A/N: Okay, this is a very important milestone for me. Fifty chapters y'all. If anyone wants me to do a word count, 1-49 is 110,830 words. Also, I just want to say thank you for all being so nice.
Harry Potter**
Filch pushed Harry roughly into the seat in front of his desk and said, "You're in a lot of trouble. Dungbombs in the library, the entry hall, and you even had the nerve to put them in Mrs. Norris's bed! You won't get away with it, I just caught you red handed!"
"But sir, I don't have any dungbombs! I don't even know who Mrs. Norris is!"
"Oh, you're a tricky one aren't you. You don't have any dungbombs because you put them in my Mrs. Norris's cat bed! I caught you fleeing the scene!"
"No I wasn't!"
"So you admit you put the dungbombs in her bed!"
"I did not," Harry said, the very picture of shocked innocence.
"I see right through that face! You did it! If I had my way, you'd be strung up with manacles around your ankles from the ceiling. But, since I don't, you'll have a detention. Tomorrow night."
"But I didn't do anything sir," Harry said, false tears brimming in his eyes and lips trembling.
"If that's how you're going to be, you'll be having your detention with Professor Snape," Filch said nastily, grinning beneath his oily mat of hair with crooked yellow teeth.
"But-"
"Say another word about your so-called innocence and you'll have two detentions!"
Harry sighed and gave up trying to get out of detention. The other man was clearly demented, and the silver lining was if he'd been putting stink bombs into the dratted cat's bed he hadn't been stealing the Sorcerer's Stone.
"I already have a detention tomorrow night," Harry said, because he did.
Since today was Friday, that made tomorrow Saturday, the day he had detention with Severus.
"Then on Sunday night! Now get out of my office you nasty little brat!"
Harry did as ordered and scampered from the room.
___
Saturday Night. . .
___
Harry trudged his way down to the dungeons, feeling the weight of everything pressing down on him. What was Severus going to do during his detention? Would he be cruel to Harry as James Sr. had been to him, or would he entirely ignore Harry's presence?
His arm felt like lead as he slowly raised it and knocked three times on the heavy black door that led to the Potion's classroom.
"Enter!" Severus barked.
With his head down, Harry entered the room and walked up to stand before the desk where the professor was seated.
"For your detention, you're to clean every cauldron in the school by hand with no magic. You'll work until you've completed the task, until breakfast starts. Then you'll continue tomorrow in detention if you haven't finished by then."
"What about the cauldrons the house elves use, or the other teachers? Am I expected to clean your personal cauldrons as well?" Harry inquired innocently, knowing that Severus wouldn't be able to let him clean the other teacher's cauldrons because they were private property.
"All the cauldrons I tell you to clean, you will clean. I expect them to be perfectly scoured, no residue remaining to muck up the next brew. You start now, with those cauldrons over there," Severus said, eyes still on the sheet of paper he was writing on, but his left hand pointing to the left side of the room where an impossibly large heap of disgusting looking cauldron's sat.
Surprising though it may be, Harry was happy to do this task. He liked the repetitive motions of scrubbing, the satisfaction of a job well done, and most of all the time to think up new things. Since he was in the presence of a great potion-maker, perhaps he could slip in some questions he'd been dying to know the answer to.
Removing his upper robes and tie so that he only wore a black button-up short sleeved shirt, his black uniform pants and his polished black dress shoes, he grabbed a bucket with hot water and lye as well as a rag.
The movements of rag on cauldron caused soft susurrations of sound to penetrate the quiet of the room, joined only by the sound of breathing and the scratch of quill on parchment.
"Professor sir, if one were to add crushed hawthorn leaf to the wolfsbane potion in the first boiling stage, crushed gaia berries into the dry ingredients including beetle eye powder before sifting, and a flask of moonwater with pressed lilac oil, would that hypothetically make the potion prevent the person from turning into a wolf at all?" Harry asked, impossibly curious if his hypothesis may have already been tested.
The quill's movement stopped, and Severus said in a dangerously silky tone, "What was that Potter? That didn't sound like the noise one make while cleaning cauldrons."
"I promise you, I am cleaning the cauldrons, I was just very curious, you see. I've read all about potions, including your own book which I found fascinating, and the molecular study of reactions in potion work is a very technically challenging thing to predict.
"I have ever so many theories, but I'm not much of a brewer yet so I can't test them out. My aunt and uncle refused to let anything related to school or magic into the house, so my uncle locked all of my supplies in the shed. May I repeat my question?" Harry asked hopefully.
