Most of the school had already passed by, toward the carriages -- a few pausing along the way to case fearful or suspicious or just plain inquisitive glances -- before Severus saw the person he had been looking for: Hermione Granger. There she was, the same bushy-haired, big-toothed know-it-all she had been last year; and neither Ron nor Harry was anywhere nearby.

Of course, Severus could have gone over and talked to her. He could have waited for the train to empty completely and roll away, belching smoke. He could have done many things, but he just turned on his heel and was gone with a swish of his cloak.

Hermione caught a moment's glance of a very angry-looking Potions Master as she left the train with Parvati, Padma, Lavender, and Neville. For a second, she didn't realize what she had seen; then she looked back to the place where he had been standing, but there was no one there. Were it not for the fact that Ron and Harry were nowhere to be found, she would have been sure that she was imagining things.

-----

Severus didn't go back to the Great Hall. If he had, he would probably have cursed (or poisoned, more likely) Gilderoy Lockhart the first time the man opened his mouth. Of course, it would have been rather entertaining (and he doubted many of the staff would really mind), but not very prudent.

So, what else was there for him to do but take a walk? He couldn't very well go wandering around the castle (it was far too noisy in there, anyway), so he set off about the grounds. It did have rather a calming effect, at first.. until the thought struck him that the Ford Anglia should be arriving soon, and he began to wonder just where it would land.

Just why was he so angry, anyway? He had said all along that Harry was just like James -- and a stunt like this was definitely worthy of James Potter. Ron Weasley even had the makings of the next Sirius Black, though hopefully he would turn out to be more faithful than Black had been.

Severus paused, then. Why should he care, anyway, if Weasley did someday turn traitor, like Black had before him? James Potter was arrogant, overconfident, self-righteous -- he had put too much faith in one person, practically begged to be betrayed. He had deserved what he got.

... But yet Severus did care. How could that be? He hadn't cared last year... or not really. He had protected the boy, of course, but that was only for Lily. It was what she would have done, what she would have wanted. But it wasn't Lily he was thinking about now, and he couldn't quite comprehend that yet. Had his manner of thinking really shifted so much in the past few weeks that he was... disappointed that Harry would do something so irresponsible, so -- so stupid? It seemed to be the only logical conclusion; and, whatever Severus wasn't sure about, he was sure of logic. It had never failed him.

Or had it? It wasn't logical for him to think this way. It wasn't logical for his hatred of James Potter to suddenly be thrust aside, as if it were of no consequence.

His musings were interrupted by a sudden, loud crashing from the other side of the castle. It was impossible, Severus told himself; there was no way that was what it had sounded like. And yet his feet flew as he headed for the front lawn, his mouth a grim line and his black eyes hard. A crash... that had definitely been a crash...

And Severus tried to ignore the fact that his heart picked up the pace at a rate not entirely proportional to the effort it was taking to run. However, this was complicated by the fact that he was also attempting to silence the voice in the back of his head that was thinking that crashes meant destruction and destruction all too often meant injury, or worse.

-----

"My wand," Ron whimpered as he picked himself up off the ground.

"The car," Harry added with wide eyes as he watched the Ford Anglia head off into the darkness of the Forbidden Forest.

"My wand and the car," Ron amended, looking like he might be sick. "Mum's gonna kill me!"

Harry froze, then. It wasn't the thought of Mrs. Weasley that had stunned him into silence, but the fact that it wasn't the Dursleys he had first thought of when considering the prospect of who might kill him for this. What in the world was wrong with him, anyway?

Ron was ranting about the many ways his mother would torture him (a list including everything from taking away his Chudley Cannons memorabilia to making him drop out of school) when Harry finally snapped out of it, picked up the end of his trunk that he could actually lift, and said, "We should get out of here."

"Yeah," Ron agreed. "Maybe if we wait outside the Great Hall, nobody will notice we weren't there?"

"Of course they will, nobody will have seen us on the train," Harry went on, new beads of perspiration breaking out on his forehead as he tried to think of a good explanation. "Anyway, they'll see the tree and the tire marks... Oh, man, we're dead..."

"We're not dead yet," Ron said suddenly. "Maybe we could say it wasn't us. Maybe we could blame it on Fred and George somehow, Mum'd never believe them..."

"They're your brothers, and they didn't do anything," Harry disagreed. "We can't blame them."

"Harry, they live to get in trouble! They'd probably love to say they were responsible for something like this!"

"Let's just try to think of some way out of this that doesn't involve getting your brothers expelled."

"The truth would be a good start," a cold voice interrupted. Both boys froze, and Harry's blood ran cold. He hadn't heard footsteps, this time. Had he been too distracted, his heartbeat too loud in his ears, or was actual effort being put into their silence again?

There was no disguising the guilty look on Harry's face as he and Ron slowly turned -- just as there was no hiding the fear in Ron's gaze and no masking the cold fury in Severus's black eyes. His voice was that chilling, expressionless tone again when he spoke. Harry wasn't sure what scared him more, the fact that the potions master sounded so lethal... or the fact that he had almost forgotten what that tone sounded like until now.

"Where.. have you been?" Severus all but hissed, his voice a low whisper and his eyes narrowed to black slits.

Ron swallowed hard and looked sideways at Harry, perhaps expecting his best friend to pull something out of his hat or maybe just talk to the professor he had spent half the summer with. Harry, however, seemed to have something stuck in his throat, because he couldn't make his voice work and he couldn't avert his gaze. It didn't matter much, though, because Severus didn't really pause long enough to give either of them time to answer, anyway.

