Chapter Text
When Severus had asked after Draco’s classes during this week’s tea, the boy had launched into his- this one by far the longest- weakly complaints about Lockhart and his idiocy.
“--And he doesn’t even teach class anymore! Not that anything he was doing before could really count as teaching, just recitation of his “greatest adventures,” but at least he was doing something! He just spends the whole class at his desk, either looking at his reflection or writing his book. He says this one is about his “daring defeat of the Basilisk.” He doesn’t even bother Harry anymore! He used to make him come up to the front of almost every class to act out one scene or another, but now he just tells us to read something educational, and then doesn’t look at us once.”
And really, that’s his downfall. Severus may not be the very best teacher, but he is gifted in his chosen profession and knows at the very least some things you should not do while in charge of a classroom. Such as ignore all of your students, not teach them anything, yet expect them to behave. Before he can really think any further, he is opening his mouth.
(Draco must be passing on Gryffindor germs to him via proxy.)
“Invite your little friends to tea next Saturday, and I will endeavor to teach you, little rapscallions, some actual Defense.” He says, long-suffering and world-weary.
He is only given a moment to think about what precisely he has just offered to do before Draco is agreeing with enthusiasm.
When Draco departs, off again to meet his friends, Severus cannot help but feel that he will come to regret this decision.
He sighs, again, before going to pour himself a measure of Firewhiskey.
_______________________
When Draco had bounced up to them after his tea with Snape to extend an invitation to the rest of them, Harry was shocked. He had almost convinced himself that the kind, concerned Snape of the Christmas Hols had been a figment of his desperate imagination. But, apparently, it wasn’t.
“All of us?” Ron asked Draco incredulously.
“All of you.” Draco agreed. “I was telling him about how bad Lockhart has been lately, and he offered to teach us some Defense!”
“Professor Lockhart has been rather… lax lately.” Hermione added thoughtfully.
Everyone looked at Hermione in shock. Hermione “I’ll Die Before I Disrespect Authority” Granger had just said that a teacher was doing a less than stellar job. She might as well have charmed her hair purple and done a jig, for how surprising this was. Ron burst into laughter.
“There may be hope for you yet!” He cried between giggles.
_______________________
Harry spends the week leading up to Saturday very nervous. He doesn’t say anything, mostly because he doesn’t want to bother his friends, but also because one of them seems to be nearly as nervous as he is. He can’t help wondering, though, if Snape is going to be kind and gentle like he was over Hols, or if he is going to treat him just like any other student. He knows, truly, that he doesn’t deserve the concern and care from this kind man, but he can’t help wanting it.
No matter how much he dreads it, Saturday still comes. It dawns, bright and cheery, and Harry pulls back the curtains from his four-poster to welcome the sunlight in. On Saturdays, he’s usually up even earlier than normal, and today is no exception. Harry thinks, for one desperate moment, of faking ill and avoiding the whole thing altogether.
But then he remembers the excited look on Draco’s face, and well… he really could use some help in Defense. He trudged his way out of bed and into his least raggedy clothes.
Harry is in the Common Room for half an hour working on homework before any of his friends are awake. When Ron finally stumbles off the stairs, still bleary-eyed, they head to the Great Hall together and sit at the Ravenclaw table with Luna and an excited Draco.
Breakfast, and the rest of the morning before tea with Snape, passed in a haze for Harry. He knew that he had participated in conversations with his friends out on the lawn, knew that they must have gone to lunch, have done something substantial until 3 in the afternoon, but he is so consumed by his worried thoughts that he would be hard-pressed to come up with any specific details of their day.
He can’t stop his mind from looping around two scenes. The first, one of the many pleasant meals Harry had had with Snape over Christmas break. The second, the aloof manner in which Snape treated him during class. And really, he knew that the man treated him with considerable kindness, given his well-renowned disposition for hatred towards Gryffindors, but Harry couldn’t help his yearning for that sliver of a kind man he had gotten a peek at over the Holiday.
Finally, it was 3’o’clock.
