"What?" Seamus asked, scratching at his hair as if it were itching badly. Ron and Draco laughed harder and Harry watched as Hermione crossed her arms.

"Draco Malfoy, how is this a helpful defensive spell?"

Draco shrugged and Ron said, "I don't rightly care. It's bloody brilliant." He turned, looking for a target, but found himself at the receiving end of a glare full of daggers from both Hermione and Ginny. "Well it wasn't going to be you," he said, shoulders sinking as he let his wand drop.

Hermione set to work trying to fix Seamus' hair, and Harry went over to his friends.

"There you are Harry," Ginny said with a smile upon seeing him, and coming over. "You were so late we thought you might not be coming."

"I spent the last half hour hiding in the boys toilet from Umbridge. She followed me from Gryffindor tower and I pretended I was throwing up." At this he motioned to the wetness on the front of his shirt and said, "I splashed water on myself and came out looking ill just in case she was still there."

"And?" Harry looked over to the young Hufflepuff who had spoken up, and turned back to the group as a whole before continuing.

"She was. I asked her if she would escort me to the Hospital Wing and then pretended to wretch, and she said she had something to do and hurried away."

"Excellent," Ron said. Then he put his hand in his pants pocket and withdrew a handful of individually wrapped candies. "Fred and George gave me these. It's their newest line, and they all make you appear sick."

Hermione crossed her arms and frowned, but Ron ignored her, pointing to a pale one. "This one here makes your face go pale and green, so it looks like you'll barf, and this brown one actually makes you throw up, but Fred promised me it all tasted like lemons on the way out." He pointed to a blue one then and explained that it would make you pass out for half an hour, and then to a red one that would make you sneeze and give you a fever for a short while, and a yellow one he warned no one to eat because it would make you pee your pants.

"Someone ought to give that one to Kenai Snape," Draco said, arms crossed, and there were nods and murmurings of consent.

"How about Umbridge?" Dean asked, eyebrows raised, and everybody laughed heartily at the thought of their professor having a little accident in the middle of class.

"Give me one of those!" a fourth year boy shouted, "for when I get detention with her."

"Me too!"

"And me!"

"I want the barfing one!"

Ron handed out all the candies he had, making sure to give Harry one just in case (the last barfing one he had), and then informed the room that they'd have to get the rest from Fred and George, who couldn't be there that night incidentally because they were in the Hospital Wing skiving detention thanks to the candies they had created. Hermione did not appear as though she approved, but knowing they were skiving blood quill detention with Umbridge, she kept her mouth shut.

Harry snapped his fingers a few times. "All right, back to work everybody, I have a new list of spells to teach you. Is anyone interested in producing a Patronus?" With all eyes eagerly on him, he set to work.

* * *

Harry wished dearly that his father would step up to fight for him, as he had often done for Kenai. He willed with all his might for his father to come rushing through those dark, wooden doors to save him from the toady woman smiling nastily at him from behind her desk. Severus never came.

"Lines Mr. Potter if you please. You owe me 300. I must not tell lies. Get to work."

"But Professor, I didn't lie to you."

"You told me you were going to the Hospital Wing, and when I asked Madam Pomfrey later, you had not checked in. Lines, now."

"But I never said I was going, I only asked if you'd take me. I went back to my room to sleep."

She fixed him with a stare. "400 lines Mr. Potter, and you will also write me an essay with the quill, about not deceiving your superiors... two feet shall we say?"

Harry flinched back at those words. Having I must not tell lies forever etched into the back of your hand was one thing, but an entire essay? His hand would be nothing less than mangled, if useable at all. ‘Please, dad, help, please.' He never came.

Wondering if he could swallow the puking candy without being seen, Harry tried to stick his hand down into his pocket, but Umbridge was watching him to closely to manage. He began writing.

Twenty minutes later, when he had let out a small cry at the pain, because the cuts were very deep into the muscle now, Umbridge looked up. "How many have you done?"

"100 maam."

"Very well. Return to your common room. You may return tomorrow night and the night after that to finish."

Harry stood, feeling very unwell and thinking he wouldn't need the candy at all to make him throw up at this point. His hand throbbed and was bleeding horribly, all the way down his arm and into his robe sleeve.

"Be on your way, I do not have all evening to supervise you Mr. Potter."

Harry went to the door, but before he could get out into the hallway, the evil woman cleared her throat, and asked, "Aren't you forgetting something Mr. Potter?"

He turned. "Sorry?"

"You are forgetting to say thank you."

"Maam?"

"I have delivered a punishment to you in order to help you learn to be a more well adjusted young man. You should be thanking me." When she saw him pale visibly, her smile only widened.

"Th- thank you." He said, and hurried out, wishing someone... anyone at all, would stand up for him. No, just Severus. And two steps out the door he had run head first into none other than a very solid, angry looking Severus Snape.

"Potter," he drawled, eyes sweeping over Harry in the way they usually did when he was in big trouble. They fell on his hand, mangled and still bleeding profusely all over Harry and the floor.

"Sir," Harry said, feeling faint. He swayed and was lucky to find a wall then, or else he would have fallen.

"You are out after hours," Snape said then. "Detention for the rest of the night."

Harry gave a small sob, unable to hold it in any longer in the pain he was in. "Go and find Filch and tell him to report to me what chores you have done in the morning." With that, Severus stalked away, not even bothering to give a glance back.

Sinking to the floor, Draco's words from the start of the term floated hazily back into Harry's mind. ‘I don't know why you stay.' Harry didn't either, and before he knew what he was doing, or where he was going, Harry was running through the castle, tripping over his own feet and sobbing hard. He didn't see Kenai when he flew past him in the Entrance Hall, and he barely noticed the first flakes of snow falling on the grounds as he ran through the darkness, to anywhere but his own private hell.

Finally somewhere in the depths of the Forbidden Forest, Harry sank to his knees, and bitterly admitted to himself something that he had been denying for so long. "He hates me," he sobbed hard. All this time Harry had pretended to hate him, because it made it easier if he didn't care, but the truth was he did. There was no reason that Harry could think of that Severus hated him so much, unless it was Harry himself. "He hates me, he hates me, he hates me," he sobbed, unable to stop. "He hates me."

Shivering from the cold, Harry thought that perhaps a loss of blood was making him hear voices and see light, because he could have sworn he'd just heard someone laugh.

Looking up, his insides froze as two men in long black cloaks held wands up in his face, blinding him by light.

"What do we have here?" a scratchy voice said.

"Poor little Potter finally strayed off of school grounds? Should have been more careful, yeah?" The second man sneered. Harry didn't recognize either one, but knew that they were not going to comfort him and tuck him into bed.

"Better run boy," the first said with a toothy grin. "Only chance ya got of getting away."

Harry didn't need telling twice. He stood and bolted as fast as his weary legs and hurt body would carry him, but the laughing followed with words that stated they'd changed their minds.

Just as Harry's shoe caught a root and he went sprawling, a nasty curse hit him in his back. He thought he should have hit the ground, but instead his body felt as if it were being pricked a thousand times by pins, and when he did land, he landed in a mound of soft snow. Looking around through blurry eyes, Harry knew he was no longer in the Forbidden Forest, but he was very alone, and very cold.

Snow drifted down over Harry Severus Potter, as he drifted into unconsciousness. He wished he had his journal to write one last letter.