Altering the events of history

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and many of the places mentioned in this story. The plot is the only thing created by me.

Chapter 7:- When Thoughts Become Actions

"Harry, are you ok?" Hermione asked him, concerned about how he might react to the statement; she knew he hadn't endured much homophobia before.

"It doesn't matter" he said quickly, trying to walk off in the opposite direction of the crowd of people that had offended him but Hermione held him back.

"Please don't listen to them Harry. It's a horrible word and they shouldn't use it."

"Why shouldn't they? It's true, isn't it?"

"Harry, are you happy with Severus?"

"Yes of course."

"And does it bother you that he's a man?"

"No. Should it?"

"Of course not but that's my point. It doesn't matter what they say or think because you're happy, aren't you? They clearly aren't if they're making stupid comments like that. Isn't that right Ron?" She turned to face him. "Ron?"

Both Harry and Hermione looked around for their friend, who was no longer right behind them but was on the other side of the street, towering over one of the members of the group, who was shaking on the floor with Ron's wand pointed at his throat.

"Do you want to say that again?!" Harry heard his friend shout from along the street; he could see how red in the face he was from where they stood. The two rushed over to him to restrain him from hurting the man on the floor.

"Ron, stop! It doesn't matter!" Harry tried to sound serious but in all honesty he was trying not to laugh and so instead he left Hermione to scold her boyfriend as he watched the people passing stop to see what was occurring.

"Answer me! Do you want to say that again?" Ron bellowed, ignoring Hermione's pleas for him to stop.

"I'm sorry alright? I wasn't talking about him anyway."

"You expect us to believe that you just happened to say that walking past Harry? We're not thick you know!"

"I wasn't. It's not him. We'll always be grateful to him for ending the war. It's the other one. Never liked him."

"What are you going on about now?" Ron asked, getting impatient.

"I think what they're trying to say Ron, is that they were referring to my partner."

"Sorry sir. I didn't mean to cause any harm. I never liked him much."

"That doesn't mean anything! I didn't like him either but you can't just go round saying stuff like that about people!" Ron continued, lowering his wand and backing off slightly.

"Sorry" the man repeated.

"Did Severus teach you?" asked Harry calmly.

"Yes sir" he responded, getting himself up from the street floor, still under Ron's watchful gaze.

"Did you dislike him because of his sexuality?"

"I didn't know until the article. He taught me and he was the most horrible teacher I've ever had."

"We understand why you don't like him. He taught through a time where he had to pretend to be someone else but he isn't that person. It doesn't matter that you think he is or even that you don't like him but maybe you should realise that calling him a horrible name that isn't relevant to why you don't like him isn't fair" Hermione joined in; Harry half-thought that she was just so used to lecturing people by that point.

"I won't change my mind about him but I understand your point. His choices don't affect my life." He then turned to Harry directly. "Thank you for what you did for us all. I didn't mean to cause you any offence. Though, I feel I must give you some advice: you and your friends need to understand that hearing an offensive word in the street isn't the worst treatment that you'll receive. You should learn to live with the fact that some people have different opinions that might hurt you." He turned to Ron. "You especially can't attack people for what they believe or say or one day you'll pick on someone that might decide to press charges. Have a nice day." The man said the last few words to all three of them before turning to his friends, seemingly embarrassed, judging by the redness in his face, second only to Ron's. When the group disappeared into a nearby shop, Hermione faced her friends, appearing somewhat mortified by what she had just witnessed.

"Ron, it was nice of you to defend Harry but you didn't need to be so violent. What's happened to you?"

"I'm sorry 'Mione but I couldn't help myself. You know what my temper's like and we have been in a Wizarding War for my entire life. I don't exactly know how to act now that it's all over."

Harry understood Ron's point to some extent but knew that both he and Hermione hadn't experienced the upbringing that he had. They hadn't become part of the war until they were much older, whereas Ron was born in the middle of it. It did however remind him of wise words spoken by someone important to him and so he repeated them back to Ron, with a whole different meaning: "The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters."

"I know that" Ron responded defensively, starting to walk back towards the place that they had all agreed to use for apparition today. The street was far too busy to just appear and disappear in the middle of it.

"Thanks for sticking up for me" Harry said with a clap on the back once he'd caught up to his friend.

"No problem. Did you see his face though?" he whispered from the corner of his mouth so that Hermione couldn't hear. Harry reacted with a chuckle that earned him a questioning look from his female friend, who was now only slightly behind them.

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While Harry was out with Ron and Hermione, Sirius was taking full advantage of having the house to himself. He was searching every last nook of the house to find any information that would tell him who the boy was that had seen Snape rape Steven. Unfortunately, he wasn't having too much luck; the house was huge and had been cleared out several times since he had last been there. He didn't think that Harry and the order were likely to throw away his personal property of his old school things so he was certain that they would be around somewhere. The search of his own bedroom had led him to nothing but that wasn't too much of a surprise. He knew that his old school things hadn't ordinarily been kept there; of course he still had to search it on the off chance that someone had put the things in there if they had found them in his absence.

