, then Harry could go back and ask for his picture. Doing what you were told quickly and quietly often worked at home—only Dudley sometimes ignored the rule and continued in his harassment, but Aunt Petunia would intervene if Harry happened to be in the middle of some chore she had set him. Professor Snape, he thought, seemed to be like the Dursleys—quick to anger and possessed of an inexplicable antagonism toward Harry. But underneath, Harry told himself stubbornly as he began crushing the black beetles, Professor Snape was different. Underneath. Otherwise why would he and his mum have been such great friends? And yet, the voice of doubt whispered in his ear, Aunt Petunia was your mum’s sister…
“Harry, you can put in the shrivelfigs now, please,” said Hermione Granger. Harry had quickly realized after the first day that, while she was insufferably bossy, Hermione was also the smartest in their class, and if Harry were to produce perfect potions, he’d need Hermione’s help. So he had made sure to sidle next to her as they all came into the Potions room the following day, and then he had taken the seat next to her while the professor swept up to the front. He had thrown an apologetic look in Ron Weasley’s direction—Ron was quickly becoming his constant companion—and pretended not to see the face of protest Ron made. At the end of that class, Professor Snape had announced they would remain in their pairs until they had covered the basic sleeping and rousing potions. And so it was that Harry carefully placed even slices of shrivelfig into the cauldron, one by one without a single splash, under Hermione’s watchful eye.
“Good,” Hermione said, bending back to the book. “Now I’ll pour in the catsbile.” She wrinkled her nose as she raised the vial of yellow-green liquid that she had painstakingly filtered and decanted yesterday. It’s not really catsbile, she had informed Harry in her I’m-so-knowledgeable voice. It’s extracted from a variant of the cat-o’-nine-tails plant, you see. Harry caught a whiff and tried not to cough—he thought perhaps Hermione had not been entirely correct as to the origin of the name. “You can go on grinding those beetles,” Hermione instructed him. “And remember, we need that to be really fine, like dust.”
Harry wanted to ask how Hermione knew it had to be fine like dust—that wasn’t in the book—but he kept his mouth shut and picked up the mortar and pestle. He pictured his mother’s face, smiling up at Severus Snape, and the coolness of the boy’s black eyes as he hugged her close.
He would get it back.
***
Their first sleeping draft was a success, if Professor Snape’s stiff nod and prompt movement to examine the next cauldron was any indication, as their next (a variation that induced sleep walking) and their next (a variation that induced sleep talking). The last Potions class of the week had gone equally well—it was a summation of the week’s studies, and the class had been instructed to prepare a potion that would result in the sleeper both mumbling and ambulating while fully asleep. They had briefly studied the interactions of the ingredients they had been using and set to the task without specific guidelines—all they had to go by was a vial of the end result, brewed by the professor.
“It’s not viscous enough,” Hermione said, brows knitted. She removed the stirring rod from their cauldron and flipped through her notes. Harry was also concerned. They had worked out the list of ingredients, the quantities, the preparations, and had spent half the night doing it. He was tired, and he couldn’t deny that the thrill of discovering Hogwarts, and schoolmates, and spells, and someone who had known his mother, was beginning to overwhelm him, just a little.
“Maybe it needs more flobberworm mucus,” Harry suggested. He turned the page of his textbook to review the chapter on interactions.
“No, that would dilute the valerian too much, and if we add more valerian it’ll turn lumpy,” Hermione replied. “Read the section on interactions between ingredients of differing mediums.”
Harry had, twice, but he skimmed the chapter to find it again. Sure enough, Hermione was right. Harry frowned, re-reading the section. “A paste,” he muttered.
“What?” Hermione sounded annoyed. “No, we can’t use a paste, we’d have to use something powdered and everything—”
“Not with powder, with the mucus,” Harry said. “In paste form, the interaction won’t be dilutive.” He pushed the book over, tapping the text.
Hermione wasn’t convinced. “This talks about standard pastes, which are powder- and water-based, not mucus-based. There could be some property that we don’t know about that’ll ruin the whole thing.”
