The Child of the Seventh Month

6. The Giant Surprise

The first lesson they had the next day was potions class with Gryffindors, and so Harry moved to sit with Neville.

The classroom was located in the dungeons, hence cold and dark, and smelled strange; of fumes and something musty. Pickled animals were floating in glass jars all around the walls, glass cabinets with colourful potions stood next to the teacher's desk, and cauldrons of varying sizes lay across the students' tables. The first impression Harry had of the place wasn't positive but he would be lying if it didn't spark his curiosity.

"I'm sorry, Ron," Neville said to the redhead from the train when Harry stopped next to their table, "Harry's my brother—"

"It's cool," Ron answered quickly. "I'll sit with someone else."

He gathered his things and moved to another table. Harry took over his seat to whisper in Neville's ear and share what he had missed since they had been separated the day before.

". . . and through that window I saw a mermaid, like in the books, a real mermaid," Harry said, surprising himself by how excited his voice sounded. He was still resentful that he had been sent to Hogwarts but it didn't change the fact that he had seen a mermaid.

"As for a presumably dead person, Mr. Potter seems to be surprisingly lively," a silky voice spoke from somewhere behind his back, and something strange pierced Harry's chest at the sound of it; a familiar sting of fear that he associated with home. An odd sense of familiarity washed over him but he couldn't remember where he could have heard the man speak before.

He swung around in his chair to come face to face with a tall man with dark, greasy hair, clad in a long, billowy robe. It was the potions professor himself, he realized, the Head of his House, Severus Snape.

"I'm not dead," Harry said, feeling a sudden wave of great dislike for the man, "I never was."

"Exactly," the man echoed with a barely distinguishable hint of wonder. Harry was sure that no one else was able to detect it but he had the priceless experience of finding cracks in the cold mask of the Lord so seeing through Snape's snarky demanour appeared a child play in comparison.

He glared daringly at the professor, doing his best to narrow his eyes in the same menacing way as the Lord always did. It didn't cross his mind that he was a scrawny child while the Lord was the most powerful sorcerer in the world so some of the effect might be lost.

"I'm afraid, Mr Potter, that in order to be excluded from paying attention in my class you'd need to be really dead," he said. "You'll write an essay about the uses of toad's tongue in potions."

Some bushy-haired girl raised her hand but the professor ignored it.

A deviant smile crossed Harry's features, "I can tell you all of them now," he said.

The professor glared, "I said essay, Mr Potter."

"But what for? I can just tell you, I don't need to write down what I know!"

"Five points from Slytherin," was all the man said.

"What for?" he felt annoyance boil into anger somewhere inside his chest.

"For the disrespectful way you address your professor," he said, his lip curling, "I'm not one of your classmates, Mr Potter."

Harry blinked, his hand itching to grab his wand, and like a creeping thief, the realization arrived. He understood just why the voice sounded so familiar, why the dark eyes were known. Even the name, Severus—he had heard it before, of course.

Was the Lord aware one of his servants was a professor at Dumbledore's school? He must have, Harry decided immediately. The man knew everything.

"How should I address you, professor," he hissed coldly to test that theory. "Would you like me to call you My Lord?"