t h i r s t

Thirst
[by victoria p.]

What a sucky title. I like this story, and I'm proud of it, for a number of reasons, but the title is not one of them. Gah.

This was my first Harry Potter story, written in the fall of 2002. Can you believe it? Me, writing about Snape of all people? It was actually supposed to be about Hermione, really, but Snape just barged right in and took over. He has a way of doing that, I think.

I was reading the occasional HP story at the time, mostly by Liz Barr or zahra, and hadn't fallen into the obsession with Remus/Sirius quite yet.

Anyhow, this story was meant to help me figure out a couple of things -- mainly, why the hell is Snape teaching, and also, what does he really think of Hermione?

This is my first, and likely only, Harry Potter story. It just demanded to be written.

bwahahahahahaha!

Ahem.

Guess I suck at divination, huh? I said the same thing about LotR.

*snicker*

He knows they hate and fear him. He expects that, even encourages it. He knows he'll never win their love, and wouldn't want to if he could. He doesn't even want their respect; the appearance of it is enough. As long as their fear keeps them in line and away from danger, it is enough.

This is still my belief -- Snape doesn't *care* about the kids as people, and he actively makes them fear him so that they'll do what he tells them to. I think it's his way of keeping himself emotionally uninvolved, and yet still managing to look after the brats and assuage what is probably quite a stern conscience.

He wonders if he's up to the task, up to guiding these children so they don't make the same mistakes he made. He fears that he's not, that he'll fail, and break not just the trust they and their parents have placed in him as a teacher, but the faith Dumbledore has shown in him by allowing him to teach at all.

I've since come to the conclusion that it's not faith so much as a form of emotional blackmail that Dumbledore is using on Snape to keep him around. I mean, he *is* a fabulous Potions Master, he seems to love the art, but he is in no way suited to be a teacher. So his fear that he is a lousy teacher is actually warranted. Now, I'm not sure he cares if he's bad at teaching or not, but when I wrote this I thought he probably did.

The bit about the same mistakes he did -- I just don't see Snape as a true believer. He's too smart to be conned into that sort of zealotry. I think he *wanted* to believe, to have something to hold onto, and I always saw him as sort of an analogue to Peter, pre-OotP. He was a hanger-on of more powerful friends, and probably from a family who'd lost its fortune and was looked down upon by the Malfoys and other such powerful families.

He forces himself not to cringe when Longbottom begins pouring ingredients into a cauldron, and again questions his fitness to teach these children -- all of these children. He hates children; as a child he'd sought out the company of adults. Twenty years ago, if someone had told him he'd be teaching at Hogwarts, he'd have jeered. The idea was ludicrous then, and even more ridiculous now. And yet, here he is.

What a long, strange trip it's been, eh, Snivellus?

The mark on his arm itches even when hidden; it separates him from them the way Potter's scar raises him above the crowd.

I like the parallel of Voldemort indelibly marking both his followers and his enemies.

Potter.

He stares at the boy, bent over his cauldron and whispering with Weasley. Potter flinches, knowing he's being watched, and Snape feels a small tingle of satisfaction. He thinks sometimes of letting go of the petty hatred -- he knows it's petty, but it's fueled him for so long, and he can't let his fire die just yet. Not with so much depending on him.

Yeah, I think he's got enough self-awareness to know that hating a kid is just ridiculous and stupid, but he can't help it. That hate drives him -- his hate of James sent him into the Death Eaters, on some level -- the way hate and envy are all tied up together.

And how I think he hates Voldemort et al. in much the same way, because he bought into it, thought he was going to be powerful and live forever and be able to snap people like James and Sirius in half with a thought, and it didn't quite work out like that.

Potter looks up, eyes wary behind his glasses, and Snape realizes he will never give up the hatred. It's hard to look at this child, the very image of James Potter, staring at him with Lily's eyes.

Lily.

She had let him down gently. She never laughed at him, never made him feel the fool for loving her. And she was so easy to love -- her bright hair and laughing eyes drew him to her like a moth to a flame. She was everything he was not. Graceful and delicate as her name, Lily had a strength belied by her frail appearance, and he loved her even more for it.