“Yeah and if we let the potion be as it is, it won’t work,” Harry argued. “You said so yourself, it’s not viscous enough. This won’t pass muster with Professor Snape. There are only twenty minutes left—if we make the paste now and put it in, there will still be enough time for it to simmer.”
“But if it doesn’t work, our current potion will still be a lot closer—”
“You think he gives partial credit?” Harry looked at Hermione. She bit her lip.
“Fine,” she blew out, shaking her bushy head. Quickly they gathered up the mucus and the remaining ingredients and crafted the paste, moving as rapidly as they could without mangling the delicate herbs and animal parts. Hermione kept an eye on the clock, announcing the time remaining every two minutes until Harry finally snapped at her to stop, she was making his hands shake. The final ten minutes were excruciating, as they could only watch their cauldron simmer as they cleaned their work station and hoped for the best.
“Time!” Professor Snape barked from his desk at last, and Harry let out the breath he’d been holding for ten minutes. Beside him, Hermione did the same. They looked at each other with anxious grins. “Let’s see what horrors you lot have concocted this time,” Professor Snape said as he began stalking down the aisle on the far left. Harry watched as he peered into Pansy Parkinson’s and Millicent Bulstrode’s cauldron.
“Passable,” he sniffed. “A bit too like soup.” He always went easy on the Slytherins, Harry had noticed. It would’ve seemed unfair had the other heads of houses not been the same with their own house members. Professor Snape moved on to Seamus’ and Ron’s cauldron and dismissed it with half a glance. “Dismal. Apparently you misplaced the vial of potion I had prepared. This bears zero resemblance to that, and therefore deserves zero marks.” Ron and Seamus didn’t say anything, but shared an outraged look. Harry gave Ron a sympathetic shrug, and felt wholeheartedly relieved to be sitting next to Hermione.
They watched the professor belittle most cauldrons’ contents and lavishly praise that of Draco Malfoy and Vincent Crabbe (“Finely brewed, Mr Malfoy, Mr Crabbe—nearly equal to my own.”) and then, the moment arrived. Professor Snape loomed over Harry’s and Hermione’s work, stirred it, raised the glass stirrer into the air, narrowed his eyes at the pale green slime coating the end. He tilted it down to watch the potion slide from the stirrer and drop unceremoniously back from whence it came, with a slow plop, plop, plop.
He released the stirrer to the cauldron. “Admirable, Ms Granger.” The words were thickly coated with sarcasm. Professor Snape turned away.
“Actually, it was Harry who did it,” Hermione suddenly spoke up. Professor Snape and Harry froze. “He came up with the solution of making a paste with the flobberworm mucus. I hadn’t realized…”
She trailed off as Professor Snape slowly turned to face them. His expression was eerily still—Harry recognized it as the danger sign it always was and tried to call off Hermione with the power of his thoughts. It didn’t work.
“Yes, Ms Granger?” Professor Snape asked softly.
“Er,” Hermione stumbled, then regained herself. “I hadn’t realized that you could use a mucus-based paste since that wasn’t covered for these types of drafts, but Harry thought it might work, since our potion wasn’t quite right anyway…” She trailed off again as Professor Snape’s gaze went to Harry. Harry met his eyes boldly—he had nothing to hide.
“I see,” Professor Snape said. “Is this true, Mr Potter?”
“Yes, sir,” Harry replied. His heart was beating hard—he couldn’t tell what the professor would do.
Professor Snape regarded him with those blazing eyes and that mask-like face.
“So you admit to taking an unstudied and potentially dangerous course of action because you had rendered Ms Granger’s potion beyond repair after availing yourself of her diligence all week?”
Harry went hot—his throat constricted, jamming the words that would have shot out.
“No!” Hermione objected. “He didn’t--!”
“Silence!” Professor Snape hissed at her. “Detention, Potter, for your reckless behaviour. You are not making Cornish pasties in this classroom, you are entrusted with potent and volatile ingredients for real potions, and a misstep by you could cost your friend here a limb. My office, tomorrow evening, eight o’clock, on the stroke.” He leaned toward Harry, whose hands were now cold. “Be a moment late, and it will cost you,” Professor Snape whispered.
