Chapter Text
The important thing was that Dar-Benn was not allowed to assign punishments. She had tried a few times, earlier in the year, and been shot down by the administration every time. Lacking any truly official role in the school, she had no recourse.
What she could do was report students and demand that they be punished to the full extent of the rules. And, despite many of the school's students contriving to wander into the woods at least once per year, and basically never being punished for it previously, it was, technically, forbidden. And they weren't going to explain that they'd been out there with Hagrid. They might have explained it if it was just the headmaster, but Dar-Benn wasn't leaving his office until she got closure on the infraction she'd uncovered, even if it was dinner time and she was preventing herself, him, and McGonagall (present as their head of house) all from eating.
"I suppose," Dumbledore decided, regarding the Accuser wearily across his desk, "that you are correct that transgressing in this case deserves a serious punishment. I believe two nights a week of detention with Master Mordo for the rest of the term…"
"A terran that already has ties with them? Potter, in particular, would love that. They should serve the detention with me!"
"You don't have a role in the school that can host detentions," McGonagall informed her, crisply.
"Alas, Minerva is correct," he continued, obviously not actually sad about it. "However, you did not allow me to finish! For Mr. Thomas and Ms. Patil, who are first-time offenders, the detention with Mordo. For Mr. Potter, who is largely a model student but has gotten carried away with teen hijinx a few times in the past, perhaps a stronger sentence to remind him to stay in bounds. I believe that Severus has complained about his rule breaking in the past, and might be inclined to host his detention and take it seriously."
Dar-Benn squinted at them, trying to figure out if she was being outmaneuvered, but had heard about Snape's harsh treatment of Gryffindors. Pursing her lips, she eventually smirked and noted, "Acceptable."
"Excellent. Shall we adjourn for our evening meal, then?" As the kree woman turned away from him, Dumbledore shot Harry a wink.
Honestly, beyond his first few months after starting at Hogwarts, Harry hadn't had that much problem with his father's old rival. The man was overly vindictive, still, and prone to judging harshly, but Harry's chemistry work was hard to find fault with. He still received lower grades than Slytherins, like Draco and Theo, who turned in slightly worse efforts, but remained among the top students in class. And, over the years, Harry had basically worked out that Snape was probably some kind of Death Eater spy for Dumbledore that had to act like he hated Gryffindors. It was the only thing that made sense based on the various encounters with him they'd had during tense situations, and how much the headmaster obviously trusted him. Plus, while he was hard to read, even with Soul Stone empathy, Harry had never picked up any actual malevolence from the guy, even at his meanest.
Would they prefer that he be replaced with a professor that wasn't out to get them, Harry in particular? Definitely. Did they basically understand that it might be a useful ploy for the old man? Grudgingly. Was Harry looking forward to spending two nights a week with the guy for whatever reason Dumbledore had assigned the detention? Not any more than Snape likely was.
"Potter," the professor drawled, making that distaste obvious when Harry walked in for his first session a couple of evenings later. The chemistry classroom had the magical torches reduced even more than usual, leaving it extremely dim, and the smell of bleach abounded. His session was later than the normal after-dinner detention, so maybe it was already done and he wasn't going to get assigned cleaning. "Regretting your adventure, yet?"
"Yes, sir," Harry agreed, politely. He usually tried to start off as polite as possible. Snape would often needle him just to provoke backtalk, that he could assign punishment for. Or just come up with a clever counter-retort that made him look smart in front of the Slytherins. Perhaps he'd save those theatrics when they were one-on-one.
"Sit." Snape gestured at a comfortable-enough wooden chair that he'd clearly dragged from his office to put near his teaching desk. He was sitting in one of his own, his dark eyes unusually visible as he'd pulled his greasy black hair into a ponytail. The normal seating in the classroom was stools, which weren't very comfortable to sit on but made it a lot easier to escape a chemical accident on the lab tables. Once Harry was seated, he explained, "Albus has been trying to arrange this for months…"
Harry just waited, rather than asking what Dumbledore had arranged. It was always a gamble whether Snape was waiting for a question to prompt him to continue, or an opportunity to reprimand for talking out of turn. It was easier just to wait unless he asked a specific question, clearly directed for Harry to answer.
