The Boy With Green Eyes
It shocked me when the old memory returned, after lying buried all those years in my childhood memories.
What constitutes normality? Who can say? But that day it all came back seemed normal until my youngest boy teasingly smiled at me, and that certain tuck in the corner of the boy’s grin time-turned me back to a rainy evening when I was lost in the vast labyrinth of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
I was a first-year, silly and scared, burdened with a tumble of brown hair pulled back by an old piece of ribbon. I worried about the time”some fifteen minutes past curfew”and wondered what Professor Weasley would say if I lost even more points for Gryffindor the very first week of term.
The war was over”long over. My parents had been teenagers when it took place, and the historical facts of the final battle that were repeated year after year seemed more like a tale from the big book in Father’s library than something that actually happened. But they did happen. Hogwarts was real, and I was enrolled with the other first-years, just as students had been centuries before me. Many strange but true stories had their origins there among the blocks of stone and marble”they made me feel small, and did not help my predicament in the least.
True to form, I had put my foot in it during class that morning, earning myself an immediate detention and robbing my House of 20 points. Though it had started out innocently
enough.
~ ~ ~
The first-years sat nervously in their very first Potions class, waiting for their infamous professor to make his equally infamous appearance. Professor Snape was well-known for his demonstrative entrances and exits, not to mention a long history of showing blatant favor to members of his own House. One girl sat alone at her double-desk, her Slytherin badge gleaming dully in the candlelight of the laboratory. She looked up with a sneer when I approached and I glared back her without blinking. Before either of us could speak, a door in the back of the room slammed open, rattling beakers and vials along the walls. A man with long, dark hair streaked with grey swooped down the aisle, robes billowing, and turned with a flourish to look down his long nose at the class, sizing us up.
“Hmph,” he murmured, crossing his arms and placing a hand to his chin. His face was weathered, and I found myself comparing him to my father, who had brown hair and brown eyes, and was only 34 years old. Professor Snape, I thought, had to be over 60, but his features spoke more of experience and wear rather than age.
My musings were interrupted when he began talking”almost whispering”outlining what he expected from this class. I was startled, certainly, when my desk-mate
spoke out of turn, lazily raising her hand, and said, “But Professor, you can’t expect much of Gryffindors, surely?” There was sniggling in the class and a few looks of pique,
though no one dared laugh aloud.
“Now, now, Miss Pyramel, “Snape tutted, showing not a sign of irritation. “All our Houses have long since put away their differences, as you know. We’re all one big happy family here.” The professor’s lips turned down as he made that last remark. “Some of my be... Some of my most memorable acquaintances were Gryffindors.”
Then I went and did it, fool”silly child that I was, blurting what had been on my mind from the first moment I knew I would been in Professor Snape's Potions class. Raising my hand, I said, “Sir, would one of those acquaintances be Harry Potter?”
The upside-down smile on Snape’s face froze, allowing his lower, uneven teeth to gleam through his parted lips.
“What?” he hissed.
The room seemed to have gone cold.
“Harry Potter, Sir, Gryffindor House,” I repeated, either naively innocent or totally out of my mind. “He was in your class, wasn’t he?” I prompted, ignoring Snape’s frozen
appearance. “The Boy Who... ”
“I know who you mean,” Snape snarled, his fists curling up under the sleeves of his robes. He took a breath, seemed to put something aside in his thoughts, and looked at me with his keen, black eyes. “I knew lots of Gryffindors, not to mention Slytherins, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws.” He leaned closer, close enough for me to hear a watch ticking away somewhere in the folds of his robes. “How does that pertain to this class?”
I found myself leaning back, my astigmatism making it hard for me to focus at such close range. “She was talking about my House,” I stuttered, pointing to the girl sitting aloofly beside me. “She said…”
“Ten points from Gryffindor, Miss, er…”
“What? Why? What did I… Uh, it’s Stewart, Sir… But why are you taking points?”