***
Harry found his way to Professor Snape’s office easily the second time, passing under the Slytherin portraits’ eyes without noticing their pursed-mouth stares. He met the massive wooden door at two minutes to eight and stood momentarily, inhaling, exhaling, in a futile effort to lessen the horrible leaden weight pressing down upon his lungs. He shifted his book bag across his shoulder, rustling the textbook and parchment and quills within, and raised the door-knocker. Another breath, then he let it fall.
The door creaked open, accusation in the low skurr of its hinges. Harry’s fingers clenched into fists; he stepped into Professor Snape’s office once more, seeing not the hundreds of jars adorning the shelves, but only the professor, seated at his desk across the chill room.
“Mr Potter. How kind of you to make such a timely appearance,” Professor Snape greeted him, the sneer virulent in his voice. He rose, casting long shadows against the rows of jars behind him. “I see you’ve come prepared with your Potions materials?”
Harry advanced tentatively into the chamber. “Yes, sir,” he answered, every muscle tensed. Professor Snape seemed like a serpent himself, narrowly coiled, ready to strike from behind his desk.
“And what did you suppose detention would entail?” the professor asked, a humourless smile touching his lips. “An opportunity to revise, perhaps, or to begin the work you were assigned yesterday?”
I don’t know, Harry thought dully. This is my first detention. He pressed his mouth together to fashion his response. “I wasn’t sure. I brought my Potions things in case I needed them.” It came out suitably even-toned.
“You won’t be needing any of that,” Professor Snape snapped. “Your work is to be done on your time, not mine. Come with me.” He turned from his desk in a whirl of robes and marched farther into the room, disappearing behind a shelf of tall twisty jars. Harry hurried past the desk to follow and found the professor in a sizeable laboratory, more dimly lit than the main chamber, equipped with silver steel faucets and black stone basins, and gleaming marble work surfaces littered with stands of vials. In the back rested four squat round cauldrons, and shelves along the upper parts of each wall stocked yet more jars of mysterious ingredients.
“Those need to be thoroughly scrubbed and dried,” Professor Snape said, pointing a finger at the stacks of bowls, knives, mortars and pestles, empty vials, jars and bottles of assorted shapes that lay beside each sink. “Once dried, they are to be stored in their proper places.” He waved his hand, and cupboard doors that Harry had not noticed in the dim lighting opened beneath each sink. “You will find each shelf there labelled,” the professor continued brusquely. “I expect every last piece to be spotless and returned to the appropriate shelf. Any mistakes or broken vials will cost Gryffindor points or you another detention, or both. You have two hours.”
With that, Professor Snape spun on his heel and vanished from the laboratory, leaving Harry alone with his books, and ten thousand things to clean.
It turned out not to be so awful, though, once Harry removed his woollen outer robes and took off his jumper and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Really, it was like tidying up after one of Aunt Petunia’s dinner parties. They were typically elaborate, involving the nice china from the special glass case that Harry was not to go near save with his aunt’s express permission, and the dozens of tiny forks and spoons and cups and saucers that seemed wholly unnecessary for a single meal. As Harry sloughed at the grey grime coating the bottom of his fifteenth ceramic bowl, he pretended he was simply cleaning up after a Potion masters’ party—a grand night, the event of the year, at which all Potions masters from around the world were invited to feast, to talk of advances in the field, and to demonstrate the new and brilliant concoctions they had devised since their last gala. It started him pondering on the state of Potions masters elsewhere—how many were there? Were they all teachers at schools, or were some independent researchers of some sort? Perhaps some operated in an industrial capacity, developing potions for commercial use—Harry had seen the adverts for wellness potions in Ron’s Daily Prophet. As usual, his private musings kept his mind as occupied as his hands, and sooner than anticipated, he was down to the big pile of strangely shaped bottles that he had left for last. They required special attention, to get into the funny bends and curves and corners. Harry dried the last of the ordinary jars, screwed the lid into place, and put it at the front of a shelf labelled “Jars – Standard” in Professor Snape’s distinctive spiky hand.
