Harry’s visit to the tower was largely uneventful. He greeted Ron and Hermione and, when they asked him about where he’d been, he lied. He felt awful about lying, but he simply couldn’t tell them the truth, even if Snape had not ordered him to keep mum. It was too weird and embarrassing.

“You mean he hauled you out of bed at six o’clock in the morning for a special detention? After he kept you out after curfew? Barking mad, just as I always said.” Ron shot Hermione a vindicated glance, which she did not return. Something about this seemed funny to her, though she was unsure of what, exactly. She settled for chewing her thumbnail and mulling it over in her mind.

“How about a game of chess then?”

Harry would have loved a game, but he had those damn lines to write, not to mention two feet of essay. He actually got a decent start on the lines before lunch, and even made a small start on the essay. After they ate he allowed himself to be tempted into a small game of chess after all, then another, and, breaking for dinner, it was almost eleven o’clock before he realized what had happened.

It took him until almost two to finish the lines and write a foot of the essay, and he knew he’d have to stay up late the next night to have any chance of finishing his essay by the feast. He stumbled to bed and the next day was as bad as he thought it would be.

It was the custom at Hogwarts that the last class was a sort of summation of what had been learned, as well as a goodbye for the summer. Snape forsook this custom, and much preferred to simply have the children make a potion of some sort.

He strove to ignore Potter as much as possible, not wishing to call attention to the situation. To his irritation, he could not keep his gaze from wandering over every so often. The boy was white as a ghost, with dark circles under both eyes. He wondered if it was nightmares again. He would hate to put the boy on a regime of sleeping potions, because they could prove habit forming, but if the child wasn’t sleeping, that could prove just as detrimental.

Fortunately for Snape, and much less fortunately for Harry, Snape happened to be walking quietly behind the Trio as Ron and Harry discussed the chess match of the night before. Specifically, the aftermath wherein Potter stayed up until two AM. Snape’s ears perked up at once. At the front of the class, he collected the potions and looked at the back left corner with a cold smile. “Mr.Potter, I will see you after class. The rest of you, dismissed.” The scholars raced gratefully for the door and Harry, feeling like a man condemned, walked to the front and waited.

“What time did you go to bed last night?”

Harry was tempted to lie, but had an eerie feeling that Snape would guess, and had a further notion of how Snape might deal with dishonesty. The bat was still giving him a look which could charitably be called “nasty”, so he inhaled and blurted out

“Late.”

“How late, exactly? Ten o’clock, perhaps? Eleven?”

“N-no. Later than that.”

“I could have sworn lights out is eleven.”

“It is. Sir.”

“So you ignored your curfew?”

“ I had to finish--”

“Finish what, boy? Those lines shouldn’t have taken long, nor the essay. Had you put your shoulder to the proverbial wheel, it shouldn’t have taken more than three hours or so. How long did it take you?”

Potter couldn’t look at him. Insolent brat kept his gaze locked on the floor. His hands began fiddling with the strap of his book bag, and Snape could not restrain himself from giving them a gentle swat. He had to break the boy of this fidgeting; it was bloody impossible to talk to him while he did it.

“I don’t, sir. A long time.”

“Would you care to explain to me why it is Mr. Weasley seems to think you were still awake at two o’clock this morning?”

Harry went stock still. Uh-oh. His mind scrabbled for a plausible excuse but Snape only let him writhe a second before, in an uncharacteristic fit of mercy, he cut the boy off.

“ I take it he was right. Would it happen to be because you used your time poorly?”

Harry nodded, shamefaced. It was bizarre, having Snape care about what time he slept. Snape was pleased the boy had the good grace to be ashamed. Not that he’d expected any better from the brat…

“Very well. Since you can’t manage your own time, I will help you. You will report to my office at six o’clock and write the rest of the essay while I watch. And bring those lines, I want to make sure you did them well. You’re dismissed.”

Harry raged the whole way back to Gryffindor tower. Damned stupid mean greasy bastard, he just wanted to torture Harry. Bloody git. It wasn’t fair, he had no right to humiliate him, why did he stick his nose into other people’s business?

After dinner, Harry toted his book bag down the stairs and knocked at Snape’s door. It swung open at once, and the Git himself was sitting behind the desk, writing on a piece of parchment.

“Good evening, Mr. Potter. Do sit down.” The professor had transfigured a desk and stool that sat directly in front of his own. Harry groaned-- this was apt to be a very long night.

By nine o’clock, Snape had, through a combination of threats, glares and dire intimations, prevailed upon the boy to finish the essay. The child’s writing was dragon scratch, of course, and his spelling absolutely horrid. The little monster himself was no better, all pouty looks and martyred sighs. Snape finally got so irritated that he gave into his worse angel and favored the boy with a slow, snakelike smile.

“You are acting like a spoiled brat, Mr. Potter. You are so intent on complaining that I feel as though you should have something to complain about. Very well: Since I cannot trust you to go to bed at a reasonable hour of your own volition, you will go directly to bed as soon as you get to the tower. No games with your little friends, no reading, no conversation. Straight to bed. Perhaps that will improve your surly attitude a bit. And I warn you, boy: I will know if you disobey, and punish you right then and there.”

It was all Harry could do not to cry. He had wanted so much to spend time with Ron and Hermione before the summer holiday; on the other hand, a whipping in his dorm room was too horrible to contemplate. And deep down, he was honest enough to admit he felt tired. His sleep had been awful for almost a week. Every time he shut his eyes…..

“Well? Do you understand me or not?” Snape had no time for childish antics. He had to prepare his home for a child, when no child had lived there for almost twenty years, not to mention how to get the boy to Devon from King’s Cross. Not for the first time, he wondered whether he was quite mad in taking Potter, of all people, into his home.

“Yes sir.” Harry squared his shoulders and looked the tall man right in the face. He wouldn’t give the bat any reason to think his meanness affected Harry even a little. It didn’t. Harry didn’t care if Snape ruined his time with his friends, not a bit. His bravado was failing rapidly as he thought about it, the tears he’d been fighting all day crowding to get out.

The boy was unhappy. Snape tried not to care and did a fair impression, except for a bothersome little tickle in his chest. The tickle was urging him to be more understanding, the child was thirteen, after all. It was natural that he wanted to idle his time away, rather than do healthful things like homework and sleep.

Stupid interfering tickle. “Potter, if you can wipe that look off your face and try to mind me tonight, then I suppose you could stay up a bit later than usual tomorrow. I imagine you’ll be too excited to sleep at light outs anyway.”

Harry’s face lit up. Was Snape actually acting like a human, instead of a total birk? The man was still making that hateful mean face at him, and said louder than necessary “That’s only if you can manage to behave tonight. Do you think you can go five minutes without that rebellious streak showing through?”

“Yes, sir.” The boy looked ready to smile. Snape pointedly didn’t look at the brat, but waved him out with one hand. “Go on, then. I’m going to check to see you’ve obeyed me.”

Harry picked up his things and made for the door. The halls were silent and dark as he went back to the tower. For his part, Snape ordered a large pot of strong black tea from a house elf, wishing for a bare second he was a drinking man. He had a sudden idea that, between the boy and this suddenly troublesome sense of compassion he was developing, it would be a long summer indeed.