"I'll take the transfiguration; it can't be worse than the cruciatus curse," said Harry.
"You think you could take that?"
"I have," said Harry.
"He has," confirmed Snape.
"Then this should be a piece of piss for you, laddie," she said.
It hurt, but it was no worse than when his head ached. Harry concentrated on thinking about his blue sky.
"I hope you inflict much pain on whoever has hurt this kid so bad he can lie there smiling," said Healer Nadder.
"I hope to do so," said Severus. "The boy has been through rather a lot. Can you fix him a pair of plain glass spectacles as well? It might be wise if nobody knows he can see without them."
"As you wish," she shrugged. "Whatever you're up to, I don't want to know."
"No, you really don't," said Severus.
Shortly thereafter they floo'd back to Severus' quarters, and Harry, practising his knee flexing, found he was able to go through without falling over, if not with elegance.
"You're a quick study, anyway," said Snape. "It's almost curfew; I'd better escort you to your common room in case anyone's watch is fast."
This meant Umbridge of course and Harry smiled grateful thanks.
"I can pay for the treatment when you take me to Gringott's," he said.
Snape surveyed him, and nodded.
"Thank you, Mr. Python," he said. "It means I will not have to worry if one of my own House needs treatment. I'm not too proud to accept. We shall commence your study on how to study tomorrow night."
"Sir, why didn't my father have his eyes fixed? And Dumbledore?"
"Your father did not want the pain. And Dumbledore? His eyesight degeneration may be old age, but as the old coot is a very fine transfigurationist himself, I suspect that his need for glasses might well be fictional, or he has glasses which are charmed to see the invisible."
"Is that possible?"
"It is, and I will consider doing the charm another time. But not tonight," said Snape.
oOoOo
Hermione joined Harry at his next supposed 'remedial potions' lesson.
"I read the book you loaned to Harry, sir," she said.
Snape regarded her.
"And what part of that statement was supposed to be news to me?" he asked. "Mr. Python has invited you to share his lessons, he has a book on the subject. It would be a surprise to me if you had not read the book. Did you understand it all?"
"No, sir."
"Thank goodness, a straight answer from the resident know-it-all. How much research did you do to cover the parts you did not understand?"
"Only a couple of hours," said Hermione. "I ... I thought perhaps you might have more coherent answers as you have experience ..."
"Now you HAVE surprised me," said Snape. "You actually give credit to me for knowing things that are not in the book? Will you perchance also at times respect my Mastery of the art of potioneering to believe me if I tell you that the book is not always telling you to do things in the best possible way?"
"Isn't it? Why not? Why do we have a text book which isn't telling us the best way to go about things?"
"There are three reasons. Firstly, because nobody has got around to writing a better text book for English students than the one we use. Secondly, because it simplifies things down for dunderheads to be able to reproducibly produce a potion which will do the job adequately, if not efficiently. Thirdly, because the only text book in the world which covers a similar course and which is better is in German. Do you read German, Miss Granger? I doubt many people do."
"If I had the incentive of a better text book, I'm sure I could learn," said Hermione.
"Ah, yes, I think you would. But would Mr. Weasley? Or Miss Brown?"
"No, sir."
"No indeed. It is my miserable task, on a level with the cleansing of the Augean Stables, to instil enough knowledge into the numbskulled brains of seething teenage hormones with gawky limbs attached to get through the OWL in a skill which can kill the unwary. To do this, I do not want to encourage too much experimentation in class. This leads to exploding cauldrons. I will set aside time for those who ask for more guidance."
Hermione's eyes widened.
"So all I had to do is to ask for more lessons?" she gasped.
"Exactly," said Snape.
"May I?" Hermione managed.
"Certainly. I will pair you with Miss Greengrasse, who is a fairly good potioneer, which will please Miss Davis as she will no longer have to sit in the potions lab to do her homework as chaperone. You will find Miss Greengrasse formal but no deatheater," he added. "But if you really want to get on with her, you should perhaps check out a book on wizarding world etiquette from the library."
"Why would I want to do that, sir?" asked Hermione, perplexed. "I'm not about to be impolite."
"Miss Granger, you are impolite without meaning to every time you open your mouth," said Snape. "You wouldn't go to France without learning the customs so as not to offend anyone?"
"You mean like customs of slavery of house elves?" Hermione's ire was kindled.
