Chapter Text
Harry didn’t remember every detail about when he went to live with his Granny and Grandpa Potter at Hartwell Manor. One day, he lived in a cupboard, and the next, he had a bedroom of his own. To his eight-year-old mind, the house was as big as a castle, and just a stone’s throw from Richmond Park, where Harry could go and watch the deer.
With time, many of the finer details had faded, but Harry did remember that the bed had been so tall and squashy that he hadn’t known how to get into it. His granny had taken a pin from her hair and transformed it into a step for young Harry to use.
They held him close that first night and told him how sorry they were that they hadn’t taken him sooner. Harry hadn't understood at the time the full ramifications of what had gone on, he'd shrugged and told them, “My cupboard wasn't that bad”.
From that day on, little Harry Potter was given every indulgence a boy could ever hope to receive. Rarely was there a “no” spoken. He didn’t ask for much, still remembering his time with the Dursleys, but what he did want was often granted without much issue. That was until a surly adult named Severus Snape came into his life.
“Can I pour that in?” the ten-year-old Harry asked. His grandpa always let him help brew when Harry was around.
“No,” snapped the man.
Harry frowned. “But Grandpa always lets me.”
“I am not your grandfather, and if this were my home, I would not allow a child anywhere near my workstation.”
It didn't take long for Harry to decide that the new stranger knew only how to snap and how to scowl. Harry couldn't imagine him doing much beyond that. He probably even brushed his teeth with his brow furrowed, angry at the toothpaste.
“Harry,” Grandpa said merrily as he joined them in the workroom, “whatever has come over you? Why the long face?”
Harry, who had been in the process of trying to imitate his mind's eye of how Mr Snape must look when brushing his teeth, had been caught mid-act. He shook his head, and Grandpa moved on with an amused look at his antics.
“Severus, how goes the tincture preparation?”
“Slowly,” Mr Snape growled.
Grandpa had referred to the young man as a great talent and someone he was keen to work with. Harry had never known his grandpa to have anyone else with whom he worked with making his potions. Only Granny sometimes helped out, as it was she who drew and designed all the pretty labels for the bottles, and sometimes blew the glass to make new bottles. But Grandpa wanted to spend more time with Harry and Granny, and Mr Snape had come highly recommended by Headmaster Dumbledore himself. He’d been the former Potions Professor at Hogwarts even, but was apparently keen to move on to pastures new.
Grandpa chuckled again. Mr Snape’s face only screwed up tighter, unimpressed.
“Can I help?” Harry offered again, this time directing himself to Grandpa.
“Not for this, Harry. Severus is rather more used to brewing alone. But if you have some spare time, you can make a Shrinking Solution.”
Shrinking Solution was very dull, but Harry did like the labels on the bottles for that one. Each showed a large and a smaller tree next to each other, with the trees waving at each other.
Mr Snape finally stopped scowling to instead look at Harry with confusion. “You let him brew Shrinking Solution? At his age?”
“I’m going to Hogwarts next year,” Harry spoke up, feeling put out for the first time in the interaction.
Grandpa wasn’t bothered by Snape’s tone and gave a hearty laugh. “He’s more competent at 10 than most of the Hogwarts graduates these days, I think you’ll find, especially since you stopped teaching.”
Severus raised an eyebrow, but just as Harry was sure he was going to argue back, he shrugged and went back to his potion.
“If you get stuck at all, Harry, just ask Severus for help. I’m going out to the garden to assist the house-elves and Granny with the harvest.”
Harry nodded, missing Severus’s full-body wince of disgust.
It might not have been obvious to Harry on that first meeting, but he would come to learn a few certainties about Severus Snape. One: he was fantastic at what he did. Two: he hated to be in the company of other people. Three: it was probably for the best that he only lasted a few years as a teacher at Hogwarts, such was Snape’s lack of patience around young Harry.
Even just having to deal with one, very eager and talented pupil like Harry over the summer holidays was a stressful, loathsome prospect that Mr Snape never tried to hide.
Unfortunately for Mr Snape, he would have to put up with Harry every single holiday from that point in his life onwards.
Every. Single. One.
Harry went through a phase of disliking Mr Snape quite distinctly. His emotions towards his grandfather’s assistant were, in many ways, unique in Harry’s life. There was no one else who managed to make Harry feel so small and so completely incompetent as Mr Snape – not since he’d been taken from the Dursleys, at least. His first summer back from Hogwarts, Harry expected Mr Snape to give him some level of respect and perhaps allow him some space in the workroom. After all, Harry had one year of Hogwarts under his belt and was now almost 12, which surely meant something. He wasn’t that small child who couldn’t even own a wand yet. He had a wand, and he knew how to make potions even some of the sixth years struggled with.