“For not…being…quiet, Miss Stewart,” he said, each word spoken more slowly”and more quietly”than the first.
How dare he tell me to be quiet? I fumed, and the years my father had spoiled me came back to bite me in the arse. “You didn’t mind Miss Slytherin talking about Gryffindor,” I rebutted. Yeah, call me stupid”that’s what I was when I was eleven, and too cocky and sure of myself to boot.
“Ten more points from Gryffindor, Miss Stewart, and I’ll see you in detention tonight right after dinner, my office.” Professor Snape’s face was deadly cold, but his voice shook momentarily. No one else seemed to notice that, but I did.
After that, class resumed”it was a double, if I remember, but I spent the whole time staring at my desk, turned away from Miss Pompous. Snape never looked at me again
until he dismissed the class”a darting glance over his shoulder as he walked into a back room”which I presumed was where I was to meet him that evening.
The day passed somehow and I grew more nervous as the time for my detention approached, hardly touching my food during dinner. I fairly bolted for the dungeon laboratory when it was time, wanting to get this awful matter over with, and ran into Snape’s office gasping for breath.
He wasn’t there.
I was a bit early, so I went out into the classroom and sat in the front row where he could see me when he returned, whether through the classroom or some other entrance
into his office.
Slowly my breathing evened out, and I became distracted by all the accoutrements in the laboratory. Some day I hoped to know everything about Potions”I’d been fascinated by the subject since I was old enough mix vinegar and baking soda. I began humming, a long-
established childhood habit, which helped to pass the time.
“Stop that,” came a low voice from behind me. I was so startled I jumped to my feet, nearly turning over the desk in the process.
“Sorry,” I said, far more contrite this evening than I was in the classroom earlier that day.
“I didn’t--I didn't know you disliked singing.”
“I don’t... dislike singing,” he growled, motioning me to follow him into his office. “I just don’t like that song.” He sat and motioned for me to do the same in an uncomfortable wooden chair in front of his desk. “You heard Peeves singing it, I assume?”
“Peeves? Oh, you mean the poltergeist,” I replied.
“No, I mean the stupid, ethereal git who made that up.”
I decided not to continue the subject as it seemed to bother my teacher. Clearing my throat and trying to put "Potty, wee Potter" out of my head, I waited demurely for my punishment.
“There are four houses in Hogwarts.”
I looked at him, waiting for more. His gaze was piercing, the warm candlelight drawing glints of blue and silver from his long, shining hair. "Sir?"
“But they don’t matter. None of it matters, Miss Stewart. Haven’t your parents taught you that by now?”
“I... well, I... ”
“Obviously not.” That sneer again, yet just a spark of something else. “So,” he said, louder and with the sense of having swept something into the dustbin, “detention.”
“Yes, Sir,” I said.
“If you want to learn Potions, as Headmaster Weasley has told me is the case, you must pay attention in my class.” He got up and took a turn around his desk, his eyes far
away. “You must study diligently, be meticulous in selecting and measuring your ingredients, and learn to trust your intuition.”
“Intuition?”
“Potions is an exact science only up to a point. A fine intuition makes the difference between a good potion and an exemplary one”a difference that could be life or death
for a victim”or you, Miss Stewart. Do you understand me?”
He had stopped right in front of my chair, his robes brushing my knees, his glance sliding along his nose like an arrow to my heart. And in that moment, I understood his passion for the art.
I couldn’t help myself; I grinned. “Yes, Sir.”
Our gazes remained locked for a minute, then he went back to his chair and sat.
“Detention is over.”
“Sir?”
“Are you deaf, Miss Stewart? Should I prescribe a potion for you?” There was the spark again.
“Erm, no thank you, Professor. Shall I go, then?”
“I’m not keeping you,” came the curt reply. His head was down and he was shuffling through some parchments. I turned and walked to the door, placing my fingers on the
handle.