"It's not my business how much you offend the house elves; that's your problem," said Snape. "But I prefer that you do not inadvertently insult one of my harder working Slytherins by your insufferable assumption that the muggle way is always the best, your sloppy greetings and lack of sensitivity to the feelings of others. You, after all, would not like me to barge into your parents' dental clinic, and say 'hey bub, you're doing it all wrong, you should use a correctional transfiguration to eliminate the caries and a bone-strengthening potion to improve the overall condition of that man's teeth. Your clothes are ridiculous, you should wear pink medical robes and by the way all your women look like whores because they show their knees.' I have better manners than that."
"I don't do anything like that," said Hermione, close to tears.
"Yes you do," said Snape. "You come up to someone and start talking right away, you use first names without permission, you don't respect families and you have this superior look on your face as though you think that the muggle world does things better. It does not. It does things differently. There is no right, no wrong. Could the wizarding world benefit from learning from muggles? Probably, but not in a way that suggests that it is better. I think the muggle world could benefit from learning from wizards too, but the statute of secrecy precludes that. Now don't you dare burst into tears; I could have been a lot harsher, though I have to say I do wonder how a witch as clever as you has failed to notice that you have been treated with disdain by anyone born to the wizarding world."
"How would I know? I've always been treated with contempt by those people who don't like a swot," said Hermione, hotly.
"Ah, lacking in people skills, and I suppose I can relate to that," said Snape. "If you are to help Harry defeat Riddle and put some order into our corrupt society you need to know the society first before you attempt to change anything so you can get the pillars of society to listen to you. Do you young people want to run a revolution or not?"
Harry and Hermione stared, open mouthed.
"I hadn't thought any further ahead than killing His Scaliness," said Harry.
"Honest to a fault and far too Gryffindor," snapped Snape. "What's the good of winning the war if you don't win the peace? Do you really want Dumbledore and his ilk causing the rise of another dark lord by his insistence that muggle ways are better and pure bloods are trash?"
"Do you feel that way? That you are treated as trash?" asked Hermione.
"Miss Granger, are you under the impression that I am a pureblood?" asked Snape.
"Well ... yes," said Hermione.
"I'm not," said Snape. "I'm a half-blood. My mother was from a pureblood family and my father was a muggle. I am quite well aware of the muggle ways of doing things. I occasionally watch television. I know who Darth Vader is, and I much prefer Mr. Creevey's designation of me as Darth Snape than being called a vampire, it gets old very quickly. And I know better than many people that if my mother had known more about muggle things, and my father had had the chance to be better tolerated in the wizarding world, we might have been a happier family. And if you can win this war and then be an ambassador for the muggle born showing respect for the old ways and customs you can win support from those who might otherwise fight tooth and nail against you."
"I see, sir. I had no idea that... that I was being discourteous."
"No. If I thought you knew I would not have been gentle," said Snape, hiding a savage grin as she processed the thought that this had been gentle. "You check out that book, read it, and I will answer questions on it. It won't do Mr. Python any harm to read it as well."
"Why do you call Harry that?"
"Because he has been going around like a Norwegian Blue in need of being nailed to his perch," said Snape, unanswerably. "I am, for reasons known to myself and Mr. Python, averse to his birth surname. He is a parselmouth. I thought it an eminently suitable soubriquet."
It was dawning on Hermione that she knew nothing about her potions master at all.
"Shall we start, sir?" asked Harry.
"Yes; I want to test how well you are holding your shields. Legilimens!" he pushed at Harry, who surrounded his thoughts with blue sky. Small clouds clustered on the horizon.
"Ah, you have compartmented your thoughts as the book suggested and made them into atmospheric effects?" Snape pushed at a cloud. It rained on his thoughts. "An interesting response, not what I would have chosen, but it seems to be working. However, I can force sunshine to dry your rain and evaporate your cloud and ... dear me, I have no desire to see that, I ate not long ago." Harry was blushing as Snape stripped away memories of kissing Cho. "A good outer layer though, trivialities which loom important to most teenage boys. Why is there a storm cloud emitting lightning bolts?"
"I think that's my scar, sir; it just turned up like that," said Harry.
"Interesting," said Snape. "You need to build a lightning conductor to take anything coming from it into the blue."
"You've got music in your head," blurted out Harry, who was seeing if he could follow Snape's thoughts back.
"And? I grew up in the era when there was real music not boy bands," spat Snape. It had been a natural progression to think of the Electric Light Orchestra's 'My blue world'.