"I heard you the first time!" Severus snapped, but then an odd look crossed his face and he said, "Your aunt?"
Harry brushed some wild black tangles away from his face with his arm, his hand being covered in lye and dragon dung. Then he inspected the professor's face. Of course he knew that Severus had met Petunia, but he hadn't really expected him to care.
"Yes. . . ?" Harry said leadingly, pretending confusion.
"What is her name?" Severus almost snarled.
"Petunia Dursley, sir," he said, wide eyed, the very picture of frightened surprise at the potion teacher's ferocious attitude.
"Stop lying!" the man said, slamming his palms against his desk to push himself up, "I know as well as anyone else that you and your brat of a brother were raised by the Chorus family!"
"What are you talking about?" Harry said with a little bit of heat in his tone, "I've been with my aunt and uncle since I was a baby! They constantly complain about how much of a burden I am and how they hate my parents for drunk driving and getting themselves killed!
"They said they wished I'd died too, and that I shouldn't have survived, even in the backseat, that that's how I got my scar. They've always hated me! I didn't even know I had a name until I was ten years old!" Harry screamed, tears racing down his cheeks for the abused child he'd been less than a year prior.
He filled his head with all of Harry Potter's memories, nothing about his true nature or about Era, but all the memories of abuse, and the joy about learning magic was real, and certain memories of Diagon Alley that couldn't harm him. He made a special place for each of his lessons in his head, and how 'gifted' he was magically, as well as the hurt he'd felt at Severus's way of treating him that very first potion's lesson.
Then, in a calculated move, he met the startled black eyes of his teacher with his own tear reddened green ones. As he'd expected, the teacher couldn't help but take the bait dangled so openly before him.
He went into Harry's mind.
The first memory was when he was four. Vernon Dursley had kicked him in the face for trying to steal a peach. Then the time Dudley tried to drown him in a bucket. He then remembered all the times he'd gotten badly injured learning how to cook. When he was five, the exorcism the Dursleys had tried to perform on him. How every time he'd used accidental magic, he was beaten into unconsciousness.
Years and years of beatings, of being called a demon, not being good enough for a name, not being fed or given water when he needed it, and all the long memories of miserable nights suffering in agony from physical injuries, hunger, thirst, and perhaps most painfully, knowing that he deserved it. That he wasn't good enough.
Then the joy of learning that magic was real, that he wasn't alone, that he had a name. Then, when he learned his parents weren't a couple of drunks-
Harry closed his eyes at that calculated moment. He didn't like his parents, in some deep part of himself, he could admit that he despised them. Lily, who with her dying wish condemned him. James, who would never have understood him, likely would've abused Harry for being more powerful than himself as he grew older. Lily already hated him at the moment of her death, and even before that secretly despised him for being odd.
Harry opened his eyes again, focusing on the happiness of Diagon Alley, where he'd gotten Agate, his midnight black owl, and found so many books on spellcraft, magic, potions, and creatures. The way he'd enjoyed his classes, and he put a lot of focus on how badly Severus had made him feel, being harsh towards Harry, then punishing him further when he correctly answered the questions presented him.
Severus blinked at this and shook his head, breaking the contact with Harry.
"We'll go to the Headmaster immediately," Severus said, somewhat surprising Harry.
He'd thought that Severus would pretend nothing had happened, and then just treat him like any other child because he could understand some of what Harry had gone through, being abused by his own father, Tobias Snape, when he was younger.
"No!" Harry said desperately, sniffling, "He's the one who sent me to them!"
"Don't be ridiculous. It's not his jurisdiction to place children with guardians. That's only for the Magical Youth Services to handle. Then, if there are any issues with the placement, the Department of Child Protection will safely remove the child from their custody, and they'll find a safe placement.
"There are checkups every two years how-" Severus broke off, his face going pale with horror.
Harry was pretty sure he was about to ask, 'How could they not have noticed your condition' or something like, but Harry was certain he'd drawn the correct conclusion. Dumbledore had prevented these visits from happening, and Dumbledore knew all along.
While Voldemort's side was unquestionably in the wrong for a lot of things, they weren't as blinded as the light by Dumbledore's act. They knew he was evil, and although Severus might have crossed over the the liar's side after Lily, whom he'd had a schoolboy crush on, had died at the hands of Voldemort, Severus would be unable to convince himself of Dumbledore's 'goodness' with the evidence he'd found in Harry's mind.
Severus was looking at Harry in a combination of horror and pity, although Harry couldn't quite decipher what the man planned to do with his newfound knowledge. Perhaps Severus didn't even know himself yet.