Chương 19: ITW,H - Chapter 19 - Tuesday

(Word Count: 3, 862) The next morning, Hermione seemed to be avoiding him. She was too shy because of her queen comment last night. To not push the matter, or tease the poor girl further, Harry treated her as normal in the brief chances he got to talk to her. Tuesday morning was chock-full of study hall. From the first time slot to lunch.

Unlike yesterday, when there was nothing to do, this time we already had several essays we had to write: 6 inches about the Lumos and Nox charms for Charms class, 6 inches about Acutifors for Transfiguration, and a full 12 inches about the gargoyle strike for History. For Herbology, right now it's only learning some different terms. For a new student, a total of 24 inches of essay was quite a lot. For Harry, who had the misfortune of suffering through university, it was a simple matter.

Especially when he already knew the subjects well. Even the history assignment wasn't too bad, since he had taken some good notes while reading the textbook. As he was already wrapping up his first essay, the charms one since it was the easiest, Ron looked at him in dismay.

"You're already done, Harry!? How!?" He whispered.

"I've barely finished one sentence!" Alas, it didn't seem like the wizarding world taught how to write up a proper essay. Most of the students would just write out their thoughts as they came. He had noticed it in a lot of books as well. It was considered a part of the whimsical nature of wizard kind.

"Here, I find that in writing essays it's best to start with a general outline of what you want to talk about. Instead of just writing out the ideas as they come, you plan ahead and decide where you want to talk about each topic. Like this, see?" Harry pulled out his other bit of parchment that was his outline.

"You start with the introduction, which states the main thing you want to talk about in the essay, then you move onto the main portion of the essay. This usually contains the three main ideas you have about the topic. For simple essays like this one, you can wrap up each idea in a single paragraph, but later on, these may end up being several paragraphs each! Then you close the essay in the conclusion.

"If you stick to this general outline, you can easily get the 6 inches needed in any assignment. For the 12 inch history essay, you may want to include a paragraph to introduce a counter argument then another paragraph to dispute it, then the conclusion." Ron furrowed his brows in confusion.

"I don't get it." Harry took out a new parchment and listed out "Introduction, topic 1, 2, 3, and conclusion."

"Here. Just follow that outline. Write out a paragraph for each, then when you're done, I can look over your essay for you if you'd like." Hermione, on the opposite side of the table a couple of students down, nodded approvingly to my teaching. Dean, Seamus, and Neville who sat around us noted down the same outline.

"Thanks, Harry. This'll help a lot!" Dean said. They all went back to work. The rest of the study hall passed by quietly. Harry already finished all three assignments. Most other students weren't even done with one. Hermione seemed pleased with herself as we left.

"Hey, Hermione, have you already finished your assignments?" Harry asked her.

"Eep!" She blushed a bit, but at least she didn't run away.

"Y-yes, I'm already done with my essays." He smiled. It's no wonder canon-Hermione had the time to always be helping out canon-Harry/Ron. She was a quick worker.

"Great! If you'd like, we can look over each other's essays. Just to get a second eye on them." She smiled back.

"That'll be great! Thanks!" ~ ITW, H ~ There were only two classes on Tuesday, both of which were with Hufflepuff. The first was a potions class right after lunch. The other class after potions was Charms, so at least there's that. Something to cheer him back up after potions. They made their way down into the dungeons to the potion's classroom. It was just as dark as it was in the movies. The room had a vaulted arched ceiling, with low hanging chandeliers of candles.

Several of the walls were lined with shelves full of beakers, jars, and books. The front of the classroom had a line of windows that let in rays of sunlight. He could see rays clearly in the dusty room. Wasn't this a huge risk for a potions class? In chemistry, any sort of contamination from outside sources had to be tightly controlled. Even going so far as to do some experiments beneath an open flame so no germs could fall into the petri dish from the air.

Not to mention all of the potion fumes that would get trapped in the poorly ventilated room. It was no wonder Snape became so greasy and foul. He was always coated in potion residue from staying too long in this room! All of the students sat down in the rows of tables, and began setting up their cauldrons on the stands in front of them. Harry made sure to sit next to Neville. There was no way he could in good conscience just sit back and let the poor boy get seriously burned.

The boils could be potioned away in a day, but that didn't remove the pain and suffering in the moment. He would, of course, make sure all instructions are read through carefully. Just as the time for class started, Snape burst through the doors, black robes billowing out behind him, and made his way to the front of the classroom. The windows behind him silhouetted him, giving an ominous air to him. Then he pulled out a sheet of parchment and began calling the roll. It was surreal in a way.