Draco leads them unerringly deeper into the dungeons, and Harry shivered as a cold draft blew past him. In front of him, Hermione, Ron, and Ginny were all following Draco, unbothered. Luna, too, although Harry wasn’t entirely sure how she managed not to trip over the uneven flagstones beneath their feet, considering she was looking up at the ceiling in wonder. Harry had looked around them when he had first seen her look around but had been unable to see whatever she was seeing. He shrugged it off, unconcerned. He would ask her about it later.
Finally, they were in front of the door to Snape’s room. Or, at least, Harry hoped they were, otherwise Draco might have gone mad, leading them all to a blank expanse of wall and knocking on it. He wondered, for a moment, how Draco had known to come to this specific bit of wall before his eyes caught on the sconce to the right of them. This one was just ever so slightly different from the rest, the bottom curve of it curling subtly into and S. Harry smiled at the irony.
S for Scary Slytherin Severus Snape. He snickered to himself silently.
The huge stones that made up the walls of Hogwarts slid apart, folding in on themselves, to reveal Snape, backlit by the cheery fire in his rooms. The expression on his face was much darker, but he ushered them all in any way, stepping aside out of the way.
As they filed into his rooms, Draco still bouncing excitedly, Harry felt a prickle of anxiety settling in under his skin, and a pressure building up in his skull. The expression on Snape’s face sent a bolt of terror through Harry, every single one of his instincts screaming at him angry man!!! Angry man!!!! Run run run hide-- But Harry stuffed the voice deep down inside him, struggling to remember the kind Snape from over Christmas break. As he struggled to keep his panic down, the stones behind them slid back together, sealing themselves into a smooth wall once more, looking no different from the inside than they did from out.
Draco darted forward, wrapping his arms around Snape in a lightning-quick hug, and Harry struggled to keep still, and not leap to the other boy, and pull him out of range of the dark-haired man. But as Draco backed away, smiling sheepishly, Harry watched in awe as the expression on Snape’s face softened, instead of hardening like he had expected it too. Some of the roiling in his gut quelled at the sight.
“I trust you’ve all come prepared to learn?” Snape’s voice was as silky smooth as always, but it lacked some of the bite he usually had in class. They all nodded their heads, some of them (Draco, Hermione) eagerly, others (Ron, Ginny) dismally. Ron had complained extensively about learning on a Saturday but had been unable to say no in the face of Draco and Hermione’s combined enthusiasm.
“We will start with an assessment of all of your skills. No use wasting our time going over things you already know.” He glanced at Ginny and Luna. “I will not expect the both of you to know as much as the rest of them, but considering your dismal instructors the past two years, I can’t expect you’re much farther behind the rest of them”
And so it went. Snape asked them to perform a few spells each on a stuffed dummy that he had conjured for their use. He quizzed them on their knowledge of Magical Creatures (of which Luna knew an exorbitant number of). He even asked them what they wanted to learn. Harry could hardly believe it, an adult putting in so much effort for a bunch of students where he didn’t have to.
Several times over the course of the lesson, Harry had caught Snape looking at him. But he wrote it off easily, seeing as Snape had been assessing all of them the whole time.
As he ushered them from the room at 4:30, Snape told them he would have a proper lesson drawn up for the next week.
The next week.
Snape was inviting them back. Harry didn’t have to try so hard to imagine that kind version of Snape. He could see it in this one, behind the pokey outer shell.
_______________________
The year was winding to a close. Harry tried valiantly not to think of what his summer looked like, and was mostly successful. Between Quidditch, studying for exams, and meeting with Snape every week for supplemental Defense lessons, Harry barely had any time to even think of thinking of the Dursleys.
The same could not be said for his dreams.
Whenever Harry closed his eyes to sleep, it seemed as if the Dursleys had been waiting in his mind to pounce. Quirrelmort popped in occasionally to remind him of the triviality of his own thoughts. How ridiculous was he, that he had burned a man to death, and yet he was afraid of a few overweight Muggles.
