Harry Potter Short Stories

Inner Slytherin Ch 3

Harry groaned.

"I have enough trouble reading the board as it is, all the letters are fuzzy," he said.

Snape stared.

"When did you last see an optician?" he asked.

"I've never seen an optician," said Harry. "Aunt Petunia got me these glasses from a charity shop. They helped a lot, except when Dudley kept breaking them."

"Do you know, I am much inclined to kidnap you from your aunt's home and let the wards fall so that the dark lord can send his people to question them," said Snape, angrily.

"Oh, sir, they don't deserve that, they aren't strong enough to survive the cruciatus curse," said Harry, appalled.

Snape smiled.

"I wasn't thinking about them surviving. Why do you plead for them? They have been outrageous to you."

"Would you have given your father to Riddle? Or mine?"

Snape was jolted back.

"You know where to stick in the stiletto and turn it, little snake," he admitted. "I confess I wasn't that bothered what happened to your father, but I would not have instigated it. Or handed over my own father. You win that one. However, it's not so late that I can't get an appointment for you with an optician immediately; I can call in a favor. Follow me through the floo to Diagon Alley."

Harry hated flooing, but the idea of being able to see properly held allure.

"Shouldn't I be paranoid about you taking me out of school?" he said.

"Of course you should, but I swear on my magic I mean you no harm," said Snape. "Good little snake. Deeply suspicious of everyone. I'm going to give you a new surname, Mr. Python."

"What, because Hogwarts is a silly place?" asked Harry.

"Very good, Mr. Python. And because we have started over, so now for something completely different."

Harry chuckled.

"I think Dumbledore should have had his power as part of the mandate of the masses, not as part of some farcical aquatic ceremony."

"Mr. Python, we will abandon the quotes for now unless you don't want new glasses? Or your eyes fixed?"

"Can they be fixed?"

"Of course they can be fixed; it's a matter of a skilled medical transfiguration of the shape of your eyeballs."

"Then why didn't McGonagall do it?"

"Because she's not specialized in ophthalmic transfiguration and she could have made you blind. Why she didn't send you to an optician however, I do not know. Probably the old coot told her that for some reason it couldn't be done and she believed him. Minerva is distressingly like Miss Granger in her belief in authority figures, rules and what the book says. Now follow!" and he swirled with his cloak through the fireplace.

Harry followed and was glad to have his elbow caught on the other side.

"Why don't you let your knees bounce as you go through, so you can absorb the shock of the translocational energy?" asked Snape.

"Because it's another of those obvious things that everyone except me knows," said Harry. "Why don't you hold classes for the muggleborn to orient them to wizarding ways?"

"Because the head held it to be demeaning," said Snape. "You're a half-blood anyway, you wouldn't have been eligible."

"Even though muggle raised?"

Snape shrugged.

"I try not to plumb the depths of Albus', reasoning," he said. "I'd need to be a cryptographer to decipher his convoluted thoughts. This way!"

Harry found himself on a chair like a dentist's chair while a mediwitch examined his eyes with her wand and various magical optical devices.

"Not like you to leave one of your little snakes so long before bringing them for corrective surgery, Severus," she said.

"He's not one of my snakes, alas," said Snape. "If he had been, he would have been a lot healthier looking too."

"I wasn't going to comment on the malnutrition, badly healed bones, and stunted growth," said the mediwitch.

"Good; carry on not mentioning it to anyone."

"You don't intimidate me, Severus, I still think of you as the demigod who rescued me from Gryffindor bullies and brought me to have my own eyes fixed where they'd driven the shards of my glasses into my eyeballs for the crime of being Slytherin. Why do you think I went in for this field? I can pass it on."

"Hmph," said Snape. "You were more likeable when you were calling me 'Professor' with a modicum of respect in your voice, Heather Nadder."

She laughed.

"Mr. Python, this is going to be mildly painful for about ten minutes for each eye," she said. "If you wish to go through with it, I will do one eye at a time, or I can fit you with magical corrective contacts, or a new set of glasses."