No Fortress Is So Strong, Chapter 08
Title: No Fortress Is So Strong
Summary: In 1981, the two Potter sons had their fates switched, and Nicolas Potter became a famous face. But there are those who know the truth, that the real Chosen One was the younger child. The Slytherin. Now, two brothers share a destiny.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Brothers. Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Notes & Caveats: This is a rewrite of the fanfiction story Slytherin Serpent. The premise was originally thought up in 2004, rewritten in 2006, and rewritten again in 2009. This is the only complete version.
This chapter is as yet unbeta’ed for spelling, grammar, and brit-picking. I apologize for this in advance. If you spot any error, no matter how small, please tell me in a review so that I can fix it.
Many thanks to Micah, who examined this story for plot and continuity errors.
“When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life.” ~Antisthenes
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Chapter Eight: The Potions Master
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In contrast to the happiest day in Harry’s life so far, his first night at Hogwarts was plagued with restless sleep and foggy, unfocused nightmares. He floated like a ghost and raced up and down corridors he’d never seen before. There was cackling laughter, portraits that chatted and wandered from frame to frame, suits of armour that clanged and walked as though the ghosts of their owners resided in them still.
He woke in the darkest hours of the night sweaty and panting, as if he’d been running for far too long. He lay in the dark, gulping desperately and trying hard to catch his breath.
Sleep was gone for him, and he waited in the dark and quiet for daylight to come.
When the prefects led him to the Great Hall in the morning he made a beeline straight for his brother, already sitting at Gryffindor table with his friends.
“Morning, he said idly, plopping down across from his brother as if he did it every day.
“Hi Harry,” Nick said, smiling. “Got your schedule?”
“No?” Harry asked, furrowing his brow.
“Your Head of House gives it at breakfast,” Katie said, elbowing Nick in the ribs.
“Oh yeah,” Nick said sheepishly. “That would be why we don’t have schedules, either.”
Katie rolled her eyes.
“You’ll want to be at your table when the food arrives, Harry,” she explained. “At least this first morning. You don’t want to miss it - especially with Professor Snape.” She shuddered theatrically.
“Is he that bad?” Harry asked uneasily.
“Not to Slytherins,” Jon said from Nick’s other side. “He favors you guys like nothing else, but he hates Gryffindors.”
“He hates me,” Nick said in dismay. “And I’ve no idea why!”
“Yes, you told me,” Harry nodded. “I didn’t know that your Professor Snape was the man who gave me my messages last year.”
“Those messages that told you I’d got my letter?” Nick asked curiously. “Did you ever find out who sent him with them?”
“No,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I’ll ask though, now that I’m here.”
“The Professors are coming down Harry, you’d better go,” Katie said urgently, and Harry looked up as he rose to his feet. Sure enough, Professor McGonagall was bearing down on them with a stack of parchments in her arms, and across the hall Professor Snape was prowling towards the Slytherins.
“Bye, Nick!” he yelped and hurried away without waiting for a reply.
The only empty seat by the other first years was between Goyle and Nott, so he refrained from chatting while the Professor passed out schedules. When he got to their section of the table, his black eyes met Harry’s over Tracy Davis’s head, dark and empty like tunnels. He stared at Harry for a long moment as though he wasn’t sure what to make of him. Harry felt much the same, remembering his own rather desperate attempt to rationalize Snape’s presence by thinking of him as a long lost uncle or cousin.
As though he’d seen the thought, Snape jerked a little as though startled, and then an expression of dismay crossed his hawk-like features for a split second before disappearing again. Harry blinked, bemused, then had the rather awful thought that perhaps magic could make it so people could read minds. He fought the childish urge to cover his ears and close his eyes as if that would guard against it.
Instead, he silently accepted the schedule the Professor handed him with what he hoped was dignified aplomb. This time, the Professor’s lips twitched in amusement.
“Charms at nine after breakfast,” Pansy read when he’d moved away. “Astronomy on Wednesday, at midnight. Does that mean Wednesday morning or Wednesday night?”
“The class starts at midnight, so Wednesday morning,” Zabini mused, examining his own schedule. “Then Herbology after Charms today, and on Wednesday after lunch and Friday at ten-thirty. Oh, we have Friday afternoons off, brilliant.”
“When’s Defense Against the Dark Arts?” Nott wondered, picking up his own schedule.
“Tuesday, last class,” Zabini provided, “and Wednesday after lunch and Thursday at ten-thirty.”
“We have Potions on Wednesday!” Malfoy said delightedly. “Last class.”
“That’s going to be grand,” Pansy said, smiling. “Professor Snape favors us.”
