Chapter Text
12-year old Harry’s eye twitched. Snape was writing in the same font he always did. The same size, same handwriting, same spacing.
But he couldn’t read it.
He squinted. What was going on? He took off his glasses and rubbed at them with the edge of his robe. Seriously, he thought, putting them back onto his face, can’t he write any larger?
Snape moved away from the board, robes swishing behind him as he began to stalk from row to row, ensuring each of the students were on task.
Harry squinted once more, irritation growing, “Psst!” Ron hissed. “Mate, get started on slicing these up, won’t you? Before Snape gets on our arses for not having them done.”
Harry abandoned his hopeless pursuit of reading the board to dice the octopus tentacles—yuck—that were placed on his desk.
“I need to get some more aloe vera, alright?” Ron said, rising from his seat, “Get started on the next step while I’m up.” Before Harry could protest, Ron had disappeared, heading towards the student supply cupboard.
Harry grit his teeth, glaring at the board. He could almost make it out, and he knew for a fact he wasn’t getting up to get a closer look at the thing. He considered asking Hermione to copy down the instructions for him, but dismissed the notion. She was already struggling enough, having been paired with Neville. She would need all the time she could get to keep that mess from going haywire, especially since the instructions were so long that Harry had no doubt they were especially tedious too.
Dump…how many tentacle chops in? Harry couldn’t tell, no matter how hard he squinted. Curse his faulty glasses!
(Harry remembered vividly the process of getting them. He was nine years old, and attending elementary school. The announcement had gone out the day before that there was going to be mandatory eye sight checks during PE.
To help the students learn, they had said.
Harry remembered panicking all the way back ‘home’. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew how horrid his eyesight was.
He also knew how livid Uncle Vernon would be if him and Aunt Petunia had to purchase Harry anything, let alone something as expensive as glasses.
The day of the eye exam, Harry felt like throwing up. He spent the entire time waiting in line taking deep breaths, attempting to calm himself.
It didn't work.
Finally his name was called. They took him into the testing room, where there was what Harry assumed to be the stereotypical lettered eye chart—he couldn’t know for certain, of course, for he was never allowed to watch cartoons with Dudley, and wouldn’t have been able to examine the ones on screen—-and Harry was made to take a seat on a rickety old stool.
He remembered lightly brushing his finger against the ridged stools leg, counting each of the numbs and ridges, and resolutely attempting to ignore the growing pit in his stomach. His brow was furrowed, and his leg was bouncing up and down.
He followed the examiner’s instructions, and read out the letters on the chart to the best of his abilities.
The next day, Uncle Vernon got a call from the school for Harry’s eyesight, and the poor boy was locked in his cupboard for two days straight with very little to eat.
Aunt Petunia had ended up dragging him by ear to the thrift store the next week, and making him rummage through the glasses box until he found one that helped his eyesight, while she got a whining Dudley ice cream.)
“Is there a problem, Mr. Potter?” A dour voice asked from behind Harry, startling him so bad accidentally stabbed his dicing knife against his other hand. He snapped out of his memories and looked up at the man, smothering a glare.
“I’m alright sir,” the boy responded, “Just peachy.”
The man’s eyes zeroed in on his now bleeding hands. “I don’t suppose you’ll deign the class with what made you decide not to carry out even the second step of the brew, while everyone else is on their fourth?”
Harry was trying hard not to glare, he really was. “I’m waiting for Ron to come back with the aloe vera, sir.” He responded.
“Ah, but the second step could have easily been completed without Weasley’s poor attempt at gathering potions ingredients,” Snape said with a raised eyebrow, “though I suppose our precious golden boy can’t pay attention to such feeble things as instructions.”
The irritation simmering in Harry flared up. “Apologies, sir,” Harry shot back, voice dripping with disdain, “For having glasses that aren’t the prescription.”
Stain towered over him. “Do not take that tone with me boy.” He growled. It might have been Harry’s reminiscing of the verbal attack Uncle Vernon had given nine year old Harry for his bad eyesight, or just Snape’s general disposition, but Harry flinched at the term of address. Hard.
Noticeably.
Snape paused. Fortunately, that was the moment Ron decided to return with the aloe vera. “Hey mate, I’ve got..the…” The redhead trailed off at the post-glaring contest the two were having. “Um..”