But Harry’s instincts on this were wrong once more. Mr Snape continued to scowl as if that was all he knew what to do with his face. He sniped and criticised in a way that often left Harry basking in memories of the past, all the kinds he’d rather continue to suppress and forget.
Maybe he was worthless. Maybe he was a waste of space. Could he even boil water correctly? Snape never came out and said his grandfather was delusional about Harry’s skills, but he certainly knew well enough how to strongly imply it out of the earshot of his elderly employer.
The bad feelings grew intensely. By the time Harry had finished his fourth year at Hogwarts, he returned home for the summer full of spite, bottles of ingredients, and a plan to get Snape fired by Grandpa, once and for all. His only aim? Get that malevolent spirit and overpowering presence out of the house.
But as fate had it, the dragon pox epidemic of 1995 had very different ideas about how Harry was meant to feel about Severus Snape.
It started slowly. Granny was a little off one evening, with a gentle cough. Grandpa frowned, but promised he’d whip her up something before bed.
“Augusta had a cold, probably just picked something up from her. Why she still came to our card game, I’ll never know.”
“How is she doing these days?” Grandpa enquired politely.
“Fine, fine. Worried over Neville’s O.W.L.s this year. Make sure you help him with his Potions homework, Harry.”
Harry didn’t mention that Neville would no doubt be dropping Potions. For as nice as the other lad was, Neville’s passion definitely grew more in growing potions ingredients than actually using them.
Neville had been happy to source a few of the things Harry needed for his incredibly sneaky Sabotage Snape plan, unbeknownst to Neville. In fact, after dinner, Harry planned to start step one, which was to go rub some of the lingonberries into the inside of a clean cauldron in the workroom. Whatever Snape planned on brewing tomorrow, it would end in a catastrophe due to the unknowing presence of benzoic acid they contained. And Snape would never see it coming. Why would his perfectly clean cauldrons be dirty? Snape dealt with them all himself, cleaning them all meticulously.
The plan got put on hold when Grandpa asked for Harry’s help with a cough suppressant that evening. Grandpa wasn’t feeling too bright by bedtime, either. Grandpa took a cup of the potion for himself, laced with plenty of honey and ginger. Harry finished up bottling the rest of the cauldron’s worth, applying hastily-made labels. They weren’t up to Granny’s standards, with beautiful calligraphy and imagery, but as these were only for personal use and not for sale, Harry didn’t think it mattered much.
An array of potions Snape had spent the day brewing was still cooling on the same countertop. A few of them were meant for St Mungo’s, and were easily distinguishable as such by the undecorated, hand-written labels. For the non-consumer, bulk-ordered side of the business, Snape made his own labels by writing the Potion names out, plain and simple. Still, there was some beauty in them, as Harry often found himself admiring the strong, perfectly curated script of Snape’s hand.
Harry turned Snape’s bottles around so he couldn’t see the label. It made him feel self-conscious about his own handwriting to see Snape's writing.
He went to bed that night, having completely forgotten about his plans for sabotage, too tired from clearing up. Harry only remembered what he’d meant to do when Snape let himself into the workroom in the morning to begin work.
“Your grandfather isn’t up yet?” Snape asked, as aloof as ever. He prodded his wand at a pile of cauldrons he’d left to dry the night before, setting them on the preparation table.
“He’s probably sleeping in; he wasn’t feeling too well last night.”
Severus picked up one of the bottles of cough suppressant Harry had helped brew the night before and held it up, examining it with those dark, fathomless eyes of his.
“You made this, I take it? This isn’t your grandfather’s handwriting.”
Harry had helped, but he certainly hadn’t done it all as Snape was assuming. He went to say as much, but instead, he committed a heinous crime.
“Yes,” he lied, greedily taking full credit.
Severus unstoppered the bottle and peered into the neck, before sniffing it.
He put the glass stopper back in and passed no further comment. Harry hated how much warmth bloomed in his chest. Snape had nothing to say about the potion. That was as good as him saying it was perfect.
By lunchtime, it became apparent Granny and Grandpa had flu-like symptoms. By dinnertime, the rash started. By bedtime, the fire-breathing became an issue.