“Professor, may I ask you a question?” I ventured, sensing that there was no immediate danger.
“You may ask,” he said, raising his eyes.
“You did know Harry Potter, didn’t you, Sir? My father told me…”
“Yes, yes, yes.” He sighed and sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers over his stomach. “There are the tales, the myths, the aggrandized stories of the famous Gryffindor trio who were the bane of poor, greasy Professor Snape.” There was bitterness in his words, but my curiosity prevented me from telling him he needn’t say more.
Snape rocked a little in his chair, tilting precariously on the back legs, and looked at the ceiling. “All true, of course,” he continued. “I hated Harry Potter, hated him because of who his father was, hated him for pranks his teenaged dad had once played on a teenaged prat, hated him because James Potter saved my life and I never got the chance to pay him back.”
I stood there, my mouth open, my hand still upon the door handle. The professor seemed to have forgotten I was in the room; I got the impression he was talking only to himself.
“Ridiculous, I know. But you see, Miss Stewart,” he said, bringing his eyes down to mine again. “I had not yet seen the way of things, as Dumbledore had. I took myself far too seriously. I had, in fact, never grown up.” His eyes went back to the ceiling. “Until the war.”
“The war against the Death Eaters!” I whispered. “Against You-Know... ”
“Yes, Miss Stewart, how perceptive of you. That war.”
I was becoming uncomfortable, realizing that I was hearing things from this man that were painful. I was just an eleven-year-old girl--why was he telling me this? I backed up a step and started to pull the door closed.
“He saved my life.”
I hung on the words, not daring to breathe. Words that were painful...and personal...
“No one knows that except for you, me, and the Death Eater he killed while standing over my wounded body.”
“I thought he killed... I was told he destroyed V-Vol... ”
Professor Snape shot me a look that could have pinned me to the wall had it been a spell. But then I saw something behind the hardness of his eyes, and he knew I saw it.
“He did. He battled with Voldemort, wandless”their wands were useless against each other”and he beat the villain. But Potter saved me first, and I watched, safe, as he fought his last battle. And I saw him win.”
“But I thought Harry Potter died!” I interrupted, confused. “All the history books say so.”
“Yes, he died, though not immediately. Voldemort didn’t kill Harry, Miss Stewart. Defeating Voldemort killed him. His energy spent, Potter fell to the ground after Voldemort died. His hand was clasped to his forehead”his scar, you see.”
I nodded, letting him know I wasn’t entirely ignorant of the legendary details concerning Harry Potter.
Snape continued: “I had regained some strength and managed to crawl to Potter. He was still breathing, but there was a recognizable rattle that told me he was dying, and quickly. I pulled him into my arms to get him off the rubble and smoothed the fringe from his forehead.” Snape laughed bitterly, as if he were living the moment all over again. “It was gone.”
“His scar?”
“Yes, completely gone, the forehead smooth as the day he was born. I marveled at it until he spoke to me. He reached up and clung to my robes, straining to speak, and I
leaned forward to hear him better. He looked up at me, and he was crying... They were--they were his mother’s eyes...”
Snape stopped, stood abruptly and turned his back to me. Crossing his arms, he looked down at his feet. Seconds ticked by...
Snape laughed again, an unpleasant, self-deprecating chuckle, as he turned to face me.
“Don’t you have somewhere to go, Miss Stewart?”
“Yes, Sir. I... Thank you, Sir.” And I left him, closing the door quietly behind me. I would have liked to put my arms around the professor, like I did my father when he was thinking about Mum; Professor Snape looked like he hadn't been hugged often. But I was too much a coward to do it, fearing he might throw me bodily from him or something equally theatrical.
Instead I left the dungeon lost in deep thought, began to wander, and soon had become irrevocably lost. I found myself on an unused floor, cobwebs and dust everywhere, and could find no unlocked doors that led to stairways of any kind.