Harry’s friends, on the other hand, seemed to be much more ready to think and speak about summer all the time. Such as right now, during a break in Snape’s tutoring.
“I think,” Hermione said, drawing a piece of parchment and quill from her knapsack, “that if we plan accordingly, we can spend the break together in equal parts at each of our homes.”
“We’ve got 14 weeks in total, right?” Draco asks, and Snape nods.
“We could spend the first month of break all in our own homes, then everyone goes to everyone else’s house for two weeks.” Hermione says decisively, scribbling away at her sheet of parchment.”
Harry tries to sink down into the couch and out of sight. He needs to tell them that Dumbledore won’t let him leave the Dursley’s for the first two months of summer and that they most definitely cannot stay at the Dursley’s… but he can also imagine the looks on their faces. Looks that say we weren’t planning for you anyway, Harry. Looks that say as if we’d want to spend the summer with you anyways.
Harry turns his cup round in his hand anxiously, the dregs of his tea swirling around the bottom.
“Harry, do you know if the Dursleys would let you go anywhere, or have the rest of us over at all?” Hermione’s voice cuts through Harry’s thoughts.
“Dumbledore says I have to stay with the Dursleys for the first two months of summer, and I don’t think the Dursleys want anyone to come over, they don’t much like anything fr- magical.”
Hermione frowned at him, and Harry steels himself for the disdain, the anger.
It doesn’t come.
“Well,” Hermione says. “We’ll just have to work out a way that we can go to everyone’s houses during the last month. We can spend the first two months at our own houses, visiting when we can, and then spend the last month going to each house!” Hermione says excitedly, scribbling away at her parchment.
“Wait,” Harry says, sitting up straighter. “You don’t have to change your plans for me. I’ll-- I’ll just see you guys at school. It’s ok, really.”
“Mate, really, we’d rather change the plan to spend time with you,” Ron says, leaning around Draco to look Harry in the eye.
“Oh,” he says, stunned, happiness swelling in his chest. Ron cracks a wry smile at him, leaning back. Hermione proudly flourishes her sheet of parchment paper, almost whacking Ron in the face.
“Alright! So, I’ve set it all out, let me know if you have anything you’d like to change.”
Hermione slides the parchment across the table, so it’s at an angle that everyone will be able to lean forward and read it.
Month 1: separate
Month 2:
Week 1: The Weasley's
Week 2: Luna's
Week 3: Hermione’s
Week 4: Dracos'
Month 3: repeat previous circuit with Harry
Harry leaned back in his chair and tried to smother the smile creeping up his face. His friends were willing to butcher their plans just to make sure he had a good summer break too. He felt the sudden urge to gather up all his friends and squeeze them tight, but he didn’t want to make them regret their decision, so he kept himself stuck to the comfy seats the Professor had conjured up for them.
Around him, his friends chattered excitedly about their summer plans. Harry could hardly wait.
“It’s 4:30, Uncle Sev ” Draco announced, setting his teacup on the table in front of him. Harry and his friends all followed suit, gathering up their things, and preparing to leave. They traipsed in a line to the door, stopping right before they exited.
“Bye Uncle Sev!” Draco said cheerily, waving over his shoulder. Ron, immediately after him, sniggered.
“See you next week, Uncle Sev!” He said jokingly. The rest of them broke into smiles, offering various Goodbye, Professor ’s as they left.
(They entirely missed the warm, stunned look on Severus’ face.)
_______________________
Luna was the first to do it in public. After that first time, Ron jokingly called Professor Snape “Uncle Sev,” almost all of them had unironically called him Uncle Sev during their Saturday meetings.
Luna, however, was the first to do so while in public. Even Draco hadn’t done that.
_______________________
Luna raised her hand. Severus, from the back of the classroom surveying the brewing, noticed, stepping down the few stairs to stand beside Luna’s workstation.
“Yes, Ms. Lovegood?”
“What do you think about four stems of roses for the two eyes of newt? Crushed Sebastiana pavoniana to balance the acidity.”