"KREACHER!" he yelled, already annoyed with his lack of success. A loud crack could be heard, as the old house elf appeared.

"Find me my old school things" Sirius barked.

"Kreacher does not follow the orders of Mister Black any longer" he stated simply, seeming more than happy to deny Sirius of his request.

"I am the master of this household, you ugly gimp and you will do as I say!"

"Harry Potter is the master of the household now. Kreacher will only listen to him and his three friends."

"I am here now Kreacher and you will listen to me. Harry was looking after the place while I was gone but this is my house." But Sirius knew that it was no good; he knew within him that while the house was in Harry's name by law, Kreacher was his house elf and wasn't likely to follow Sirius' instructions when he hated him so much. It seemed strange that Kreacher wasn't throwing about insults as he normally did; perhaps Harry had banned him from them.

"Kreacher will find your school things when Harry Potter asks him to" the elf said with finality as he disapparated to some unknown location.

"For fuck's sake!" Sirius shouted to the empty room.

He thought for a moment about which other rooms would contain his things; they wouldn't be in any of the occupied bedrooms but could have been in any of the others. An hour or so of looking later, Sirius decided to check the master bedroom, where he had previously kept Buckbeak; now he thought about it, he didn't even know where the hippogriff was anymore. This room looking more promising than the others; as it was no long occupied by Buckbeak, it had been used as a storage room for all of the items that the order hadn't disposed of. The boxes were all neatly labelled, which he could only assume would be Hermione's doing, as none of the others would have bothered. Sirius' and Regulus' rooms had been left untouched; Remus had told him that Harry had wanted them to remain as they were in memory of them. The boxes in the master bedroom were from the other rooms and seemed to be only of sentimental value; boxes of family heirlooms were kept separated. Sirius couldn't help but be thankful for Hermione's organisation but he doubted she would have done it to help him in his current situation and his goal to ruin her best friend's relationship. It was for his own good, he told himself for the hundredth time.

Lifting through the boxes didn't take long and Sirius soon found the one that he was looking for. It had been labelled: School/ Marauders. He unsealed it with a diffindo charm and began searching through, stopping in sadness at all the memories of James and Lily. He pushed them aside for another day, not wanting to be distracted by Memory Lane and the emotions that it had to offer. He soon came across an old yearbook and almost ripped it in his excitement. Sirius laughed very briefly at his and his friends' yearbook photos before concentrating and turning to the Ravenclaw graduation page. He vaguely recognised some of the students but hadn't spoken to any of them since he left school; in fairness, he did spend 12 of those years in Azkaban, 2 years on the run and then 2 years 'dead'. His attention was drawn to Steven Wiley and he felt a twinge of pity, knowing that the boy's smile was completely fake; Steven still hadn't recovered from the incident by the end of school and hadn't done as well in his exams as expected because of it. Of course, the teachers had filed for mitigating circumstances and everything had worked out.

Two rows up and slightly to the right, Sirius found the face that he had been looking for and almost hit himself when he saw the name to go with it. The boy had been called Joseph Sterling and Sirius was sure he could have remembered that had he have tried a little harder. It's a shame Remus hadn't been able to tell him when he had asked him recently but he had seemed oddly suspicious; there was reason to be obviously but Remus didn't know that. Content with his new information, Sirius sat himself down at the desk in his room and began to write.

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Back in his classroom, Severus was having no such issues with homophobia or over-defensive friends. In fact, he was very shocked at just how ordinary things were; no one was making any comments or even acknowledging the fact that only a week ago, they had seen their 'heartless' professor break down in front of them all, outing his secret relationship with their saviour. The class he was currently teaching, fifth year Slytherins and Gryffindors, were all treating him with the same caution that they always had; the only difference being that they were all slightly quieter. Perhaps they saved their mindless gossip for the Common Room Severus assumed; he didn't mind not hearing their rumours or opinions but it did bother him that for the first time he didn't know what people were thinking about him. He had always been seen as the evil and strict teacher and someone to be afraid of but now he wasn't entirely sure that things were the same.

Severus' thoughts were disrupted when out of the corner of his eye he noticed one of the Gryffindor trouble makers, Liam Breaves, sneaking wrong ingredients into a friend's cauldron. The friend clearly hadn't noticed, as he was staring at his textbook, appearing unable to make any sense of the next step in the brewing. Without even looking up from his desk, Severus spoke aloud to the class but more directly to Liam.