“That’s what I heard,” Harry said warily, remembering the Professor’s strange stare.
“We should go,” Nott murmured. “Does anyone know where the Charms classroom is?”
There was a chorus of head-shaking.
“Bloody,” Zabini muttered. “They should hand out maps.”
“Fifth floor,” a nearby Prefect supplied helpfully. “Up the main staircase and turn left, then left again first corridor you come to. That’s the Charms corridor, and you lot had better scamper - it’s a ten minute walk, easy.”
The first years jumped to their feet, grabbing their book bags and in the cases of Crabbe, Goyle, and Zabini, shoving last bits of breakfast into their mouths. That done, the ten of them filed out of the side door of the hall - the ‘Slytherin exit’, according to Malfoy, and headed around the Great Hall towards the entrance hall, where the great marble staircase was.
They found the Charms classroom without incident, and were greeted by the tiny, white-haired Professor that Harry had seen up at the staff table. He introduced himself as Professor Flitwick and started class with a roll call, whereupon he paused at Harry’s name and peered at him unsurely. Harry regarded him silently in return, uncertain but with his chin held high.
First class was a lecture on the basics of Charms, including the necessary safety precautions. The class was a single session and ended after only forty-five minutes, whereupon they were told to go to their common room to study the material before leaving the castle for the greenhouses and Herbology.
In Herbology, Professor Sprout regarded them all with a bright, cheerful smile as she gave them a tour of the greenhouses for their first lesson, lecturing on the more harmless plants and their properties and uses. She assured them that she didn’t expect them to remember everything just yet, but would they please study on their own time so they may learn them as soon as possible?
Then it was lunchtime, and the Slytherin first years tramped back to the castle wearily and fell to their lunch ravenously. Midway through, Professor Snape rose from the Head table and descended on the Slytherins, pacing the table and asking questions about their classes. He grilled the two new fifth-year Prefects and bent his head to speak with the male seventh-year prefect, nodding and murmuring quietly.
When he reached the first years, he scanned them all with a cold and indifferent gaze.
“The youngest of the Snake House,” he murmured when he stopped beside them. “Mr. Malfoy. You day goes well, I trust?”
“Yes sir,” Malfoy said respectfully. “Charms and Herbology so far, as you know, and we’re to have History of Magic and Transfiguration after lunch.”
“How are your classes?” Snape asked them at large, to a chorus of ‘fines’ and ‘greats’ and one lone ‘easy’. “Very good. I have the prefects and other Professors keeping an eye on you. Rest assured that any transgressions will get back to me, in addition to any struggling in class.”
“Yes, sir,” they dutifully said, and Snape nodded crisply and returned to the Head table.
He’d ignored Harry entirely.
After lunch they set out for the History of Magic classroom. Within moments, they’d taken a wrong turn, and then another wrong turn trying to get back to where they’d taken the first wrong turn, and before long all ten first years were completely and utterly lost.
The ghosts were no help. Harry thought they must have come across three of them in their desperate attempts to find something familiar - unfortunately the Bloody Baron (for all of his strange actions at the Welcoming Feast) spoke to no one living - at least not students. The Grey Lady didn’t even notice them. They also met the Fat Friar, who gave them very earnest and complicated directions that got them more lost than ever. The portraits, when you could get them to talk sense, were no more help than the Friar.
The stairs made everything twice as bad as they would have been. Every time they tried to go up or down one they seemed to shift, so that no matter what the Slytherin first years did, they were essentially wandering aimlessly.
And then, as if that were not enough, there were the doors, which were just as deceitful and complicated as everything else. Some of them weren’t doors at all, just replicas, while some were about two feet tall and others made of solid stone impossible to open unless you were under the effects of a particularly powerful Strengthening Solution (according to Daphne). Some wouldn’t open unless you had a password, or complimented them, or tickled them in exactly the wrong spot. With growing despair, Harry and the others figured that the dire warnings by the Slytherin prefects about being lost forever were more than just hot air.
Their fears turned out to be unfounded, however, when Harry spotted the name plaque on the base of the statue of Borigand the Befuddled that the Fat Friar had mentioned as being right across the corridor from the History of Magic classroom.
“There - look!” he said, feeling a great rush of relief. They sprinted down the corridor and peeked through the door.
It was Professor Binns, the only ghost Professor at Hogwarts. Since the first day was a series of single sessions, the classroom was empty - but that didn’t stop Binns from lecturing to it.