Realizing the boy wasn't going to ask, the Slytherin head of house continued, "I remember from two years ago that you were working on meditation, so you could astrally project. And I understand from Albus and Karl that you have become proficient in it." It took Harry a moment to remember that Karl was Mordo's first name. "Am I correct that… Lupin… never included the discipline of occlumency?"
"No, sir. Er, he did not." Harry considered leaving it at that, but figured he'd been asked a direct question and some kind of elaboration wouldn't be snapped at, and it seemed like straightforward Latin. "The art of concealing the mind, sir?"
That actually got a quickly-hidden twitch of a smile of approval from the man, who elaborated, "That is its core function, yes. Exercises to organize and protect your thoughts. While there is little that is proof against the yellow Stone, there are other magics to divine thoughts and control the mind. Or simple psychology to look for tells. Occlumency makes it possible to resist such intrusions.
"This is not why Albus asked me to teach you the art. He has not seen fit to elaborate on exactly why you might require it, but a side effect of occlumency is improved memory and lucid dreaming. He implied there is something in your dreams that it might be useful to have better control of. Perhaps some insight into the Dark Lord? Hidden memories from a child confronted by him?"
Did Dumbledore truly trust Snape as much as he seemed to, if the man was fishing for information? Or maybe the headmaster just hoarded his secrets out of reflex. Considering for a moment, Harry decided to throw him a bone, if they were going to be working together on it. "I've been having visions in my dreams. Mostly of stuff he's up to. It let me warn the headmaster in time to save Mr. Weasley. Maybe Dumbledore thinks I could get more information if I could control it better."
"What an interesting gift."
Harry paused for a moment, thinking about whether to respond to that snide tone, but realized he might have another option other than ignoring or responding to the snark. He offered, "I think it's part of what my mom did to save me from him. She used magic from Queen Frigga to protect me."
That had the tactical benefit he had hoped. The amount of sadness and grief Snape still felt over Lily Potter broke through what, Harry realized, must be occlumency barriers to his empathy. He could finally tell for sure what he'd only previously heard in rumors from Sirius and Bruce: Severus Snape had been a good friend of his mother, and deeply regretted her passing. Before the protective walls went back up, Harry could basically feel the man resolve to teach him occlumency as a way to improve the benefits of the last spell cast by his dead best friend.
"Very well," was all the verbal indication the professor gave of his decision to truly help, rather than making a token effort and hoping his student self-sabotaged so he could get out of the frequent one-on-one sessions with the boy that reminded him of his own childhood enemy. His perfect memory made it so hard to ignore the years of conflicts with such a similar face, despite the eyes of his best friend staring out of it. Perhaps it was even worse because of the eyes. "Enter your meditation state, but do not go so deeply that you leave your body or lose your ability to hear. I will give you instructions on what to visualize once you are ready…"
An hour later he was back in the common room, not sure if he was actually making progress but at least Snape had realized that verbal abuse wouldn't help a meditative state so they'd mostly sat quietly with periodic commands to envision a castle, a storage room, a wall, a dungeon, or other elements of security and protection. Harry wasn't sure how his success was to be tested, but the exercises were at least reasonable.
"How'd yours go?" he asked Dean and Parvati as they walked into the common room not far behind him. It was mostly empty, as the rest of Gryffindor was getting ready for bed.
"It was great!" Dean answered. "He did a bunch of tests of our martial arts and wandless casting and seemed impressed with what we could do."
"Even me, I guess," Parvati agreed, but with a roll of her eyes. "Honestly, though, I don't know if I'm going to survive this twice a week with you and Mordo goobing about kung fu together. It's like getting it in stereo."
Harry smiled, "Remember when you thought you couldn't hack it? You'll be ninja kicking Cthulhu monsters like it's nothing just like the rest of us."