“It’s dragon pox,” a tired Healer Smethwyck confirmed. Harry sat on a chair beside his grandparents’ bed, his heart beating a mile a minute.
Snape stood, still dressed in his work robes, before them. It had been him in the end who had firecalled St Mungo’s and convinced them that someone had to come through and examine the Potters. It had been him who had recognised the symptoms and decided that further medical intervention was necessary, even in light of Granny and Grandpa insisting they were fine and it would all blow over by itself.
“Shocking. You don’t say,” Snape said snidely, his yellowed teeth clenched.
For once, Harry could understand his ire. The burn marks all around the bedroom, and the ever-present coughs of his grandparents made the diagnosis a sure thing.
“What do you give for dragon pox?”
Healer Smethwyck looked at Harry, and then back to his grandparents.
“Harry, be a dear and write to Mrs Longbottom, would you? Let her know what has happened. I hate to think I’ve spread this around to her.” Granny’s voice was raspy. Panic continued to settle in Harry’s heart.
“It probably came from her in the first place, don’t you think Euphemia?”
“I hope she’s well,” Granny said, now fretting. “Poor Neville has already lost enough.”
“She’s at least 30 years younger than us, Euphemia. I don’t think Augusta has much to worry about.”
Feeling the air tense around them, Harry left the bedroom and went to do as directed. He didn’t know what, but even Harry could tell he was missing something. Something that made the dread crawl around the inside of his skull.
His letter was rushed, his writing more terrible than usual. By the time he walked back to his grandparents’ room, Snape was storming through the door, followed by Healer Smethwyck.
“I’m telling you, it can’t be done!” the Healer shouted at Snape’s back. Snape turned, and in the candle-lit hallway, glowered at the Healer.
“Just because you pathetic specimens of so-called professionals can’t, doesn’t mean I can’t. I bid you good day!” His robes flared out as he walked past. Healer Smethwyck struggled after him for a few angry steps, calling him a madman as he went.
Harry frowned, but went back into his grandparents’ bedroom. Their normally shared marital bed had been separated into two now, which was probably for the best when each of them kept on coughing up fire. They were sweaty and shaking; whether from illness or the heat of the fire, it was hard to tell.
“I’ve sent the letter off with Hedwig,” Harry confirmed.
“Good boy,” Granny said with a pained smile.
“What were Severus and Healer Smethwyck talking about?”
His grandparents shared a look. It cemented something within Harry. The floor felt like it was going to fall away from him.
“How long until you’re better?” Harry tried again.
“Harry…” Granny said softly. “The thing is…”
Grandpa coughed, but not in a way from the illness, more to get their attention, Harry figured.
“The usual potion regime they give people with dragon pox isn’t something your Granny and I can take, as it is contraindicated to the potions we’re taking for our hearts and lungs.”
At Harry’s confused face, Grandpa continued, “It means you can’t take the two at the same time. To cure one may be to cause irreparable damage in other ways. Healer Smethwyck explained that they’ll have to try us on something a little more alternative,” he rasped.
Harry’s grandparents were old enough to be the great-grandparents of most of his classmates. They had James so late in life, and that had initially contributed to their agreeing to Harry going to the Dursleys after Lily and James had died. They thought Harry would be better off being raised by a young couple, with a child near his own age who could be like a brother to him.
Lord Voldemort had killed Harry’s parents, tried to kill him and failed. The Dursleys almost killed Harry in his place. Now, dragon pox might yet take the fragile remainder of Harry’s family from him.
Two days later, with Granny and Grandpa in St Mungo’s, Harry had lost hope.
“Severus will stay with you tonight at the house, so be a good boy. I’ll be home soon.” Granny’s hand shook as she patted Harry’s cheek.
Harry wanted to kiss her on the cheek, but the Bubble-Head Charm helping with her breathing meant he wouldn’t have gotten close. Grandpa hadn’t even woken up that day, leading to the move from their home to St Mungo’s.
“Be brave, my little Harry,” she whispered. “Goodbye, Severus. Take care of each other.”
Snape stood stoic and wordless as he observed the professionals tending to Granny and Grandpa.
“I don’t anticipate sleeping tonight, but I’ll be in my rooms if I do. Otherwise, you may find me in the workroom,” was all Snape had to say as they walked towards the fireplace to leave the hospital. “Don’t disturb me unless you’re dying – even then, think twice about interrupting me.”
Harry ended up in his grandparents’ empty bedroom. It was strewn with empty potion bottles and fireproof cloths.
