Chapter 31: The severe path of Severus Snape

Vernon heaved a large stack of printing paper into the trunk of their family car. At the same time, Harry carried what must have been an industrial amount of ink.

"Are you sure that's enough paper?" Vernon asked as he looked at the large stack. "Could do with twice that when I was your age attending school. They've really let up, haven't they?"

Harry sighed, patted his uncle on the shoulder, an act he had to go on his tippy toes for and went back to the crosswalk where he watched the man enter the car. "I don't know, uncle, it's just so not challenging, I'm even skipping grades. I can't bring up the motivation to bring much more, it will all go to waste anyway."

"Bah, damn brat, make me spend twenty quid on writing supplies and then not use them. Horrible, ungrateful," Vernon said as he stretched a meaty hand out of the open window and tousled Harry's hair.

"The youth of today, what can I say?" Harry said. "Have a nice one, I'll tell Petunia you dropped me off an hour later than you did, that way you have enough time to be alone for a bit."

Vernon guffawed in the car and slapped the steering wheel. "Too mature for your own good! Shouldn't you have moved out by the time you noticed that sometimes a man just needs some space and time alone to not have to think and talk constantly? Well, whatever, you queer bugger, I'll see you tonight," the man said before abruptly driving off, leaving Harry to stand alone in the sweltering summer heat, surrounded by car exhaust and cigarette smoke. He quirked his nose and turned down the street towards where he knew the leaky cauldron to be. He had some shopping to do and for once, that wasn't just him making up an excuse so that he could get dropped off in London where he would take an ageing potion and show people on the streets his magic tricks in return for money, which he used to purchase goods and services. He started whistling as he walked to his destination. Feeling up the little pouch of wizarding currency he'd gotten from Professor Flitwick after their most recent session. Harry had completely forgotten that the half-goblin was a Head of House and thus had access to the muggle-born fund; his role as his mentor had overtaken all other descriptions he could have given the man.

-/-

"Back again, little French boy?" Skeeter asked, almost aggressively after she'd pulled him to the side the second he'd entered the Daily Prophet's archive. Harry wondered what she'd been doing here. He glanced to the side, at the table she'd been sitting at and saw that she'd been going through some old articles. He turned his attention back to the sharply dressed woman.

"Miss Skeeter, haven't seen you in a while," he said, politely, apparently unbalancing the woman from how she literally stuttered in place and narrowed her eyes at him.

"There is no Professor Dumont," she accused. If she was expecting some sort of penance, then she was to be sorely disappointed.

"I'm sorry about the little lie, I just really wanted access to the archive and was willing to say any idiotic thing to get in," Harry admitted freely and looked past the reporter's lime green pencil skirt to check that nobody was observing them. As last time, the archives seemed remarkably empty for how useful of a resource they were. He guessed that people who grew up in the wizarding world didn't see the need, and muggleborns didn't know the archives existed.

"How straightforward," the woman muttered as her eyes glazed over a bit and the usual frown that her face seemed permanently stuck in relaxed a bit.

"How have you been doing? Ended any careers lately?" Harry asked, getting a surprised blink. He gently pushed the woman a bit back from where she was entrapping him against the wall and leaned against it confidently. Perhaps his ageing potion escapades weren't having the best influence on his behaviour with older women, he noted as Skeeter looked at him in some confusion at the move. Which made perfect sense considering it and his tone of voice could have been considered flirtatious were he not wearing the body of a 12-year-old.

"Other than my own?" was the bitter reply at which Harry tilted his head.

"Tough luck?" he asked.

Skeeter snorted and flicked his forehead. "Bah, leave it, we all have our problems, don't we. Can't imagine the twelve-year-old wasting his youth in the newspaper archives has had anything to write home about happening to him recently."

Harry wondered if getting private instruction from a Charms Master, leading a millennia-old artefact around London and having an oddly fulfilling life for a young lad was anything to write home about. He chuckled. "Guess not. However, considering that both times I've seen you here, you seemed to be in a bad mood I have to ask… Do you even like your job?"

Skeeter stared at him and muttered. "Like my job, he asks me. What's not to like about shoving truth down people's throats only to have no one read it when it does get published," she shook her head. "Everything's going great," she said more loudly with a strained smile.

"I'm glad to hear that," Harry said with a fake smile, "but well, as nice as it was to chat, I'm actually here to read some old newspapers."

Skeeter looked him up and down, frowned again, sighed, and then turned around. "Read your heart out, kid," she said and left, leaving Harry behind in the fairly sterile room. He watched her go, perhaps gazing at her bum as she did a bit too intensely. He wondered if he was entering puberty. He'd started noticing girls a lot, even when not on the ageing potion.

He shook his head, turned around and cheekily pulled his wand out of his sleeve. "Literra Revelio," he said, simply creating the word he was looking for in his mind. Using a wand in a place like this would hardly activate the trace. Several of the metal compartments filling the room to the brim lit up like beacons. Some of them even like, dare he say it, Christmas trees. Made sense. He'd just queried the archives for Hogwarts after all. Harry wasn't going to leave his class advancement up to just his magic skills after all. He needed to see how previous cases of students skipping grades had gone. And if he found additional information about his mother… So be it.

He started flipping through the cabinets and the newspapers, noting that most of the articles mentioned Hogwarts in relation to Dumbledore's political career, which was definitely an interesting thing to see develop in real time. The man truly had a large amount of influence.

Otherwise, the school wasn't mentioned much, mostly on the last pages, whenever the board of governors got a new member, the school got a new teacher, or a particularly note-worthy alumn did something impressive which necessitated bringing up their NEWT scores again.

