Striking Thirteen

Chapter Three

Albus explained everything and left Harry reeling. The last ten years of his life had been a dream. A total and utter lie. Nothing had happened. The curse that Neville had hit him with all those yesterdays ago actually had worked. Albus wasn't dead. Neville wasn't dead--or perhaps he was; Albus hadn't actually said. Voldemort was still there, undefeated and looming. And Severus... Severus was no longer Severus, but a dark and distant figure known as Professor Snape. He was seventeen, not twenty-seven. Hogsmeade had never been burnt to the ground. All this knowledge, his experience, all he had learned and said and done, it was all an infinite falsehood that unraveled before his stinging eyes. Nothing. He had nothing.

He turned over and buried his face in the pillows, hoping somehow he could block out the truth. "So nothing was real," he whispered when Albus was done.

Albus sat down on the bed and put a comforting hand on Harry's shoulder. "Not events. Wizards' dreams are unique, though, Harry. I'm sure you know that, given your connection with Voldemort. Tell me, did you acquire any new skills in your dream?"

Harry turned back to face Albus and nodded blankly, not sure where this was going.

"Everything in your dream, any book, any new spell, was something you had access to here. If you went to the library in your dream and looked at a book, you read something that was really there. It's a phenomenon known as latent acquired content."

Harry blinked. "So what you're saying is that everything I learned was real, just not anything I did."

"Essentially."

"So I've completed school. Why don't we just put everyone to sleep for a couple of days and have them do all their schooling there?"

"Think about that, Harry. Think about what you dreamed. Think about what would happen if everyone dreamed their own separate timelines."

"Everyone would go mad."

"It's very likely. Not many wizards have the power to survive such a thing. You do. I do. Perhaps most of the professors at this school do. But your average student wouldn't. And there's something to be said for tradition as well. Part of our job here is to mould you students into functional members of wizarding society. And we unfortunately cannot control dreams, so even if replacing schooling with lucid dreaming were a practical idea, there's no telling what would happen. Perhaps the possible timeline of a student's dream would include dropping out of school and spending the rest of his days reading Muggle comics. I, for one, once had a particularly pleasant dream in which I read the entire works of Charles Dickens. While enjoyable, it afforded me nothing in the way of practical knowledge."

Harry smiled slightly in spite of himself, but his mirth faded quickly. "What's going to be done about my schooling, then? I've finished it, but I couldn't exactly bring my N.E.W.T. results back with me," Harry said bitterly and with no small amount of sarcasm, thinking of a few other things he couldn't bring back either.

"That's quite simple. When you're strong enough, a special examiner from the Ministry will administer your N.E.W.T.s. Assuming you pass enough of them, you'll be free to do as you please. Tell me, did you complete a secondary course of study?"

"An apprenticeship."

"With?"

Harry sighed. Dumbledore was certainly going to know the story now. "Professor Snape," he mumbled.

Dumbledore smiled benignly, but Harry could practically see the wheels turning in the old man's head. "Well, there's no substitution for an apprenticeship, I'm afraid, but you may, of course, also sit the Potions Master certification test. You've a unique opportunity here, Harry. You've seen the life that resulted from one course of action. You now have the choice to repeat that course and live that life again, though it may not be exactly the same. Or you may choose another, if another would have been more satisfying. Tell me, Harry, were you happy?"

Chapter Four

Neville never made it to the Ministry. The house-elves found his lifeless body hanging from a rafter in the Great Hall. Though Harry was still weak, Madam Pomfrey was unable to stop him when he bounded out of bed in a blind rage and stormed into Snape's office.

"I hope you're happy," Harry hissed across the desk at his teacher.

Snape gave him a tired look. "No one could have known the boy would be so stupid. He could have led quite a comfortable life as the squib he was to become."

"You heard him threaten to kill himself!"

Snape sighed. "As a teacher of adolescents, you must realise that I have been hearing such threats at least twice a day for the past seventeen years. There has yet to be one that was serious, and I thought no differently in Mr. Longbottom's case."

"You'd bloody well take points from him posthumously if you could," Harry spat.

Snape leaned serenely back in his chair. "I did try," he said, "but there seems to be some spell in place preventing it."

"You complete bastard," Harry said, leaning as far into Snape's personal space as the desk would allow. "You made his life a living hell for six years, and were well started on a seventh. How can you presume to be so cavalier about a death you clearly helped cause?"

"I've killed more people by more direct means, as have you."

"I've never committed murder."

"If Bellatrix Lestrange's death wasn't a murder, then I'm Helga Hufflepuff."

"It was self-defence! I was cleared of all charges!"

"As was I, numerous times."

"Dumbledore didn't have to pull any strings for me."

Snape put a hand on his chest and gave him a push. "Sit down, Potter."

Surprised by the touch, Harry obeyed.

"Potter, I'm not going to stand for your Gryffindor Golden Boy insubordination any longer. You've defied me since the day you got here, hated me since you first laid eyes on me. You've no right to judge me on any basis. You are valuable to the Order's cause--nay, essential--which is why you were not expelled long ago. Despite your hero complex and your inflated ego, you've shown promise the past two years. You've mastered Occlumency and the Animagus transformation. And you've surpassed most of the students in my class."

Harry thought his eyes were going to bug out of his head. However backhanded it may have been, Snape had just paid him a compliment.

"Despite the fact that I can barely stand you, it would be criminal not to at least offer you the opportunity to develop your talents. Albus Dumbledore is mortal, Potter. I'm arguably even more so. If I even live to take his place at the head of this school, I will not be able to continue teaching Potions. As such--Potter, close your mouth, you look like a great bloody trout--as such, I must make provisions for my own successor. You, sadly enough, are the most promising candidate."

"Why me?"

"Potter, you idiot, I've just told you. Don't make me say it again; it was painful enough the first time."

"But why not hire someone who's already qualified?"

"I see Miss Granger must have failed to transmit the entire contents of Hogwarts: A History to you. Since the time of Salazar Slytherin himself, there has not been a master of these dungeons without Slytherin blood. Some intangible and unbreakable ward set by Slytherin refuses to allow them to be mastered by someone who is not one of his own."

"I don't have Slytherin blood."

"Even if you didn't, the Dark Lord's transference would have done well enough."

"Even if I didn't?"

"I'm pleased to see you can hear after all. Yes, Potter, you may take that to mean that you do, in fact, have Slytherin blood. Very little, but enough."

"How?"

"Your mother's paternal grandparents were wizards. Her father was a squib who married a Muggle. Her sister, we ultimately discovered, had an entirely different father, a Muggle, and so was born a Muggle herself."

"Why didn't anyone tell me?"

Snape shrugged as though Harry had just asked him why the sky was blue. "You had no need to know. I highly doubt anyone but your grandmother knew Petunia Evans' parentage, and no one but your grandfather knew that his parents were wizards. We--the Order, that is--only found out by chance when we performed the initial tests to assure that your mother and your aunt were blood-related. We found that they were, but only on one parents' side, so we researched it further."

"I don't suppose it's that important after all," Harry said, long resigned at this point to finding out new and interesting facts about himself every day.

"As to your taking over my position when the time comes, it will require an intensive apprenticeship to begin immediately."

Once Harry and Snape had agreed on a time for their first meeting, Harry left the dungeons. It was only when he reached the end of the corridor that he realised it had never occurred to him to refuse, stunned as he had been by the offer. He also seemed to have entirely lost the thread of his anger over Neville's death, which had, as he now remembered, been his reason for being in the Dungeons in the first place. Damn Snape had distracted him. And he absolutely refused to think about exactly why.