He got back to his feet and surveyed the short ledge over the sink, where the soap and rags and scours and sponges were kept. Raising himself onto tiptoes, he looked for an elongated scrubbing brush, something angled and bendy like the special looped brush Aunt Petunia had for cleaning champagne flutes. He reached in and pushed aside wet and dry rags, inching his fingers to the back, hoping to touch the right kind of brush for the job. There was none to be found. Harry went to the other sinks, searching, but in vain. It seemed Professor Snape’s laboratory was missing a crucial piece of equipment. Harry looked at the doorway that led back to the office. He was certain that leaving the laboratory before finishing off the odd bottles would set the professor off, but he couldn’t clean them properly without that loopy brush, and he had a feeling that would make Professor Snape even more upset, which was the last thing in the world he could afford to do, if he ever wanted to see his precious picture again. He braced his shoulders and went out.
Professor Snape was at his desk, to all appearances unmoved since the first time Harry entered his office a week ago. Harry walked toward him slowly, without making a sound. He was about to open his mouth to announce his presence when the professor broke the silence with a curt, “You cannot possibly be finished.”
Harry paused, his mouth half-open in surprise. He hastened to reply when Professor Snape’s head swivelled sharply toward him, his nose flashing for an instant in profile, beakishly. “Erm, no, sir, but I needed—”
“More time? I’m afraid not,” Professor Snape interrupted, lowering his head back to his marking. “That equipment will be required tomorrow—you’ll have to stay on until it’s done.”
Harry waited, uncertain if the professor had more to say. When Professor Snape’s hand stopped over the scroll he was reading and hovered, ominously, halfway over the page, Harry said quickly, “Yes, I know—I’m almost finished but I just need a, a, it’s a special kind of brush, I’m not sure what you call them here in the, er, Wizarding world—it’s kind of bendy and long for reaching into funny-shaped glasses and it’s got a curvy sort of loop at the end—”
Professor Snape was staring at him again, with such force that Harry was compelled to fall silent. For a peculiar, heart-stopping moment, Harry had the curious sensation of becoming transparent—as if his face were too flimsy to support Professor Snape’s gaze and the professor could see, not through him but into him, as if the professor had heard what Harry would say before he had uttered the words.
Professor Snape unfolded himself from his chair and whisked past Harry. “Follow me,” he called out impatiently when Harry remained glued to the carpet where he stood.
“Here,” the professor said shortly, once Harry joined him in the laboratory. “Flask brushes.” He indicated a cupboard in the far corner, too high for Harry to reach unaided. A wave of his hand had a large carry-all, stuffed to the brim with fuzzy brushes of all kinds, floating down to a work top.
“Oh,” Harry said. Hagrid had told him he would grow accustomed to seeing things like this—objects being directed through the air by magic—but Harry couldn’t agree. “Thanks.” He looked up at the professor, then hastily went to the box of brushes after a fleeting glimpse of his stony face, and took it by its handle to the sink where he had been working. Conscious of Professor Snape’s continued presence in the room, he picked up the nearest bottle, one that was bulbous on the bottom with a twisty neck. Harry sorted through a few brushes, then chose a likely one, soaped it up, and started scrubbing, never lifting his head until he heard the shift of Professor Snape’s robes swinging away.
Half an hour passed, and Harry returned to Professor Snape’s office to find him scratching notes across the margin of a book, still behind his desk.
“At last,” Professor Snape said, without preamble. “Later this evening I will inspect your work. If I find a single vial has been treated with anything less than meticulous care, you will be summoned. Immediately.” The professor paused, turning the page, and turning it back. “You are dismissed.”
Harry stood there, dumbly, his shoulders achy from the scrubbing, his tie and shirt hem and the left thigh of his trousers damp with sink water. He was exhausted, and angry, and helpless, and he still hadn’t the faintest idea of what he’d done wrong, or how to get his picture back.
He swallowed, held the heat behind his eyes hard in check, and watched Professor Snape go on with his writing as if Harry wasn’t even there.
“May I have my photograph back, please, sir?” Harry asked in a low voice, and miserable.
Professor Snape did not appear inclined to respond, and after a beat Harry thought he might not be able to manage it after all.