“Shh, shh,” Harry said desperately, looking back at his year mates’ uneasy faces. On tiptoe, they eased into the classroom and settled as quietly as possible at their individual desks, setting bags down and hushing each other whenever someone made too much noise. All the while, Binns droned on and on without once looking up from his ghostly notes.
That was the most interesting thing that happened in History of Magic. Despite the adrenaline rush - or perhaps because of it - within moments they were all fighting to stay awake.
They didn’t have long to doze however - they’d been there barely fifteen minutes before the bell was ringing and they were away, rushing to find their next class.
This time, they bumped into a Slytherin fourth-year who directed them to the Transfiguration classroom. Anxious to not be late for this class of all classes, they arrived thirty minutes early and ended up sitting in the corridor for the older class - Slytherin and Gryffindor sixth years - to finish and leave.
Like all the other classes they’d been in so far, Transfiguration was again different. Harry’s perception of Professor McGonagall had been quite correct - she was not one to cross. She sat them all down in their first class with her and lectured firmly on the subject of rules, regulations, and proper conduct before moving on to the class lecture. Even Malfoy, so often a smug and irritating wanker, turned into a respectful and charming boy in her presence.
Afterwards it was dinnertime, where Harry nearly fell asleep in his mashed potatoes, and then back to the common room. They were all so exhausted that their steps dragged along the corridor in the dungeons, their book bags weighing them down heavily. Harry wanted nothing so much as a long, hot shower and bed, but the day was not over yet.
The teachers hadn’t assigned a lot of homework yet, but Professor McGonagall had assigned them two chapters’ reading, and they had her class again the very next morning. Tired but determined, Harry set to it with a will, but was interrupted before he’d gotten through five-hundred words by the fire flaring brilliant green and spitting out his Head of House.
Too tired to stem his reaction, Harry gaped at the sight of someone walking out of the fireplace, which was actually lit, and had to rub his eyes vigorously to make them focus enough to realize that yes, he had just seen someone walk out of the fire.
“First years,” Snape said imperiously, calling from the area just in front of the fireplace. He gestured at the students sitting nearby; they groaned as they gathered their books and papers and vacated the chairs. “Sit,” he told Harry and the others, gesturing at the chairs.
“I have spoken to your professors today,” he began, “and I am pleased that I received no complaints, as of yet - except for you, Mr. Malfoy. Professor Sprout reports an astonishing lack of magical plant awareness - you will rectify that immediately. I will find you a tutor, and it will probably be a Hufflepuff, and you will treat them with respect, understand? At least while they are tutoring you.”
“Yes, sir,” Malfoy muttered sullenly.
“Excellent, and that brings me to another point of interest. It has come to my attention that my first year class has an interesting mix of old school pureblood views and a nearly unheard half-blood.”
Harry stilled. He knew from Nick’s letters about the differences in bloodlines - half-blood, pureblood, and the so-called Mudblood. Snape was going to tell them, tell these little vipers what he was. Well, so what. Harry lifted his chin defiantly and glared at Snape, daring him with his eyes.
“I will not have any of you - ” and here his eyes settled on Malfoy, then on Pansy, Zabini, and Nott, “not any of you speak ill of bloodlines while inside this House. Slytherins stand by each other, always. I will not have anyone in this House exiled or looked down upon because of bloodlines. If I hear even a whisper of an insult along those lines, the results Will. Not. Be. Pleasant.” The entire class of first years gulped, looking alarmed. “There will be more discussed, but I see you have readings to do and your evening ablutions to attend to. I shall speak to you tomorrow evening.”
“Yes sir,” they murmured obediently, and shuffled off. Feeling an odd mixture of relief and bewilderment, Harry stared at his Professor for a long, drawn out moment before he followed his classmates. The sound of the fire roaring heralded the Professor’s fiery exit.
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After their first day, the first year Slytherins were paired up with another House for some of their lessons, which went from single, forty-five minute sessions, to double classes at an hour-and-a-half each. For Potions, they were paired with the first year Gryffindors, while for Herbology they were paired with the Hufflepuffs, and for Defense Against the Dark Arts(a total bust, thanks to Professor Quirrell) they were paired with the Ravenclaws.
Within two days, the first years had begun to form their own hierarchies. Three of the Houses seemed to enact a trial-based system with a semi-leader type, but Slytherin split in two. At first it was just Harry avoiding Malfoy, who seemed to go out of his way to insult and aggravate him (being careful not to call attention to Harry’s bloodlines, however), but soon Theodore Nott started keeping him company - if you could call sitting in the same general vicinity as such. Nott was a loner type, and rather too clever to follow someone of lesser intelligence than he, as Malfoy was, and unwilling to follow someone regardless. Harry didn’t care - he didn’t mind the company, and Nott was a quiet sort.
