Detention
It comes as a shock to everyone that the new Professor Slughorn isn’t there to take up the cursed position of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at all, but is in fact supposed to replace Snape as Potions Master, whereas Snape is finally getting the job that was always his own first choice.
Harry’s heart seems to skip a beat when Dumbledore informs them all of this and he immediately looks over at Snape, but the man gives nothing away. As always, when he’s sitting in his seat at the staff table, the man’s face is a mask devoid of any feeling.
”I thought you said Professor Slughorn was the new DADA teacher!” Hermione whispers next to him.
”No, I just assumed”, Harry whispers back. ”It was the only thing that made sense. How was I supposed to know Dumbledore would let Snape teach DADA all of a sudden…”
”Didn’t you spend half the summer with him?” Ron hisses from across the table. ”He never said anything?”
”No”, Harry mumbles and looks down at his half-finished treacle tart, trying not to let his friends see the hurt on his face. ”He didn’t… He didn’t tell me a thing…”
”Figures”, Ron muttes. ”Greasy git… Always so bloody mysterious, isn’t he?”
Harry frowns to himself, but doesn’t say anything else. Even though part of him wants to agree with Ron, he just can’t bring himself to say anything mean about Severus… Snape, he corrects himself. He’s Snape. But mysterious is bloody right, even if he’s not a git anymore… Except…
Except, just like Harry had worried during his two days at the Burrow, whatever made Snape treat him decently while he stayed with him at his house seemed to have gone now that they’re back at Hogwarts, he seems to be back to his old git self again. And although Harry still harbours some small ounce of hope that that is just for show, and that Snape sees him differently now after their time together at Spinner’s End, even if he can’t show it while there are other people around, that hope is slowly dying down because really… there was no-one around during their trek up to the castle, and Snape had been just as nasty as ever to Harry then.
Well, almost as nasty anyway, except for that one moment, just before we went into the castle, Harry thinks and allows himself to wonder, for a moment, if that had really been hurt glinting in the older man’s eyes when he’d looked at Harry, startled at his outburst.
Apparently, I don’t care, Snape had said.
Are you alright, he’d asked just before Harry accused him of not caring, he remembers now. So he did care. Harry groans to himself and pushes the plate away, the few bites of treacle tart he’s eaten has not been enough to take the edge of his hunger, but he feels slightly sick suddenly and can’t bring himself to eat another bite.
He replays that moment over and over again later in his bed. He tries not to, he tries to forget all about it, because every time he remembers that glint in Snape’s eyes, he feels like an utter shit. But no matter how hard he tries to distract himself with other thoughts, that one moment keeps coming back to him and when sleep finally overpowers him, he dreams of billowing black robes and frown lines deep with disappointment and hurt.
*
During the first few weeks of term, Harry tries to get a moment alone with the former Potions Master, now traditionally ill-fated professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts, but the man proves even more elusive than Slughorn, only more subtle about it.
Meanwhile, Harry’s suspicions of Malfoy grow and fester with every passing day, until the mere sight of the boy’s platinum blonde hair makes Harry clench his teeth and even though he stubbornly denies it when Hermoine tries to broach the subject carefully, Harry knows that there is more to his anger than just suspicion, although he won’t go as far as to admit, even to himself, that what he’s actually experiencing is jealousy… But one thing is for sure, when he catches Severus put a discreet hand on the blonde boy’s elbow as he steer him off to the side for a word, Harry’s heart starts hammering away furiously and his fingers twitch with the impulse to break something…
Dumbledore isn’t helping either. Harry tries to talk to him about during their first meeting, but the old man just tells him to forget about the whole thing. And after Katie is cursed by the necklace, he tries to bring it up again but Dumbledore waves his hand dismissively and retrieves the Pensieve, and that’s the end of that conversation.
Harry feels a surge of frustration like he hasn’t felt since Dumbledore was avoiding him last year. But he likes to think he’s matured a lot since then, enough to be able to control that frustration. At least he wants Dumbledore to think he has matured. And Snape. He wants Snape to realise that he isn’t a little boy, but a young man. So he curls his fists and stuffs them in his robes’ pockets and clenches his teeth and counts to ten.
”Harry?” Dumbledore says, peering at him from over the rim of his halfmoon glasses. ”Are you ready?”
”Yeah”, Harry mutters, thinking eight, nine, ten… And deep breath. Okay, I’m okay. ”Yeah, I’m ready.”
*
”Detention, I think… Potter…” Snape says in a low voice, and although Harry tries his best not to let the jolt of triumph to mar his mutinuous glare, something in his face must have given him away because Snape narrows his eyes, then adds: ”With Filch.”
”Fine”, Harry snaps surlishly.
