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The Great Hall - Snape
The pumpkin soup was tolerable. This alone qualified the afternoon as above average by Severus Snape's standards.
He sat in his customary seat at the staff table, positioned between Aurora Sinistra and the mercifully empty chair that Quirrell had vacated twenty minutes prior, citing some nonsense about needing to prepare his classroom for a demonstration involving a boggart. The man's departure had been the second-best part of lunch, surpassed only by the blessed silence that followed. Quirrell's stammer had a way of burrowing beneath one's skull like a parasitic vine, impossible to ignore and equally impossible to respect.
The Great Hall hummed with the low roar of several hundred students consuming food at varying levels of barbarism. The Gryffindor table, predictably, was the loudest. The Weasley twins appeared to be conducting some experiment involving a bread roll and what Severus suspected was a mild animation charm. At the Hufflepuff table, a cluster of third-years giggled over something in a magazine. Ravenclaw ate with characteristic restraint.
And Slytherin. His house. The table nearest the dungeons, where his students sat with the practiced composure he expected of them.
Severus lifted another spoonful of soup. The pumpkin had been roasted properly this time, a rare occurrence. Whoever was managing the Hogwarts kitchens had finally learned that scorching the flesh before pureeing it produced a superior depth of flavor. Small mercies.
"...absolutely fascinating alignment this month," Sinistra was saying, her dark eyes bright with enthusiasm that Severus found as tiresome as it was predictable. "Mars and Jupiter in conjunction, Severus, you must have noticed the effect on your lunar-dependent potions. The Wolfsbane in particular should demonstrate increased—"
"I am aware of the celestial calendar, Aurora," he said, not looking up from his bowl. "I do not require a lecture."
Sinistra huffed but subsided. She was accustomed to his curtness. Most of the staff were, and the ones who weren't had learned to interpret silence as preference.
A quiet afternoon. His morning classes had passed without catastrophe. The second-year Ravenclaws had managed a passable Swelling Solution. The fourth-year Gryffindors had only destroyed two cauldrons, which was almost an improvement. And he had not been forced to look at that red-haired boy for the entire day, which meant his jaw had relaxed enough to actually enjoy the soup.
The red hair. Lily's hair, on James Potter's son, walking through his dungeons, sitting in his classroom, breathing in his house.
He pushed the thought away. Not now. The soup was too good to ruin with that particular poison.
Movement at the far end of the staff table drew his attention. Madam Hooch was approaching, her hawk-yellow eyes bright with the particular gleam she reserved for Quidditch-related excitement. Her short grey hair was windblown, her referee's robes still showing grass stains at the knees. She had clearly come straight from the pitch.
Severus recalled, now, seeing her outside the castle earlier. She'd been near the entrance hall, speaking animatedly with someone. A student. Red hair.
Potter.
He hadn't paid it any mind at the time. Hooch spoke to students regularly about flying, about broom maintenance, about the endless minutiae of her beloved sport. It was her nature to enthuse, and Severus had long since learned to tune out enthusiasm as a matter of self-preservation.
Now, watching her weave between the staff chairs with that particular bounce in her step, he felt the first whisper of unease.
Hooch claimed the empty seat beside him, the one Quirrell had vacated, and settled in with the satisfied air of someone bursting with news. She helped herself to a bread roll from the basket between them.
"Severus," she said brightly. "What a day. What a wonderful day."
"Your definition of wonderful and mine rarely align, Rolanda."
She ignored this. "You should have seen your Slytherins this afternoon. Both teams, going at it hammer and tongs. I haven't had that much fun refereeing a student match in years."
Severus's spoon paused halfway between the bowl and his mouth. The soup trembled slightly on its silver surface. He set it down.
"Both teams," he repeated. There was one Slytherin Quidditch team. There had always been one Slytherin Quidditch team. He had approved one Slytherin Quidditch team.
"Oh, you didn't know?" Hooch tore a piece from her bread roll, oblivious to the temperature drop emanating from the man beside her. "Flint organized a scrimmage. Your official squad against a group of first-years. Bit of fun, he said, to test a potential recruit. I was fetched to referee after one of the boys took a nasty fall, and I'm glad I was, because what I witnessed after that..." She shook her head, grinning. "Remarkable, Severus. Truly remarkable."
His knuckles tightened around the stem of his goblet. The pewter creaked.
"First-years," he said.
"Led by young Mr. Potter." Hooch bit into her bread with evident relish. "I know you've been reluctant about the boy, and I understand your position on first-years and broomsticks, I do. But after today, I simply cannot keep quiet about it."
