Disclaimer: Not mine. I wish it were so we would have had HHr, but alas it's JK Rowling's.
A/N: My reply to the challenge issued by PJ, you can find it here: http://talk.portkey.org/index.php?showtopic=26635 . This story will start right after fifth year, and it will involve sex, some blood, and such, so this is why it is rated NC17. I hope you'll enjoy it, I think this is the most complex challenge I've ever dared to reply to, so I sincerely hope I'll be able to pull it off well.
Thanks to my beta Gingercat!
Harry Potter and His True Sixth Year
Chapter Seventeen: Snape's Story
"Harry, I admit it took me almost six years to understand it, but I've a pretty good idea why Snape treats you so badly"
"What?" Harry asked, dumbfounded.
"Think about it, Harry. Snape is a spy for the Order, so he can't openly appreciate you otherwise he would jeopardize his position in the Death Eater ranks and ruin our chances to know what Voldemort's doing quickly enough to plan a defence. He also knows first hand how powerful and dangerous the Death Eaters are, and Voldemort most of all. He also knows you have to face him in the end, right?"
Harry nodded, wondering where she was going with that.
"Plus, he was in school with your father and mother, and as much as he despised him, he knows your father was a smart guy, and Lily...well, everyone who speaks of her can't help saying she was one of the best witches of her age, possibly the best" she said, and Harry smirked, pulling her close.
"Reminds me of someone" he whispered into her ear, making her shiver.
"Harry" she warned him. "Behave" she added then, swatting away his hand, which was sneaking under her skirt.
He sighed, and resumed listening to her.
"Plus, he is a teacher, and they all have access to the archive where we found you are distantly related to Ravenclaw"
"Your point being?" Harry asked, a bit miffed after all that talk about Snape.
"That he knows you're a smart guy, and not the stupid, arrogant brat the papers make you look like" she said, smugly. Harry was staring at her.
"So you say he is just pretending to hate me, to keep his position as a spy and to challenge me to give my best?" he said, wanting to be sure he had understood her point.
"Precisely" she said, smiling at him and kissing him softly. "So you'd do better to prove to him that you are indeed a bright young man both while developing this cure and in Potions"
--
In the meantime, in the dark, smelly dungeons of Hogwarts Castle, Severus Snape was working over the notes he and the two students had taken that night, while brainstorming to find a cure for Remus Lupin. He had to smile to himself.
The Granger girl, he had always known she was bright, but Potter...well, it seemed that being with her was starting to have a positive effect on the boy.
Their combined theory of genetics being involved in Remus' anomaly was ingenious and the suggestions Potter had come up with that night were excellent.
Sure, they lacked the fine art of potion making to find a cure on their own, but he could provide that. His knowledge of every single ingredient available for potions, and its effects, would be enough to create a working concoction, once they had the basic idea of what they needed the potion to do, and that would be where the two teenagers would prove important.
As he worked on some routine potions for Madam Pomfrey, he let his mind wander back to how exactly he came to be in this position.
Severus Snape had never been an evil person. Sure, there had been a time when he had joined the Death Eaters and not as a spy. Now there was no backing out of that, so he was making the most of it, providing the Order with useful information on their enemy's plans.
But that was not the path he would have chosen for himself, had he been free to make the choice. Sadly, that right had been taken from him when he was teenager by his own father.
Serion Sterneus Snape, and his wife Abigail Optelda Gotlerbusk who was almost as ruthless as him, were supporters of Grindelwald, two of the most vicious. When Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, they bid their time, waiting for a new Dark Lord to come, someone worthy of their support. Sadly, when it happened and Lord Voldemort built his first reign of terror, they were both ill and too weak to join his army of Death Eaters. However, there was still someone in the family who could.
When their son Severus was sorted into Slytherin, his parents had held a huge feast to celebrate it, but Severus had easily slipped away, hating the attention for something he didn't actually do, it was all the sorting Hat's doing after all.
His parents barely noticed him when he was home, unless they had to punish him for something. His father had never been a patient person, and he often beat the boy, leaving him bruised for weeks.
So when young Severus was old enough to take the Dark Mark, Serion forced him to, even if the boy had strongly protested that he didn't want to do Voldemort's bidding.
After that particular row, and the long minutes under the Cruciatus Curse that followed Severus' act of defiance toward his father, the future Potion Master at Hogwarts School had eventually had to bow to his parents' will, and took the Mark.
He always tried to retain a low profile as a Death Eater, but Voldemort wouldn't have it, especially because he was the most skilled in potions in the whole lot, so he would often be in the spotlight for that reason. The fact he had learned Occlumency to protect himself from his father's probing to see what he was really thinking was useful, thus, as he often found himself in the presence of Lord Voldemort himself, the most skilled Legilimens on Earth, probably, or at least as good as Dumbledore.
Then the night of the attack on Lily and James Potter came, and while he had hated the boy in school, as he and his friends constantly picked on him for being a Slytherin, he hated traitors even more. He had more than once toyed with the idea of killing Peter Pettigrew once the rat had joined the ranks of the Death Eaters, but then he would have to explain to Voldemort exactly why he had killed the only one who could lead him to those who had already defied him three times.