"Would you play music to help us meditate then?" said Hermione. "I like a lot of dad music ... oops," she went red.
"Since I am a contemporary of Mr. Python's parents, I suppose that cannot be an insult as it is accurate," sighed Snape, "But you open your mouth, Miss Granger, and swallow your foot so far that I fear it would take a tonsillectomy to remove it."
"Sorry, sir," said Hermione.
"Accepted. Now, let me see what you have done... legilimens!" he threw himself into Hermione's mind. Numbers bombarded him, flowing from all the bookshelves of her thoughts. Pi being calculated ... Snape withdrew. "Very effective, Miss Granger," he said. "Leap those numbers round a bit more, in a random fashion, in case you get someone who actually enjoys arithmancy and mathematics. It is, however, obvious that you are practising occlumency with those bookshelves on display. If you can hide them behind thoughts of furiously calculating a lot of equations, you might even fool Dumbledore into thinking that your sole concern is spell design. It needs practice. As does Mr. Python's. However, I feel at least some small modicum of optimism that we might even get there."
"Please, sir, is there a way we can remove Harry's scar and hence the way Riddle is attacking him?" asked Hermione.
"The problem with cursed scars is that they tend to be incurable," said Snape. "Like the dark mark. The ministry has so far been unable to duplicate it to introduce other spies into his ranks."
"He probably cast it with Parseltongue," said Harry.
Snape froze yet again.
"Good grief, you appear to be growing a brain in there somewhere," he said. "Or the occluding is permitting you to get past the usual spaghetti you laughingly call your thoughts, can it be as simple as that, that the horcrux is interfering with your thought processes?"
"Horcrux?" asked Hermione.
"Oh hell," said Snape. "Dumbledore is going to kill me."
"Why?" asked Hermione.
"He doesn't want Harry to know because he wants him to have a normal childhood without living in fear," said Snape.
"Excuse me, Professor, but would you listen to yourself and realize how absurd that sounds?" said Harry. "I haven't had a normal childhood at all to date, I've lived in fear of my relatives all the life I can remember, and Riddle has tried to kill me every year since I've been at Hogwarts except when it was only dementors after my godfather. And Dumbledore has been assisting him at every turn, setting up that insane obstacle course for the philosopher's stone which would appeal only to the average eleven year old or insane megalomaniac, though in Cormac McLaggan's case I would have been repeating myself. Then he let us go after the basilisk, and really? A man as well read as he is, knowing that Aragog was frightened out of the castle did not work out what it was? Hermione did, and I know she's smart, but she was barely thirteen. Then he let the dementors come instead of telling Fudge where to stick himself, and then he permitted a Death Eater to put my name into the goblet of fire and insisted it was binding. There should have been no way it was binding! But I was scared of losing my magic more than I was scared of the competition. Why didn't he notice that his old friend wasn't acting in character? Hell, sir, if it had been someone you knew well, even an old enemy like Sirius, you would have noticed."
"I would," said Snape. "I overlook your linguistic lapses as you are justifiably angry. I think you should be. You are right, he has been grooming you to fight to certain stimuli; to whit, if you think someone you care about is in danger, or something you care about, like the philosopher's stone. I thought it odd he would not permit me to do what I wanted to do with the potions and have all of them poisons, or at least the draught of living death. That ... that puts an interesting complexion on it."
"Sir, if Riddle is rebuilt using my blood, doesn't that make the blood wards at the Dursleys essentially useless?" asked Harry.
"You want to be careful your poor little brain doesn't overheat," said Snape. "You are quite correct, it would render them totally superfluous. What was Albus thinking of in sending you back there?"
"And keeping him incommunicado by ordering us not to write," said Hermione. "I was dubious about your mistrust of the headmaster, Harry, but I am coming round to your point of view."
"He's been manipulating me longer than he's been manipulating you, Miss Granger, and it's only recently that I've been questioning it," said Snape. "And making me spy to atone for having been stupid enough to pass on the ruddy prophecy to Riddle."
"What prophesy and you've ducked the question of what is a horcrux," said Hermione.
"I knew there was a reason I shouldn't have let Pot - Python bring you," hissed Snape. "You are altogether too acute and tenacious. Very well. The prophecy is about a child born as the seventh month dies, who will have the power the Dark Lord knows not. There was more but I didn't hear it. HE will want Python to retrieve the memory from the Department of Mysteries, since only those named in a prophecy can touch it safely."