Giving the moderate stack of parchment a fleeting glance, Harry swiveled around and checked the floor for his shoulder bag, even though he knew he hadn’t brought it along to detention.

When did he ever?

He looked up at his professor with an expression of mingled incredulity and irritation.

“I don’t have one,” Harry stated. “I mean, I thought I’d be doing what I did yesterday…you know…cleaning out those glass bottles.”

Snape rolled his eyes as he turned and walked the short distance to his desk.

“Potter, if I wanted any more of my vials broken, I would have, indeed, set you to the task of scrubbing them.” Snape’s voice was slightly muffled as it echoed off the small drawer he was rifling through.

“Oh…”

Git.

Harry shifted on his stool. He felt a bit stiff and achy. His head hurt and seemed to be stuffed up. Resting his cheek on his left hand, propped up by the elbow, Harry watched as Snape retrieved a spare quill and bottle of ink from the bottom drawer.

His face was still warm and prickly, most likely from the waning embarrassment that had flooded his face over the past few minutes when Snape had threatened to…

No way. I am NOT going to think about it, Harry told himself as his brain fought to destroy that horrendous moment.

Items in hand, Snape stood up and stalked back over to Harry who was now stretching his eyelids wide to keep them open.

The professor looked at Harry strangely but said nothing. Instead, he set down the ink with a clunk at the right hand corner of the parchment and held out the delicate writing instrument.

Wordlessly, Harry took it and straightened his head, dropping his left forearm flat on the table.

He sighed.

Snape glared.

Harry shifted again, attempting to neutralize his expression into one of polite expectation. He wasn’t sure it worked, since it was hard to appear as if he were anything but exhausted and dizzy. But Snape seemed to have accepted it, as the man cleared his throat and proceeded with his instructions.

“Every action is accompanied with a consequence, is it not, Potter?” Snape began, his voice clear and commanding.

“Mmhmm,” Harry answered with a small nod, wishing Snape would just hurry up so he could finish his lines and bury his head in the depths of his pillow for the rest of eternity.

“Mr. Potter, I believe we’ve already discussed my intolerance of your mumbled slurs,” the man snarled. “You will address me with respect.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry replied automatically, resisting the urge to crumple a few pieces of parchment up in his fist.

With a firm nod of his head, Snape continued, “As I was saying—are you listening to me, Potter?”

“Yes!” Harry glanced up at his professor. He really was listening; his brain was just having a difficult time absorbing the information.

Snape raised an eyebrow, but moved on.  “It is vital for you to realize that you will go nowhere in life without possessing accountability for your deeds—or in your case, Potter,” Snape added, “your many misdeeds."

It would probably be bad if I gave him the finger right now, Harry thought to himself, amusedly.

Snape crouched down slightly so that he was at Harry’s eye-level.

“Therefore,” the man proceeded in his infamous, silky tone, “you will begin by repeatedly relating the following message in writing for the duration of your detention.”

Removing a dark wand from the inside of his robes, Snape gave it a smart flick and watched as the sentence slowly bled into the very top of the first piece of parchment:

I will no longer be immune to the consequences of my foolish actions.

Harry stared blankly at his professor. 

“Problem, Potter?” Snape inquired with a smirk, taking his usual stance, arms folded beneath his robes.

Harry shrugged. He just wanted to start his punishment so he could finish it.

“Nope,” Harry stated, quickly remembering to add the “Sir” as he risked a glance through his fringe at Snape's piercing stare.

“Very well. You may begin.”   With a sweep of his robes, Snape turned and sauntered towards his desk.

“Oh…wait,” Harry added quickly, half-expecting Snape to turn and hurl something at him.  “How many times do you want me to write this? Sir?”

But Snape only reached for a stack of essays he had arranged, and without looking at Harry, sat down and replied, “What part of ‘for the duration of your detention’ did you not understand, Potter?”

Harry barely suppressed a groan.

“All right,” he sighed.

Picking up his quill and arranging it comfortably between his fingers, Harry dipped it into the ink and began.

*******************

For the first page and a half of lines, Harry concentrated on nothing but his cursive handwriting and the pounding ache in his temples. He practiced writing as neatly as possible because, really, what else was there to do? The damn tyrant had given him an endless task.

But is he really that much of a tyrant? Harry questioned himself as he wrote.

After all, Snape could have easily had Harry expelled (or tried to anyway), or the man could have skipped the warning and walloped his bum the minute he stepped over the threshold of the classroom entrance…

I will no longer be immune to the consequences of my foolish actions.

Harry paused, his quill poised in midair.  He flushed yet again.

As much as he tried, Harry couldn’t bury the reality any longer: Snape could smack him?  Since when?

But obviously, the man could or else he wouldn’t have even mentioned it.

