You Broke Him, You Fix Him
By Teacherbev
Summary: After a brutal Occlumency lesson has disastrous consequences, Dumbledore forces Snape to live as Harry Potter. Will our Potion's Master finally learn who Harry really is? No Slash, No OC, rated for language and Dursley abuse only.
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling, I am not a multinational bookselling company, nor am I a multi-million dollar movie company, so I don't own anything that you recognize. I am a retired former teacher who likes to twist plots and play with characters, so enjoy.
AN: This is not my usual Harry/Severus father son bonding story, this story starts out much darker and a more broody and snarky Snape so be warned!
Chapter 1: I am not my father!
The day had been going splendidly for one Professor Severus Snape, greasy git of the dungeons, bastard potions professor and all around evil git. He was fully aware of all the names the students, (and lets face it some of the staff members, too) called him under their breaths, when they thought he couldn't hear them. But he did hear them, and the more evil and despicable they thought him, the more he smiled inside. If no one loved him, hell, very few people tolerated his presence, let alone liked him, the better he was doing his job.
Severus Snape had been an unloved and abused boy and grew up to be an unloved and unlikable man. That was fact and nothing he had ever tried had ever made a difference. He had realized early on in his miserable life that the only people who acted nice towards you were those who wanted something from you or those who were afraid of you. Since he didn't want anything from any one else, that left only making everyone fear you. And that had become his mission in life at an early age. And it was a mission that he excelled at.
He swept down the corridors to his dungeons, his own private fiefdom, where he ruled with an iron fist and an evil glare, his black robes billowing behind him in a very practiced and deliberate movement. The scowl upon his face and the ramrod stiff posture of his stalking walk guaranteed that no one would disturb his progress. And that's just the way he liked it!
Despite the glare upon his face and his apparent black mood he was actually looking forward to his evening. He could indulge himself in one of his favorite pastimes, tormenting Harry bloody Potter. And there was nothing Potter could do about it, for unlike his worthless father, Potter was a student and therefore powerless to retaliate in any meaningful manner. After all, Severus Snape was a Professor and as such he had all the power in their relationship, something he relished as he retaliated against his childhood tormenter each and every opportunity that arose. And Harry bloody Potter was too much of a Gryffindor to go running to Albus Dumbledore to complain about it. Sure there were rumors that reached the Headmaster's ears, but without any proof, all he could do was look disappointed and disapproving towards his Potion's Master. But since Severus Snape had never been approved of and had always been a disappointment to those around him, the mild distress of the Headmaster would never be enough to deter him from his revenge. Of course, it would have been much sweeter if the brat was actually his father and not just the spitting image of him, but he would use the target that was available. He wasn't that picky, after all, revenge against the Potter name was enough.
He reached the portrait of the evil hunchback that was the guardian of his personal office and glared at the misshaped form, snarling "Revenge is sweet." It was his personal favorite for a password. He had just thirty minutes to prepare for the evil scheme he had planned for tonight. He would crush the boy, rub his face into the mud and destroy all the belief in the wonderful father the boy clung like a strange shellfish to. He sat down in his deceptively comfortable office chair, summoned up all of his skills as a Master Occlumens that he had honed through the years of spying for both the Dark Lord and Albus Dumbledore and carefully reconstructed a particularly prominent memory from his fifth year at Hogwarts. One that particular afternoon, shortly after finishing their O.W.L.'s testing, he had managed to catch James Potter alone without his constant companions and hit him with a pick pocket jinx that had him hanging upside down, his white boxers showing for all the people on the grounds to see. He carefully melded that with the very common memory of the Gryffindors sitting on a blanket, James ruffling his hair while trying to impress Lily Evans. He blended in another memory of Lily being angry about some senseless prank and then viewed the entire new 'memory' checking for errors or spots where they didn't blend properly.
He viewed the 'memory' several more times, tweaking it and making it flawless before drawing his wand. He placed the tip to his temple and carefully extracted the strand and placed it into the pensieve he had borrowed from Dumbledore for this express purpose. He smiled evilly and gave a bow to himself at his own cleverness. Now to summon the Bloody Baron so that he could set up his departure from his office in a contrived 'emergency'. He knew from Dumbledore that the brat had invaded his pensieve before and that he had received no punishment for doing so. He also knew from overhearing many frustrated conversations between the 'Golden Trio' that Potter was frustrated about some big secret that Dumbledore was supposedly keeping from him. With an evil smile that would send the most hardened Death Eater running, Severus Snape sat back and contemplated the perfect revenge on the whole bloody Potter family. And he would win, finally.
Right on time, a timid knock on the door announced the arrival of Potter. He slunk in, stowing his backpack on an empty chair and shuffling toward the deliberately uncomfortable chair that sat in front of Snape's desk. He kept his head down, refusing to make eye contact before he had to.
Snape took in the slump of the shoulders, the resigned set to the boy's body and inwardly chortled, 'Just one more time; one more night and I will have the ultimate revenge. I will break that boy into a mass of quivering flesh only suitable to stay at St. Mungo's with that worthless Longbottom's parents! I will be the one to completely stamp out the arrogance and self-righteousness of the last of the Potters!'
Snape snarled, "Potter, have you managed to wrap your little mind around anything I have taught you? Just like your arrogant father, too spoiled and above working for a goal! Well, answer me, boy!"
Harry tremulously raised his head, fearing to meet Snape's black eyes. He mumbled, "I've tried but I don't know how."
"And it's beneath you to find out how, isn't it. Your arrogance got Cedric Diggory killed, a boy worth ten of your miserable, worthless hide! You're just too spoiled by those Muggle relatives of yours to even begin to know how to work. A useless, worthless waste of space, ignorant, arrogant, you should have died with your worthless parents and saved us all the trouble of trying to teach you anything."
