His love for Potions I ✔

Chapter 9: Snape's advice and a new friend

It took Harry weeks to get up the courage to confront Snape. Weeks of dealing with Lockhart, Quidditch, and Malfoy, in an exhausting spiral that left him little time to feel sorry for himself and less time to plot. Still, eventually he settled on a strategy in true Gryffindor fashion - charge straight ahead, smash everything. He waited until the weekend, so there wouldn't be any embarrassing witnesses for what was sure to end badly.

"Professor."

Professor Snape proceeded to ignore him.

"You said last year I should be treated like everyone else. I don't think you would have tried to get everyone else expelled at the start of term."

Professor Snape continued grading papers.

"I know you hate me. I know you hated my father. But I thought better of you, somehow."

"I see the Headmaster already has you copying his pedantic moral soliloquies. I am not charmed, Mister Potter."

"I don't understand you at all," Harry said, and turned to leave.

"Mister Potter," Professor Snape said, when Harry was almost out of the room, hand on the door. Harry paused.

"It is not in your nature, but consider the previous year. How many times have you almost died since you came to Hogwarts? I thought perhaps it was Quirrell, but this year you managed to nearly murder yourself via tree, and the year is young. I truly do not expect you to live to graduate, so you might as well give up."

Harry took a few minutes to disentangle this.

"You're not the first person to tell me I'd be in danger if I came back to Hogwarts this year," he ground out, "And I'll tell you what I told him - I don't need your help."

Professor Snape said something as he slammed the door behind him, but Harry was already running, and he didn't hear it. Forget Snape, forget Dobby, forget everything. His face was dry by the time he hit the Quidditch pitch. Harry was a wizard, and he had a broom, and he could fly, and in the rush of air and twist of wind, he could forget all the problems that waited for him on the ground.

#

Draco took a moment during potion brewing to come over and eye Harry's potion, which was stubbornly bright pink instead of lavender.

"Oh, dear. Failing again, are we? You know, it's too bad we're not friends, Potter. I might take pity on you and tutor you."

Harry glanced at Ron, who shrugged, because as of February last year Ron had a death vow to stay out of Harry's potions Thing. Harry looked back at Draco.

"We're not friends."

"I'm hurt."

Draco rehearsed that in a mirror, was what Draco was.

"You're a bully," Harry said flatly. "So we're not friends."

"I am not," Draco said.

Harry gave him a flat look, and then glanced at Hermione and Neville, down the way.

"Fred and George Weasley are bullies, and you like them fine," Draco drawled quietly. And then, more loudly, "And Neville doesn't mind me suggesting ways for him to improve himself, do you, Neville?"

"Two points from Gryffindor for distracting your classmates, Potter," Snape interrupted. Draco, taking the hint, went back to his own potion. Harry seethed quietly through class.

"Rotter," Ron murmured to him. "It's not like Fred and George hurt anyone."

Harry nodded, but the barb stuck under his skin, just the way he knew Draco knew it would. He and Draco were getting to know each other far too well for Harry's comfort.

Perhaps it was that edge of anger and anxiety that prompted him to approach Professor Snape after class.

"It won't work," Harry said abruptly, not looking up at his professor. "Trying to make me miserable so I'll leave school, I mean. I won't do it."

"Mister Potter, the next time you attempt to divine my motives, I will have you scrubbing cauldrons for a week of your precious Quidditch practices."

So, really, his long term goal to get his Potions professor to like him was going wonderfully.

#

Draco Malfoy, whatever his reasons, did not yell slurs in the hallways of Hogwarts upon discovering Harry standing over an apparently dead cat, with blood smeared on the walls.

He did grin and go, "Couldn't happen to a nicer animal. Hip hip hurrah!"

Which is why he was leading a choir of cheers when Filch turned up. It really wasn't much better than him using the M word, from Harry's perspective. The only positive thing about the entire evening was Snape talking about something called a Mandrake Restorative Draft, which wasn't in any of their textbooks. Granted, when Harry tentatively asked about it all he got was a tired, "We have a library for a reason, Mister Potter," but that was very nearly encouraging.

The recipe for Mandrake Restorative Drafts was horribly complicated, but the longest stage seemed to be growing the actual mandrake, which Harry took as a tentative plus.