He'd known, somehow, deep down, that he'd never have her, though she was always nice to him. Her kindness had made it hard for him to sneer at her, impossible to taunt her the way his friends had. She was one of the few people he had ever felt at ease with. Even with her Muggle background, she was above his touch, her inherent grace obvious to everyone. And even with his pure wizard's blood, he always found himself lacking.

Another point of this story was to help me figure out why Snape hated Harry so much. And the idea that Harry looks like his most hated childhood rival, and also like the girl he'd loved -- yeah.

I was bitching about this to my mother one day, about how could a grown man have such a vehement hatred for a twelve-year-old, and she said to me, "Snape was in love with Harry's mother." And it was like everything fell into place for me. Snape makes a lot more sense if you look at him through this Lily-tinted lens.

I realize the thing about taunting her isn't quite true, given OotP, but I like to interpret his calling her a "Mudblood" as his way of protecting his fragile male ego, because at fifteen, what boy wants to be rescued from utter humiliation at the hands of the cool kids by not just a girl, and not just a girl he knows his society considers beneath him, but the girl he likes?

Gah.

I feel so sorry for young Snape.

Anyhow, I didn't know all that yet when I wrote this fic, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. *g*

But for her to have chosen Potter, of all people.

The only thing that could have been worse would have been if she had chosen Black.

That was the only thing that made the sting bearable -- Black, too, had lost out, had never held her heart.

Here I was playing with a couple ideas -- one, that Snape believed Sirius and James were in competition for Lily, and that Sirius lost out as well; and two, of course Snape would hate hate hate that Lily eventually chose James. Hadn't she seen what James was like? Didn't she know James had tried to kill him? He tries to convince himself she's not worthy of the feelings he has for her, because obviously, she's an imbecile for choosing Potter.

Also, at the time, I figured Sirius was a bully and James was not, which is why it would have been worse for her to choose him. Ah well.

And now he and Black and that damned untrustworthy Lupin are among the key people protecting Lily's boy.

Had to get that snark in at Remus, didn't you, Snape?

He knows the boy will do great things -- has already done them, to be honest -- if they can keep him alive long enough. Just as he knows Malfoy will come to a bad end. It's bred into them. He doesn't generally believe in predestination, but he knows that in wizarding families, prophecies are often self-fulfilling, and the children of wizards often live out their parents' wishes without ever realizing they've done so.

My own irritation with Draco comes through here. That's what led to me writing "Nothing Like the Sun," actually. Fanon!Draco was driving me insane.

Anyhow, children usually become what is expected of them, and I think in the wizarding world, there's probably some unconscious power working on the kids as well. In fact, I think someone should explore the nature of the will and its impact on Potterverse magic, and how the unconscious wishes of one's parents have an actual physical impact on one's choices as one is growing up, as opposed to the more amorphous ways our parents influence us in the real world.

I think a look at Sirius and Regulus and Mrs. Black would be really interesting, because obviously, Sirius's will was the stronger there, and Regulus is called "soft and weak."

And man, am I really off topic or what?

His own humble beginnings are proof of that. He was the tagalong, the weakling trying to overcome years of poverty and hatred and a blackened family name; he chose the wrong path when he allied himself with the Dark Lord and his servants.

His eyes slide across the rows of students.

Granger.

One of my betas didn't like this stylistic choice of repeating the names as their own paragraph. But I wanted it to be a visual signal that Snape's thoughts have shifted -- first Harry, then Lily, now Hermione.

Yes.

She's already a formidable witch. Under other circumstances, he might have taken silent pride in her proficiency, been secretly delighted by her thirst for knowledge.

"Under other circumstances" meaning, had she been sorted into Slytherin (which, I'm telling you, was the Hat's other choice for her. Not Ravenclaw, though she'd have fit there, too).

But knowledge is power, and her thirst for it reminds him all too clearly of himself at her age -- always striving to know, as if knowing the proper potion or spell could somehow fix everything that was wrong in his life. Somehow erase the stains attached to his family name. Somehow make Lily love him for more than a fleeting second under the influence of some Valentine's charm.

He used to believe that -- that power was the cure for all ills. He'd needed to believe it, because it validated all the choices he'd made.

He wonders, fearfully, if Granger believes the same thing.

He sees himself in her, and he knows what he was willing to do for power, and he knows -- even more after OotP -- how ruthless she can be, and how easy it is to be led astray by promises of secret knowledge and power.