"What," Severus said, each word dropped like a stone in a graveyard, "exactly happened today."
Hooch turned in her seat to face him properly, her yellow eyes alight. She began with the catch before the scrimmage, the one he already knew about and had already dismissed. Twenty-nine seconds, she said again, as though the number improved with repetition. On a school broom. Against a released training Snitch with no opposing Seeker.
Severus's jaw tightened. He'd heard this from her before, in his office, and he had given his answer. No.
But Hooch wasn't finished. Her voice carried the cadence of someone reliving something extraordinary, and the nearby professors were beginning to listen. Sinistra had abandoned her star charts. Mirabel leaned forward with motherly curiosity. Even Flitwick, three seats away, had tilted his head.
"Flint arranged the match properly. Full rules, Quaffle and Bludgers and Snitch, seven against seven. Potter's team was entirely first-years, Severus, children who've barely been on brooms for two months. Against your starting squad." She paused, letting this sink in. "One of the girls, Davis, actually scored a goal. And the formations they ran, basic triangle offense, whoever taught them knew what they were doing."
Potter. Potter had organized it. Potter had coached them. Of course, he had.
"But the real spectacle was Potter himself." Hooch's voice dropped to something almost reverent, and Severus felt his stomach curdle. "One of his Beaters, young Crabbe, lost control of his broom at about a hundred feet. The boy panicked, fell."
Severus's eyes narrowed.
"And Potter abandoned the Snitch chase, dove after him, and cast a Levitation Charm mid-flight to slow his fall. Saved the boy's life, or at least saved him from serious injury. Wandwork while maintaining full broom control at speed, Severus, that's third-year material at minimum. I've seen seventh-years who couldn't manage it."
The Great Hall noise seemed distant now. Severus was aware of blood pounding in his temples. His grip on the goblet had gone white. The metal was warping beneath his fingers.
"Then, after the match resumed," Hooch continued, seemingly unaware that the man beside her was approaching the thermal output of an active volcano, "Potter spotted the Snitch in open air with Bletchley racing him from the opposite direction. A Bludger came at him from behind, completely blind spot, and instead of dodging or braking, he performed a full corkscrew barrel roll at top speed. At top speed, Severus. A maneuver I've seen professional Seekers botch in international competition. He executed it flawlessly, evaded the Bludger, and caught the Snitch coming out of the spin."
She sat back, satisfaction radiating from her like heat from a cauldron fire.
"Final score was one hundred sixty to seventy, Potter's team. First-years beat your starting squad." She let that sit for a moment. "The boy is a once-in-a-generation talent, Severus. I've been teaching flying for thirty years, and I have never seen instincts like his. Not from a student. Not from most professionals."
Every word was a needle. Every detail was James Potter all over again, the arrogance of a boy who believed rules existed for lesser wizards, who assumed that talent entitled him to exception, who strutted through every space he entered as though the world had been arranged for his convenience.
And beneath the fury, beneath the reflexive disgust, something else stirred. Something cold and small and unwelcome that Severus crushed before it could take shape. Because everything Hooch described, the tactical mind, the precision under pressure, the choice to save a classmate at the cost of victory, did not sound like James Potter.
It sounded like Lily.
He killed that thought like squashing a bug under his feet.
"I intend to formally support Flint's petition to make Potter Seeker," Hooch added, brushing crumbs from her robes with casual finality. "Youngest in a century, if it goes through. I've already begun drafting the recommendation for your approval. Given what I saw today, I expect you'll want to move quickly before the Gryffindor match." She smiled at him. "It's in two weeks, after all."
Severus set down his goblet. The metal bore the impressions of his fingers, four small dents pressed into the pewter.
"If you'll excuse me," he said, his voice so controlled it could have sliced glass. "I have matters to attend to."
He rose from the table without waiting for a response. His robes billowed behind him as he crossed the Great Hall. Students instinctively moved from his path. Portraits averted their painted eyes.
Sinistra watched him go. "What did you say to him?" she asked Hooch.
Hooch shrugged, reaching for another bread roll. "Just told him about his students. He should be thrilled, honestly. That Potter boy's going to win Slytherin the Cup."
Severus descended toward the dungeons.
The common room door yielded to Severus, and what he found beyond it confirmed every suspicion that had festered during his march from the Great Hall.