The professor raises his eyebrows a little. Harry quickly looks around at his friends and spots similiar expressions on their faces, Ron’s in particular seems to say Mate, what’s wrong with you? and Harry feels a flush creep onto his face. Too late he realises that he must have sounded disappointed, and not by the prospect of detention in the first place, but detention with Filch, which is the truth and not that weird, but what is weird, to his friends at least, is that Harry hadn’t seemed disappointed at the prospect of detention when he’d thought it was with Snape, quite the opposite even. He’d seemed almost eager, he knows. Even Snape had noticed, which is why, Harry knows, he’d added Filch as an after-thought.
It is also possible that he did so because he himself is anything but eager to spend any more time than necessary with Harry, especially just the two of them. But the idea of that makes Harry’s stomach clench painfully, so he tries not to linger on it.
Harry spends the full duration of his detention with Filch furiously scrubbing trophies while stewing in his anger with Snape. Finally, Filch dismisses him and Harry drops the brush with a clunk against the floor and strides out of there. He walks quickly, breathing heavily, as the rage building up inside him continues to pulse and grow with every hurried step.
He’s already half-way across the castle when he realises that he’s nowhere near Gryffindor tower. Looking around, mildly annoyed with himself and his impulsive nature, he finally recognises a couple of the paintings on a nearby wall and realises he’s near the stairs leading down to the dungeons. Figures, he thinks and huffs at himself.
He imagines Snape in his quarters, getting ready for bed… and just as suddenly as the image has popped into his head, another image slides unbidden in front of it, as he pictures Snape with Draco, talking in hushed voices, plotting together, Snape putting his hand on Draco’s shoulder in that familiar, intimate way of his that Harry has already witnessed once… Suddenly the anger that has been brewing inside Harry during the night, and for the past few weeks really if he’s honest with himself, ever since Snape dumped him on the doorstep of The Burrow and Disapparated without as much as a Goodbye, flares up again and Harry continues walking towards the dungeons, more determined than ever to confront the professor.
It’s not until he’s stalking up and down the length of the corridor outside the Potions classroom that Harry realises he actually has no idea where Snape’s private quarters are located. He swears silently to himself, and for a brief, desperate moment he even considers just screaming the man’s name, but reigns the impulse in, since he doesn’t want the attention of every single student in Slytherin House any more than Snape would. Finally he decides to knock on the door to the Potions classroom, on the off-chance that the man is using it to work on his private potions research after school hours. And if a student should show up I can always tell them I’m looking for Slughorn, Harry thinks as he bangs on the door a couple of times.
He waits with bated breath, listening for any noise on the other side of the door… But everything is deadly quiet. With a sinking feeling, Harry realises that the classroom is probably empty. He tries knocking a few more times, but his heart isn’t really in it.
”Fuck…” he whispers to himself.
Then suddenly, a soft groan tears through the eerie quiet of the dungeons and Harry whips his head around to see a door sliding open further down the corridor.
His heart starts pounding painfully again, but this time it’s with anticipation and he quickly strides over to the now open door and the shadowed figure who has ventured outside the room. Harry quickens his strides until he’s standing right in the figure’s space and the familiar scent of sulphur, tea, parchment and wood washes over him, making him tingle all over and for a brief moment he forgets what he was angry about and almost smiles.
”Potter”, Snape hisses. ”What do you think you’re doing?”
”S-Sir”, Harry says, vaguely horrified to hear the breathless quality of his own voice as it fights its way out of his blocked throat.
”Get in here, before you wake up the entire dungeon”, Snape whispers furiously.
He grabs Harrt by the scruff of his neck and pulls him forcefully inside the room and Harry stumbles into a small furniture just inside the door as the man lets go of him just as forcefully.
”Careful”, Snape hisses.
”S-Sorry”, Harry stutters out even as his anger flares up again, because Really? You shoved me into it, you git!
Then the older man is towering over him again, and Harry finds himself struggling to breathe through the scent so familiar to him now and acutely aware of the other man’s body heat pushing against him in waves of warmth, and he shivers.
”I hope you have a very good explanation for this”, Snape murmurs quietly, but with his consonants still sharpened.
”I needed to see you”, Harry says, trying to match the other man’s haughty tone but merely succeeding in sounding petulant. ”I needed to talk, I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me for weeks, but you’re always avoiding me!”
”Mr Potter”, Snape says with what is clearly forced calm. ”I have had quite a few more pressing matters on my mind lately than to cater to your moody whims…”
Harry feels a pang of guilt, but he immediately shakes it off because he knows what Snape is doing and it’s not fair. Harry is not some spoilt little brat demanding constant attention. Five minutes, that’s all it would have taken. Just a moment to reassure him that things were okay!
”I’m sixteen now”, Harry blurts out, feeling his cheeks heat up slightly.