If they didn’t come home…
Harry thought of his cupboard. The cold. The yelling and the way he just felt so alone all the time.
They were going to die, weren’t they? Dragon pox had an effective treatment, but not one his grandparents could take. But there were others, and they’d get better? They’d maybe get better. They had to get better.
Even though all they’d done so far was get worse, so much worse. Grandpa hadn’t even woken up. Granny could barely breathe, even with a multitude of charms. She couldn’t sit up on her own any longer.
Something snapped in Harry, and he went tearing out of the bedroom. He took the stairs two at a time, going as fast as his feet could take him. By the time he made it to the workroom where Snape was holed up, anger was radiating off of him. How could Snape do that? Just shrug and walk away as his employers were hospitalised?
“I bet you can’t wait for them to die! You’re probably rubbing your hands in glee!” Tears were prickling in his eyes. “I know you hate them. I know you hate my entire family, but she’s been nothing but nice to you! She makes you lunch every day! You’re nothing but a disgusting, dirty coward!”
Snape put his knife down and had a wand at Harry’s throat in a single movement.
“Care to say that again?” he asked in a dangerous purr.
“How could you not even say goodbye to Granny? Do you really not care at all?”
Snape stepped away and hid his wand once again somewhere on his person.
“If you really care for your grandparents, I need around 300 doxy eyes de-veined. Get to it, if you don’t want them to die.”
Harry rubbed his fingertips under his glasses, hoping Snape hadn’t noticed the tears.
“What?”
“You heard me. If you really want to pretend you care about something other than yourself, you can help me with this formulation. I am perhaps doing the only useful thing out of anyone in this world to save your grandparents. Reformulating the Pyrestem Potion without the use of fireweed or the urchins, thus making it safe for your grandparents to take. Removing the issue of instant death if they took it in its original form.”
Harry stood aghast, not understanding fully, but a little hope was starting to bloom.
“Get to it, you miserable, asinine, self-centred child. Standing about weeping – you’re truly pathetic.”
For the next 25 hours, sleep was not an option. Harry’s hands pruned and wrinkled from all the moisture involved in handling the eyes while he pulled out minuscule blood vessels with a very fine-tipped pair of tweezers.
When it came time to administer the potion, Snape didn’t ask permission. He used Harry to get them into his grandparents’ room at St Mungo’s, and from there, the two of them acted quickly, with Snape providing the right charm to force the comatose patients to swallow while Harry poured the potion in.
Harry’s inner voice shouted alarmed and hateful things at Snape. He hoped both that this worked, while also being so certain Snape was feeding his grandparents poison.
Harry watched their green, ashen complexions, still asleep. He could barely believe they weren’t dead already.
“How do we know if it is successful?”
There was no hesitation when Snape answered, “They live.”
“And if it isn’t?”
Snape tapped his fingernails against the wooden armrest of his seat, the chair he had all but collapsed into once the potion had been administered.
“Your grandfather asked me if I’d be your guardian, in the event that they both passed.”
Harry leaned forward, aghast. “What?”
“Precisely. So you and I, Potter, better hope this works. There’s only one situation that exists in which I’m willing to play daddy.”
It took the rest of the summer for his grandparents to be back to some semblance of health. But the important thing was: they did get better. Severus’s potion worked, and Granny and Grandpa were eventually allowed home.
Harry never wanted to de-vein another eyeball so long as he lived. If Severus asked him to do so though, he would have agreed to do a hundred of them in a heartbeat.
He hugged his grandparents extra tight at the station before returning to school that year, still feeling a shaky, nervous sensation that maybe this would be the last time he’d see them. The summer had changed Harry in more than one way. He’d never take his grandparents being around for granted again.
“Sorry you couldn’t come visit,” Harry said to Hermione and Ron as they settled in. “Things were just so hectic with the hospital and all.”
“Nonsense, Harry, there’s nothing to apologise for. I’m just sorry you couldn’t come to the Burrow as well. We missed you!”
“Exactly, mate. Your grandparents came first. You’re the one who had to spend the summer with Snape instead.”
That was exactly it, the other thing that had changed: Snape. Or Harry’s opinion of his grandfather’s employee was closer to the truth. He’d just been so calm and collected throughout the ordeal. He’d pulled everything together to pull off a potions miracle and invent a new solution as needed.
Despite every angry, belittling thing he’d ever said to Harry about his potions skills, when it came down to it, he’d trusted Harry to be part of the brewing process as well.
