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Chapter 18: Seventeen

Severus Snape was not pleased with Harry Potter.

Granted, he never was, but in six years, the magnitude of his ire had never even come close to what it was now. This year - the seventh, and (he hoped) the last - was the worst, because the Boy-Who-Lived had done the one thing that no one had ever suspected he would:

Harry Potter had managed to become friends with Draco Malfoy.

It was hell.

Potter alone, with his absolute disregard for the rules and Dumbledore's endless supply of favoritism, he could have handled. Draco alone, lacquered to a mirror finish with nepotism and Slytherin politics, he could have managed. Potter and Draco? A dynamic duo with more potential for chaos than the Weasley twins and essentially no oversight, not even the law - Severus dreaded the day they did anything of major legal consequence, because he was already suffering every time his godson showed up at his office unannounced to whinge that all the detentions Severus was handing out were cutting into his time with Harry.

'Harry'.

Dear Merlin, he needed a drink.

Severus grimaced down at his desk, littered with work he hadn't mustered up the energy to do, and wished fervently he'd saved some Sobering Draught from the most recent batch - that way he could at least drown his pain in Firewhiskey. Alas, no such luck.

He was at least thankful that the initial impression - of Draco being infatuated with Potter - had proven false under scrutiny; Severus dared not imagine what the two would have been like as a couple. It would have been a dreadful sight on par with the very pair who had inspired Draco and Potter to become friendly in the first place: the Dark Lord and his Assistant.

In his darkest moments - no, more often than that - Severus wished the Dark Lord would just go back to open warfare. Because of course Potter had to go and become a fan of the accursed media franchise sometime during the summer; the boy was as avid a fan as Draco, which was saying something, given WhiteDragon was one of the biggest names in the fandom short of the stars themselves. And now it was all they talked about.

All of this, irksome as it was, would still have been.. tolerable.. if Severus didn't keep catching the two of them practicing Dark Arts in his bloody classroom-

(Which, incidentally, was why he was overseeing detention for both of them, right now.)

The Potions Master wanted to scream, but he would not give them the satisfaction of witnessing it. He kept his eyes on the first-year Defense essays and refused to acknowledge either of the so-called Despotic Duo where they were scrubbing cauldrons ten feet away; if either of them caught his eye they would try to piss him off so he'd send them out early. (It worked more often than he'd like to admit.)

It was the third such detention he'd assigned, now, a few weeks into term; and they all knew it for the impasse that it was. Because they also all knew there was no way to enforce Dumbledore's puritanical rules about 'acceptable' magic in the school: Draco was, simply put, Lucius' son, and Potter...

A tiny hole singed in the corner of one essay, spreading slow but steady like a cigarette burn until it reached the very edge of one messily written word on the page.

If the headmaster even believed such an accusation against Potter, he would most likely 'make an exception' for the boy after a long lecture and judicious application of disappointed blue eyes, and Potter would pretend at contrition, as he always did, and continue what he was doing while trying harder not to be caught. As he always did.