“Mr. Weasley,” Snape said, focusing his attention from Harry to the other boy. “Do try and make sure Mr. Potter doesn’t explode his cauldron if he mentally checks out again.” He said before striding away without waiting for a response, robes billowing behind him.
Ron shot Harry an apologetic glance for leaving him alone for so long as he rummaged through the student’s cupboards for the aloe vera.
Harry, however, was too distracted by his own mortification to notice the silent apology.
He had just flinched like a weakling. Even worse, he had done it in front of Snape.
He was lucky the rest of the class hadn’t noticed the two’s swift argument too focused on getting the detailed steps of the potion down before Snape came down on them, too.
Or maybe they did notice it and just chose not to let it show for fear of Harry sending Slytherin’s monster after them.
Whoops.
What was going to happen now? Snape had noticed the odd reaction, Harry knew he did. The expression of baffled puzzlement that was on the man’s face at Harry’s reaction was familiar. He had seen it on plenty of his teachers as a kid, when he used to flinch quite often.
He thought he had gotten over that embarrassing habit of his, but apparently not.
And of course, Harry thought miserably, Snape was the one out of all people to witness it resurface.
“-ate, Mate!” Ron’s voice broke through his self-loathing. “Come on, Harry. Don’t give that bat another excuse to nag you.”
Harry shook his head, as if physically dumping out the self-pitying thoughts from his head. Being miserable wouldn’t do anything. Hopefully, Snape would forget about the whole interaction. He’d hate to have to experience it being used as leverage against him by the man.
“Poor little Potter, flinching like a baby at the slightest just because of a word!” He imagined Snape taunting. He shuddered, and focused on his work.
Might as well get this done, and deal with everything else later.
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Snape returned to sit at his desk, pondering Potter’s peculiar behavior.
Nothing to consider, he thought, simply the boy’s quidditch instincts, nothing more. He needed them for how often he got injured playing that cursed game.
Speaking of injuries, with Weasley’s arrival, Snape had forgotten to address Potter’s cut from the potion’s knife. Typical of him to be so careless, though it was odd he wasn’t whining about due to it and begging for attention. Probably waiting until another class, with a teacher that would actually let him get away with such a thing. Like that fraud, Lockhart.
Scratch that, Lockhart was much too self-centered to let the attention be directed anywhere other than himself.
Well, either way, Snape couldn’t allow that.
“Potter,” He called out, “Stay after class.”
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Both Harry and Ron simultaneously bit back groans.
“Seriously?” The latter of the two bit out, “What could he possibly want now? Our potion is the same quality as always!”
Though Harry knew what Snape wanted. He was going to fish for information on why Harry flinched.
Why he was so weak.
But Harry knew better. It would take much more than a conversation to fish that information out. No, if the dungeon bat wanted any leverage over Harry, he was going to have to fight for it.
The class packed up their things and Hermione apologized to Harry as her and Ron left him behind in the classroom.
I should have just snuck out with the crowd, the lone boy thought glumly.
“Well? Come over here,” Snape snapped at the still form. Honestly, could the child even think for himself?
Harry marched over to the man’s desk, a pit forming in his stomach. He couldn’t tell if it was from trepidation, anger, fear, or a cocktail of all three.
He stopped a good two feet away from the desk.
“Give me your hand,” Snape demanded.
“Why?” The other asked suspiciously. He’d already had a professor try to kill him last year. He would like to avoid going through that whole mess again, if he could.
“Oh, hush, Potter.” The man said, narrowing his eyes, “If I wanted to injure you, I assure you it would be in a much more subtle and untraceable way.”
Harry offered his hand up, not feeling very comforted by that tidbit of information. The man was right, he supposed. As much as Harry hated to admit it, Snape was a talented potions master. He could have easily slipped something into a drink or added a component that made one of Harry’s potions explode in his face and kill him or something evil and dastardly along those lines.
“The other hand you incompetent- You’re injured, foolish child!”
Harry blinked. With the pain tolerance he had built up over the years spent with Dudley’s ‘Harry Hunting’ and multiple fits of rage from Uncle Vernon’s part, he had hardly noticed the stinging in his hand from his earlier cut, opting to wait until after class to see if Hermione had any band-aids or healing balms. He had simply wiped off any excess blood every few minutes, instead of making a fuss about it.
He offered up his other hand. Snape whipped out his wand, and Harry, being as conditioned as he was to be fearful of fast movements, flinched in the presence of the man he hated most—sans Voldemort—for the second time in a span of two hours.