It wasn't until half an hour in that he'd found what he had been looking for, or well, something similar. The student in question, Severus Snape, hadn't taken an upper-year class but had just sat N.E.W.Ts at the end of his sixth year, passed with mediocre results in everything but Potions and Defence and the Dark Arts, for which he'd gotten an O+ and then left Hogwarts one year early. Harry thought back to how Snape's copy of Advanced Potion-Making had started missing the marginal notes halfway through. It would make sense if that had been because he'd been studying for his N.E.W.Ts instead. However, the issue was… Why exactly did Snape wish to leave Hogwarts a year early?

Was it perhaps because he was feeling guilty about something? But no, the man was a Slytherin. Considering his infatuation with Lily and him then acting strangely afterwards would have been just suspicious enough for him to not take the exams early. If anything he had likely not wanted to stay in the institution in which his best friend had been assaulted. It's not like he had a reason to want to stay. The Snape that Harry imagined didn't have any additional friends to tie him down to Hogwarts. He reread the article

'We, at the Daily Prophet very much hold high expectations for Mr Snape's career, even though it is questionable if his sitting of the N.E.W.Ts one year early was a good decision.' Was a phrase that stuck out to him. Would he too be subjected to public scrutiny in the future if he excelled too much? This had been one of the reasons why he hadn't published the word query spell under his name and had allowed Flitwick to do it anonymously.

Did he have it in him to reject moving into third-year Charms and start Arithmancy a year later?

Harry considered the question for more than just a moment, before coming to the conclusion that he'd come too many times before. He couldn't pretend to be an average child. He'd played with the idea for a few days back when he'd started first grade in the muggle world, but the reality of the situation was that sand-bagging something like this and being surrounded by people less mature than one's self was a sure-fire way to go insane. Even if his being a genius made it more likely for people to become interested in him and perhaps figure out the unfortunate circumstances of his being. Not being a "genius" would make life not worth living in the first place, so what exactly would he be protecting with such an act? It wasn't like it mattered, with a war likely coming, since Voldemort was quite possibly still not dead. People would forget all about Harry Evans if he just quietly moved to America or Italy after his N.E.W.Ts. Just another brain drain, when one truly considered Britain's stance on their muggleborn and its logical consequences. He brought out his wand and cast the spell again, this time searching for Severus Snape, he didn't want to dwell on decisions already made and was quite curious about what had come out of the wonder-boy.

Not much, apparently, he noted as only three golden outlines appeared in his vision. One of which was the article he'd just read. He skipped a few years forward and opened the newspaper on the 31st of March 1982. He flipped back until he arrived at the last page. He was expecting an obituary, but what he found surprised him.

'Severus Snape, Potions Master,' was the title, he continued reading.

After a short apprenticeship to the German potions master Nusskampf, Mr Snape successfully defends his thesis on the controlled usage of volatility in optimised brewing in front of the potions committee of continental Europe. This occurred during the yearly magical conference of 1982, which we have reported on more extensively in yesterday's edition. With Severus Snape gaining his Mastery, Britain has successfully produced seven Potions Masters in the last two decades, a record number. We asked Master Snape's former potions professor about his thoughts on the young man's early graduation from our country's finest learning institution:

Horace Slughorn: Severus was always a very bright lad, just that the environment of the school was perhaps not conducive to his learning while he was here. I thus understand why he sought to graduate early, something which obviously didn't harm him much considering he just gained a mastery.

Interviewer: What do you say about the fact that Mr Snape finished his apprenticeship in only three months? Most people require at least a year or two.

Horace Slughorn: He likely conducted independent research before getting the position, thus his experience in potions is probably similar to someone who has taken a more traditional path. In fact, if Severus ever reads this, I'd like to tell him that he's welcome to how to visit me for a party on Christmas or such-

Harry stopped reading as Slughorn began gloating about all the important people who attended his soirees and wondered about the curious gap in Snape's presence between his graduation from Hogwarts and his Potions Mastery. It correlated almost exactly with the blood war. But if that meant that the man had been involved, or not involved, he could not say. He furrowed his brow when he realised that the only thing he'd really learned today was the fact that the press might be interested in his success at school. Which was what he'd set out to do, but still. There was also the bit about the magical conference and the apprenticeship system. Also, apparently, even wizards had to write theses? Very interesting, he took a moment to pat himself on the back for inventing the word query spell. In an archive which held the daily newspapers of the last few centuries, he actually felt like he was using a computer again. A slow, biased one, but still.

His thoughts suddenly shifted to a different topic as he remembered a painful memory. How defenceless he'd been in his confrontation with Twix, he frowned and started walking around slowly with clenched fists. Was there really anything he could do about that, other than learning some offensive and defensive magic once he was back at Hogwarts? The problem was that there was nobody to teach him how to defend himself and if the trend of Defence against the Dark Arts teachers being crap continued, that wasn't going to change. Even so, they just learned spells for specific scenarios in that class, it wasn't like they were getting practice fighting other magicals. What search term could he use to find out some useful information? Harry thought about the question for a bit before an answer came to mind. Perhaps it was floating there already due to his closeness to Professor Flitwick.

"Literra Revelio," a flick of the wand. The wand movement was constantly being reduced as Harry gained experience with the spell. Several instances of 'duelling' lit up in his vision, and Harry once again thanked himself for creating the incredibly useful piece of magic. He went over to the first paper and started reading, learning that there was a European championship. He found several mentions of Professor Flitwick, denigratory to a certain extent, despite his achievements. Likely because of his blood status. Those articles were mostly concentrated in the past. It seemed like most people had forgotten the professor at this point. It wasn't until a few minutes later that Harry found what he was looking for.

He glanced through the article and determined that this was exactly what he needed as an excuse to at least gain some experience facing off against other magicals. He didn't know if Flitwick would teach him, or who his sparring partner would be, but a way forward had just been illuminated.

'Antonin Dolohov wins the U17 category of the European duelling championship, another trophy for England.'