He has watched her, late in the evening, slip down to the library to study. She goes above and beyond what her classes call for; she always has. But now, as she gets older, she has moved into more dangerous territory. Territory that may be dangerous for them all, if she proves weak-willed and easily swayed by promises of secret, and possibly treacherous, knowledge.

Things disappear from his office occasionally, and he knows that she's involved. Potter and Weasley need her; they're not able to brew up anything more complicated than a sleeping draught without her, and many of the spells they've used can have unexpected, and unpleasant, consequences.

She must realize that, in these tense times, she will be limited, that there will be those opposed to her advancement, based solely on her parentage, and not all of them are Death Eaters.

The prejudice against Muggle-borns in the wizarding world runs deep and has a long history. It must. Otherwise, how was Voldemort able to rise so quickly and easily to power? An awful lot of people must have been like the Blacks, on board with his ideas on Muggles and Muggle-borns, even if they were squeamish about his methods.

Such restrictions had enraged him at her age, and he fears that she will be the same. She's brilliant, she's a hard worker, and she will always be in Potter's shadow. That will chafe at her. He would think less of her if it didn't. He doesn't understand how she's remained friends with the boy for this long; he was sure she'd have moved on from him by now, tired of being eclipsed by Potter's fame, and held back by her own Muggle heritage.

He doesn't understand friendship very well. I don't think he quite understands Hermione, either. I don't think she sees herself as being in Harry's shadow -- not the way Ron does (or did).

I think Hermione's pretty aware of her own worth, and I hope that she continues to be so; she's passed through the most dangerous age, I think, of thirteen/fourteen/fifteen, where girls start dumbing themselves down to impress boys, where they lose interest in school (or have it slowly hammered out of them by teachers who favor boys over girls) etc., so I don't think we'll see that with Hermione -- she has too strong a sense of self.

But. I do think that if the wizarding world isn't changed in some dramatic fashion by the end of the books, then Hermione is going to have some difficulty with a career. On the one hand, yes, good friends with Harry Potter, heroine of the war, blah blah blah PR cakes. But on the other, Muggle-born and too smart for her own good, *plus* she's got a strong streak of the liberal reformer in her, and I don't think wizard society has much use for liberalism or reform. So I think there's a glass ceiling for old Hermione. But that could just be me.

He just worries about what will happen when she reaches that limit, even as he pushes her to achieve everything she can.

Without guidance, she could fall so easily under the sway of anyone who would slake her thirst for knowledge without regard to her social status, or lack thereof. And the wizarding world has no lack of unscrupulous people, even amongst those unaffiliated with Voldemort. The Dark Lord isn't the only evil that walks in the world, though he is the most pressing at the moment.

Again, I like the idea that there are other enemies than just Voldemort, and that Snape knows it.

A germ of an idea takes hold in the back of his mind, so wild and unprecedented that he wonders if Dumbledore slipped something into his morning coffee.

Come on, we all know Snape takes his coffee black, no sugar, preferably espresso or French Roast.

I dunno. Remus is obviously a tea drinker (could be more of my Remus=Giles thing, or just me being overwhelmed by fanon), but I see Sirius and Snape both as coffee men.

He turns away for a moment, wondering if he could pull it off; if he wants to pull it off.

Severus Snape has never backed down from a challenge, and he's not about to start now.

Woo! Go Snape! Do something nice for somebody!

When class ends, he says, "Granger, stay a moment."

She looks up at him, startled, eyes wide with apprehension.

Potter and Weasley hover and he says, "I don't remember calling your names." He can feel his lips twist in disgust as he looks at them. The boys -- still children, yet shouldering adult burdens -- open their mouths simultaneously. "One word and it's fifteen points from Gryffindor." He pauses and narrows his eyes. "Each."

I thought this was very Snape-ish. I think most people who sent feedback agreed. *g* It always makes me happy when I can get a character's voice right, even if it's just for a few lines of dialogue.

They snap their mouths shut and leave the classroom. He hears them waiting outside, and knows they're eavesdropping. Lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper, he says, "Write two scrolls on the interaction of saxifraga with vetiver and belladonna."

"That's--" she stops, and he knows she's already familiar with the potion he's describing. He knows she's checked out Most Potente Potions at least once, and Verstadren is the Holy Grail for anyone who studies potions. It's also highly dangerous, and highly illegal, for him to do this, but he will ensure that her thirst for knowledge is sated, while guiding her hand in support of his -- Dumbledore's -- goals.

