A Remedial Life

Chapter One: Truth and Scheduling

"You're the last person I would ever talk to," Harry snapped, darkly narrowing his jaded eyes into the kind of intense stare that's supposed to wither someone's insides. Snape, a man with insides like rotten fruit, was unaffected.

"Potter, do stop being a melodramatic arse. When I said I wanted to talk, I was merely referring to scheduling your...Remedial Potions lessons," Snape said with his usual sneer, making a chilling echo in the empty stone-laden stretch of Hogwarts hall outside his office.

"My...?" Harry's eyebrows knotted in comprehension. "You have to be joking. You wait until Sirius is dead to pick up those lessons again? How convenient." Harry started to storm back to Gryffindor when Snape seized his arm with his pale bony hand. Harry whipped around, ready to lash out with a bitter obscenity, but the threatening look on Snape's face reduced Potter to an impotent school boy attending his first Potions class.

The Potions master was breathing heavily. The nostrils on his crooked nose looked ready to fire bludgers at Harry's head. However, the first words out of his mouth were restrained to a fierce whisper. "First of all Potter, watch what you say out in the open." Snape shifted his gaze from one end of the hall to the other, as if activating some inner Death Eater radar. He then quickly pulled Harry into his office and slammed the door behind them.

Snape took a seat behind his desk cluttered with spellbooks and jars of random potions ingredients. And Harry stood there, deciding whether to walk out or tell Snape off for hurting his arm. Severus extended his hand to the empty wooden chair in front of his desk, indicating Harry to sit, but Harry's entire body was in some sort of holding pattern as it plotted its next expression of teenage angst.

Snape set his arm back on the desk. "Secondly, Potter," he said, his voice slightly less steel-like. "As simple as it would be, considering your underdeveloped logic, to blame me for Sirius Black's death, you are going to have to find another scapegoat. The reality is that you need me to learn Occlumency. And you need to learn Occlumency because if you do not, more of your loved ones will die."

Harry swallowed hard. The image of Sirius plunging behind that ominous curtain replayed beneath his eyes for another thousandth time. "No. I won't make the same mistake again. I'll know. I'll--"

"It's more complicated than that. If the Dark Lord has access to your mind, he has almost complete power over you. It's more than him knowing your secrets, although he will. He will know you. He can tamper with your emotions. Control you," Snape urgently explained.

"I won't let him control me," Harry replied coldly.

"No you won't...if you know how to use Occlumency."

Harry sighed, wishing anyone but Snape could be forcing him to face this undeniable truth. "Why can't Dumbledore teach me?"

"Because Dumbledore is preoccupied with the Order," Snape answered shortly, and his eyes fell down to study the broken grains of wood on his desk.

Scowling, Harry thought about all the times last year Dumbledore had avoided even looking at him. "So he has better things to do."

"Yes, precisely. Now, when shall we schedule the first lesson?"