Snape blinked at him. “I’m not going to hurt you Potter,” he said, with a tone the boy couldn’t even try to decode, “I am simply trying to cast Episkey on your hand, to heal the cut.”
He held up his wand, slower than before, and murmured the spell. The cut closed up.
Harry’s lungs felt as if they were collapsing in on themself. Why had he done that? He had flinched in front of Snape! Again!
“Th-Thank you sir,” he stammered out, before gripping his bag and bolting out of the room.
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Snape watched him go, pondering his own odd actions with a deeply furrowed brow.
He had been kinder to the boy after the second flinch. But why? He knew exactly the reason for the arrogant child’s reactions. Attention and quidditch, (coincidentally, both things that the boy's senior had valued very much), but he still hesitated in presuming his hatred-fueled treatment of him.
No, that’s not it.
Merlin, Snape had been normal, dare say even polite to James Potter’s son for reasons that didn’t involve his vow.
Which circled back to his question. Why? Why had he done that? He tried to chalk it up to the boy’s eyes, staring up at him with a fear he had only seen in eyes that shape and color a select few times before, whenever young Severus had told Lily about his father.
That must be it, he assured himself, I was simply startled to have those memories revived once again after so long.
(But deep down, wedged behind occlumency shields, he knew the true reason.
It wasn’t the boy’s fearful eyes, that reminded him much too deeply of Lily,
But rather the boy’s fearful flinch, which reminded him much too deeply of himself.)
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Harry raced down the now empty corridor.
Idiot, idiot, idiot!
He mentally chastised himself all the way to the dorms, deciding to ditch Lockhart’s class for today. Hermione would give him the fraud’s notes, anyway. Though probably with pink hearts scribbled all over them. Whatever.
Why had he flinched in front of Snape again?! He couldn’t even hold it in for the minute it would have taken for Snape to heal him and send him on his way? No, his idiotic self had to be a baby, just like Dudley had always told him.
Once could have been brushed off by the bat as a coincidence. A one-off odd occurrence.
But two? In the eyes of Snape—-who Harry could begrudgingly admit was also, unfortunately, clever enough to figure out students with just a glance, though how, the boy may never know——was a pattern.
And Snape was very good at figuring out patterns.
He completed his speedy to the dorms with a start, almost slamming into the portrait and eliciting a startled yelp from the fat lady. He told her the code and was granted access to the common room.
He then continued his newfound career as a trackstar by rapidly running up the stairs to his dorm and collapsing into his four-poster bed.
He let out a long, muffled scream into his pillow, regretting his overall existence.
Why did things like this happen to him so often?
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(Because I’m using you as my angsty self-insert Harry. Get with the times🙄)
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The next day began with a bucketload of regret for one Harry Potter.
First, he had none of his homework even slightly worked on, having fallen asleep from the anguish in his soul from yesterday’s events only to wake up the next morning, realizing he had accidentally fallen asleep and didn’t work on a single one of his assignments the day before.
Then, Ron and Hermione kept on pestering him with questions about what had happened with Snape until he finally admitted that Snape had only healed him, nothing more. He also may have told a white lie about skipping Lockhart's class because he was feeling a bit peaky.
(“I’m alright now, though, ‘Mione! I don’t need to go to the wing.)
Afterwards, that brought him here, in the lunchroom, where his two best friends were discussing the one, (well, one of multiple, actually), thing he really wanted to avoid thinking about.
“It makes no sense though, ‘Mione!” Ron argued. “Snape hates him. Why would he heal him without being forced? You listen to me mate,” He addressed Harry, “Snape is trying something, I guarantee it. Probably believes all that rubbish about you being the heir of slytherin, and wants to get on your good side so you don’t unleash Slytherin’s monster on him.”
“Oh honestly, Ronald!” Hermione snapped, “He’s a professor, that’s why he helped Harry! And I know you were too busy taking five years to locate aloe vera for you and Harry’s potion, but I was there when Snape was insulting him. Do you think he would have done that if he wanted to get on Harry's good side?”
Ronald ignored her good point, opting to turn back to Harry. “What do you think, mate?”
Harry thought that they should both shut up and talk about something else before Harry hexed them.
Or threw up with anxiety.
Or both.
“I think he might have just been having an off day, or something like that. Might’ve just wanted me to not have the luxury of dipping from defense to Pomfrey’s wing?” He reasonably decided upon saying instead.
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