Harry glanced up from his parchment. Snape appeared to be absorbed in his grading but paused the second he realized that no quill-scratching was taking place from across the room. The professor looked up at Harry at almost the exact moment the boy dropped his eyes again, hastily returning to his lines.

“Concentrate, Potter,” Snape commanded sternly.

“Yes, sir,” Harry spoke without lifting his head, pretending that he was attempting to do just that all along.

Searching for the place where he left off, Harry began writing again, resting his head even more heavily on his propped-up hand. The words began to blur a bit.

Harry blinked a few times and rolled his eyes around so that he wouldn’t be tempted to close them, giving in to the heaviness of sleep that was slowly threatening to crush him.

It’s cold in here, he thought blearily.

Shifting his legs a bit to warm up, Harry focused on completing a few more lines.  The word consequences leaped out at his tired eyes every time he wrote it. He tried to concentrate but couldn’t stop the thoughts from bubbling over. Harry felt as if he were carrying on a one-man conversation in his head.

But detention’s a consequence, isn't it? I mean, I hate having to give up my free time, and I learn a lot from it…  Okay, that’s a lie.   But still, when have I ever gotten away with anything?

The dueling thoughts were only increasing the painful pressure in the boy’s head.

You get away with stuff all the time, stupid, Harry continued scolding himself.

He looked down at his work; he'd misspelled “actions”.

Shaking his head to clear the swirling, shouting thoughts that refused to go away, Harry squinted more closely at the shiny, black ink:

I will no longe be immune to the consequence of my of my foolish atcions.

More spelling errors.

Dammit, I really need to concentrate! Harry inwardly shouted. He felt like pinching himself.

Just then, a mild pop echoed throughout the classroom. Harry glanced up to see a rolled up piece of parchment hovering above Snape’s head. Wordlessly, without removing his eyes from the parchment, Snape slowly reached his left hand up to grasp the floating document while he continued marking an essay with his right.

Harry watched as Snape set down his quill, unrolled the parchment, and read the note swiftly.

“Merlin’s beard… Can the man accomplish anything by himself,” Snape muttered.

Harry pushed his hand further up on his forehead so that his fringe was smoothed back and pressed the tip of his quill to the parchment.

“Potter?” The Potions Master stood up and pushed the wooden chair underneath his desk.

“Yes, sir?”

“I need to inquire about something. It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. I trust you can sit still and work on your lines until then?” Snape was already making his way toward the exit.

No, I thought I’d play a little Exploding Snap…

Snape raised his eyebrow in impatient expectance.

“Yes, sir, I will.”

“See that you do,” Snape firmly added and left the classroom, closing the door behind him.

Harry breathed a tiny sigh of relief. However, he had to admit, the convulsing tenseness in his stomach wasn’t nearly as severe as it was during the hours before tonight’s detention. His palms weren’t even sweaty anymore.

Sure, it was downright humiliating being scolded, but Harry had expected yelling. He just wasn’t prepared for the burning shame that had followed. In the past, Snape was always scorning Harry for something, but he’d never rebuked the boy as sternly and seriously as he had tonight. And at the time, it caused Harry’s insides to ache with something…unfamiliar. He just couldn’t explain it.

Trying not to dwell on the night’s events, Harry forced his hand to keep moving.

Write, then bed. Write. Bed.

Thankfully, the dizziness had diminished, but Harry now felt incredibly sleepy. He was still a bit cold and his nose felt stuffy. When Harry tried to sniffle, he felt that his eyes were going to pop out.

Lifting his head, Harry removed his fingers from his tangled hair. He laid his left palm flat on the desk and considered for a moment before finally resting his cheek against the back of his splayed hand. Harry moved the parchment closer and continued working on his lines, truly not caring that the words were slanting towards the bottom of the parchment.

As he wrote, Harry decided that he would go to Dumbledore tomorrow and talk to him about this whole situation.  Snape couldn't give him a babyish, bloody spanking for any reason.  He couldn't.  And hopefully the headmaster wouldn’t tell Snape that Harry had spoken with him. After all, Harry could just ask his professor and demand to know what was going on.  But he’d already tried that and had made a fool of himself, hadn't he? Stammering like some sort of idiot...

Why is Snape so bloody intimidating? Harry thought, even though he hated admitting it.

The boy yawned heavily and shivered. He attempted a half-hearted sniffle, but found, again, that it only made his head feel clogged.

Finally, after two more lines, Harry gave up completely and allowed his eyes to droop.

****************

Severus strode briskly down the corridor approximately twenty minutes after he’d left Potter to tend to the Squib’s measly, trivial concern.

Argus Filch was forever creating vast tribulations out of petty occurrences.

The idiot had confiscated four pieces of Droobles chewing gum from Fred Weasley, after forcing the ginger-haired miscreant to empty his pockets, and kept insisting to Snape and anyone who would listen that the size and color of the candy was suspicious.