Severus Snape, Harry had come to realise, was, well… cool.
The problem with Harry’s newfound admiration for Severus was that while he’d had his worldview changed since his grandparents’ illness and subsequent recovery, Severus still perceived him as a petulant, talentless waste of space for the most part.
To rectify this, Harry decided he’d stay at Hogwarts during the Christmas holidays during his fifth year, to revise and get ahead on his schoolwork, and maybe become someone Severus would admire. Except, Professor Trelawney had to go and ruin all of that.
A week before school finished for the holidays, Professor Trelawney came down for dinner in the Great Hall. This was an unusual occasion in its own right. Harry hadn’t seen the Divinations professor very often, since she so often just stayed in her tower. She certainly stood out compared to the other professors. Her jewellery glittered under the candlelight as she walked down between the tables to the front. Just as she reached a spot behind where Harry was sitting, enjoying his steak and kidney pie, Professor Trelawney froze up.
Harry turned around as everyone around him was staring at her, and there was Professor Trelawney, her head tipped back, eyes rolling. Her hands seemed to be in spasm, curling and uncurling, while the rest of her was so incredibly stiff.
“Is she having a seizure?” a concerned Hermione asked.
But that’s when it came; Professor Trelawney’s in a wheezing voice proclaimed:
The child once lost, now shaped by love,
Becomes the adult hunted by the marked stars above,
His day of birth sets a path to desire,
But as the tenth month wanes, he'll meet her in fire,
The winner will get what they yearn for most,
A longed-for family, bound forever in blood and oath.
Her words carried clearly across the Great Hall. The teachers at the Head Table were up on their feet not long after it had started, but Professor Dumbledore warned them to stay back.
Harry sat frozen. The only thing he knew of Professor Trelawney, and the reason he’d avoided ever taking her class, was due to the prophecy she’d made about him and Voldemort before he’d even been born.
Harry went home for Christmas in the end, with the whole school speculating that Death Eaters were going to start jumping out from behind closed doors to kill him with Fiendfyre. Facing Severus, and his feelings of inadequacy around him, was possibly better than the worried (or, in the case of Draco Malfoy, gleeful) looks he got for his supposed impending death.
A yearning that made his stomach squiggle and his brain melt when he got home with Granny and Grandpa, and Severus looked at him. Over dinner, Harry found out Severus had essentially moved into the Potter household, finally taking up the rooms that he’d only used occasionally and under duress.
“Does this make you Head Brewer?” Harry asked the following morning as he helped with the set-up.
The workroom still had the same faint smell of moisture and rosemary that it always had. With the addition, every now and then, of the scent of Severus, a sort of minty, masculine something that Harry could never get enough of.
“Not officially.”
Severus clearly wasn’t in a chatty mood, but experience taught Harry he never was. It had never stopped Harry.
“You were amazing, you know? Saving them like that.”
Severus’s hand paused momentarily as he was crushing juniper berries with a mortar and pestle.
“Adapt and thrive if you wish to stay alive,” Severus intoned. He returned to his work, intending to ignore Harry for the rest of the morning.
Harry hadn’t been given anything to work on, so he set up his Potions homework instead. His focus drifted in and out. Watching Severus work was certainly more interesting than writing an essay on the effects of dried versus fresh ingredients for healing balms.
“Is it supposed to be that shade of green?” Harry asked, staring into the cauldron. He shouldn’t have spoken as Severus gave him a vicious look. The potion was one of Grandpa’s bases used to make a range of different cosmetic potions, such as lip tint and blush.
“Interfering teenagers are not welcome in my workroom.”
An additional “fuck off” was felt by Harry, but not directly spoken aloud.
“I just mean, it looks like what happens when the mooncalf hoof isn’t shredded finely enough.”
“It’s a new formulation, of course you wouldn’t recognise it. We can’t keep using the same recipes in perpetuity."
Harry returned to pretending to do his essay. Even he was smart enough to keep quiet as Severus emptied the contents of the cauldron.
“I heard that fraud Trelawney spewed out another prophecy.”
Harry snapped the tip of his quill on his parchment in surprise. “From who?”
“McGonagall and I still talk, now and then. I wouldn’t pay the prophecy any attention, if I were you. These things are only real if people believe them to be real.”
Severus was now shredding mooncalf hoof, preparing for his next attempt. Harry saw it was very finely shredded this time around.
“Do you talk to her because you used to work there?” Harry asked, hoping to move the topic away from the new threat of death.
