Chapter 17: The mysterious disappearance of the half-blood prince

Harry arrived at the abandoned classroom - something that Hogwarts had a lot of - that he and Penny had been using for practice. Perhaps Harry could have simply asked for a room from Slughorn, but he didn't want to waste his favours on something like that. He'd much rather have the copying spell that Slughorn had used, which he would hopefully get by owl tomorrow.

"How did it go?" Penny asked as he entered the room.

"Slughorn agreed with our hypothesis," he said and dropped his satchel onto a nearby table. "There's nothing to do for my potion-making skills, other than to practise it like mad in advance." He watched as Penny dropped a small oak leaf into her red potion, seemingly stabilising a brew that had begun to bubble menacingly. That's when she looked up at him and came over to hug him.

"I'm really sorry, Harry," she said gently into his ear as she rubbed his back. Harry sighed and enjoyed the closeness. He hadn't been getting the same amount of hugs at Hogwarts as he had access too back home.

"Thanks, Penny. But there's no need to be sad, what magic granted me in terms of Charms, it took when it came to Potions. All apples are poisoned, somehow. Or perhaps how an alchemist would say it. You can't gain anything without losing something."

"Is that the principle of equivalent exchange? I think you've mentioned it a few times," she muttered as she continued smothering him with her long blonde hair.

"In other words perhaps, every action prompts an equal and opposite reaction." He untangled himself from his friend's hug. Once they were standing in front of each other again Penny blushed, perhaps at some preconceived notion of how unromantic physical contact between a boy and a girl was impossible. He noticed how her tie had become slightly undone and brought his hands up to gently fix it.

"You're a good friend, you know," he said as he tightened her knot and gently tugged down at her robe, so it hung down symmetrically. It was what Aunt Petunia liked doing to Harry and Dudley, even when their clothes were perfect.

"Thanks," Penny muttered as she fixed her hair behind her ears and twirled one of her braids in her fingers. "You're a great friend too, I'm sorry that I bothered you so often about Potions."

Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry that it took so long for me to listen. If I'd practised more in the beginning we could have figured it out sooner."

"If anything it's a lesson in understanding that people face difficulties for which we don't understand ourselves sometimes," she said.

"Very wise."

"Did you get the books?" she then asked as she walked past him, fearlessly upturning his satchel to get at the six volumes. Harry rolled his eyes as he went to pick up the book that belonged to the half-blood prince.

"This one has some interesting margins, could you maybe look through the other ones meanwhile and note down any potions you're interested in? Slughorn said he'll let me have the remains of the ingredients cupboard after the exams," he said and sat down on the floor to begin reading Snape's old copy of 'Advanced Potion Making'.

"Exciting," Penny commented and went to do a mixture of paying attention to the potion she was making and flipping through the recipes of the potions they'd be making in the next six years.

Harry meanwhile started reading through Snape's margins and writing down all the interesting spells he could find, such as muffliato, levicorpus and even sectumsempra. He did hesitate on the last one, however. It was dark magic and he was wary, but he also hadn't found any particularly well-founded reasoning for why dark magic was bad. Most texts just said it corrupted the user but didn't explain how exactly that was achieved. Other texts simply claimed that it was evil.

'You have to mean it!' Resonated in his hand but he couldn't tell why that would be important. You had to mean all magic, or else it didn't work. Willpower was one of the three most important components of any spell.

Harry shook his head, deciding to wait on learning sectumsempra for a later time. It was always better to be cautious.

What was particularly interesting about the spells were the explanations written under the incantation. A small explanation of its effects, the wand movement and a small note about intent. It was all very sparse and it was missing any and all arithmancy and structure. This begged to question why Snape had been writing spells and their structure into a Potions book after he already must have written them down in more detail somewhere else. It was impossible to create a spell on the side while attending a potions class like the note-taking method suggested. Harry tapped his chin, thinking about who Snape had been as a person, before shaking his head because there was no conclusion he could reasonably make as to why the spells were written out like this. Maybe, Snape had used the textbook of his favourite class as a diary, for sentimental reasons, essentially.

Harry frowned as he reached page 117 out of 253. Sentimental reasons? Well then, why did the note-taking suddenly stop here? He flipped through the rest of the book and saw that the margins remained empty. Another indicator of the fact that he was in a similar universe, but not the same as he'd read about. Or had Snape not continued the note-taking in the original timeline as well? There was no way to know really. Unless… "Wouldn't it be too much of a coincidence if the note-taking stopped right after what happened to my mom?" he muttered.

"Did you say something?" Penny asked from where she was lying on her stomach and flipping through the fourth-year potions book.

"Nothing," Harry said as he stared at the blank note-margin. Was there a way to check if his probable conception date correlated with the last entry Snape had made? Slughorn had already been a professor back then so maybe he was re-using his lesson plans? "Amortentia, huh," he whispered as he stared at the recipe, the first one without notes. Had Snape been his father all along? Possessive and not reciprocated love boiling over in a sexual assault, a memory charm used to hide the perpetrator. Snape would have been a student talented enough to learn the spell, that was for sure, and also talented enough to brew a love-potion or cast any other spell meant to compel or to force.