"Perhaps I should guess? Not that there's much room for drawing conclusions, with considerable damage to the Whomping Willow and tire tracks leading into the forest. Where did you get the car!?"

"Wh-what c-car, sir?" Ron lied pathetically.

Severus's eyes flashed dangerously as he clarified in a voice of deadly quiet, "The flying blue Ford Anglia."

Ron gaped. "You can tell all that from tire tracks!?"

"No, I can tell all that from this!" Severus snapped, pulling the Evening Prophet from his robes and holding it up where they could see the front page headline. Ron's jaw seemed stuck in the open position, and his eyes were close to bugging out of his head. Harry, on the other hand, wasn't sure whether to stare at the newspaper or at Severus, so he settled for looking back and forth between them with cold dread flooding his veins.

"We -- but we -- we were careful," Ron objected, more than a little pathetically with the evidence of their carelessness displayed before his eyes.

"You were seen," Severus spat, shaking the paper emphatically. "By Muggles! At least a half dozen, that we know of!" The disgust in his eyes switched to frustration and lack of understanding as his gaze flickered over to Harry's face, instead. "What.. were you thinking?"

Harry found himself suddenly unable to meet Severus's gaze, and so he was staring at his shoes as he objected feebly, "The barrier... sealed itself.. before we could go through... and we missed the train.. and we didn't know.. what else to do..."

"Did you try waiting for Molly and Arthur Weasley to return?" Severus demanded in response, in a tone as if this was the most obvious thing in the world... and really, Harry thought with his heart sinking, it probably should have been. "Did you try to send your owl to them? To the Ministry? To Hogwarts?"

"Uh -- w-well, we -- uh... Not... exactly," Ron admitted after much stammering.

"So the first thing your minds jumped to was hijacking a flying car and crashing it into a priceless tree," Severus hissed.

"Well, we didn't plan on crashing it into the tree," Ron pointed out. "Anyway, that tree hit us back! It --"

"That tree is a Whomping Willow," Severus growled. "That is its instinctive response to anything it views as a threat -- and certainly to things that fall out of the sky and slam into it!"

"It was an accident, I swear!" Ron added, looking fearful. "Harry, tell him it was an accident!"

"It was a severe breach of the Statute of Secrecy... and an incredibly stupid thing to do," Severus ground out through clenched teeth. Harry's mouth remained shut tightly, his eyes still locked on the laces of his sneakers. Of course, Severus was right. It was very, very stupid. How could they possibly have overlooked such obvious things as sending an owl? And yet, it was the only thing that made sense, looking back at it...

"What's going on here?" another voice demanded, this one low and hateful and incredibly annoyed. "There should be no loitering on the castle steps, you -- oh, Professor Snape! Teaching these ingrates a lesson for sneaking out of the feast, are you?"

Argus Filch sneered at them from where he stood between the huge double doors, his cat, Mrs. Norris, curling around his ankles. Both were very obviously gloating at the idea of students getting into trouble for something so early in the school year.

Severus didn't answer, just switched his gaze to the caretaker and ordered, "Filch, go into the Great Hall and tell Professor Dumbledore that I have found Potter and Weasley. He can find us in my office, we are going there now."

Filch nodded gleefully and hurried off toward the Great Hall. You could almost hear him thinking that, if the headmaster was involved, someone might be getting expelled tonight. Severus, on the other hand, maintained the same expression before, but his voice was louder than earlier as he went on, "You two -- come."

Ron gulped and nearly whimpered, but followed without a word as Severus turned on his heel and stalked through the doors and down the path to the dungeons. Harry was silent as he trailed behind them both, a strange sort of dead weight settling into his stomach and making him feel, if it were possible, even worse. So things were going to go back to the way they were before the summer, then.

Because Severus had called him Potter.

-----

The potions master and the two Gryffindors had barely reached the room whose walls were lined with pickling jars when Albus Dumbledore himself had walked in -- followed closely by the Head of Gryffindor, Minerva McGonagall. Much to his displeasure, McGonagall had asked Severus to leave, and Dumbledore had gently requested that he comply. Though he did go up to the Great Hall, Severus found quickly that he had no appetite, and merely glowered darkly at whomever had the misfortune of addressing him until McGonagall resumed her usual seat a long twenty minutes later.

She had not expelled Harry Potter or Ron Weasley, she informed him, undoubtedly expecting him to be disappointed by this news. However, Severus felt strangely relieved to hear it, for reasons which he himself could not fathom. The only good thing about the whole matter was that his lack of visible reaction had puzzled and annoyed McGonagall, who had pursed her lips and resumed picking at her now quite cold turkey.

However, it frustrated Severus, as well, that he could no longer understand his own thoughts and reactions. Just how drastically had his perceptions been altered during three short weeks with Harry Potter in his company? The boy was obviously still the same -- thoughtless, naive, quick to jump to conclusions or do something rash -- so it could only be Severus who had changed. Perhaps he could make more sense of things once he had a chance to actually hear Harry's side of the story, now that he had gotten over the initial shock of it all.

By the time Severus returned to his office, it was empty. After disposing of the ever-filling plate of sandwiches and goblets of pumpkin juice, he stood in front of the grate and stared into the fire, deep in thought. Perhaps, he thought after a while, he had been wrong. Perhaps he had been wrong for all these years, and Harry, twelve-year-old Harry who always seemed so prone to making stupid decisions and overlooking the obvious, was really right.

Perhaps Severus had been wrongly passing on his hatred of James to Harry. However, that view seemed to have been damaged over the summer; whether Harry realized it or not, Severus's reaction had come, not from hatred, but from worry -- something Severus himself wasn't sure he was ready to admit. But, supposing that he accepted that... what would it change?