Snape could not have known but his diatribe of blisteringly harsh words were making Harry flash back to his Uncle Vernon superimposed upon his recurrent nightmares of Cedric's death and feeding his overwhelming feelings of guilt and worthlessness. Harry shuddered at the wash of hatred flowing over his shoulders and tried to push his fears and guilt away. But it was no use, because Snape never let up, his scathing vitriol just gaining speed until Draco Malfoy ran into the room without knocking and announced that Snape was needed at once in the Slytherin common room as Peeves, the poltergeist was tearing up everyone's homework.
Glaring at Potter for good measure, he snarled, "Touch nothing of mine, Potter. I expect you can at least follow enough directions to remain in your seat until I return!" He couldn't resist a small upturning of one side of his lip as he noticed Potter had seen the open cupboard with the pensieve displayed so enticingly inside. He strode behind Malfoy, his robes billowing as he relished his ultimate triumph tonight.
Harry looked at his hands, his shoes, the dried on goo on the ceiling, every where he could think of that was not the open cupboard with its enticing prize inside. He waited, and he waited, and he waited until he could resist no more. Perhaps it was the secret of what the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore had been keeping from him all year. It really hurt that Dumbledore had distanced himself from Harry so much this year that he would no longer even look the boy in the eyes. It only fed the deadly loop of verbal abuse that Vernon and Petunia had heaped upon the boy his entire life. Over and over again, they had claimed he was useless, unworthy of any decency, unlovable and utterly without any redeeming qualities. They had claimed his parents were worthless, unemployed drunks who had died in a car accident while evading the police and he was just exactly like them.
As Harry had sat in his chair, listening to Snape's diatribe, his words had unleashed Uncle Vernon's diatribe and combined with the Headmaster's unwillingness to even look at Harry, let alone carry on a conversation with him, Harry had begun to feel that perhaps his Uncle and Aunt had been right all these years. Perhaps they had seen something in him that others were just now beginning to see. After all, Hermoine and Ron had been angry with him all summer, Professor Dumbledore had cut him off completely and kept insisting that he return each summer to the Dursley's, the Daily Prophet proclaimed loudly and often that he was an 'attention seeking liar and unbalanced mentally', Professor Umbridge made him write 'I will not tell lies' in his own blood on the back of his hand, and even Professor McGonagall had refused to help him when he went to her about his detentions with Umbridge. Perhaps Snape was just saying what they were all thinking and it was all an act towards him.
His thoughts growing increasingly black, Harry could resist no longer and plunged into the pensieve, hoping to find out what everyone seemed to be keeping from him. He smiled to discover it was his father, James with his friends Sirius and Remus on a sunny spring afternoon. He walked closer, watching intently as his father swept his hand through his hair, ruffling it as if he had just left a broom. He marveled at how quickly his father could catch a snitch, so that's where his talent in catching the elusive golden ball came from. His smile faltered as he watched him taunt Severus Snape and then his expression turned to horror as he watched his father turn Snape upside down, exposing his graying underpants for the entire world to see. He was stunned as Lily yelled at James for being such a big prat. All he could think of was his father was just like Dudley, his father was a bully and everyone said he was just like his father!
With an abrupt yank Harry felt himself being drug bodily out of the pensieve while a livid Severus Snape bent down, nose to nose and began screaming at him about his invasion of his privacy and how he was just like his father.
'No, I can't be, I'm not a bully, I just can't be…' Harry's face went blank, his eyes staring at a point somewhere through Snape's head. Snape stopped for a moment, unsure about what to do now. He wanted to ruin the boy's idealized vision of his father, but he hadn't meant to push the boy into shock. Had he?
Snape pushed Potter down into the chair and left him to go fetch a calming potion from his private stores. He leaned the boy's unresisting head back and dribbled the potion into the open mouth. The potion just filled up Potter's mouth and began running down his chin. Snape shut Potter's mouth with a finger and whipped out his wand to incant a swallowing charm so the boy didn't aspirate the thick potion. 'What do I do now, Dumbledore is going to kill me. Hmm, perhaps he'll be fine in the morning. Now, how do I get him somewhere besides my quarters without anyone seeing me?'
Snape shook his head and forced the rest of the potion down his student's slack mouth, making sure he actually swallowed it without choking on the sludge. Snape was beginning to panic, something he never did and he wouldn't allow himself to panic now. 'Ah, the boy's eyes are open; I can just slip into his head and block whatever it is that's making him react this way. Yes, that should work!'
He pointed his wand at Potter's forehead and said quietly, "Legilimens!" He felt no resistance to entering Potter's mind but the flashes and bits of words made no sense. There was no thought or memory long enough for him to latch onto. It wasn't Occlumency; Potter's mind was wide open, except there wasn't any conscious mind for him to read.
Snape sat down heavily in his chair, "Oh, shit. I am so screwed; Albus is going to kill me. Or maybe he'll just hold me down and Minerva and Poppy will skin me alive."
Well, there was nothing to be done, Potter was well beyond anything he could do to fix him; he would have to take him to Poppy in the infirmary. Perhaps he could just say he found him wandering the halls in this state?
With a shuddering sigh, Severus Snape admitted defeat and waving his wand, he levitated the unresponsive and yet seemingly fully conscious Harry Potter and set off through the dungeons on the way to the infirmary.
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AN: This weird plot bunny just jumped up and bit me on my 2,600 mile road trip and wouldn't leave me alone. I don't usually write two stories at once but I promise to continue with the Shaun Snape series. My question is: Should I continue with this one also? Is anyone interested in reading about Snape having to fix Harry and eventually take his place at the Dursley's in disguise?