Harry Potter Short Stories

Inner Slytherin Ch 1

Harry felt himself heaved out of the penseive memory and was thrown to the floor.

"Amusing fellow, your father, wasn't he?" sneered Snape, black eyes blazing.

Harry gasped. This could improve things the Slytherin side of him said. You could blackmail him. Or ... or come to a more amicable arrangement.

Harry pulled off his glasses. Lily's eyes, he thought.

Snape stared. Lily's eyes. They have ... tears in them.

"I think I saw a really nasty bully and his sycophants pick on the sort of kid who I identify with," said Harry, softly. "And I'm not that happy with my mother's behaviour too. I understand why you hate me. And as I see it we have two choices."

"What?" Snape was taken aback.

"We can screech at each other like Gryffindors in a hissy fit, or we can be cool about it like Slytherins and agree that my father was an arse and that if I'd been at school with him, I'd be the kid in mismatched clothing who got picked on," said Harry. "You've been in my memories. I see my cousin Dudley when I look at James Potter. My mother was an idiot to choose him over the smartest kid in the year who would do anything for her. I'm not surprised your love for her turned to hate as well, if she was shallow enough to pick wealth over substance." His tone was bitter. "What I don't understand is why everyone talks about them as if they are plaster saints." He ran his hand through his messy hair.

"Don't do that, it makes you look like James," said Snape, waspishly. He gazed into the boy's eyes. Powers, the brat was telling the truth. He was telling the truth and he was emoting wildly about Harry Hunting.

"Sit on the chair. I'll be back in a moment," said Snape, roughly. Harry sat himself down, wondering what he had let himself in for.

Snape returned in a few minutes with a bottle of Bob Ogden's fire whisky. He summoned a chair for himself, and a couple of glasses.

"I shouldn't give you this but I think we both need it, and frankly I'd as soon be fired for getting a student drunk as to hear that nickname in school," he forced himself to speak calmly, to overcome the urges to shout at the boy, to terrorise him into never speaking of this, to throw him out. If the brat could recognise the flaws of his Gryffindor nature there was hope for him.

Harry gulped back the finger of fire whisky Snape poured for him into the summoned glass, and coughed.

"Wow," he said.

"Prosit," said Snape, with sarcasm, raising his own glass before downing it.

Harry flushed.

"I'm sorry, I don't know the etiquette of drinking any more than I know the etiquette of the wizarding world," he said.

Snape rolled his eyes.

"That old fool did you a serious disservice in having you raised ..." he became very still, like a cobra about to strike, and Harry watched him like the cobra's prey. Snape threw his empty glass at the wall in fury, and it shattered into tiny shards. Harry jumped. "DAMN him! He's been playing me, and playing you. Potter, you are right. You and I need to become very Slytherin," said the Potions' master, standing up and walking back and forth in agitation.

"Sir?" Harry asked.

Snape rounded on him, his cloak billowing.

"Potter, you spent your childhood reared as a muggle. And such snippets as I saw did not show a very happy childhood."

Harry laughed bitterly.

"Until I went to school, I thought my name was 'Freak' and I only went to school because when the authorities wanted to know where I was, and my aunt claimed I was home schooled, the inspectors said she wasn't doing a good enough job. I loved school lessons, but I wasn't allowed to do as well as I could, because if I did better than Dudley I was beaten and thrown in the cupboard for the weekend, without food. Why do you think I find it so bloody hard to study? I learned to get out of the habit. And any of what I know now is accidental magic was punished. No, Professor, I did not have a happy childhood."