It’s too dark in the hallway for Harry to be able to make out the look on Snape’s face, but the other man seems to flinch back slightly and the silence that follows feels distinctly confused. And why wouldn’t the man be confused, Harry thinks. Once again, I’m blurting out whatever comes into my mind, with no logic whatsoever…
”Yes, I know. Happy belated birthday”, Snape mumbles then, surprising Harry thoroughly, because What the hell…
But before Harry has a chance to comment on the out-of-place birthday wish, Snape has swiftly strode past him and disappeared from the small antechamber and into his rooms. Harry follows him cautiously, but hangs back in the doorway, respectful of the space as the man’s own and doesn’t want to presume that he’d be welcome to enter it.
Not that that’s stopped me before, Harry thinks numbly as he watches the man light some candles around the small livingroom, bathing it in an orange glow and making the shadows grow and dance across the floors and ceiling.
”This is not to become a habit”, Snape says and there’s a hint of warning in his voice that Harry knows not to take lightly. ”You will never come to see me here again, am I understood?”
”Yeah”, Harry says and dares to edge across the threshold.
When the older wizard doesn’t immediately hex him into next week, Harry lets himself relax slightly and walks over to one of the two armchairs that take up most of the room’s space and sinks down on it. Snape remains standing near the dying embers of the fireplace and watches him silently for a moment, then finally looks away again.
”So. Talk.”
”What?” Harry says.
”You needed to see me, to talk to me”, Snape quotes with a subtle sneer. ”So talk.”
”I… I don’t know…”
”What to say? That is curious, seeing as you were in such a hurry to get it off your chest you couldn’t even wait until the morning…”
”Where to start”, Harry corrects with a glare. ”This summer, at your house, I thought we…”
Snape’s eyes narrows suspiciously, and Harry lets himself trail off as he realises that he’s about to enter a mine field, so he takes a deep breath and actually thinks about what he wants to say before he says anything else.
”What?” Snape encourages quietly, but there’s an edge to his voice.
”I thought we’d got past some of the stuff, eh, hostility, from before. I thought we’d got to know each other better, that we’d become… closer…”
There’s a war of emotions in the older man’s eyes, or it could be the shadows from the flickering candle light. But after a loaded moment of silence, during which Harry half-expects to be kicked out of the man’s chambers again, Snape sighs and looks away. He doesn’t speak, but some of the tension seems to drain from his shoulders and he looks less like a warrior ready to strike and more of a regular man, a tired and almost vulnerable man.
”I kind of almost didn’t want to leave”, Harry admits quietly. ”Because of that, because of how we were, together…”
”Yes”, Snape says, attempting a sneer but not nearly succeeding. ”I had noticed your reluctance.”
”Because I was worried that I’d show up at Hogwarts and you’d be just like your old self again, like this summer never happened…”
”Harry… I have a job to do, and appearances to uphold—”
”I know that”, Harry cuts in. ”But you don’t have to be mean to me.”
”I wasn’t aware that I had been”, Snape retorts and gives Harry challenging look.
And now that Harry thinks about it, he realises that it’s not exactly true. Snape hasn’t been mean to him at all, if anything he’s completely ignored him which, to everyone else who don’t know how Snape treated Harry during the summer, is actually an improvement. But Harry would almost prefer it if the man would taunt and insult him like before, anything other than ignoring him.
”Maybe you’re not outright mean to me, but you…”
”I what?”
”You… You…”
Harry huffs in frustration and looks down at his clenched fists, you don’t hear me, you don’t look at me, you don’t care about me, you only care about bloody Malfoy, ”You act like I’m not even here, and it’s really frustrating…”
”I see. So the Chosen One is frustrated that there is still someone whose world does not revolve around him—”
”No, you git—!”
Snape’s eyes flash dangerously, and Harry quickly bites down on his lip.
One, two, three, four…
”That’s not what I meant”, he bites out.
Five, six, seven, eight…
”You know I don’t think like that. Why do you have to—”
”What?”
”Why do you have to talk like that? I know you know I’m not like that!”
”Really. You could have fooled me, judging by the direction of this conversation—”
”No!” Harry exclaims. ”I don’t care about what anyone else thinks, the Prophet, the Slytherins, most of the people in this bloody school, okay? I care about what my friends think, and I care what… what you think…”
”You care what I think”, Snape repeats slowly, like he’s sure it’s a joke or an insult but he can’t quite put his finger on how yet.
”Yes I care what you think, because I bloody well like you, and I know you know that!” Harry practically shouts, because mature or not, at this point he’s so frustrated his skin is crawling with it.
The silence that spreads out in the room is deafening. Harry’s cheek flush with heat, but the rest of him grows steadily colder. He looks down at his fists, unable to meet the other man’s eyes anymore.
I did it, he thinks numbly. I told him. I told Snape I like him.