Meh. I can't even remember what I thought the potion was supposed to do -- I think it was a potion variant of imperio, something to do with breaking down (the saxifraga) the will and making it pliant (the belladonna).

::looks at notes::

Ah yes, "turning the mind" - Verstadren is a smushing and corruption of a couple German words into the name of this potion.

Snape's not going to wait for the bad guys to give Hermione the dangerous knowledge. He's going to do it himself and watch her while she learns it.

He will always hate Potter, but Potter needs Granger, so he will take her in hand, because losing her to a darker path would be devastating for them all.

"By Monday," he tells her. "Speak of this to no one." She nods.

The girl rushes out, flushed and nervous. He sinks back into his chair, and hopes he's doing the right thing.

end

~*~

There was a Hermione half of the story -- I actually wrote the Snape section in sparkly green ink, and the Hermione in sparkly gold ink. Sweartagod. Green for Slytherin and gold for Gryffindor. I am so lame -- in which Hermione speculates on why Snape hates her. Now that I'm looking it over, it's decent, but it really doesn't *go* anywhere, or, rather, I couldn't figure out where to take it.

***

Hermione can feel Snape's eyes boring into her skull. She keeps her head bent over her cauldron and raises her gaze, but he's turned away already.

She knows he hates her and Ron; she knows he despises Harry. She even knows why.

But she has a hard time believing it.

Knowing what he does -- what he is -- should explain it, but it doesn't.

A grown man doesn't hate a child for no reason, even if he is the son of a man he's hated his whole life.

This is me, speaking through Hermione. I believe this.

He's not like the Malfoys. He knows better. That mark on his arm is proof of that.

Ron says it's simply that he's Slytherin and they're Gryffindors, but she knows it's more than that. It must be.

She has a theory -- she wouldn't be Hermione Granger if she didn't have a theory -- but she's wary of presenting it to her friends. She's done some research, reading old school yearbooks and indulging in gossip with the Fat Lady and Nearly Headless Nick about the years when Snape was a student, and it all comes back to one thing. One person, really.

Can you imagine the gossip those portraits and ghosts must have? Hermione would know exactly how to exploit the amazing resources at her disposal at Hogwarts.

Lily Evans.

She knows Professor Lupin believed -- believes -- Snape's hatred stems from his envy of James Potter's natural talent for Quidditch, but while that's an acceptable reason for hatred in a seventeen-year-old boy, it makes no sense for a man of Snape's abilities and intellect.

Say rather, Hermione, that Professor Lupin offered an explanation that would have been palatable to Harry, rather than the full truth.

So, as with most stories of great power and hatred, Hermione has decided that a woman is at the heart of it.

This sentence I like a lot.

She sighs and feels Snape's dark eyes on her again.

For a moment she wonders what it must be like to be beautiful and sought after, rather than annoying old Hermione. She had a taste of it last year, with Viktor paying so much attention to her, and possibly upsetting Ron in the process, but she's not beautiful. She's not charming, and she doesn't have what it takes to wrap her teachers round her finger. She knows she is the best student in her year, possibly in all of Hogwarts at the moment, and that drives her. She is also learning that there are many who would hold her back if they could, and not just because they serve You-Know-Who.

She's a mudblood, Muggle-born and bred.

It never really bothered her before, but as she reads more of wizarding history, she runs again and again into the prejudice against "her kind."

She believes education can change that. She believes that learning everything she can, and sharing it with the world, is the way to make the world better.

She's not so sure the wizarding world agrees.

Yeah, see, this would have entailed having her brew the potion, work closely with Snape, and that would have just been very complicated and more than I was willing to take on in my first HP story. Or now, even. Because it would be a lot of work to keep them both true to how I see them and let them work together, and then deal with Harry and Ron's reactions, possibly rumors about the whole thing -- yeah, it'd be interesting. I mean, difficult. Difficult and not a story I want to tell. Um. No. I don't. *g*

So that's it. I don't know if anyone was actually interested in this one, but I like it, even with the jossing, because this is how I see Snape, these are the things I believe drive him.

~*~

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~*~

Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters belong JK Rowling and Scholastic, etc. This piece of fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights.