"Cadbury Egg!" he called out to the gargoyle, skidding to a stop, just in front of the appearing staircase. Too impatient to ride the stairs to the top, he took them two at a time to the Headmaster's door, using his hands as neccessary to speed the process. "Uncle Albus!"

After what seemed a short eternity to the boy, the door opened. The door to the Headmaster's inner chambers was open, and a night-gowned and sleeping-capped Headmaster stood a few steps in front of him, smiling at him in bemusement. "What is it, Severus?"

Hardly noticing his 'uncle's' attire, Severus just held out his pointer finger between them. "Watch. Lumos!" His finger started to glow. "And this," he blew on the finger and it went out like a candle. But without the smoke.

The headmaster looked impressed. "Can you do lumos without saying the spell?"

Severus nodded. He had, after all, spent most of the night experimenting. He flicked his pointer against his thumb, striking it like a match. Like a match, too, it burst into light. Then, to prove the opposite worked, too, he said, "Nox," and his finger went out again. He grinned, and looked at the headmaster brightly, "Isn't it brilliant?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "Brilliant," he agreed, then sobered, "Severus, you must be very careful not to use this gift as Matty, nor even as Severus."

Severus frowned, "Why?"

"Because not even Professor Snape could do this."

The boy blinked. "Then how come I can? I didn't even realize I was doing it 'til someone pointed it out. I thought the Professor just did it so much it was habit."

"I believe it was an unexepected side effect of the time reversal potion."

Severus thought about that. "But how come I can do it? The potion might've given me the ability, but it can't tell me how to use it. When did I learn?"

"That, my boy, is a question we may never answer." The headmaster picked up a shiny, multicolored paperweight from the desk, and handed it to Severus. "Wandlessly transfigure this into a pincushion and tell me how you do it."

Severus hefted the heavy object once, then frowned, concentrating on it. He poked at it, biting his lower lip. Nothing happened. "Just willing it to change doesn't work," he dutifully reported. He held the paperweight between his two small hands, barely managing a complete cover. He pressed his palms against it, loosened the grip, then repeated that over and over again. He felt it slowly start to feel less glossy and rock-hard, and become fuzzy under his hands. When he could squeeze it, and not reach a solid middle, he opened his hands. Neither the shape nor color had not changed, but he handed the light-weight, fuzzy, stuffed object over to the Headmaster. "I just kept squeezing it until it got soft all the way through."

"Did you channel magic into it?"

Severus shrugged. He assumed magic must have been involved somewhere, since paperweights did not become pincushions just by squeezing them. "I guess."

"Turn it back and pay attention to how you use your magic." He handed back the pincushion.

Severus put it between his hands again. He tried squeezing it back into a paperweight, but, after almost a minute, it was no harder than it had been at the start. "That's not working. Can't make it hard by loosening it up and moving it around." He put the pincushion down on the desk, then knelt down beside it, eye-level with the object. He watched it, imagining it was his mum's melted chocolate drying in their molds. "This might take a while," he told the Headmaster, not looking away from the pincushion. He watched it, letting it harden, not touching it. He felt the Headmaster's eyes on him, but he ignored that, concentrating on the hardening paperweight. Somehow, he knew it was working this time. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the fuzziness sunk back into the paperweight, as it became shiny and solid once again. He waited a little while beyond when it looked done, remembering that touching a chocolate too soon, even if it looked done, would mess up that one's shape.

Once he was satisfied that it had finished hardening, he picked it up, and handed it over to the Headmaster for inspection. "I was making it hard by looking at it. I don't know how."

Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully. "I think you never learned how to harness this power. I believe you are using it by intuition and instinct."

Severus frowned. "Like little kids using accidental magic?"

The headmaster put a hand on his shoulder, and the paperweight back on his desk. "You have a bit more control than that, of course. Your strength with this seems to be well-practiced spells rather than transfigurations. Try lighting that candle," he nodded at a candlebra on the other side of the room with only one candlestick in it.

Severus pointed, and it burst into flame with little ado, as the torch had the previous night. The relative speed and ease, compared to the transfigurations, was obvious.

"Make it go out."

He closed one eye, and pressed his thumb and forefinger together, so that, from where he stood, it looked like he was snuffing out the distant flame. When he lowered his hand, the candle was unlit. He looked over at the Headmaster, feeling very pleased with himself.

"Locomotor Mortis," Dumbledore cast suddenly and casually. Without a wand.

Severus looked down at his locked legs, then stared in disbelief at the Headmaster. "What was that for?"

"Do the counter curse, child," the old wizard instructed, soundly mildly apologetic.

Oh. Just another test. With a small frown of concentration, he slapped himself hard on the thigh. The force of it sprawled him out on the floor, but he grinned up at the Headmaster as he drew up one knee in preparation for standing up again. He rubbed ruefully at the tingling spot on his leg, but met Dumbledore's twinkling gaze. "Did it," he told him unneccessarily, but feeling too self-satisfied to forego comment all together.

"I will speak to Remus about helping you develop these talents."

Severus tilted his head in confusion. "I thought I wasn't to tell anyone?"

"Remus already knows of your spying, and it will make the both of us feel better if we know you can defend yourself."

Severus nodded slowly, that made sense. "Does he know wandless magic, then?"

"Outside of mages, yourself, and possibly Voldemort, I know of no witch or wizard younger than one hundred who can do wandless magic at will."

Severus blinked. "A hundred? I'm only twelve. Or thirty-nine. Which is still a long way from a hundred."

Dumbledore smiled fondly at him. "Of course, child."

"No wonder Sirius was freaked out."

The headmaster stilled briefly, his only sign of surprise. "Mr. Black has learned of your secrets?"

Severus blushed faintly. "Harry said something about Peter that surprised me. After that, we sort of had to tell him. He was coming 'round by the time he left."

"'Coming 'round,'" Dumbledore repeated. "You got Sirius Black to 'come 'round,' instead of maiming each other?"

Severus grinned, "It was a near thing when he first jumped through the fireplace, but Harry took away his wand, and we talked mostly civilly after that, and I even got him to laugh a couple times. Mum would've been proud, I think. I was very good and didn't hex him once."

Dumbledore just blinked his blue eyes a few times. "You are a very rare child, Severus."

His first potions class of '95 was as Severus Snape. Matty would have it the next day. He stepped into the classroom, glad to see that no trace of Katryna's psychologist's office remained. It felt far more homey in its natural trimmings. His black eyes sought out different ingredients in the mostly-for-show jars lining the front of the classroom, and was pleased to note that he recognized most of them. On the teacher's podium stood a very young man who couldn't be much older than Harry. Severus's first thought was that he must be one of Ron's brothers, judging by the older boy's red hair, but then the green-eyed gaze fell on him and his face broke into a broad smile.

"Professor!" the boy exclaimed delightedly.

From what he had learned since arriving in this year, there was only one, possibly two if you counted Draco Malfoy, student who actually liked their potions professor. He checked. Yep, the boy wore a Ravenclaw badge. "Hello, Clarence."

If anything, his face brightened more. "Oh! You remember me! Tryna said your memory was on the fritz."

What a fritz was or why his memory would be on one, Severus couldn't guess, but he nodded anyway, "It was a reasonable guess."

"Oh," the Ravenclaw looked crestfallen, then brightened again immediately, "So you're really like you were twelve again, huh? How'd that happen? Did it hurt? Was Voldemort involved? Can you really not remember anything? Was it a potion? What did it taste like? Do you know what was in it? I can think of a few ways you could make one t-"

Severus had held up his hand to fend off the deluge of words and questions. He hadn't really expected the Ravenclaw to stop midword at the gesture. The kid must've been well trained by the Professor.

He made the mistake of lowering his hand again without having made a specific remark or question. The flow of words picked up right where they had left off. "-o do that kind of thing. Tryna says you've had a few resurfacing memories, so they must not have been totally eradicated, only surpressed, and that would have to be dried elephant blood. It was a potion, right?"

Severus nodded, feeling rather overwhelmed.

"Great! I bet I can reverse engineer it. Might have some trouble reproducing the imperfections; you've got resurfacing memories and your physical and mental age don't quite mesh, Tryna said, but once I have that, an antidote'll be a snap to produce." He snapped his fingers by way of demonstration, "D'you think I can get extra credit, if I get it right?"

Severus nodded again. Extra credit was a given, even if he didn't succeeded. If he did, a bonus of at least a hundred house points was also likely. An award for Sevices to the School was nearly guaranteed. His future career would be presented on a platter, and he'd likely have scholarship offers to every wizarding university in the world.

"Cool," he said, happy with just the extra credit.

The new professor swept in then. He scowled briefly at Severus, then began calling roll. At "Korvil, Hannah," a small disturbance broke out as a Slytherin threw a paper broomstick into a Hufflepuff's hair. Slytherin was docked ten points, and the roll call continued. Clarence came to stand next to the offending student and spoke softly into his ear, pointing first at Severus, then at one of the more vile looking jars. The Slytherin boy paled noticeably, and did not cause any further problems throughout the entire class period. Clarence returned to the teacher's side.