But Harry didn't look anything like Severus Snape. He looked like a male version of Lily Evans, through and through, so if anything the rapist would have to match her visuals to at least a certain extent. His heart was beating and an old rage started simmering again, clouding his mind. He should put more resources into finding out the truth, finding the ones responsible and-.

Harry closed his eyes and breathed in, breathed out, and calmed his mind. All with due time, he told himself, all with due time. He went back to the page with sectumsempra on it and hovered his finger over the paper, ink slowly beginning to seep out of the page and gathering at the tip of his finger in a minuscule ball of increasing diameter. He stopped when the ink was gone completely, leaving the copy that he'd made of the spell the only one in existence. He let the drop of ink splash harmlessly on his palm as he relinquished control before clenching his fist on the blot.

Scourgify flowed through his hand, the calming exercise from earlier helping him impose the spell without an incantation, without a wand.

He opened his palm to look at the pristine flesh.

He turned to Penny. "I found something interesting. This student made a bunch of notes on how to improve the potions, wanna check it out?" he asked, causing the girl to hop up and commence a scrabble for the book in his hand, which after taking it, she clutched as if it were a lifeline. With shining eyes, she pushed the open book she'd been looking at into his hands before opening Snape's notebook on a random page.

"Crushing, of course!" she exclaimed not a second after. "Why didn't I think of that?" she lamented before sitting down and beginning to flip through the rest of the book.

Harry rolled his eyes and glanced down at the fourth-year potions book, which opened on the page with the recipe for the ageing potion.

He blinked.

-/-

The Defence against the Dark Arts class was one that the Hufflepuffs shared with the Slytherins. They'd done so with the Gryffindors in the first half of the school year, which had been much more enjoyable. While it wasn't as heated as a combination of Slytherin and Gryffindor would have been, it still wasn't preferable. Harry felt the glare of Montague, the boy who'd called him a mudblood. However, Montague didn't dare do anything in class, because even if he were a spitting madman, Twix was madder. The woman paced in front of the classroom and glared at the students, waiting for an answer to the question that she'd bit out in between her repeat lecture on dangerous non-magical animals one could encounter.

Harry raised his hand, repressing a grimace. Answering the question wasn't a good strategy to not get screamed at, but he needed to push the class forward. He liked DADA, they were taught a bunch of interesting spells and theories. It was because of his interest that he couldn't let the class languish on the question for too long, they might just miss out on being taught a spell.

"Evans," Twix spat as if she'd eaten something sour. Not that uncommon for the woman, ever since Harry had snitched on her to Sprout, and she had stopped going to the restricted section during the day, likely under Dumbledore's orders.

"The most dangerous non-magical animals we're likely to encounter in Britain are bears, wild boars and venomous snakes. Bears and wild boars wouldn't be deterred by anything but the strongest knock-back jinx, while venomous snakes might poison us and make us incapable of focusing on casting the red sparks spell necessary in getting help," he said.

Twix frowned at him, rewarded him with no points and continued onwards with the lecture, now talking about spells they would learn in the future, which would help them deal with at least the more physically imposing animals. Harry breathed a sigh of relief and continued taking notes. He just had to survive another half an hour, walk for dinner to the great hall without allowing Montague to catch him alone anywhere and he would be fine. He really didn't feel like dealing with the boy, who had apparently been stewing in some sort of resentment lately, which had made him try to seek Harry out on several occasions.

A spitball impacted his hair when Twix turned her back to the class to write something on the board. Harry narrowed his eyes and followed the trajectory back to some grinning first-year Slytherins, Montague amongst them. Fucking brats, he thought and grinned. There was one weapon that gave him a perfect alibi for what he could do to retaliate. Wordless magic. He flicked his wand in Montague's direction just as Twix turned around to face the class again. A wordless levitation charm slightly lifted the boy's table and rattled it, making it seem like the Slytherin had moved it on its own and thus disturbed class.

"Mr. Montague, are you bored perhaps?" Professor Twix asked, causing the first-year to shiver and fervently shake his head.

"No, profes-sor," the boy managed to stutter out. Twix fixated him with slitted eyes, breathing harshly, obviously barely containing her anger, before she seemingly decided that the incident wasn't worth her time and returned to teaching.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Harry saw Montague give him a hateful glare. Harry shrugged, maybe if the boy hadn't been so incompetent that the largest thing he could fling with the levitation charm was a spitball, then maybe his attempts at bullying would actually bear fruit, instead of just bringing disappointment to the boy's family. He stuck his tongue out at the child and showed him the middle finger when Twix wasn't looking, making the heavy-set Slytherin run red in anger. But he couldn't do anything about it in a group setting, nor would he ever find Harry alone in the castle, considering his use of the disillusionment charm.