Chapter Text
“Harry Potter.”
Harry sat there, aware that every head in the Great Hall had turned to look at him. He was stunned. He felt numb. He was surely dreaming. He had not heard correctly.
There was no applause. A buzzing, as though of angry bees, was starting to fill the Hall; some students were standing up to get a better look at Harry as he sat, frozen, in his seat.
Up at the top table, Professor McGonagall had got to her feet and swept past Ludo Bagman and Professor Karkaroff to whisper urgently to Professor Dumbledore, who bent his ear toward her frowning slightly.
Harry turned to Ron and Hermione; beyond them, he saw the long Gryffindor table all watching him, openmouthed.
“I didn’t put my name in,” Harry said blankly. “You know I didn’t.”
Both of them stared just as blankly back.
At the top table, Professor Dumbledore had straightened up, nodding to Professor McGonagall.
“Harry Potter!” he called again. “Harry! Up here, if you please!”
“Go on,” Hermione whispered, giving Harry a slight push.
Harry got to his feet, trod on the hem of his robes, and stumbled slightly. He set off up the gap between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables. It felt like an immensely long walk; the top table didn’t seem to be getting any nearer at all.
In fact, it really wasn’t getting any nearer. Harry’s feet were planted right where he had put them when he first stood. His vision tilted oddly, and his legs felt very far away. He tried to move toward the head table, he really did, but he couldn’t. He didn’t realize he was shaking his head until his neck started to hurt from the jerkiness of the motion.
“No,” he stuttered. “No, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.” The words sounded roaringly loud in his own ears, but he wasn’t sure if anyone around him could hear him.
“Harry come here, please.” Dumbledore waved a wrinkled hand as if to coax Harry forward.
Harry shook his head. Finally, he started to move. First one stumbling step backwards and then another. After a few steps, he pivoted. The entire hall was silent as he walked away from the head table and towards the enormous doors of the Great Hall. The doors were usually left open during feasts to allow in any stragglers, but because of the ceremony and the Goblet of Fire’s selection, the doors had been closed. Harry had never seen them opened without magic, and he feared the too-heavy doors would trap him there with the rest of the students, professors, and officials, but when he got close to them, one of the doors moved. It was just a twitch, really, small enough that he doubted anyone further than he was could see it, but the door allowed him to shove it open, and it closed heavily behind him just when he heard footsteps finally following him.
It was only when he collapsed, full bodied, against the door at his back that he realized his hands were shaking and his knees were wobbling. He focused on stilling his hands first, but they only seemed to shake harder, and his breath came quicker and quicker until he was violently gulping for air that didn’t do him any good. He was shocked from his panic though, when banging from the other side of the door he leaned on sounded.
The doors weren’t opening for them. Hogwarts wasn’t helping them. But she was helping Harry.
Suddenly, he heard footsteps coming toward him from another direction. He had no idea where to go, but he ran. His shoes clapped against the flagstones, banging in time with the pounding in his head. The footsteps following him, though, and they were gaining on him. He had never cursed his small stature more than he did right now.
“Potter! You can’t run from the consequence of your actions!” Snape roared from behind him. Apparently, the man had been the only one to think of using a side exit to do escape the Great Hall.
Harry looked back just in time to see Snape lunging for him. He tried to duck out of the way, but Snape was too quick for him and hooked a long, thin-fingered hand around his elbow.
“No!” Harry cried. “I didn’t do it! I didn’t put my name in, and I won’t compete. You can’t make me! Please!”
Snape sneered at him. “And why should I believe you? You’re nothing but a spoiled child too used to getting his own way to realize that even you must answer for your recklessness.”
The insult wasn’t so different from those Snape had been spitting at him since he entered Hogwarts. However, for once, it didn’t make him want to shout at the man. Instead, he laughed.
It was a high hysteric sound, caught somewhere between a true laugh and a whimper of pain. Too high pitched, too fast, too breathy. Even in his own ears, he sounded manic. Snape stared at him with real concern creeping into his sallow face.
“Potter!” He swore when this didn’t stop the breakdown. He must have realized then how tightly he was still holding Harry’s bicep because he released him like he had been burned. Maybe he had, Harry thought wildly. Harry had burnt someone to death the first—second? third?—time he had almost been killed at Hogwarts. Why should that be only a one-time, poorly explained power?
Gently, almost kindly, Snape turned Harry toward a small, dim passageway Harry had noticed in the past but never had any reason to explore.
“Where are we going?” Harry asked, his giggles finally fading. He didn’t really care, but he thought maybe Snape was taking him somewhere to kill him quietly. It didn’t really matter. Dying now at the potions’ master’s hand, dying in the tournament, same difference really. At least if it happened now, it wouldn’t be a spectacle for the masses.
“My office. You need a calming draught, and I need to sort some things out. No one will look for you there.”
