He had noticed Potter staring at him numerous times over the past few weeks and had always made a point of ignoring it, but today he had decided to conduct a little experiment. When he had caught the boy's gaze, he had stared back, watching with interest and Potter turned slowly redder and redder and seemed to stop breathing. Severus had eventually turned away, and was horrified to find that those emerald eyes were still on his mind an hour later. Why did the boy stare at him so reverently, with eyes so young but devoid of innocence? To call the owner of those eyes a 'boy' was inaccurate, because Potter had seen things no seventeen year-old should see, and was in no way, physically or mentally, a child any longer. Why did this… man-child… stare at him so bewitchingly?

Something on the floor caught Severus' attention and distracted him from his thoughts. One of the little fools had forgotten their book. The medium sized black, leather-bound Muggle notebook lay wedged under a desk. Unwilling to get to his feet, Severus pointed his wand lazily at the book.

"Accio notebook." He said, catching the book when it flew to his hand.

There was no name on the cover and Severus supposed that, in the interests of finding out who it belonged to, he should open it and take a look inside.

On the first page, written in slightly messy black ink, were notes on the brewing of a Linrimia potion. Severus knew the handwriting instantly as that of Harry Potter. He smirked slightly to himself; how ironic. He realised this must be the book Potter scribbled in during his lessons, and, flicking through it, he saw that it contained notes on all of the subjects Harry took. Severus smirked again as he saw that Potter's Divination notes mostly consisted of a half-hearted attempt at intelligent notes, then declined into scrawled sentences such as 'no. of times Trelawney has predicted my death: 10. No. of times have died: 0'.

Then, flicking over another page, Severus froze. It was a drawing, a very good drawing, of himself. It seemed to have been drawn in class, and showed Severus writing something, his head lowered, a lock of hair falling in front of his face. It was delicately shaded to show exactly the tones of his face and was, Severus noted uncomfortably, rather more perfectly like him than he cared to admit. Whoever had drawn it, and Severus wasn't sure whether he liked the idea of it being Potter, had studied Severus' face and manner and had obviously spent a long time doing so, capturing the exact essence of what Severus could only describe as himself.

Who had drawn it? Surely not Potter. But, yes, the bottom of the page was neatly dated in Potter's handwriting as being drawn two months ago on 7th September. Flicking through the book, Severus saw that there were in all about twenty drawings and sketches of himself, all perfect, and all neatly dated from 7th September to yesterday, 8th November. Then, on the next page, was a half-finished drawing that must have been done that day, in the lesson that had just gone by. There was, however, something different about this drawing that made it stand out form the others. Flicking back, Severus saw that this was the only drawing in which he, the subject, was looking directly at the artist, his dark eyes glaring intensely out of the page. Only the face of the drawing was finished, the rest of it mere suggestions of pencil lines, but in the expression Severus could see exactly what he tried to put into his eyes when he glared at Potter; coldness, scorn, contempt. Seeing it drawn by Potter's own hand made Severus realise what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of one of those looks.

Why had Potter drawn these pictures? Why of him? Severus got the uncomfortable feeling that Potter, after all the observation, knew exactly how he moved, exactly how he executed his movements. He had never felt understood, and he wasn't sure he liked it. No one ever cared about him enough to try and understand. Why Potter?

*****

That evening, Harry sat down to do his homework, and took his books, quill and ink out of his bag. Deciding that he would use this essay to show Snape that he was good at Potions when he put his mind to it, Harry looked for his notes on the Inoculus potion that he had written today in his notebook. The notebook wasn't in his bag. Then where was it?

Where had he had it last? Not in Care of Magical Creatures or Herbology. Which meant he'd left it in Potions. Fuck.

Panicking slightly, Harry ran through his options. He couldn't do his homework without his notes so he had to get the book back. Two things could have happened: Either it was still in the dungeons, or Snape had found it. Not particularly wanting to consider the latter, Harry chose to hope that it would be where he must have left it. There was only one thing to do. Telling Hermione he would be back in a while, he ran to his room, grabbed the invisibility cloak, and left the Common Room.