"I… still don't really want to do that," she argued. "What'd Snape have you do?"
"He's teaching me to control my mind better. I guess Dumbledore thinks it might help with my visions."
"I mean, good luck," Dean said. "Guy has it in for all of us, you in particular. Can't imagine one-on-one sessions are going to get you very far, very fast."
"Yeah," Parvati agreed. "As much as I don't like his style, I way prefer Mordo over Snape."
"It's not that bad…" Harry told them.
A couple of days later, he had cause to doubt his own assessment.
"You've had the time to build your mental defenses, so let us test them," the vampire-like professor sneered, moments after Harry sat for his next session. "We'll start with a spell that would be illegal if it weren't so useful in ferreting out guilt. A shame so few in the Aurors are willing to make the bargain with Zarathos that allows its casting. Visualize some trouble fresh on your mind. Some nonsense you are embarrassed of from your winter holidays, perhaps? Envision it, then construct your mental walls."
He gave Harry a long look, and the teen realized this wasn't a time for questions. He tried to slip into his walking meditation that he'd used to prevent Fleur from reading his mind, hoping that was a key step in what he needed to do, and began to erect defenses as he'd visualized in the last session.
But he only had a couple of seconds, and had barely begun his efforts before Snape stared deeply into his eyes and incanted, "Legacy of Penance!"
Harry's hasty defenses were part memory, part construct. Thinking about what he'd done over the holidays put him in mind of the places he'd been during the holidays. Somewhere he'd considered memories he didn't care if Snape saw to try to distract him, but wasn't totally sure how to do that after one lesson. Tony's mansion bled into the Chinese Theater and Killian's estate, each flitting with things that had happened there before Christmas.
It wasn't helpful to their use as fortifications that all of those places had been pretty damaged in the memories he was using.
He'd rejected using Avengers tower, since the secrets there weren't his to share and he didn't want anyone to know about his secret storage closet for his armor, and felt good about that as his memories flitted about. He could tell Snape was successfully invading his mind as he was abruptly snapped from thought to thought in an unnatural way, and he didn't seem to have much power to visualize something innocuous. Failing to save more people at the theater. Losing Iron Man below the water as he struggled to save the house. Not doing more in Miami before having to call in the Avengers.
"You aren't guilty about any of this," Snape's voice drawled, half-heard, half-thought. "I don't believe that your most embarrassing memories are that you weren't heroic enough."
With another act of will, the chemistry professor shoved fully through the hodgepodge conglomeration of buildings and Harry found himself standing out in the open, on a bright morning atop a hill overlooking a beautiful forest on Alfheim.
It had been the worst moment of his trip.
"Ah, Wizard Potter," a young man's voice called, surprising Harry where he'd come up to look out over the next day's ride and astral project to scout ahead. He'd only just returned to his body and didn't know how long his unknown visitor had been waiting for him to start moving again. "Back among us?"
He stood from the cushion he'd brought atop the hill and turned to regard the speaker. Relaxed, leaning nonchalantly against a tree, was everything a teen boy secretly hoped he'd grow into. Tall and slender, but clearly athletic beneath his gilded scale armor, the elf looked only a few years older than Harry. His dark hair was styled in a way that it would take a Hollywood barber hours to achieve, showing off pointed ears and eyes so blue they were almost purple. A thin woven circlet of platinum, gold, and iridescent gems crossed the top of his forehead, mostly hidden by his perfect hair.
"Do they… need me?" Harry asked, trying to figure out why they hadn't sent one of the usual scouts to get him.
"Ah, no, sorry. I was just visiting the camp and wanted to meet you before you left. I hear you are a good friend of my betrothed, and she was able to convince you to lend your magic to our cause."
"Oh, you're…"
"River towards Summer, yes. That is I," the crown prince of the Seelie court smiled a thousand-watt smile. "It's so rare I'm unrecognized, I forgot to introduce myself. But, of course, you've only heard of me."