They had arranged themselves like a war council. The leather chairs nearest the fireplace had been pulled into a loose semicircle, and at its center, the Quidditch team held court as though they had conquered a foreign territory rather than played an unauthorized match against children. Flint occupied the largest chair, his broad frame taking up space the way all Quidditch captains eventually learned to, elbows on armrests, chin lifted. Pucey stood beside him, hands carving shapes in the air as he demonstrated some maneuver or another. Lucinda Talbot had claimed the arm of a sofa, her dark braid over one shoulder. Derrick and Bole flanked the group like mismatched bookends.
And there, seated in the chair to Flint's immediate right with the casual posture of someone who had been invited rather than tolerated, was Harry Potter.
The boy had his legs crossed at the ankle, a book resting spine-up on his knee as though he'd been reading before the conversation drew him in. One hand rested on the arm of the chair. The other absently stroked the scales of the red snake coiled across his shoulders. That snake, Mulciber's snake, the one that had no business being anywhere near a first-year, lifted its dark head as Severus entered. Its tongue tasted the air.
Potter looked comfortable. That was the word, the one that burrowed under Severus's skin like a splinter. The boy did not look like a first-year guest in his upperclassmen's company. He looked like he belonged there. Like the chair had been waiting for him.
First-years clustered nearby. Malfoy was perched on the arm of another chair, his grey eyes bright with reflected glory. Zabini lounged against the windowsill, pretending not to listen while absorbing every word. The Nott boy sat with a notebook open on his knee, a quill resting between his fingers. Tracey Davis was talking animatedly with Montague about something. Even the Greengrass girl, who usually maintained a diplomatic distance from anything undignified, had abandoned her book and was watching the scene with those unsettling ice-blue eyes.
Other students filled the periphery. Second-years. Third-years. A handful of fourth-years who hadn't sided with Mulciber and his disgraced pack. Even the sixth-year prefects had drifted into listening range. The entire common room had oriented itself around that fireplace, around that circle, around that boy.
Severus walked deeper into the room, and the silence came down like a blade.
Conversation didn't taper off. It stopped. Mid-sentence, mid-gesture, mid-laugh. Pucey's hands froze in the air. Talbot's head turned. Two dozen faces registered the expression on their Head of House's face, and every one of them recognized it for what it was.
"Captain Flint." Severus's voice was soft, barely above a whisper. He had learned decades ago that softness cut deeper than volume. The quieter he spoke, the more dangerous the words became. "You and your team will accompany me to my office. Now."
Flint did not move.
The boy simply sat in his chair, broad shoulders squared, and looked at Severus with an expression that was not quite defiance and not quite respect. It occupied some irritating middle ground between the two, and Severus recognized it immediately. He had seen that expression on Lucius Malfoy's face a hundred times, the look of a man deciding whether compliance served his interests.
"Professor," Flint said, and his voice was calm. Infuriatingly calm. "What seems to be the problem?"
A muscle in Severus's jaw twitched. A student, questioning a direct order from a Head of House. In front of the entire common room. The sheer brass-necked audacity of it tasted like bile.
"I gave you an instruction, Flint. I expect it to be followed."
"Of course, sir." Flint inclined his head, but it didn't feel respectful. "But if there's a concern about something specific, it might be easier to address it here. Save everyone a trip."
He doesn't want this in private, Severus realized, and the realization sent a spike of cold fury through his chest. Flint wanted witnesses. Flint wanted every student in Slytherin House to hear whatever was about to happen, and the fact that a seventeen-year-old Quidditch captain had the strategic instinct to force a public confrontation should have impressed Severus. Under any other circumstances, with any other subject, it might have.
"Is this about Harry and the first-years playing with us today?" Flint asked. The echoes spread outward. Students who hadn't been paying attention suddenly were.
Severus said nothing. His silence was confirmation enough, and every person in the room knew it.
"It was a friendly scrimmage," Flint continued, shifting forward in his chair. "A test match. Madam Hooch refereed. No one was seriously injured, the pitch was booked, and every safety precaution was followed."
"A test match," Severus repeated, tasting the words. "For what purpose?"
"To evaluate Potter's flying ability under match conditions, sir. The results were—"
"I am aware of the results." Severus's voice could have frozen the lake above them. "Madam Hooch was kind enough to provide an exhaustive account over lunch. What she failed to explain, and what you will now clarify, is why my Quidditch team organized a match involving first-year students without seeking my authorization."
The accusation landed precisely where he'd aimed it. Flint's jaw tightened, the first crack in his composure. Good.