Hidden under the cloak, and watching out for Filch or Mrs Norris, Harry reached the Potions classroom and cautiously pushed open the door. He walked in quickly and shut the door softly behind him before bringing out his wand.

"Lumos." He murmured, and a beam of light fell from the tip of his wand. Directing the beam about the room, Harry looked round for the missing notebook. The beam fell across the front desk and Harry spotted, to his relief, the black bound book lying there.

Suddenly there was a slight noise as something knocked a vial off the desks in the room adjoining this classroom. Harry froze, still under the cloak, and waited, in a typically Gryffindor fashion, to see what was there, remembering at the last minute to mutter "Nox" to cut out the light shining from his wand. Slowly, a shadow which preceded the thing that was approaching flickered into the room, and Harry saw, to his horror that it appeared to be a large cat-like animal. He stood absolutely still and watched, trembling slightly, as a large black cat, not unlike a panther, appeared in the doorway. Its dark-eyed gaze scanned the room then came to rest on Harry, even though he was covered by the invisibility cloak. For a few tense moments in which Harry was sure the panther could see him and that it was about to pounce, neither he nor the big cat moved. Then, suddenly, it turned away from him and padded silently back into the room from whence it came.

When Harry was sure it had gone, he grabbed the notebook and left, not caring if anyone could see him as he ran down the corridor back to the Gryffindor Tower.

He muttered the password, ('Lederhosen', for reasons known only to the Fat Lady herself), and ducked through the hole into the warmth of the Common Room, shrugging off the cloak.

He was immediately pounced one by Hermione and Ron.

"Where have you been?" Hermione demanded, "It's NEWTs this year, Harry, you can't afford to go gallivanting round school and not doing homework."

"Oh, shut up, 'Mione." Ron said fondly. "But, yeah, where have you been? You look like you've walked through the Bloody Baron. And you missed a brilliant game of chess."

"Brilliant?" called Seamus, "Only cos you won!"

Ron grinned, "Well, yeah…"

Harry tried to grin and failed miserably, feeling shaken from his encounter with a large, probably dangerous cat in the Potions classroom, "I had to go and get my notebook, I left it in the dungeons after Potions."

Hermione looked concernedly at him, "What happened? Did Professor Snape catch you? Ron's right, you do look terribly pale."

Harry was about to tell them about the panther, but then a little voice in his head said "Nothing, Peeves just made me jump. Gave me a bit of a shock," And Harry found that he'd actually said it as well. Why hadn't he just told them the truth?

Hermione looked seriously at the notebook clutched in his hands, "What do you write in there, Harry? You sit scribbling in it all the way through Potions. It's not a magical writing diary, is it? You know how dangerous they can be…"

"No," Harry assured her, "It's not a diary that writes back. It's just… it's where I write my notes. I've got to have something to learn from for the NEWTs, haven't I?"

This answer seemed to satisfy Hermione, and Harry was shocked to realise he'd lied to his best friends again. What was wrong with him?

Hermione turned to Ron, "See, Ron. At least someone's taking the exams seriously."

Harry nodded, seeing his chance to escape. "In fact, I think I'll go and start studying now." He needed time to think alone.

"But it's only November!" Ron howled, "You've both gone insane!"

Harry turned to walk up to his room as Hermione berated Ron on not putting enough effort into his schoolwork.

Being a prefect, he had his own room and the top of the Tower and as he walked in he was met by the smell of the flowers Winky and Dobby insisted on leaving on the windowsill every morning. Sitting down on his bed, he flicked through his notebook, making sure none of the pages were missing or had been damaged.

He saw that all of the pages seemed to be there and that none of his drawings seemed to have been disturbed. Relieved, he flicked to the final drawing, the one he hadn't had time to finish in class. He flipped the page over and saw that Snape was still glaring at him from the page, as he had been before.

Then, he noticed, someone had written something at the bottom of the page.

The thoughts 'How dare they?' and 'Oh shit' ran through Harry's mind as he looked closer at the neat copperplate handwriting. In green ink, a single line had been written. A thrill ran through Harry as he read the words.

It seems I have underestimated your attention to detail. Intriguing work.