“That’s out of the question,” Professor Snape replied. Harry’s ribs clutched—he’d thrown it out, put it in the bin—it was gone forever—
“Save your tears,” Professor Snape went on. Harry heard him as if from a distance. “You may see it, if you wish.” His wrist flicked out, a white streak of cuff. Harry threw himself forward, flew toward the ebony-backed chair facing Professor Snape’s desk, and it seemed but a breath later that he was there, gripping the arm, leaning over the threadbare velveted seat, eyes widening as he beheld the faded brown cover of a book.
Harry slowly picked it up. It was a photo album, the leather stretched and rubbed raw in places across the front, along the binding. It was slim, smaller than Harry’s textbooks, nothing at all like the gilded tome affairs the Dursleys kept on their living room bookcases. Harry’s feet tingled; he looked over at the professor, who remained frowning at his book. With great care, Harry lifted the cover.
Lily Evans smiled back at him.
Harry blinked, his throat rising up painfully, as she waved and smiled. She wore a circlet of flowers in her hair, and she was dressed in something cream-colored, flowy. Harry watched her wave and smile, wave and smile, in an infinite loop until the image blurred. He forced himself to look up, stare at the multitudes of jars, the torches on the walls, the ridges of stone in the ceiling, yes, there, better. He lowered his head back to the thin volume in his hands and turned the page.
It was Lily, pink-cheeked, running through the snow, her gold and scarlet scarf in the wind behind her, trailed by other students in Gryffindor scarves. Another page, and Lily was petting a smoky owl, her mouth forming an “o” as she cooed to it. The next page revealed Lily, not in school kit but all in white—she was older, and her wedding veil had fallen to the floor. Harry watched, without a sound, as she stooped to fetch it, only to be arrested halfway by someone’s hand at her elbow. The image was faded, but the inkstains were vivid upon the sallow fingers, and the arm that stretched down to pick up the veil was garbed all in black. Lily received the gauzy circle of white, and for a moment their fingertips touched. Her smile grew more radiant; her eyes illuminated the whole of the frame as she looked up at the man who remained hidden from view. The motion repeated—Harry turned the page eagerly—and saw his own photograph, the one of a young Lily with Mr Severus Snape.
It was none the worse for wear. He slid a thumb toward it, as he’d done so many times before, when suddenly the album was tugged from his hold and floated quickly up, across the professor’s desk.
“You’ve seen enough,” Professor Snape said. His brittle-icy tone cleaved through the bubble of warmth that had puffed Harry’s chest. Instinctively Harry leaned toward the album, arching over the quill stand, flinging an arm up to take it—but Professor Snape’s hand dug into his shoulder, close to his neck.
“Stop it, boy!”
“It’s mine!” Harry couldn’t hold it back; he knew it was useless—the truth always was—but he could no longer bear being stepped over, taken from, set aside, preyed upon—and then Professor Snape’s snarling face was right in front of him, snarling no more but fierce, grave, pallid. The lines of his nose and mouth were deep gashes in the firelight.
“I know.”
Harry sucked in a breath, reached for the album—gasped in surprise as Professor Snape’s fingers curled, biting into his collarbone.
“One day, I will return it, but until that time you must never speak a word of this, to anyone,” Professor Snape told him, lips barely moving over his yellow teeth. “Not a single syllable, not a hint, not to your friends or your owl or when you think yourself alone, not to your godforsaken relatives or even to other Hogwarts teachers, do you understand?” Harry could only stare back mutely at the black eyes glittering at him through lank strips of hair. His gaze drifted past the professor, to the album, poised in mid-air, mere inches from his grasp.
“Look at me!” Professor Snape whispered. Harry obeyed.
His heart flexed out, and in, and out—no sound passed his lips as his eyes flickered back and forth between the professor’s. The professor was still. The creases softened, slightly, in his narrow face.
“I promise,” Professor Snape said, his voice grating low. “I shall keep it safe until it can be returned to you. It will be difficult, but you must do as I say.” He studied Harry earnestly, the corners of his mouth downturned. “Trust me,” he said, his knuckles pressed hard in Harry’s skin.
Harry looked at him and thought of the boy in the photo, holding his mum close, keeping her from harm. He nodded.