Harry had read about Snape in books and fanfics, and seen him in the movies. He was a spy, working on both sides. Yet here he was, the Alan Rickman look alike, calling roll. Harry had to suppress a smile at the thought. Snape was very blunt about the roll, never bothering to look up from the paper to see which student said "present" when their names were called. He merely marked the page and moved on. Until he got to Harry's.

"Ah, yes. Our new… celebrity," Snape sneered, shooting a cold look at him before he moved on. Harry looked around and realized something. Wasn't this scene supposed to be together with the Slytherins? But they were here with the Hufflepuffs instead. Well, this world wasn't the original canon one anyway. It was meant to be a doomed world before his arrival got things back on track, so some things are bound to be different in some ways.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," Snape began, addressing the class. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word. Just like Professor McGonagall, Snape seemed to have the knack for holding the class's attention with the way he spoke.

"As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach." Silence reigned in the classroom.

Hermione was on the edge of her seat.

"Potter!" Snape said suddenly, "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?" Harry raised an eyebrow at him, before responding, "They're two of the ingredients to a sleeping potion known as the Draught of Living Death."

"It's foolish to make such an assumption. Asphodel and Wormwood are used together in a variety of different potions. A point away from Gryffindor," Snape snapped. Harry had to force down his own sneer in response.

"Let's try again, shall we? Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

"Seeing as we're in a potion's classroom, I would say in your ingredients cupboard. Anywhere else, unless you happened to have a dead goat somewhere, the potions store," Harry said sarcastically.

"5 points from Gryffindor for your cheek!" Snape's nostrils flared, before he collected himself, folding his robes tightly as he crossed his arms.

"Well then, it seems you had at least opened a book once in your life. One final question, Potter. What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

"There is no difference, seeing as they're the same plant. It also goes by the name of aconite," Harry said. Snape glared at him, before he gave a satisfied sneer.

"Well, I suppose you would know that one, wouldn't you? You probably have some growing for your pet werewolf at home."

"Excuse me?" Harry's jaw clenched. Murmurs ran through the classroom: "Harry Potter lives with a werewolf?"

"He isn't infectious, is he?"

"Is he a werewolf?" Snape raised an eyebrow with a smirk.

"What? Did I say something wrong?"

"You are being highly inappropriate, Professor. I suggest you stick to potions," he said coldly." You don't suggest anything to me, Potter." Snape drawled. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. After a moment, Snape continued.

"Today, we will be brewing a simple cure for boils. The recipe is simple enough for even the dullest mind. You will work with the student next to you! Follow the instructions in the book, and some of you will make it through somehow. Begin!"

'It's official. I hate Snape.' Harry knew that Snape was going to be annoying, but he had no business talking about his home life in front of the entire class. He will be writing up a formal complaint for Dumbledore as soon as he gets out of classes. Harry opened the potion's textbook and looked at the recipe. 3 stewed medium sized horned slugs, 2 0z. of crushed snake fangs, 3 dried nettles, and 2 porcupine quills. His face scrunched in disgust. Stewed slugs?

It's no wonder potions all taste disgusting with all of the crap they put in them.

'I hate potions.' ~ ITW, H ~'I really really hate potions.' It was just two hours of Snape going around criticizing every single student. He would nitpick at every little thing. If they were doing everything right, then he would find something wrong, or could be better, about their setup around the workspace. Snape had no right working in a school. The only good thing about the class was that Harry had successfully prevented Neville from melting any cauldrons and giving himself boils.

"Intense, isn't he?" Ron sighed in relief as they made their way to charms.

"Intense?" Harry sneered in anger.

"He's just a petty little cretin that has no business being anywhere around children. He would be a better teacher if he just left the students to work on their own." Hermione frowned.

"He did seem to have something against you, the way he took points away from you at every chance."

"I'll say!" Ron scoffed.

"The way he was going, I'm surprised he didn't give you detention!"

"Yeah. Reading some of my parent's journals, I already knew he hated my father, but now it seems he's directing that feud towards me now," Harry explained.

"That's not right!" Hermione was truly indignant.

"Whatever it was between them, he has no right to take it out on you! And he's a teacher!"

"Thanks, Hermione. Let's just get to charms, I could use something to cheer me up." Charms was undoubtedly going to be his favorite class, he could tell. Flitwick was a great teacher. He was very enthusiastic about every success a student had. Everyone could tell he loved charms.

"Welcome back, everybody!" Flitwick welcomed as class began.

"I hope you're not dead on your feet from a class of potions! Hohoho!" He chuckled. He knew how Snape was and how rough his class can be for students.