“Yes.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Your grandparents offered me an obscene amount of money.” Severus looked up, and seeing Harry’s expression, added, “Did you think it was for my love of creating hair tonics? It wasn’t out of the goodness of my own heart that I ended up here.”
Something told Harry that this was only part of the story.
“Why would anyone want to become a teacher there? You just deal with loud, obnoxious teenagers all day,” Harry wondered.
Severus peered at him, and Harry could swear he saw his lip quirk for a moment. “It doesn’t sound too much different from how my day is going currently.”
Severus stayed over for Christmas Day, even if he refused to put on his hat from their Christmas crackers pulled at the table. He did indulge in some of Granny’s elf-made wine though, which was how Harry came to discover what Severus was like tipsy.
Harry had a mouthful of the wine himself after dinner and nearly spat it back out immediately.
“Blegh, people really like that?”
Severus took another sip, with a definite tilt to his lips now.
“You’ll grow to enjoy it,” Granny said. “Your mother did. That last Christmas when she declined, that’s when I first got an inkling you were coming into existence.” She smiled a soft, sad smile.
Granny and Grandpa didn’t mention Harry’s parents often. Harry could imagine why. He’d never known them, but for parents to outlive their child… It was a grief Harry couldn’t begin to pretend he could understand.
Severus fell asleep in front of the fire, to Harry’s surprise. He remained asleep as his grandparents said goodnight and prepared to go up to bed after a long day of eating delicious food.
“Let him sleep,” Granny whispered before she left the room. “Poor man has been working himself to the bone to give Grandpa a bit of a rest. But you know how it is around Christmas, orders coming in and out all the time.”
Harry rested his elbow on the armchair’s side and watched the play of the firelight dancing over Severus’s sleeping face. There were deep, embedded frown lines between his eyebrows, and his complexion was definitely not that of one of Harry’s teenage friends… None of that mattered. Harry found himself enchanted; it was like looking at a piece of classical art.
He almost got caught watching when Severus woke up all of a sudden, discombobulated and, for a moment, completely unsure of where he was. Severus looked up at the clock on the mantle, where the time read as 11.47 pm.
“Fuck,” he muttered. He stood up a second later, rocking slightly on his feet. “Shit.” Now he just looked annoyed.
“Is everything okay?” Harry was concerned. Was Severus upset that they’d let him sleep?
“I have to finish and order and bottle it tonight or it’ll go to ruin. I’m meant to be sending it off tomorrow morning. It's a hangover potion for the Minister and his guests.”
“It can’t wait until morning?” Harry suggested, only half-serious. Sometimes that was fine if things were cooling. Severus was clearly more under the influence of the wine than even he had realised, what with the swaying and general state of uncharacteristic clumsiness.
“No,” Severus said sharply, rubbing his eyes with his hands, looking as frazzled as he ever had. “I never should have let that woman ply me with so much wine. I need steady hands for this next part.”
“Can I help?” Harry offered, while at the same time Severus commanded, “You shall do it.”
Harry finished up his Christmas Day with Severus standing over his shoulder, correcting his posture as he mixed the contents of the cauldron under a low heat.
“It should be a waltz, not a fox trot.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Severus reached over and put his hand over Harry’s, directing his stirring, resulting in long, smooth strokes across the cauldron.
They hadn’t exchanged Christmas gifts, but there and then, with Severus touching his hand, teaching him whatever a waltz meant when it came to stirring (Harry was too distracted to figure it out), it was the greatest present Harry could have had. Perhaps it was even worth the humiliation of Trelawney’s prophecy driving him home.
“Can I write to you sometimes? When I’m at school?” Harry asked, voice shaking as he started bottling up the potion later. It was nearly 1 am by this point. Severus was sitting backwards on a chair, only keeping himself up by propping his arms on the backrest.
“Whatever for?”
Harry shrugged. “Potions homework help? The O.W.L.s are just around the corner now.”
“Your grandfather knows enough to help you. Failing that, Slughorn isn’t entirely incompetent.”
“You did work at the school, right? You’d know the curriculum better than Grandpa.”
“Hums, perhaps.” Severus sounded like he might fall asleep again on the chair.
Harry didn’t dare push his luck and stopped talking there. He stayed quiet as he finished sealing the bottles. He applied his own little labels, decorated with tiny scribbles of Christmas trees, holly and even a little red-breasted robin. They weren’t elegant like Severus’s or beautiful like Granny’s, but Harry had never enjoyed making labels more.