With a wave of his wand, Snape had been able to examine them and assure Filch that, indeed, the Weasley twin was up to nothing more than blowing menacingly large bubbles during Transfiguration.

What Severus really wanted to do was chew up all four pieces at one time and press the wad into the dunce’s forehead; however, Snape simply left Filch’s office with a dramatic roll of his eyes and signature sweep of his robes and made his way back to his own classroom.

As Severus rounded the corner for the second time that night, he hurriedly threw open the heavy door and stepped inside.

He froze.

Potter was sound asleep. 

His messy head was resting on the desk as still as a piece of driftwood, and his left cheek was stupidly squashed against his hand making the boy appear cherubic,

Disgusting.

Instead of letting the door bang closed, Severus released it softly and sauntered over to the sleeping boy, preparing to crouch down and scare the daylights out of him with an abrupt awakening.

But as Snape moved in closer, he noticed something…odd about the boy.

Potter seemed to be shivering. The boy was attempting to breathe through his nose but wasn’t having much luck.

Severus moved even closer and squinted.

Potter was a bit pale, and the expression on his face was not one that reflected the comfortable release of a deep slumber.

Straightening himself up, Snape grimaced and closed his eyes.

Let Pomfrey deal with him…

As Severus opened his eyes, Potter stirred a bit and moaned very lightly but did not wake.

Tentatively, Snape reached a hand out and held it very close to the boy’s face. Pausing for only a moment, the potions master sighed and gently touched the back of his fingers to Potter’s upturned cheek.

Very warm.

Frowning, Severus shifted his hand to feel the boy’s forehead. Clammy heat soaked into the back of his wrist, but as his fingers brushed past Potter’s nose, the man noticed that it was icy cold to the touch.

For the first time that night, Severus noticed that Potter was not wearing a jumper—only his white school shirt rolled up at the sleeves.

Foolish boy, Snape thought.  You’ve had detentions in the dungeon before.

But Snape also remembered Potter mentioning that he thought he’d be scrubbing out more vials.

Finally, Severus’s hand strayed over to the quill that Potter held lightly in his hand. Very small drops of ink dotted the desk where the soaked tip had been suspended. Removing the delicate instrument, his knuckles brushed past the icy tips of the boy’s fingers.

The man felt like snapping the quill in half.   The only thing worse than an unruly Potter is a sick Potter, Snape inwardly growled, his frown deepening.

Wasting no more time, Snape reached into his robes and pulled out his wand. With an elaborate swish, he cast a warming charm on the boy’s clothes.

He half-expected Potter to wake up at the unfamiliar sensation, but the boy simply shifted a bit and sighed.

Bloody hell.

******************

Crouching down to the boy’s level, Snape spoke mildly.  “Potter…”

No movement.

“Potter,” he tried again, a bit louder.

Somewhere, muffled in the back of Harry’s brain, he faintly heard himself being summoned. Slowly, the boy opened his eyes and lifted his head. His world was spinning again. Harry groaned and turned his head. Snape’s pinched face was inches away from his own.

Harry jumped and nearly fell off of his stool. In the midst of his wild movement, his right hand swept the small jar of ink to the floor.

With a loud clink the ink splattered everywhere.

Without thinking, Harry bolted down from his stool, trying to ignore the pounding in his ears; he squatted and reached for the bottle. But before he could grab it, Harry felt strong arms grasp him around the shoulders and slide him firmly underneath the lab table away from the mess.  His school shoes squeaked against the floor as he was dragged forward.

Harry wobbled on his feet as he stood up, but before he could register the dizziness, Snape lifted him from under his arms and plopped the small twelve-year-old on top of the table.

“Don’t move,” Snape commanded firmly, pointing a finger at Harry before stepping around to the side of the table and quickly banishing the mess. Retrieving the empty ink jar, Snape grabbed the pile of parchment and deposited both items on his own desk.

The professor exhaled strongly before turning back around.

Harry sat slumped on top of the desk; his right elbow rested on his thigh while he pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses with the corresponding hand.

Listening to the noises in the room, Harry could only guess that Snape had moved to a nearby cabinet and was rifling through many items that clinked and clattered.

The boy rubbed his thumb and forefinger against his closed lids to relieve the ache behind his eyes. He sniffled again and then cursed himself for forgetting about the uselessness of that…

“Potter, look up,” Snape stated.

Harry complied.

Without warning, he felt thick wool brush against his glasses and cheeks. Snape had put something over his head. A jumper.

An light gray, ugly, ugly jumper.

Where the hell did he get that? Harry wondered, the aching in his head obviously barricading his mind from the common sense of simple transfiguration.

Snape held the jumper out and shook the sleeves impatiently.  Harry finally put his arms through the holes, giving his professor a look of incredulity.