But Pucey stepped forward before Flint could answer. "Professor, you should have seen him. Potter caught the training Snitch in twenty-nine seconds before the match even started. During the game, he performed a corkscrew barrel roll at full speed to dodge a Bludger. That's a professional-level maneuver, sir. I've watched World Cup where—"
"Mr. Pucey." Severus cut him off with a single look. "I did not ask for a performance review."
But the damage was done. The details were in the air now, breathed into the common room where every student could absorb them. Twenty-nine seconds. Corkscrew barrel roll. Professional level.
Talbot spoke next, and the fact that she spoke at all said something. Lucinda Talbot was not a girl who offered opinions casually.
"He also saved Crabbe's life," she said quietly. "The boy fell from a hundred feet. Potter abandoned the Snitch chase, dove after him, and cast a Levitation Charm mid-flight. I've never seen a first-year do anything close to that."
Severus's nails bit into his palms behind his back. "Touching," he said. "And entirely beside the point. The point, which all of you seem determined to avoid, is that you organized an unsanctioned match involving students in my care without my knowledge or consent." He let the words settle. "I am the Head of Slytherin House. The first-years in particular are under my protection. Their safety is my responsibility, and you circumvented my authority."
"With respect, Professor," Flint said, and the phrase 'with respect' had never sounded less respectful, "the school rules allow for Head of House exemptions regarding first-year Quidditch participation. There have been four such exemptions in the past century. What we did today was demonstrate that Potter merits consideration for one. We're not circumventing your authority, sir. We're exercising it properly by bringing this to your attention with evidence."
Clever boy. Severus wondered if Flint had worked that argument out himself or if someone else had coached him. Now that he thought about it, was it possible...this trap...was it really his idea, or someone else's?
His eyes moved past Flint, past the team, to the boy sitting in the chair with the snake on his shoulders. Potter was watching him. Those eyes, green as killing curses, green as the woman who had carried them first, fixed on Severus with an expression he couldn't parse.
Was that a smirk? The faintest curl at the corner of the boy's mouth, the ghost of amusement in those terrible familiar eyes. It looked like a smirk. It looked like James Potter's smirk, the one that had preceded every humiliation, every hex, every moment of powerlessness that Severus had endured for seven years in this very castle.
The boy was enjoying this. He was sitting there, with his mother's hair and his mother's eyes and his father's smirk, watching Severus be outmaneuvered by his own students, and he was enjoying it.
"The Gryffindor match is in two weeks," Flint pressed on, apparently interpreting Severus's silence as consideration rather than the murderous rage it actually was. "Bletchley is a competent Seeker, I won't deny it. But competent isn't going to beat the Gryffindor squad this year. Their Chasers have improved, and Wood's been training them since September. We need an edge, Professor. Potter is that edge."
"Madam Hooch has prepared a formal recommendation," Pucey added. "She said she'd support the petition to the Headmaster if needed."
"Every member of the team supports this," Flint said, and heads nodded behind him. Even the ones who hadn't spoken. Even the reserves. "We're asking you as our Head of House, sir. Will you approve Potter as our Seeker?"
The common room held its breath.
Severus looked at Flint. At Pucey. At Talbot. At the first-years clustered nearby, all watching with that bright, expectant trust that children possessed before the world taught them better. At Potter, still seated, still watching, still wearing that expression that might have been composure or might have been contempt.
"No."
Flint opened his mouth.
"Furthermore," Severus continued, and his voice had dropped to its most dangerous register, the one that made even seventh-years go pale, "you, your entire team, and every first-year who participated in this afternoon's unauthorized exhibition will serve detention. Three months. Beginning tomorrow evening." He paused, watching the horror spread across their faces like ink through water. "Perhaps this will teach the lot of you to seek proper authorization before organizing activities that risk injury to students in my care."
Three months. The words rippled outward. He could see the calculations happening behind every pair of eyes in the room. Three months of detention meant missing evening practices for the Quidditch team. It meant destroyed schedules for the first-years. It meant that Severus was not merely refusing Potter; he was actively punishing everyone who had supported him.
Flint's jaw was so tight the muscles stood out like cords beneath his skin. Pucey looked at the floor, his expression one of barely concealed disbelief. Talbot's hand had closed into a fist on her thigh. Among the first-years, Malfoy had gone white. Zabini's practiced nonchalance had fractured into something raw and surprised. The Nott boy's quill had snapped in his grip.
Even students who had nothing to do with the match shifted in their seats, exchanged glances, and Severus could read every one of those glances. They all said the same thing:
This is wrong.
Good. Let them understand that his authorization is not to be questioned.
