Harry Potter gets smart and takes control - The Goblet

Chapter 32 Sev & Professor Snape

TRIGGER WARNINGS!

This one has some trigger warnings! The details are at the bottom of the page for anyone who wants to check them.

If I put them here they'll contain spoilers for everyone.

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The other thing Harry had been tackling that week was his mother's books. Harry had pulled out her book on the flower language in a desperate attempt to distract himself from the images he had seen in the maunders prank book. They were still bothering him. He didn't want to see them when he closed his eyes in his nightmares, didn't want to remember, didn't want to face the fact his father had been Sev's Dursley's.

The flower book hadn't been notated like so many of her other books. And it was more like an encyclopaedia or dictionary than a textbook. Each plant or flower had a drawing of it, the name and a detailed explanation of the meaning.

He flipped through the pages randomly, reading different flowers here and there but stopped when Wormwood caught his eye.

Wormwood. Suddenly he remembered Professor Snape's words from his first-ever potions class, 'What would I get if I added powdered root of Asphodel to an infusion of Wormwood? What is the difference, Potter, between Monkshood and Wolfsbane?'

Harry started frantically flicking through the pages, Asphodel and Wolfsbane were in the flower language too.

Of course, Sev... Severus Snape. How had he missed it?

It hit him like a punch to the gut, all at once that Professor Snape, his potions master, who hated his guts, who hated his father's guts, was the same Sev that played with his mother in the park, that his father picked on, that was abused growing up.

Something inside twisted painfully, and he frantically pulled out the Maunder's Grimoire, flicking through the pages. Yes, the dark-haired boy, so often the target of his father and his friends, looked a lot like a very young Severus Snape.

How had he missed it? Of course, Sev! Sev was short for Severus, Severus Snape, Potions Master. How the hell had he not put it together!? He clenched his jaw and started flicking through the book again. He'd read about a lot of the things the Maunders had done in Lily's diary, but he was hit now, but a feverish need to know. To know every sin his father had committed against Professor Snape. He needed to know what he'd done. Needed to know everything his father had done to the poor boy that grew to hate him and hated Harry too, despite loving his mother.

After that, Harry couldn't not reach out one more time to his mother's friend. Harry, as hurt as he was, as mad as he was, as much as he hated the way Professor Snape snapped and snarled at him (to a small justifiable extent), as much as he was loath to, for fear of his potion master's sure-to-come ire, Harry knew that once Sev had been his mother's friend. He couldn't help but reach out to that boy. He couldn't help but reach out to the unspoken message in those questions all the way back then.

I deeply and bitterly regret Lily's death.

He looked up and the ceiling turning the idea over in his head. Clenching and unclenching his jaw. Sev and Snape were the same person. Did he want to do anything with that? He didn't forgive, as a general rule but what Snape was apologising wasn't his fault. Was it? Either way Harry wouldn't mind melting his mother's Sev, as apposed to Snape. He scribbled a note on the back of his potions homework.

'If you asked me about Asphodel and Wormwood, about Monkshood and Wolfsbane, I would say that I would add a White Tulip and an Eglantine Rose. It would give you a daffodil yellow potion if you were to add a sprig of purple Hysinthea and a Star of Bethlehem.'