Their tiny group grew when Daphne Greengrass started joining them in the library and across the common room when they were studying, leaving the remainder of their year surrounding Malfoy on the other side. After Daphne included herself, Zabini gave up on Malfoy’s attitudes and started sitting with them again, followed by timid Tracy Davis, and suddenly the Slytherin first year class was split in half.
Harry was so busy he hardly had time to do anything but smile and wave at his brother, and greet him before breakfast and say goodbye right after dinner.
Then, before he was quite aware or prepared for it, Wednesday arrived and with it, their first Potions class - with the Gryffindors.
As it turned out, Snape most certainly did favor the Slytherins, to Harry’s mixed delight and horror.
Potions class was taught in the dungeons, although not as deep as the Slytherin common room. The classroom itself was one of the larger dungeon rooms, lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves brimming with potions ingredients. There were twenty small tables inside, each equipped to hold a small cauldron off the tabletop so a magical flame could burn beneath it. Their cauldrons were already there.
Harry glanced at Zabini and Nott uncertainly, catching sight as he did so of the boy who’d run off with the Sorting Hat; short, round-faced, with an unpleasantly green tinge as he scanned the shelves. Harry glanced in the direction the boy was looking, feeling a twist of amusement at what was making him so queasy - it was a pickled toad, floating in bizarrely purple liquid. It seemed to squirm every once in a while.
The first years sat down, separating naturally into halves with the Gryffindors nearest the door, and the Slytherins on the other side. As such, when Professor Snape slammed open the door with an enormously loud bang, it was the Gryffindors who got the full impact of the noise. They jumped, startled, and Draco Malfoy’s lot sniggered. The Gryffindors glared in their direction.
Snape was one of the few teachers that did not take roll call before class. As soon as he was through the door, he was speaking in a low tone, threats and insults pouring from his lips. Harry felt himself grow tenser.
“Weasley!” Snape snapped, eyes narrowing on one of the boys on the other side. It was the redhead, tall and lanky and bewildered looking. “What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”
Weasley looked befuddled. Harry blinked, uncertain, and something tickled vaguely in his mind. Something about sleeping so deeply you looked dead…?
“I don’t know, sir,” Weasley replied.
“A point from Gryffindor then,” Snape said waspishly. “Thomas! Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”
This time a tall black boy froze in surprise, caught off guard.
“Er…”
“Well?” Snape asked, irritated. “No answer?”
“No, Professor,” Thomas said, subdued.
“Another point. Third for three then, shall we? Longbottom, what is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”
Harry inwardly winced as Snape called on the pasty-faced Longbottom boy, but he surprised him.
“N-n-nothing, sir,” he squeaked, and Harry knew at once that he was correct because Snape whirled around with a sweep of black robe and snarled at them all to pair up.
“For your information, Weasley and Thomas, powdered root of asphodel and infusion of wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it simulates death. It is called, in fact, Draught of the Living Death. A bezoar is a stone found in the stomach of a goat, and it is a cure for most poisons. Longbottom, take note that monkshood and wolfsbane is also called aconite. Write that down!”
It suddenly became rather chaotic as the Gryffindors tried to partner up while simultaneously trying to take notes, until Snape let out a crack with his wand to make them settle down into their seats. For the remainder of the hour he had them work on a simple potion to cure boils, alternately hissing at the Gryffindors and subtly praising the Slytherins.
Harry partnered Zabini and together they managed a fair potion, incurring a nod from Snape. Then the Professor was telling the class to look at the perfect way Malfoy had stewed his horned slugs, and was suddenly interrupted by a loud hissing noise as a cauldron on the other side of the room buckled and warped as it melted into a puddle of slag. The potion, a violent fuchsia, seeped slowly across the floor, burning holes in the shoes of those unable to get out of the way in time. The Longbottom boy whimpered, the exposed areas of his skin rapidly developing painful-looking boils.
Snape cleared the mess with a swift wave of his wand, then spun around.
“Idiot boy,” he snarled at Longbottom. “You added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire, didn’t you? Despite the fact that I clearly stated each step at the beginning of class, including that of taking the cauldron off the fire before adding the porcupine quills! You, Thomas! Why did you allow your partner to add the quills? Too good to listen also, I see, and that’s another point from Gryffindor.”
Thomas opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again, pressing his lips together. Looking disappointed, Snape gestured brusquely at Finnigan and ordered him to take the whimpering Longbottom boy to the Infirmary.
Chapter Nine