“And the overall effect?”
“It should help the smoothness of the potion. Eye of newt tends to leave a potion thick and hard to swallow.”
“Go ahead,” Severus said, continuing forward down the steps.
“Thanks, Uncle Sev!” Luna said behind him. Severus’ steps stuttered for half a pace before he went smoothly forward as if nothing had happened. Facing away from the students as he was, none of them saw the small smile creeping onto his face unbidden. However, behind him, he could hear whispers breaking out around the classroom. He dragged his expression back under control.
“Quiet!” He called, turning back around, and the students scurried to do their work before he could take points but didn’t stop shooting disbelieving glances over their shoulders at Luna.
_______________________
The doors to the Great Hall slammed open, Fred and George beaming and out of breath.
“Luna Lovegood!” They said in unison, rushing to the Ravenclaw table where she was seated. Around her, Harry, Hermione, and Draco had confused looks on their faces. Ginny and Ron looked resigned to whatever it was their brothers were about to do. Luna looked entirely unperturbed.
“The one,” said Fred.
“The only,” said George.
“The inimitable-” Fred tried to continue before Ron cut him off.
“Spit it out already!”
George elbowed Ron, being closest to him. He and Fred continued to beam at Luna.
“We heard about Potions class,” George said. He and Fred both seized one of Luna’s hands, shaking them up and down vigorously. “We thank you greatly for your service, madame.”
“Of course,” Luna says primly, looking supremely unbothered by the twins practically shaking her arms off. After a moment more, Ginny whacks both of them with her napkin and they drop her hands with a yelp, ducking away from the assault.
“Potions class?” Hermione asks as all of them watch Fred and George scamper over to the Gryffindor table to talk excitedly to Lee Jordan.
“I got Uncle Sev’s attention in class by calling him Uncle Sev, and I didn’t really notice, but the Professor took me aside after class to tell me he didn’t mind, and I realized it had probably slipped out because Draco says it so much.” Luna smiled at Draco, and he blushed a bit.
“Well, he’s my uncle! What else would I call him?” Ron shrugs, before grinning mischievously.
“What do you think he’d do if we all started saying it in class?” He asked. Hermione’s lips twisted into a little smile.
“I think the rest of our year may explode,” she said, and the rest of them burst into giggles.
_______________________
“Your potion is almost the exact shade I described,” Snape says, peering into Hermione and Ron’s cauldron. “Exemplary work.”
Hermione beams up at the professor.
“Thanks, Uncle Sev!”
Ron, next to her, makes a choking noise, slapping a hand over his mouth. Behind Ron and across the aisle, Harry can see Dean slapping Seamus insistently on the arm, Seamus looking at Hermione with wide, unbelieving eyes.
Harry tucks the hard ball of irrational fear deeper inside him. He knows Snape doesn't mind them calling him that-- if he did, he wouldn’t hesitate to say so. Harry is three weeks out from the Dursleys, and every instinct is screaming at him to stop annoying the Adult, to comply, and be quiet and do whatever it takes to stay safe. But that instinct is at war with the amusement he feels at the expression on Snape’s face, equal parts bewilderment and shock.
“I-- you’re welcome, Ms. Granger.”
Snape sweeps away from them, back towards his desk, and Harry watches him from the corner of his eye as he settles into his seat, a look of tired exasperation on his face as he stares out sightlessly at the classroom. After a long moment, he drops his head into his hands, and he keeps it there for the rest of the class.
_______________________
They’re two days out from their exams, and Harry is sort of worried that Hermione is either going to burst into tears, hysterical laughter, or both. She was a frenzy of scrolls, books, and ink stains. Everyone else wasn’t much better, but Ron and Ginny seemed to have adopted a “whatever happens, happens” attitude by this point. Luna was reading a book upside down (she had said that was how you got the “hidden knowledge” out of it, and Hermione had almost looked tempted to set down her study guide and say something about it, but in the end, her study guide won out), and Draco looked almost as stressed as Hermione, though he was hiding it better.
