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Harry sat at a workstation near the back of the classroom, methodically scrubbing a brass cauldron. He was supposed to be serving a mild detention for knocking over a rack of empty vials, which was a deliberate act of clumsiness designed entirely to give him an excuse to be in the familiarity of the dungeons and to be near his father.
At the front of the room, Severus Snape was having a bad week — worse than usual. The Potions Master was hunched over a stack of sixth-year essays, but his quill moved too slowly, pausing too long between marks. His movements were mechanical and Harry detected a distinctive faraway look in his eyes that Harry had learned to dread.
Harry watched him from the corner of his eye, his heart aching. While he couldn’t hug his father or provide any real comfort or tell him the truth, he refused to let Severus stay in that dark, terrible place inside his own mind.
If “Alexander” had to temporarily sacrifice his academic dignity to drag Severus Snape out of his depressive void, it was a price Harry was more than willing to pay.
The scratch of Severus’s red quill abruptly stopped.
Harry paused his scrubbing and held his breath and waited for it.
For ten long seconds, Severus simply stared at the parchment in front of him. The Potions Master slowly lowered his quill, placing it onto his desk with a terrifying, deliberate precision. He pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a long, deep breath that sounded dangerously close to a hiss.
"Mr. Holland," Severus said, his voice a lethal, vibrating baritone that barely hovered above a whisper.
Harry set down his scrub brush. He picked up his cane, leaning his weight heavily onto the silver handle, and limped toward the front of the classroom. He stood there and projected the nervous deference of a traumatized teenager, while internally bracing himself for the incoming storm.
"Yes, Professor?" Harry asked softly.
Severus picked up the essay. He looked at it as though it were personally insulting his ancestors. "I am holding your submitted theoretical work regarding the stabilization of Volatile Valerian Root. A complex subject, certainly, but one with established, universally accepted methodologies."
"Yes, sir."
"Explain to me, then," Severus said, his dark eyes snapping up to pin Harry in place, "why you have dedicated four and a half inches of parchment to the highly recondite, utterly imbecilic theory that the roots must be exposed to... interpretive lute music prior to chopping?"
Harry forced his expression to remain entirely blank, staring at his father with wide, innocent brown eyes. "I read it in a supplementary text, sir. It supposedly soothes the plant's aura and reduces the acidity of the resulting sap."
Severus looked at him. The sheer, unadulterated academic outrage completely eclipsed the hollow grief that had previously haunted the man's features. A vein began to throb visibly at his temple.
"The plant's aura," Severus repeated, the word dripping with venomous disbelief. "Mr. Holland, Valerian is a root, not a temperamental pureblood heiress. It does not require a serenade. It requires a silver knife and a decisive, perpendicular cut. What 'supplementary text' could possibly have filled your head with such prolix, sentimental drivel?"
"Madam Pumpernickel’s Almanac of Gentle Herbology, sir," Harry lied smoothly. "I found it in the Haven House communal library."
Severus closed his eyes. He looked as though he were physically praying for strength.
"Let me be absolutely clear, Mr. Holland," Severus began, leaning forward, his voice rising from a whisper into the magnificent, commanding cadence of a true lecture. "If you ever attempt to sing, hum, or play a stringed instrument to any ingredient in my classroom, I will personally see to it that you are expelled. Magic is a precise, demanding science. It is not governed by the emotional coddling of vegetation!"
This was the Severus he missed. The hyper-competent, intensely passionate man who cared so deeply about his craft that stupidity offended him as a fundamental offense. Harry let the familiar, cutting vocabulary wash over him like a heavy, comforting blanket.
"Furthermore," Severus continued, his black eyes flashing with reinvigorated energy, completely distracted from the ghosts of his past. "Your assertion that stirring counter-clockwise with a wooden spoon—rather than the required brass—will 'align the potion’s chakras' is nothing short of a crime against alchemy. A wooden spoon would dissolve immediately, creating a highly toxic fume that would melt your eyebrows from your skull."
"I see," Harry said softly, injecting a note of chastised humility into his voice. "I apologize, Professor. My previous education was... somewhat fragmented."
Severus scoffed, a sharp, dismissive sound. He grabbed his red quill and violently slashed a massive 'D' across the top of the parchment.
"Your education was a tragedy," Severus corrected sharply, thrusting the parchment back toward Harry. "You will rewrite this entire essay. You will use only approved texts from the restricted syllabus, and you will omit any references to auras, chakras, or musical instruments. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir," Harry murmured, taking the essay with his free hand.
Severus waved him away, already pulling the next essay from the stack, his posture straighter, the terrifying, suffocating fog of his grief temporarily banished by the sheer irritation of Alexander Holland's academic incompetence.
"Return to your cauldron, Mr. Holland," Severus snapped, though the dead, hollow emptiness had vanished from his tone. "And attempt to scrub it with the abrasive side of the brush, not your misplaced optimism."
Harry turned away, leaning on his cane as he limped back to the dark corner of the dungeon. He settled onto his stool, picking up his brush. As he resumed his work, the corners of his mouth twitched upward in the shadows. the only thing Severus Snape would be dwelling on was how to fix Alexander Holland's aggressively stupid potion theories.