"Now, I trust we remember what we talked about yesterday! Lumos and Nox! Let's cast it all together now! 1, 2, 3, Lumos! Nox! Very good! Very good! Let's move on to a new way to cast the spell. Instead of imagining the tip of your wand lighting up, I want you to imagine the light to be hovering just above it! Shall we try?" For Harry, it was very basic stuff, but that didn't matter. It was the cheerful atmosphere Flitwick made for his class that mattered. His class passed by in a flash.

After class, Harry approached Professor Flitwick.

"Professor?" He asked.

"Ah! Yes, Mr. Potter? How may I help you?" Flitwick asked.

"Well, sir. I heard that you were rather experienced in the dueling circuits before you became a professor. I'm looking to join the U-15 circuit this summer. If it's not too much, would you be willing to teach me?" Harry decided to be straightforward in his question. When Flitwick heard "dueling" his smile slowly dropped into a slightly regretful expression.

"Ah, Mr. Potter. I'm sure when you do eventually join the dueling circuits, you'll cause some big waves. However, I think it would be best for you to wait until at least after your third year before you join. It's far too soon for you to consider it."

"Don't worry, sir, I'm not going into this blindly. I've already learned ahead and I'm casting 4th year spells already. I've even been practicing spellchains with my godfather Sirius and my grandfather Arcturus. I can pointcast, cast silently, and I can even do some spells wandlessly." Flitwick looked surprised.

"Really? Wandlessly? But you just started!" At this, Harry shook his head.

"No, I've been able to levitate and summon objects at will before I even visited Diagon Alley. Since I've been living with Sirius, I've been studying through all of my mum's old textbooks. So far, I've completely mastered up to fourth year in both Charms and Transfiguration. I can speak parseltongue and have learned many healing spells in it. I am also rather gifted in Mind Arts. Both Legilmens and Occlumency." Might as well give him his entire skillset. Flitwick gaped at him like a fish.

"All of this before Hogwarts? Incredible! And you're a parselmouth? Don't worry, I'm not one to believe in baseless superstition. Well, with such claims, I hope you don't mind me putting you to the test, then! Why don't you show me some of your spellchains then?" He twirled around, waving a wand towards the center of the long room. A dummy rose out of the ground, holding a false wand. Harry nodded, and drew his wand with a flick of his wrist. It popped out of his wand holster.

"Whenever you're ready." Harry suddenly realized something, as he was mentally going through his spellchains. He was using up most of the magic power he could channel already. 7 from the horcrux, and 30 from the horned serpents he had summoned. He only had 18 points of power left available. The shield breaking curse took 20. He would just have to work around it. He started off with a "Levioso-Accio-Incendio-Depulso-Glacius" combo—silently, of course—then a "Stupefy-Circumrota-Diffindo-Bombarda."

Then he did some of his parseltongue spells, "$Blind! -Bind! -Fall! $" these ones he couldn't use silently, and had to speak them. Some of those spells pushed him all the way to his maximum Power available, 55, so it did get tricky. Flitwick whistled.

"Can you cast a shieldbreaker? That's key in any duel." Harry grimaced.

"I'm sorry professor, but I can't right now."

"Not a problem. It'll be something to work on then. All in all, I can see why you would feel confident in joining the dueling circuits. Hmm… I don't know though. I manage both the school's music choir and the arts club. I'm quite busy, even after classes end. Then again, this is a rare opportunity to be the coach of an up and coming dueling champion." He began muttering to himself there at the end. Flitwick came to a decision.

"Very well! I'll do it, but I'm afraid I can't commit too much time. At best, we can meet once a week on Sunday evenings. I can check your progress and give tips for how you can improve throughout the next week."

"That works for me, thank you!"

"If that'll be all, you're free to go. I'll see you this Sunday." Harry thanked him once again and left. He went straight to Dumbledore's office. Along the way, Peeves tried to dump a trash bin full of paper on him, but he cast a Skurging spell at the poltergeist, it shrieked and flew away screaming about stupid firsties. He burst into Dumbledore's office. Dumbledore was there behind his desk again, sucking on a lemon drop while a quill was filling out some paperwork.

When Harry came in so suddenly with an angry expression on his face, he knew exactly what was wrong.

"I suppose I should have expected this to happen," he muttered.

"I'm here to lodge a formal complaint!" Harry said angrily.

"Against Professor Snape, I presume?" Dumbledore sighed.

"Yes…. and while I'm at it, I might as well file one against Professor Binns. Just to get something on record against the ghost. Maybe someday with enough of them, the board will be forced to consider hiring a proper professor…. No, wait!" Harry shook himself out of the train of thought.