“Here,” Snape snapped as he held out a folded, white handkerchief.  “Your incessant sniveling is giving me a migraine.  Blow.”

Harry tried, but his ears popped instead.

“I can’t.”

Snape was busy measuring out a portion of some sort of amber liquid.

“Potter,” the professor huffed, irritated, “I never thought the day would come when you would actually fail in accomplishing even the simplest of tasks…”

Harry was too tired to be offended.

“No,” the boy mumbled, “I mean…my nose is stuffy. I can barely breathe out of it.”

Snape strode once again to the cabinet, which Harry now saw was crowded with jars full of multicolored potions, and chose one—a deep blue liquid.

Closing the small door with a snap, Snape returned and handed Harry the small portion of the amber potion.

“Drink it.”

“Er…” Harry hesitated. He’d tasted a good deal of Madame Pomfrey’s potions and not one of them was remotely appetizing.

“Drink it now, Potter, before I spoon it up and feed it to you,” Snape growled.

Harry could tell the man’s patience was waning.  He tipped the small glass to his lips and swallowed.

Sick.

Harry made a face and handed the glass back to his professor.

“Ugh.”

But already, Harry’s headache was going away.

“Quiet, Potter. Drink.”

Snape handed Harry another small glass filled a fourth of the way with the indigo-colored potion.

Harry closed his eyes and downed it.

It tasted like the smell of a dirty sock.

This particular concoction actually caused Harry to stick his tongue out in disgust, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

Immediately, his head began to feel lighter, and he sniffled noisily.

Snape held the handkerchief out once again, and this time, Harry was able to blow his nose.

He felt a little better—still extremely tired, but better.

Gathering up the bottles and empty glasses, Snape marched over to the counter and set them down gingerly. When he returned, the man leaned against the lab table and looked at Harry gravely.

“Have you felt ill all day, Potter?” Snape questioned.

Great, here we go again… Harry thought miserably.  Maybe if I pretend to pass out he’ll just leave me be.

“Only after lunch. Sir,” Harry muttered. He crossed his ankles to prevent his feet from swinging involuntarily and sat on his hands again.

“And you failed to visit Madame Pomfrey, even though you continued to feel worse, am I right?”

“Well...” Harry began.  "It’s just, I thought that…” He paused.

“Go on.”

“I just didn’t get much sleep last night."

Snape frowned.  “Explain.”

Explain what?

“I was just thinking….about stuff,” Harry mumbled. He really just wanted to go back to his dormitory. Or finish writing his lines, now that he felt better. Snape’s glare was sizzling a hole through his forehead.

“Mmmm,” Snape commented; he continued to frown as he stared at Harry. “Very well, Potter, you are dismissed for the night.”

Harry looked at his professor in disbelief.  “Really?”

“I mean what I say, foolish boy!”

Harry sighed in relief and moved the heels of his hands to the edge of the table to push himself off.

“However,” Snape continued in his silky tone, "you are to go straight to bed. No lounging about in your common room.”

Harry’s mouth fell open involuntarily.  “It’s not even nine o’clock yet!” the boy cried, “Professor McGonagall doesn’t give us a bedtime!”

“Nevertheless, Mr. Potter, I just did, and as long as you are spending the next two nights in my dungeons for the remainder of your detentions, I will not tolerate your dozing off in the middle of them. Is that clear?” Snape stated in an icy voice.

Harry swallowed.  He really wanted to say You can’t tell me what to do! But he held his tongue.

Fine, the boy thought, we’ll see what Dumbledore has to say.  At that precise moment, Harry had decided to see the headmaster first thing in the morning instead of waiting.  He figured there had to be something he didn’t know…

“Well?” Snape demanded.

Harry cracked his knuckles.  “Yes, sir,” he muttered, struggling to suppress his glare.  “Can I go now?”

Snape hesitated.

“You are to see Madame Pomfrey if you begin to feel ill again.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry pushed himself forward.

“Straight to bed, Potter. I won’t have you slacking off during any more detentions.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry stated quickly, his bottom teetering on the edge of the table. He just wanted to go!

Snape nodded curtly. “Come tomorrow immediately after dinner. No later than five-thirty. You may go.”

“Thank you!” Harry sighed in relief, hopping off and speeding toward the door.

“Walk!” Snape called after him.

Harry slowed. 

"Blasted little dunderhead..."  the professor grumbled to himself.

Snape watched as the boy yanked open the door and stepped through, taking care to close it gently behind him. But after a few seconds, he could faintly make out the boy's quickened steps once he had reached the other side.

Rolling his eyes, Snape stalked back over to his desk.

“Your welcome, Potter.”  He found himself smirking around the sarcasm.

Running both hands through his dark hair, Severus sighed as he sat down, pulling the temporarily neglected essays close as he settled into the comfortable monotony of grading.