Harry was somewhere between Ron and Hermione. He had a study guide of his own creation sitting in front of him, but he had abandoned it a little while ago in favor of picking at his dinner. He was worried about his exams. Exams had been canceled the year before, so in the end, he hadn’t had to worry about it. He wanted to do well on his exams, having the first chance of his life to do so. At the same time, he didn’t want to bother Draco or Hermione for tips on how to do better, so he would have to just suck it up and figure it out himself.
Harry sighed, poking at his mashed potatoes. He’d just have to do his best and see how it went.
_______________________
Harry left the exam room feeling as if someone had blended up his brain, with his hand cramping from several days of writing and wand movements. The physical drain was only compounded by the fact that in a week, he would be back with the Dursleys for the next two months. At the very least, he could look forward to the fact that he would spend his last month of the summer with his friends.
Hermione and Ron were two steps behind him, along with a flood of other students in his year that he didn’t know.
“Lake?” Ron asked around a yawn. Hermione nodded, smoothing a hand over her frizzy hair as she did so.
“Let’s wait for Draco, then we’ll go,” Harry said to the two of them, and Ron responded by slumping tiredly against the wall. Hermione began to dig into her bag, and Harry braced himself for the inevitable flood of “Oh, I knew number 37 was Law of Restrictive Transformations!” Harry shot a look at Ron, and the expression on his face looked almost as if he would cry.
“Hermione, please, just… 10 minutes.” Harry begged, and she paused in her search through her bag, smiling sheepishly.
“Sorry, I just get so worried,” she said, wringing her hands together in place of digging through her bag.
“There’s nothing to be done now, ‘Mione, may as well take a well-deserved break. Sides, we all know you got top marks in every class.”
Hermione blushed, and Harry smiled at his two friends. Ron’s sure confidence in all of their abilities was always heartening. He didn’t even look awake enough to realize what a compliment he had bestowed-- instead, it was spoken as if it was absolute fact and nothing else.
Draco came out the door as the last of the students were streaming out-- mostly Slytherins, as they were seated in the back of the large lecture hall.
“Ready?” Draco asked, adjusting his bag strap over his shoulder. Ron straightened, blinking hard, and nodded. Draco led the way out to the lake, and they chattered a bit as they walked about pointless topics, like Ron’s latest morning-wake-up venture, or a new chess technique Draco had read about, but Harry ultimately paid little attention to the conversation, lost in his own head.
“There?” Ron asked, nudging Harry with his arm before pointing at an open patch of the bank near the left side of the lake. The others agreed, and they hurried to head over to the blessedly sunny and open patch before someone else could swoop in and take it.
Ron slipped his bag off his shoulder and flopped face-first into the soft grass, contented groaning muffled in the grass. Hermione, Draco, and Harry all followed suit much more graciously, settling around Ron in a rough circle and laying down, face upwards to soak up the sun. After a moment, Ron rolled over in order to pull an abundance of snacks out of his bag. Harry, hungry from all the thinking, still couldn’t resist slipping a croissant into his bag on principle. He had been trying for ages to figure out how to properly work a preservation spell, but it was a Fifth Year spell, and he’d yet to manage it.
Around him, Harry’s friends chattered quietly, and Hermione checked her watch before pulling out a scroll from her bag. Knowing her, it had been ten minutes to the second, and Harry couldn’t stifle a grin at the thought. He laid back on the grass, crossing his arms behind his head, and tried to memorize everything he could about how he was feeling at that moment.
_______________________
Severus Snape was… stunned. He had been billowing his way down a hallway on the first floor when a gaggle of Second and First Years had plowed towards him. Of course, they were his gaggle of students, or he would have been much more likely to start taking points.
“Uncle Sev! Uncle Sev!” Called Draco, who seemed to be leading the charge towards him. Severus paused, waiting for the barrage of 11 and 12-year-olds to finish their forward assault towards him. Finally, they reached him, and suddenly there was a flurry of parchment in his face. He gently pushed the arms out of paper-cuts-to-the-eyes range enough so that he could see all of their excited, beaming faces.