"I'm… I was actually wondering if I'd see you on the campaign," Harry managed to formulate a response, feeling weirdly cornered despite all the directions he could leave the apex of the hill.
"Believe me, I've argued incessantly with my parents to be here. But they're not lead-from-the-front types. I believe they're quite cross with the Marshal that he's allowing my Flower to risk herself here."
"She's been a big help."
Rivière smiled fondly. "Yes, testing herself will be of great value. How many kings of Alfheim have had a battle-hardened queen at their sides, ready to defend them? Like unto Odin and Frigga, shall we be."
"I think Bors let Odin test himself as well."
"By and by, so will I. I still have centuries to hone my skills, and much more learning to do. It wouldn't do to get myself hurt going off with my training incomplete. Many rely on me, after all…"
Harry really wasn't sure what was on his face, and he was hoping his shields against elven empathy were holding. The elf prince wasn't giving anything away, himself, other than friendliness and cool, and it wasn't like they'd known each other long enough for anything more to come to the Boy-Who-Lived. "Sounds like a lot of responsibility."
"Heavy is the head," Rivière agreed. "Anyway, I've tarried here long enough. I just wanted to thank you again for all you are doing in friendship for my Flower, and for my realm. I shall make sure Vanaheim knows how much we appreciate it. Farewell, Wizard Potter."
"Farewell, River towards Summer," he managed to answer as the young elf gracefully made his way back down the hill toward camp.
And then Harry was back, sitting in the dungeon, staring at Severus Snape. "There's no way you're that good," the professor said, flatly, probing his student's eyes for deception.
"What do you mean?" he asked, a little upset that the man had seen such a private moment. "I didn't want you to see that! I wasn't even thinking about it."
"And you just happened to find a memory of another boy standing in between you and Fleur Delacour to show me?"
"Uh, yes… sir?" Harry said, baffled.
"You… have no idea. You have no idea what James Potter did to me, do you?"
"I know he bullied you, sir. Sirius admitted that much. Well, he thinks you were basically just rivals, but the stories he tells… he doesn't come off as well as he thinks."
"Four against one will tip the scales, yes," Snape sneered. "But I could forgive the bullying. Almost forgive the time they nearly killed me. But for…"
Snape had forgotten to put his own occlumency back up after invading Harry's mind. Some wisp of the magical recreation of the Penance Stare still connected them as the teen's eyes flared orange behind the camouflage of his glasses. Fragmented images and sounds accompanied what was normally just empathy, as the older man's mind dwelled on his own similar moment of embarrassment.
"She doesn't want to even talk to you anymore, Snivellus," a man's voice said, in the basically-British Vanir accent. It could have been Harry's own face staring at him, in the memory, though with different eyes and no scar. "Not after what you said. Get it through your head. She only ever thought of you as a friend. And now, you've ruined that. Go spend your time with your own kind."
Snape hissed in surprise and slammed his defenses into place. "What was that?"
"The visions, sir," Harry explained, eyes wide and what he'd realized. "I can get empathy, sometimes, but I guess your spell… I… my mother? I knew you were friends but…"
"Didn't know that I was your father's rival? Why would you? I often wonder if she even knew." He tried to say it dismissively, but there was nearly twenty years of regret in the still-turbulent waters of his mind.
Harry reeled. Had there been a chance that he never would have been born? That whatever existence he had could have been as the child of Severus and Lily Snape? Sirius and Bruce knew that they'd been chemistry partners, and seemed to know each other from before Hogwarts, but hadn't given much thought to how deeply that bond ran. And neither of them knew much about Lily other than her time at school, and what she was like after she started dating James Potter. Harry had grown up with Pepper's stories about his father but she'd barely even met Lily.
"Professor… can you… can you tell me about my mother?"
Another long moment, where the man considered whether he was being set up. But there was nothing behind those eyes other than the same intense need to know that he'd seen hundreds of times before on another face.
"Your mother and I met in a park near our homes when we were just nine years old…"