"Mr Breaves, if you would kindly stop adding unnecessary ingredients into Mr Faulkner's potion, it might serve you well, as I intend for you to sample it at the end of the lesson. We wouldn't want anything disastrous to happen now, would we?" The professor could feel the fear coming from the boy without having to see his face or hear the worried whimper that he allowed to escape from his lips. Impressed with himself for still having the element of horror that he'd always prided himself on, Severus smirked before continuing with his preparations for the next class. The rest of the lesson went by fairly quickly with no further misbehaviour from anyone in the class, showing that Severus had clearly made his point. Just as the end of the lesson (and the day) arrived, Severus dismissed his class, asking Barry Faulkner to fill an extra vial of his potion up so that Liam could sample it. The boy gulped as his friend complied and passed the small amount over to his friend, looking apologetic and leaving with the rest of the class as requested.

"Come here Mr Breaves. I believe I would like to see the effect of the potion more clearly." The boy was quite small for his age but had a slightly bigger build around the middle, which was perhaps his reason for acting out as he so often did. He shook in his steps as he walked towards Severus, clearly fearing for his life and he wouldn't take his eyes off the murky liquid in the vial in his hand that should have stopped bubbling a good ten minutes ago. The only colour left in his face was the blue of his iris. When he reached Severus, he bent his neck back a bit to look up at the tall man that towered over him before his gaze settled back on the potentially dangerous potion in his hand.

"Mr Breaves, do you remember which ingredients you added into this potion?"

"Yes sir. Dung beetles and gas plant extract" he answered, looking disgustedly into the potion.

"Are you aware of what effects they would have on the potion?"

"No sir."

"So, had I suggested that all students taste their own potions, you would have allowed your friend to have tried it, despite what may happen to him?"

"No sir. I wouldn't do that. I was only having a laugh."

"And has it been amusing for you thus far?"

"No it hasn't."

"For your information Mr Breaves, the dung beetles would have no effect on the potion, apart from a change in taste but the gas plant extract combined with the nightshade in the original potion would have caused an internal bloat of the stomach when drank, which would gradually become worse and without treatment would be fatal."

"How do you know that sir? I mean, obviously you haven't done it so how do you know?" The boy seemed genuinely curious, which was a first to Severus' knowledge; even his other teachers had noted that he seemed uninterested in every subject.

"Because I am a Potions Master and I have studied each ingredient in immense detail. I know exactly what would happen if you were to combine one ingredient with any other that was known to be of use in potions."

"That's awesome. You know everything about potions. I don't know anything about anything."

"Perhaps you should make more of an effort to understand and then you will learn. The worst way to do this would be to witness the death of a friend by adding dangerous ingredients into their potions."

"Yes sir. I'm sorry sir."

"Did you not think that I am aware of everything that happens in my classroom?" The boy didn't respond to the question and Severus wondered if he had scared him a little bit too much. "Answer me."

"Some of the other teachers wouldn't have noticed but it doesn't matter. I shouldn't have done it whether I knew you would catch me or not."

"You seem to have learnt your lesson. I will allow you to leave without losing points or getting detention on two conditions."

"Thank you sir. What are the conditions?"

"The first one is that I never catch you doing anything as stupid and reckless as what you have done today."

"I promise. What's the second one?"

"You try harder in your school work and find the subject that you are naturally good at. There will be one but you haven't made the effort to find it yet."

"I will try professor but there really is nothing that I'm good at."

"You will never be good at anything if you do not try. Now, you may leave."

"Thank you sir."

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Before it got too late, the trio spend their evening going through their new textbooks, all too worried about how quickly they would have to learn everything. Dumbledore had told them that they could take the exams when they were ready, as they would have anti-cheating enchantments on them but still, they had a maximum of two months to learn everything that they normally were taught in a year. Even Ron was stressing out about the idea and he ordinarily didn't think about exams until the day before or sometimes a week before if Hermione stuck a colour-coded exam timetable to the inside of his curtains at Hogwarts. As Dumbledore had said, the majority of the practical side of the spells made sense, especially after their intense training with the order last summer. They were expecting to hear from the Headmaster the next day about when they would need to have their practical potions lessons at Hogwarts. Harry wasn't sure whether to be excited to see Severus or dread looking like an idiot in front of him; the latter seemed to be the most prominent though.

"Master and friends, dinner is ready downstairs when you are ready for it."

"Thanks Kreacher. Will you let Sirius know? We'll be down in a moment."

CRACK!

"Harry, I've been thinking that maybe you should speak to Sirius about Kreacher. He used to treat him really bad and I imagine he will still do the same. Kreacher's happy now and we don't want him going back to how he was before." Hermione still hadn't given up on her SPEW campaign after all those years and Harry couldn't wait until she was released into the world of work. It would be amazing to see whether people with similar interests and intelligence as her could win an argument with her or whether she really was just that good (and stubborn).