"Severus Snape has no business being a teacher! You should fire him!" Dumbledore pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You know why I can't do that, Harry. I need Severus to serve as a spy when Voldemort inevitably returns."

"You don't need to worry about Voldemort, Dumbledore. I told you. I already know everything I need to defeat him once and for all. You can leave it all to me. You don't need Snape as a spy anymore, because Voldemort will never be a problem anymore."

"Things never go according to plan, Harry. What if whatever you're planning fails? Then we'll need a man on the inside. I simply can't fire Severus until I know for sure that Voldemort's been dealt with," Dumbledore said firmly.

"Fine. I still want to file a formal complaint though. Where's the right document for it?" Wordlessly, Dumbledore waved a hand and a piece of parchment and a quill flew into Harry's hand.

"Are you still not going to tell me where the horcruxes are?" Dumbledore asked. Harry didn't bother looking up from writing his complaint.

"Nope. I saw you get yourself killed by an old Egyptian withering curse that guarded one. Don't worry about it. I plan on rounding them all up in my fourth year. By then, my occlumency should be robust enough to handle every compulsion those things can throw at me." Dumbledore plopped another lemon drop in his mouth in consternation. It had been a very long time since he wasn't the one with the plan. It was a bit unnerving for him.

"I wish you'd tell me more."

"Perhaps when the time draws closer. Though I'd prefer you retire and focus on the things you enjoy instead. You've fought in two Wizarding Wars. You deserve to relax after everything you've done for the wizarding world." Harry finished writing and duplicated the page, handing the copy to Dumbledore.

"Here, you can file that away." He put it in a drawer.

"Anything else, Harry?"

"Nope! I'm gonna go relax in the common room." ~ ITW, H ~"Harry!" As soon as he entered the common room, Harry was ambushed by a pair of red heads. Fred and George threw their arms over either shoulder.

"We've heard you're the new King of the Werewolves!" One of them said.

"Slaughtered a whole pack of them, you did!" The other said.

"Then the rest of them bowed down and begged you to spare their lives!"

"The alphas of alphas!"

"Gah!" Harry cringed hard.

"No! None of that is true at all! Who's saying all of that?" The twins snickered.

"Everybody, of course! There's also rumors flying about that you're a Seer. It wasn't us that spilt the tea, we swear!" The other twin nodded solemnly.

"Cross our hearts." Harry sighed.

"Yeah, I know. It was Ron, the very first night to our roommates. It was bound to happen anyway, Dumbledore's signed me up for Divination already."

"Blimey, Harry! Looks like we'll be classmates then!" Harry blinked at them in surprise.

"Really? I figured you'd both go for Ancient Runes instead." Ancient Runes shared the time slots with Divination, so it was one or the other. It was a large part in why Harry was glad he was able to attend Divination early. That way, he could just take the two years before his elective classes officially start to master dream interpretation. Then, when his third year starts, he'll take Ancient Runes.

"Why'd you think that? You don't need Ancient Runes to enchant things! Not our prank items anyway. They don't need to last several years." The two of them were already creating several candies and prank items, and selling them around the school. It was impressive just how inventive these two were.

"And while Arithmancy is good to know," one began.

"We'd rather learn it on our own!" The other finished.

"Take the easy O classes for the easy homework, for more time to work on our own projects."

"That's… actually very smart," Harry conceded.

"Well don't sound too surprised now!" They said, acting offended. He laughed, "Actually, now that I've got you here… There's a certain bit of parchment that I think found its way into your possession… Do Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs ring any bells?" The twins gaped at him.

"How'd you know about that?"

"As it so happens, you're looking at the son of Prongs, and my godfather, Sirius, is Padfoot," Harry said smugly. They looked at each other, stunned, before they both fell to their knees and bowed.

"WE'RE NOT WORTHY!" They shouted.

"UNWORTHY!"

"THE HEIR TO ALL THINGS PRANKS AND MISCHIEF!"

"All right! All right! Enough of that! Stand up!" Harry shouted, pulling them up off the ground.

"Listen, I'd like the Marauder's Map back."

"Of course," they said, and one pulled it out from his robe's pocket.

"It is yours, after all."

"Also, you've no doubt heard that someone had gotten me with a prank yesterday?"

"Yeah, there were several people giving us the stink eye, thinking it was us!"

"Well, it was Padfoot that did it. I want to get him back, but he's no doubt expecting my letter back to him to be pranked. I'd like your help to get back at him. Can you help me?" They smiled gleefully.

"Oooh! A chance to prank the king of pranksters? We'd love to!" Harry grinned evilly. Sirius won't know what hit him.