Shattering a vial as the anger within him mounted again at the thought of the deceiving rat, he growled as his hand covered in blood.
Healing himself with a quick spell, he magically cleaned the mess he had made, and with a long breath decided to call it a night.
--
A couple weeks passed by, and while Snape was as stern as usual in class, Harry watched him with interest, trying to determine if what Hermione had theorized might be true. He did notice that their Potion Professor seemed to lose patience easily when someone made a blatant mistake, thus his repetitive shouts at some students who more often than anyone else managed to mess up their potions.
Harry, with the help of Hermione, had improved lots, and willing himself to believe that Snape wasn't set out to hate whatever he did helped him relax enough to brew satisfying potions. Well, they would have been satisfying hadn't the Professor been Snape, at least.
"Potter! This is not good enough!" the man snarled, and Harry fought his first instinct to retort that the potion was instead nearly perfect. Only Hermione had done better than him, he knew because he had watched all the vials the students had brought to the front of the classroom, and only he and Hermione managed to get a transparent looking liquid, although Hermione's was perfectly clear while Harry's was just a tiny bit less transparent.
He guessed Hermione's claim that Snape only wanted him to do his best and push him to do it might be as true as his own that the man simply hated him. Without the man openly telling them the truth, they would never know.
As they filed out of the dungeons, Hermione squeezed his hand supportively, knowing what he must be thinking. To tell the truth, while she was pretty sure of her assumption, still she found the behaviour of the Professor a bit out of line.
--
During the Christmas break, Ginny had missed Draco lots, and being around her grumbling brother Ron had done nothing to lift her mood. So, it was with a happy sigh that she greeted the return to school. She would finally be able to spend time with her boyfriend again.
The redhead girl had lately wondered why she hadn't noticed Draco before, but she was surely glad she had now. She felt on cloud nine whenever she could spent time with the silvery haired boy, his once upsetting smirks and sneers having become the light of her day, his rough touch when they would make love for hours in the Room of Requirements setting her body on fire.
The fact he was a Slytherin, thus supposedly forbidden for her, was an added thrill to the love she felt for him
"Oh boy" she giggled as she walked to their usual meeting point at night. "I'm truly in love with him" she realized, a smile gracing her lips as she felt her heart flutter with the feeling.
"Weaslette" he greeted her when she finally reached him on the Astronomy Tower. "You're late" he growled, and she blushed.
"Sorry, lost myself in thought and didn't realize how late it was" she excused herself. He nodded briskly, pulling her to him for a kiss. He had thought he could have some fun with her, maybe humiliate her in public when he broke up with her, but he found himself addicted to her porcelain skin, her flaming red hair, her hot-tempered attitude, and boy she was sexy when she glared at him with her hands on her hips.
He couldn't explain why he felt that way, but the fact was he did, and he was a bit scared by it.
During the Christmas holidays, he had thought that maybe being away from her would help him rationalize his situation, but it didn't. It only heightened his longing for her company, and that was the moment he knew he had fallen in love with the Gryffindor girl. And on top of that, she wasn't only a Gryffindor, she was a Weasley!
But they are right when they say you can't order your heart and you can't help who you fall in love with. He would be damned if he let a petty family hate come between them. He was a Malfoy, and all Malfoys got what they wanted. Right now, he wanted Ginny Weasley, and no one was going to stop him from being with her.
It was so that after a long night of passionate lovemaking, when they lay in the bed the Room of Requirements had conjured for them, cuddling, he wasn't freaked out like most would think he would, hearing her utter those words.
"Draco, I love you" she said, looking up at him from under her eyelashes.
"I love you too, Red" he said, caressing her nice breast and calling her with the pet name he had lately started using in their intimate moments. After all, the trimmed bush between her legs left no doubt that she was a natural redhead, just like the rest of her family.
--
Since their afternoon was free, Harry and Hermione had arranged with Luna and Neville to meet in the library for a bit of research on how to cure genetic diseases in wizarding people. Hermione had found that some cases of maladies like cancer had happened through the years, but they were rare as it seemed that magic would automatically right any possible genetic disorder known to Muggles, or at least, it did most of the time. When it couldn't, no cure for the condition had been found.
However, they found very little about conflicting magical genes.
It was frustrating, but no one of the quartet lost their hope. They kept researching, and then at night Hermione and Harry would meet with Snape to report their findings and help the man come up with a potion that could hinder Remus' Metamorphmagus dormant recessive genes, which would not have affected him normally had he not been bitten and infected with lycanthropy. In fact, he would not have known about the recessive dormant genes because he didn't have the ability to morph so he wouldn't notice the change, if he had never been bitten in the first place. But these dormant recessive genes, made partially active in his DNA by lycanthropy, would leave the field free for the Lycanthropic genes to fully develop the powers associated with that condition.
So far, they had had little success in developing such potion. Harry was concentrating as hard as he could but to no avail.
Then, he suddenly was struck with an idea. Looking up to see his two companions still deep in thought, he proudly announced, "Hermione, Professor Snape, I think I found the solution"
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