Yeah, because any student would have to be insane to go there willingly. The deeper down the stairs they went, the colder the drafty passage got. It was too dim to really see any details on the stone walls, but he imagined that they descended under the lake, the stones go dewy with condensation. It smelled musty enough to make sense.
Eventually, they exited into a wider corridor Harry recognized as one that ran perpendicular to the one they took when going to potions. It was also the hallway Malfoy had led them to when Harry and Ron infiltrated the Slytherin common room. That felt like a very, very long time ago.
Snape stopped them before they reached the blank stretch of wall that guarded the common room’s entrance. A very old portrait of a very old man with a bulbous nose and bushy gray eyebrows glared at Harry before turning his attention to Snape.
“I’m allowing Mr. Potter access to my quarters this evening, Raginald. There is no need to inform the headmaster.”
Raginald—Raginald Edevane IV, Slytherin Head of House 996-1012, according to the little brass plaque at the center of the lower edge of his frame—nodded. “Very well, Severus.” His voice was rough and gravely, but surprisingly neutral. Without the further commentary the Fat Lady would have no doubt insisted on, the portrait swung forward.
Snape herded Harry into the room revealed behind the portrait, and Harry was surprised to find such a homey little room. The sofa was leather, with large, overstuffed cushions and a knitted blanket hanging over one arm. A matching armchair was pushed into the corner near the hearth. The stone floor was covered with plush rugs, and the cold stone walls were all hidden behind floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, all of which were full to bursting. The fire in the hearth crackled to life at their entrance.
“Sit, Potter,” Snape ordered, waving him towards the sofa.
Harry obeyed. He watched Snape move towards a cabinet on the other side of the room. Within moments, he had produced a vial of a lavender liquid. “Drink this—all of it.”
Harry did, pleasantly surprised at the flavor—sweet chamomile tea with a light chocolate aftertaste. All the muscles in his body loosened and relaxed, even though he hadn’t noticed they were tight before. His breath came out all at once, like a sigh that had been waiting all day to be let free. He collapsed back against the truly luxurious cushions at his back.
“Why do you keep that potion in here?” he asked. He hadn’t really meant to, but without his permission, his lips had started moving and the words had spilled out into the air between them. He expected to be embarrassed by the unintentional question, but he wasn’t. It was like his usually too-close-to-the-surface emotions had taken a break and couldn’t be bothered to come as usual. Harry couldn’t say he minded. Therefore, it made perfect sense to continue on. “I mean, most of your potions are stored by the potions classroom, in that big storage closet with the threatening sign posted. So why keep the calming draughts here?”
Snape raised one arched eyebrow at Harry’s slumped form. Harry tried to mimic the expression back at the professor, but he couldn’t control his eyebrows individually, so both went up. That just meant it was doubly meant, right?
“Because most students desperate enough to disturb me in my quarters usually need help calming themselves from whatever hormone-driven melodrama they’ve found. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see what’s being done about your place in the tournament. You will stay here. And you will not touch anything.”
Snape was oddly talented at making his eyebrows threatening. Harry promptly imitated a statue—the non-magical variety, that is—to demonstrate his obedience. With a sigh that very clearly stated that he did not trust Harry but also didn’t have the time to come up with an alternative plan, Snape left, back through Raginald Edevane IV’s portrait.
Once the portrait closed behind him, Harry broke his statue imitation. Usually, he would have been up in a moment to poke through Snape’s bookshelves and cupboards to find whatever he was hiding—because there was no way he wasn’t hiding something. But for once, Harry felt no compulsion to snoop. Snape wasn’t threatening him, so he felt perfectly content to just sit and wait for the potions’ master’s return. He kicked off his shoes, grinning at the soft shush- shush they made in thick pile of the carpet when they landed. Then he spun himself so he could lie down properly. The sofa was too short though, so his knees nested on the far arm, and his lower legs dangled down the side of the little couch. He kicked his socked feet happily humming a silly tune the twins and come up with for a rather crude limerick they had written one night instead of doing homework.
He was contemplating the stones above his head—they weren’t all one flat gray like he had always assumed. They were mostly gray, of course, but they also had waves of a sort of tan color going over parts of them and ribbons of purplish tying everything together. On top of all that, they were all speckled, like someone had painted them with glue and thrown sand at it. Or maybe they already had the sand inside them with they were cut. That probably made more sense—when Raginald Edevane’s protract opened with a bang and a startled yelp from the frame’s sole occupant.
“Severus! Severus, where are you?”
Harry knew that voice. Wedging himself up on his elbows, he got just high enough to look over the sofa cushions. “Hi, Draco.”
The blond head ceased its yelling for the absent professor and swiveled in his direction. “Potter? What the bloody hell are you doing here?”
“Snape put me down here while he went to investigate this latest death trap. What are you doing down here? And why are you calling him ‘Severus’? I’m pretty sure he’d turn me into potions ingredients if I called him by his first name. But only the gross pickled ones he doesn’t actually use except to scare students in detention. Because he’d probably think I’d ruin a potion just for being in it.”
