As Potter is to Snape

Chapter 43

January faded into February, and with it came the letter that Harry had been dreading. The Ministry had finally set a date for when the social worker would come back for the second round of interviews. It would be on the sixteenth: just over two weeks away.

Harry almost wished that it was sooner so that it could be over with already and he wouldn't have to keep worrying about it. As it stood, there was plenty that could happen in those two weeks. The Gryffindor match against Ravenclaw was the coming Saturday, and the next Hogsmeade trip was the Saturday after that. Harry had no intentions of staying behind now that he knew how to get there. He just had to make sure that he wouldn't get caught.

To make matters worse, Harry's anti-dementor lessons weren't going anywhere near as well as he thought they should be. Remus had assured him that he was doing remarkably well for his age, but it did nothing to appease Harry as he watched his patronus simply hover in the air, too feeble to drive away the boggart-dementor and draining Harry of all his energy, leaving him feeling tired and irritable.

Things with Snape, however, were going better than Harry had expected. After the first initial shock to everyone after the news had come out, things had seemed to calm down quickly. But in the end, it wasn't so much the fact that Harry was now Snape's ward that had Hogwarts' rumor wheel running, but Snape himself. He had changed more than anything.

Not in his sternness or in how he pushed his students and didn't take any slacking off, that Harry was sure would never change. But it was in how he had begun to treat everyone. He gave points to students not in his House and had even been seen taking some from Slytherin. Hermione especially had come to love Potions Club, and Harry had even spotted Snape talking quietly to Neville last week, actually explaining to him how to keep his potion from being ruined. If Harry didn't know better, he would swear that Snape had been replaced by a doppelganger.

Of course, none of these changes seemed to be aimed towards Harry. If anything, Harry thought he was suddenly pushing him even harder in an attempt to not be accused of showing favoritism. Harry couldn't be bothered to care, not when Snape kept calling him Harry in front of the class and even praising him when he did something well. A small part of him thought that it should embarrass him that Snape was giving him attention, but the other part of him wanted to soak it all in.

He was still worried that Lucius Malfoy and the like would find out— not that he could even be sure that they hadn't already— but so far everything had been quiet. No one had really said much of anything about it, and the silence was what worried Harry more than anything.

***

Two nights before the match against Ravenclaw, Harry and Ron crawled through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor Common Room with Neville, who had been standing outside, unable to get in because he didn't remember Sir Cadogan's newest password. Ron headed up to the dormitory to give Scabbers his rat tonic after pausing to say hello to Hermione. Harry, taking in the tired look on Hermione's face as she sat in the middle of a mountain of books, sat down next to her.

"Do you really need to take all these classes, 'Mione?" he asked, picking up her Muggle Studies essay titled: Why Muggles Need Electricity . She nearly snatched it back out of his hand.

"Of course I do! I can't believe you didn't think it would be fascinating to learn about Muggles from a wizarding perspective."

Harry shook his head. "What about Arithmancy? It looks bloody awful."

"Oh, no! It's really so—"

But Harry didn't find out what Arithmancy really was because at that moment, Ron began to scream from upstairs.