When attendance had finished, the Professor looked out across the students, and introduced himself, "My name is Professor Zmiya, and some of you may already know Clarence Tragyl," he nodded at Clarence. "Clarence will be helping me keep with Snape's syllabus," most of the class, as well as the teacher turned to look at Severus. He ignored them. Shortly, the teacher resumed his speech, "and will be helping out in the classroom when he has a free period."

"You guys are one of the lucky ones," Clarence told them, with a smile Severus might have called evil if he hadn't spent the last week contemplating Death Eaters and Voldemort. "We're already over a week behind, so we're going to squeeze two lessons into next class. But we'll start with one lesson to the period today. This lesson is on Stretching Potions." He turned around began writing the recipe on the board.

"Turn to page 198 in your text," Zmiya ordered. "The ingredients are in the cabinet. Both Clarence and I will answer questions if you have any."

Severus turned to the appropriate page, and scanned the instructions. Before he finished, he noticed that he was no longer sitting alone at his desk. He looked up, reaching prudently for his wand, and found himself face-to-face with a Hufflepuff boy. "What?"

"You don't have a partner," the Hufflepuff pointed out. "I was hoping you'd let me join you. I really need to pass this class this year." Severus closed his eyes. Of course the hopeless cases would want to partner him. He grew up to be a Potions Master, after all. "Fine. Get the ingredients." His plan was simple, leave the mindless, annoying work to the Hufflepuff, and do the interesting, tricky bits himself. The other boy would get his good grade, and Severus would get out of chopping up the tough Elsewhire Root.

Once Clarence finished writing out the recipe - apparently by memory - he began pacing up and down the aisle, peeking into everybody's cauldrons as the professor just sat at the front table. As the Hufflepuff - he'd made a conscious decision not to ask the boy's name, though it went against everything his mother had ever taught him - chopped up the Root, and Severus measured out crushed Beetle Wings, he heard Clarence give a cutting remark about the consistancy of Malcolm and Graham's potion. As the Ravenclaw moved away, Malcolm muttered something about 'worse than Snape.'

Clarence spun abruptly toward them again. "Five points for disrespect to a prefect!" He then glanced over at Severus and gave an embarrassed smile. "You know, you're right. That is kinda fun."

Severus tried not to laugh, and plastered on a scowl instead. "You're supposed to favor the Slytherins."

The red-haired boy grinned, "Oh, but I'm not Slytherin. I'm Ravenclaw. And Ravenclaws don't need favoring."

"Insolent prat," Severus muttered.

"Learned from the best, sir," Clarence agreed, smirking, then ended the conversation by dashing over to a pair of Hufflepuffs at the back of the room, "Don't put that in yet! Ten points for nearly blowing up the school!"

At the end of the period, Severus didn't really understand what purpose the nominal professor had served. For all the grumbling of his classmates, Severus thought Clarence was right. Their class was one of the lucky ones, if that professor 'taught' by himself in other periods. He had far more confidence in Clarence finding his antidote than Professor Zmiya.

Matty's potion class was the next day. Gryffindor-Slytherin for the third-years this year. Severus saw Katryna walking down the hall several feet ahead of him, and pushed through the intervening crowd and caught up to her, "Hey, hi. You're Ron's cousin, Katryna, right?"

"Tryna, yeah," she agreed. "You're that new kid, Dumbledore's nephew, Groves, right?"

"Matty, yeah," Severus confirmed.

"Sorry about your folks."

Severus shrugged. "Yeah. Um, well, oh, your brother's the new Potions Assistant, right?"

"Clarence, yeah. He's thrilled about it."

"Is he free this period?"

"He's got Transfiguration," Tryna told him, relief in her voice.

"Darn it!"

She laughed. "I wouldn't worry about it overmuch. I heard he's a real terror, a junior Snape, but worse on Slytherins, so nobody likes him. He's really nice outside of the Potions lab, though."

"You're his sister, you'd be safe, surely."

"Ha!" Tryna laughed, "Are you kidding? This would've been the perfect opportunity for him to get me back for getting him in trouble at the beginning of the year. Besides, I'm Slytherin."

"What's that to do with anything? I thought his favorite teacher was Snape."

She rolled her eyes. "Snape teaches potions. Slytherins are the competition."

"So are Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs."