Now it was past curfew and I was growing cold, tired, and scared”the creepy, irrational kind of scared that meant nothing except jittery nerves and an increase in adrenalin.
Given the opportunity at that moment, I would have packed my bags and made a beeline for home and a Muggle school nearby.
I wasn’t crying”I was never a crier, but nursed instead a deep ache that squeezed the air out of my lungs”I would much rather have been able to blubber loudly like other girls of my acquaintance. So I wandered farther, resigned to my fate, wondering what they would say when they found my body in a hundred years, turned to bone and wisps of Hogwarts uniform plaid.
Finally, worn out and defeated, I slid down a cool stone wall and waited. I was past caring what I waited for. In that frame of mind, I began to think of Professor Snape
again, his cold demeanor, the little spark in his eye, the firelight in his hair. I remembered reading a bio of the man in The Daily Prophet. He had been described as having greasy hair. But that wasn’t true at all! And he’d been civil to a Gryffindor”something unheard of according to what I’d read of him.
He’d hated Harry Potter. That was a mystery to me, an enigma”how a fully grown man, a teacher, no less, would hate a little boy before ever meeting him”hate him through all the seven years he was a student at the school.
Then I thought about Harry. I’d seen pictures of him, of course. Not what one would describe as handsome, even as he grew older”always a little smaller than the rest of
the boys, diminished somehow. Yet the stories and news articles described an entirely different person from what he appeared. I wondered then if I would have liked him had I known him. But I would never know...
Some time during my musings I must have dozed off, only to wake hours later, cold and miserably stiff. I decided I’d rather die trying to find my way back than just give up, so I
dragged myself to my feet and started back the way I’d come, my footprints just visible in the moonlit dust.
I came to the end of that hall and stopped at the tee, ondering which way I should go. I had decided to go right”opposite the way I had come in”when I saw movement to my left, just out of the corner of my eye.
Turning, I saw a boy standing in the distance, fully dressed at this late hour, watching me. When he saw that I had noticed him, he beckoned me to follow. I saw no reason
not to and hurried to catch up.
He kept just ahead of me, though never getting out of my sight, turning corners and finding staircases my footsteps had never touched. I could tell we were coming to the
inhabited areas of the school now; there were torches and pictures on the walls, and a faint odour of food from the dinner earlier.
Finally, I rounded a corner and found him waiting for me beside the portrait of a fat lady whom I recognized. Grinning, I approached him slowly, afraid he’d move away again before I could thank him. He stayed put, though, and smiled at me softly, tentatively, as if he didn’t do it much. One corner of his mouth quirked a little higher than the other, and he pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.
“Thanks,” I said, holding out my hand. “I thought I was a goner!”
He really grinned then, a look of camaraderie spreading over his features. But he didn’t take my hand. He turned and started to walk away when I called after him.
“Wait a minute! How did you know I was a Gryffindor?” Until now, we had never been close enough for him to see my regalia.
He turned to face me and placed his hand over his heart. Without thinking, I copied him.
Surprised, I looked down at my hand lying comfortingly over my breast.
When I looked up again, he was gone.
Though I never stopped hoping, though I looked for him often during those years before I graduated, I never saw him again.
~ ~ ~
Only now am I remembering this! Strange after all this time. I suppose I had shut it out over the years as I faced the death of my father and took on the responsibilities of
Potions Professor, marriage and raising two children.
It took that little quirk in my son’s smile to bring back the night when a boy with green eyes and round glasses led me back to Gryffindor Common Room”to make me remember once again my school friends and Hogwarts, and Headmaster Percy Weasley. To make me remember a legendary Harry Potter who, for me, would remain a boy in the halls of Hogwarts forever. To make me remember the astonishing night that Professor Severus Snape opened his heart to a prat of a first-year, a know-it-all Gryffindor, a silly little girl”like me.
end
The Boy With Green Eyes by Scriptor
Chapter Notes: It took that little quirk in her son’s smile to bring back memories of a night long ago...