“Morgana, Potter, are you drunk?” Draco asked incredulously.
“I don’t think so? Not unless Snape spiked the calming potion he gave me with firewhiskey or something, but I don’t think he did. The alcohol would react poorly with the valerian root, because they’d over-depress the drinker’s central nervous system. Betcha didnt think I'd know that one. Also, Snape doesn’t seem like the kind of professor that would share his liquor with a student.”
Draco gaped at him.
“What? Has he shared his liquor with you? Will you give me some?”
“What? No! Of course not. Severus barely drinks at all, so he certainly wouldn’t encourage underage drinking. It’s just that you’re the worst babbler I’ve ever seen when you’re all drugged up.”
Harry hummed. “Yeah, it feels nice. But!” He had started to let himself fall back into the embrace of the sofa cushions, but he shot up again. “You never answered my questions! Why are you down here, and why do you get to call him ‘Severus’?”
Rolling his eyes, Draco moved from the doorway to take a seat in the armchair near the fireplace. Harry collapsed gratefully back down on the sofa now that he didn’t have to crane to see the other boy. “You know that I don’t actually have to answer you, right? I’m not like all your little sycophants.”
“That’s nice of you.” Harry let his eyes drift close. “I wish they weren’t like that either.”
“’They’ who?”
“The sycophants.”
“Huh.”
Harry could feel Draco’s eyes on him. He turned his head and opened his own eyes to meet Draco’s stare. Draco stared at him as if he were searching for something important. Harry wasn’t sure if he found it, because he had gone back to examining the stone ceiling. After a long minute—or maybe longer, or maybe less; Harry wasn’t keeping track—Draco said, “I’m here because I wanted to interrogate him about your spot in the tournament. And I’m allowed to address him with familiarity in private because he’s my godfather, sort of.”
“How does someone ‘sort of’ be your godfather? I mean, it’s not like Sirius who is my godfather but was in prison my whole life, is it? Or does that make Sirius my ‘sort of’ godfather too?”
“You actually met Black then? After he escaped, I mean.” Draco leaned forward, his eyes glued to Harry’s face.
Harry considered telling the other boy the whole story of that night in the Shrieking Shack but decided against it. He didn’t actually trust Draco, after all. He just wasn’t bothered by him at the moment. “That’s not what I said. I just heard that he’s my godfather while I was eavesdropping down at the Three Broomsticks. Now, stop changing the subject.”
Draco slumped back. “Severus isn’t legally my godfather. His family doesn’t have a high enough standing, and he’s—well, he’s not poor exactly, but he’s not well off either. So on my birth certificate, my godfather is Adair Avery. But he’s been in Azkaban since—since I was a baby. So, Severus kind of took over the godfather stuff so that I wouldn’t be missing out.”
“Really?” Harry asked around a yawn. “That’s nice of him. What counts as godfather stuff?”
“Er, I don’t know. Christmas presents and birthday gifts, for one. He used to take me out on outings when I was little, and he came to stay at the manor with me last summer when my parents when on holiday just the two of them. He always visits on the holidays, even though he hates the big parties my mother throws. He usually doesn’t stay long, but he always comes to talk to me before he leaves. And during the summer’s he’ll visit me then, too. Everyone says he’s a terrible teacher, but when there’s not a whole class full of students, and when his students actually care about the topic, he’s amazing. He got me my first potions set when I was eight, and he taught me all sorts of tips. Plus, I’ve learned a lot more Defense Against the Dark Arts from him than from any of the crap professors we’ve had here.”
Harry mumbled, “Remus was pretty good.” His eyes had drifted shut again without his permission, and he couldn’t quite drag forth the will to open them.
“Didn’t he try to eat you at the end of last year?” Draco drawled.
“’t was n’acciden’.”
“Well that makes it all better!”
“Exactly! Usually it’s on purpose. Anyways, your godfather sounds cool.”
“He is. Potter?” Harry rolled his head back in Draco’s direction, but he still didn’t open his eyes. “How did you get your name in the Goblet?”
“Didn’t,” Harry insisted. He felt his face scrunch up into a vague sort of scowl. “Don’t want to compete. But if someone wasn’t trying to kill me, it wouldn’t be Hogwarts, would it?”
“Yeah right. I bet you loved it. The adventure of it all is all very Gryffindorish.”
Harry rolled his head away and pressed his face into a pillow by his head. Muffled only a little, he said. “The Hat was right. Should’a let it put me in Slytherin. Maybe then everyone would stop trying to kill me.”
The was a long moment of silence. Then, Draco said, “I think you had better go to sleep before you say something you regret.”
Half-heartedly, Harry shrugged. “Prob’ly already did. G’night, Draco.”
“Good night, Potter.”