He was about to turn and leave when the boy stood up.
Potter rose from his chair. The snake adjusted its coils across his shoulders. He stepped forward, past Flint, past Pucey, until he stood alone in the open space between the team and their Head of House.
"Professor Snape."
The voice was calm. Respectful. Pitched to carry without shouting, the same technique Severus himself used, and the recognition of that technique in an eleven-year-old's voice was deeply, profoundly unsettling.
"On our first night in Slytherin, you gave us a speech," Potter said. "I remember it well. I imagine most of the students here do."
Something cold began to form in Severus's stomach.
"You told us that we were sorted into this house because we possess qualities Salazar Slytherin himself valued." Potter's green eyes did not waver. "You said your first expectation was academic excellence. That you would not tolerate laziness or underperformance."
The boy took a breath.
"You told us that a smart Slytherin finds ways around things. That you were unconcerned with what occurred, provided no one was permanently damaged and no evidence remained. You told us that Slytherins respond strategically, patiently, and when the opportunity presents itself, decisively."
Each sentence was a mirror held up to Severus's own face, reflecting his words back at him like a spell. The common room had gone so silent that the fire's crackle sounded like thunder.
"You promised that as our Head of House, you would defend us against unjust accusations and support our legitimate academic pursuits. That you expected us to bring honor to this house through achievement, not infractions." Potter's voice remained steady, respectful, and absolutely devastating. "You told us to cultivate our alliances carefully, because they may determine our future."
The boy was quoting him verbatim.
"Every house in this castle already views Slytherin with suspicion," Potter continued, and now his voice softened, taking on an earnest quality that was either genuine or the finest piece of acting Severus had ever witnessed from someone who hadn't finished puberty. "Every professor watches us more closely. Every student from every other house assumes the worst about our intentions. We survive that, sir, because we have each other. Because Slytherin stands together."
The boy paused. The fire popped behind him.
"But if we cannot rely on our own Head of House to support our achievements, if the person who is supposed to defend us is the one punishing us for excelling..." Potter's chin lifted fractionally. "Then how is Slytherin any different from the houses that look down on us? How is this house unity, sir?"
Severus could not speak.
It was not that he lacked words. Severus Snape had never in his life lacked words.
But the words would not come, because the boy had used his own, and anything Severus said now would be measured against the speech he had given on the first night of term. Against his own promises, made in this very room, to these very students.
If he dismissed the argument, he contradicted himself. If he attacked the boy's character, he proved the boy's point. If he doubled down on the punishment, every student in the room would understand, with absolute clarity, that their Head of House had abandoned his own principles because of a personal vendetta against an eleven-year-old.
The boy had built a cage out of Severus's own words and walked him into it.
Rage surged through him, hot and toxic and consuming. He wanted to take every point Slytherin had earned. He wanted to assign detentions until the boy graduated. He wanted to look into those green eyes and say something so cruel that the child would never again dare to—
The snake moved.
Sylvia lifted her head from Potter's shoulder, rising slowly, sinuously, until she was level with the boy's face. Her dark eyes, glossy and depthless, turned toward Severus. They fixed on him in a way that was unusual for a reptile to do. No ordinary animal looked at a human being like that.
She did not hiss. She did not bare her fangs. She simply looked at him.
And Severus's breath caught in his throat.
The green eyes turned red. The red hair darkened. The child's features sharpened into something older, something colder. The snake on his shoulders became a symbol rather than a pet. For a brief moment, Severus felt like he was looking at him once again.
The fear hit Severus like ice water, so sudden and so visceral that his hand twitched toward his wand before conscious thought caught up. It was not rational. It was not proportionate.
The moment lasted perhaps two seconds. Perhaps three. Then Sylvia lowered her head back to Potter's shoulder, and the spell broke. The common room was just a common room again. The boy was just a boy. The students were just students.
But Severus's hands were shaking, and he could not make them stop.
He held Potter's gaze for one more second. Green eyes. Lily's eyes. In a face that was not James, was not Lily, was not Lord Voldemort, but was something new, and he hated it, hated the uncertainty of it, hated the way the boy looked at him without fear.
"Captain Flint," Severus said, sounding as calm as he could. "You may have your Seeker."
The room did not react. Not yet. They were waiting.
"However." His eyes swept the assembled students. "Every participant in today's unsanctioned match will serve detention. One month. For acting without authorization." He paused. "This includes Mr. Potter. The reduction from three months should be understood as mercy, not vindication. There are rules in this house, and they will be followed."
He turned before anyone could respond.
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