She smirked, "He doesn't consider Hufflepuff a threat. And he's a pseudo-Gryffindor since his third year when he pretended to be his twin Menteron for half the year until they were both nearly expelled when they got found out. His first loyalty is Ravenclaw, of course, but Gryffindor is a close second."

"And you?" Severus asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Oh, definitely Slytherin," she laughed, "No second loyalty for me. What about you?"

"Gryffindor all the way," Severus grinned.

"Great, glad we understand each other. Do you have a potions partner?"

Severus raised a brow, "You'd partner a Gryffindor?"

She shrugged indifferently, "Why not? I'm a Tragyl. The other Slytherins understand. The other Gryffindors do, too, if that's what you're worried about."

"Nah, what I wonder is: Do you have any of your brother's skills?"

She laughed. "I'm not hopeless at any rate. I can't compare to Clarence, though. No one at this school can, except maybe Snape himself."

"Before or after his transformation?" Severus asked, mock seriously.

She rolled her eyes again. "After, of course. Not even Clarence could match him before."

They entered the classroom a few moments later, and took a table together in the middle of the room. As she had promised, nobody seemed to think it odd that the Slytherin was sitting with a Gryffindor. The professor arrived not long after they did, and took roll call. This time no one threw a paper broom, which was just as well since there was no Clarence to yell at them.

He directed them to page 231 of their book and started writing out the recipe to the Shrinking Potion on the board. Over the next two hours no less than three cauldrons exploded, two because of fillibuster fireworks. When there was little retaliation for the first one, the same culprit repeated his success. Since he was a Gryffindor, Severus did not point him out to the teacher when he ineffectually tried to find the perpetrator.

Other potions were orange or some other color that was very definitely not the bright green it was supposed to be, and clearly wrong. Only Severus and Tryna and two other groups got it right. Once he finished, Severus tried to to help out some of the other Gryffindors, while Tryna moved among the Slytherins pointing out obvious mistakes. Between them they brought three more potions to fruitation, and the professor awarded both of them with ten points to their houses.

Tryna grinned at him from across the room, "Hey, Matty, I think that's the first time since Snape's been a teacher that a Gryffindor got points during potions."

As they left together, at the end of the period, Severus asked, "Are they all that hopeless with Snape, too?"

She shrugged, "Well, he does yell at us when we get it wrong rather than letting us suffer through the class thinking we're doing all right."

Severus laughed.

"And nobody would dare throw a firework with him around." She smirked, "Though from what I understand, Clarence is putting the Fear of Snape into the classes he assists."

"Oh?" Severus prompted, genuinely curious.

"Ok, the Fear of Clarence, more like, since no proper Slytherin has any reason to have had the Fear of Snape before. I heard from Malcolm Baddock, a second year Slytherin, who heard from Jerry Something, another second year Slytherin, who had thrown a paper broomstick during roll call, that Clarence came up to him afterwards, and told him, and I quote, 'I took private lessons from Professor Snape for the last five years, I can harvest your eyes and fingers and pickle them in a jar if you ever disturb this class again. I recommend you remember this and inform all of your troublemaking friends that any misbehaviour will not be tolerated.'"

"That's not been embellished at all?" Severus asked suspiciously, but grinned in amusement.

She shrugged, "Well, Slytherins, you know. Maybe, maybe not. It's got a very Clarence-ring to it, though, when he tries for 'intimidating'. He can be quite good at it, when he wants to be. So I think your buddy over there," she jerked her chin toward the firework throwing Gryffindor, walking a bit ahead of them, "should be very thankful that Clarence has got Transfigurations this period."

"You knew he did it? You're a Slytherin and you didn't turn him in?"

She shrugged, "If the professor can't keep people from throwing fireworks in his class, he has no business being a professor and doesn't deserve help. Besides, Clarence is campaigning for a time-turner so he can come to all the classes. I figure he's got a better chance if Zmiya wants him around all the time."

"I thought you didn't want Clarence assisting for us?"

She spread her hands, "He offered a box of chocolate frogs, plus immunity, if I'd sabotage the class. I gave your friend over there the fireworks and two frogs for taking the risk. When walking around, I messed up as many as I helped, dropping stuff in when they weren't looking. Gryffindor cauldrons, of course. I even managed to blow up one without using a fillibuster. Even Neville Longbottom didn't blow up the Shrinking Potion, I'm told."

Severus blinked at her, and opened his mouth twice before saying, "You are evil."

She grinned, "Why, thank you, Matty."

"Truly and completely and utterly evil."

"I like you, too, Matty."