"Funnily enough, there are plenty of things that I need to speak to Sirius about and his attitude towards house elves wasn't actually top of my list, considering his thoughts about my partner."

"Well maybe I'll speak to him then" she pressed on, "he doesn't have an issue with Ron and I being together. In fact, I think he kind of expected it."

"Hermione, we all expected it and not just kind of" Harry laughed, forcing Ron to turn his favourite colour once again. On that note, the three of them went to the bottom floor to sit down at the kitchen table with Sirius, who had already arrived. Harry couldn't help but notice that he seemed a little shifty but he chose not to comment on it.

"Did you get everything from Diagon Alley?" Sirius asked no one in particular.

"Yeah. The books were all on sale so Hermione got the whole shop" Ron joked, making Harry choke on his chicken.

"We've been looking through the books this evening and we're all a little concerned that we just don't have the time to learn everything" Hermione told him honestly.

"I'd be happy to help with anything that I can and I'm sure that Remus would do the same. Just let us know if there's anything we can do."

"Thanks Sirius but you'll probably have enough to worry about: first proving you're alive and then proving you're innocent" Harry said, trying to make light of the peculiar situation that his godfather was in.

"Perhaps you're right but I'm willing to assist all the same. What were you reading up on today?"

Hermione happily told him everything that they had read through together, reciting the textbook word for word, despite only having read it once and proving to everyone that there really was no reason for her to be worrying. Sirius seemed just as interested as Hermione and the two of them went into great detail about animal transfiguration and wordless magic while Harry and Ron sat staring at the pair of them, feeling like a couple of dunces in the corner of a classroom.

Later that night when they had all gone their separate ways, Harry sat in his bed with his magical diary on his lap, wondering whether to bother writing to Severus or not. It wasn't likely that he would have the time to talk to him but he wanted to at least leave him a message nonetheless. Knowing he would be very disappointed if he didn't get a response, he braved it and wrote.

I miss you.

To his surprise and delight, Severus responded almost instantly.

Already? How on Earth will you feel after a week?

I'm hoping I won't ever have to go that long without seeing you again. There's no reason we can't visit one another.

You are correct. Though I want you to concentrate on your studies. Did you retrieve your books?

Yeah I got them all. I'm getting worried.

You will be fine. I'm sure that Hermione will ensure that you learn everything that you need and more.

I just don't want to fail. I don't really mind if I don't do amazingly but I just want to get the grades I need.

I am positive that you will do just that and better and if there is an issue then you will be able to retake the exams. Do not worry yourself.

This is why I miss you. You make me feel so much better about everything.

And I will continue to do so. Just promise me that you will put all of your efforts into these exams? It will be the last time that you have to.

Only if you promise me something in return?

Are you trying to bargain with me Mr Potter?

It is for your benefit as well.

Go on.

Promise me that we'll spend time together when I come to Hogwarts for my lessons and that we'll see each other more often than just that.

I promise. Now you.

I promise to put efforts into my exams. Are you going to get really mad at me in the lessons? I'm so bad at Potions.

I will make sure that you improve. I will have no reason to get angry as long as you concentrate and try your best. You managed to get an E in your OWL and I am certain that you will be able to do just as well in your NEWT with some help.

Thanks. It means a lot that you support me.

I will always support you.

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Somewhere much further away, a letter had been delivered and the man that had received it, read it several times in confusion, undecided on how best to respond.

Joseph,

I apologise for writing to you out of the blue and unfortunately, I have to keep my identity secret for now. I am contacting you to ask if you remember exactly what happened between Steven Wiley and Severus Snape in your seventh year at school. It may appear a very strange question and I know that it was a very long time ago. However, I know that you witnessed the incident that I am talking about and you are the only person that can tell me what happened. Snape's version of events sound very unrealistic and not what I remember hearing from when I was school.

I suppose you will be wondering why I am so interested in something that happened so long ago and something that doesn't directly involve me nonetheless. I'm sure that by now you will know of the relationship between Snape and Harry Potter if you have read about the end of the war in the newspapers. Harry is a close friend of mine and I am concerned for his wellbeing. As I'm sure you can tell, I don't approve of this situation that he has got himself into. I told him about what happened between the two of them and how traumatised Steven had been for the rest of the school year. Snape fed him a web of lies to cover up for what he'd done and sadly, Harry believes every word. The only thing that is likely to change his mind is evidence.

If you are willing, I would like you to meet with him and tell him what happened or even show him a memory if you wouldn't mind. I know that Harry is nothing to you but please remember all that he has done for our world. We no longer have to live in fear because of him and I think we all want him to have the chance to be happy now, without more evil wizards to worry about.

Please send your response to

The Occupier

12 Grimmauld Place

Islington

London

Thank you in advance.

After his fifth time reading the letter, Joseph picked up a quill and a blank sheet of parchment, writing his well-thought out response.