“We got exam results back!” Hermione said excitedly, bouncing a little in place. Even Ginny and Ron, who both generally held a decent amount of disdain for school, looked pleased with themselves.
“I assume you have all managed to pass you, classes?” Severus asked drily.
“Draco placed first in Potions and Charms!” Hermione burst out excitedly, and Severus didn’t even have a chance of answering before Draco was talking with just as much enthusiasm.
“Well, Hermione got first in Transfiguration, History of Magic and Astronomy!”
Severus raised a brow in surprise. He had expected a decently even split between the two of them for top rankings in class, but between the two of them they had only placed first in five of their classes, so who had placed top in the other two.
“Well done, you two. And the rest of you?”
“Higher than I expected, so mum will be pleased.” Ron shrugged, and Ginny nodded in agreement. Finally, Severus turned to Harry. The boy shrunk a little under his gaze, shrugging.
“Um, I did ok, I think,” Harry said meekly, and Hermione immediately turned to Severus in outrage.
“He did better than ok!” she said, seemingly outraged on Harry’s behalf. “He placed first in Defense and in the top 15 of our year in almost every other class!”
Snape turned an appraising eye on Harry, who was blushing furiously, and looking very much like he wanted to stamp on Hermione’s toes. Severus filed the boy's disinterest to discuss his own accomplishments away to think about later, and turned the slightest smile on Harry.
“Well done, Mr. Potter. I am glad to see you have taken my lessons to heart.”
“O-of course, sir! I, I really appreciate the help you’ve given us this semester.”
“It was my pleasure, you are all excellent students, and I must congratulate you all on your scores and hard work this year.”
The small group of children broke into delighted babbles and thanks, and Severus tried not to smile too fondly at them in public, but he wasn’t sure he was entirely successful.
_______________________
Harry’s stomach twisted with dread as he ate his last meal in the Great Hall until September. Harry had been attempting for the last few weeks to slim down his portions in order to prepare his body for a summer at the Dursleys. He also knew that this morning would probably be his last regular meal until his friends came to pick him up in two months, but was unable to stomach more than a few swallows of scrambled eggs.
And in no time at all, breakfast was over. Harry stood with the rest of his friends to leave the Great Hall and head towards the carriages that would carry them to the train platform. He gazed around himself, trying to catalog every brick and stone within the Great Hall, and caught Professor Snape's eye. The man waved gently towards himself, where he was standing against the wall, and Harry understood the signal. He gently touched Ron’s elbow and jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate Professor Snape, and Ron nodded in understanding.
One good thing about his diminutive size, Harry mused, was that he could finagle his way through crowds quite well. By the time Harry made it to Professor Snape, though, most everyone had cleared from the Great Hall, with Harry’s friends standing in a haphazard clump by the doorway.
“Yes, Professor?” Harry said once he had reached Professor Snape.
“Mr. Po-- Harry,” Snape said, meeting Harry’s eyes clearly. “If you need anything over the summer, anything, please do not hesitate to contact me,” he said, and--
Harry wanted to believe him, wanted so bad to believe that this adult could want to help him, could be worried about Harry’s wellbeing.
“I--” Harry looked down at his feet, his ratty trainers, the ripped edges of Dudley’s too-long hand-me-down jeans rolled three times over just to keep from dragging on the ground. “Thank you, Uncle Sev.” he said, finally looking back up to meet the man’s dark brown eyes. Then he darted forward in a burst of courage he usually only felt when his life was in danger, and wrapped his arms around Snape’s waist in a rushed, rib crushing hug, before darting back to his friends.
Snape watched him go, and after a moment, he felt eyes on him. He turned, and up at the head table, Dumbledore sat watching him, the twinkle in his eyes muted. Snape tried not to shiver and strode from the room.
END OF BOOK 1 OF HARRY POTTER AND THE HIDDEN PATH