By the time Harry got back inside, it was his turn to shower, and he hurried into the bathroom without looking at any of his cabinmates. He left his clothes folded on the bench outside the shower, with his cap on top, as he always did, but when he emerged from the shower, they were gone, along with his towel.

Horrified, and trying to flatten his perpetually messy hair enough to cover his ears (although it was not really long enough), he called out, “Give them back! This isn’t funny!” He cursed when he realized how pointless that attempt was, then resignedly grabbed a hand towel to wrap around himself a bit and stepped out of the bathroom.

When he entered the main part of the cabin, he saw Rudy holding his clothes, wadded up into a bundle. When Rudy caught sight of him, he grinned and held the clothes up above his head, swinging them back and forth tauntingly. Harry glared, knowing that his clothes were probably out of his range even if he jumped, since Rudy was so tall.

Rudy’s grin faded when he caught sight of Harry’s face, and he lowered the clothes and then tossed them to Harry, who caught them. “I was just having a little fun, relax,” he said verbally while he signed.

Harry nodded and began dressing, not sure what to say. He knew he was overreacting, and if the same thing had happened in Gryffindor tower a couple of months ago, he would have laughed it off. But he felt so insecure still in this environment, and he had managed so far to keep anyone from seeing his shriveled ears. Though he knew it was ridiculous to expect to keep them a secret from the world forever, he could not bring himself to show them.

He looked up as he slid his t-shirt on, and he saw Sean ask, “Hey, what’s that on your ear?”

Harry blushed, but knew there was no sense in hiding it now. All four of his cabinmates were looking at him with curiosity on their faces, so he answered, “It is my ear. They got messed up by the… accident” (he could not remember how to sign the word for potion) “that made me lose my hearing.”

Gio signed something that Harry thought might have been “they look cool,” and everyone resumed getting ready for the day, teasing each other as they always did. Harry felt some of his anxiety melt away, replaced by relief at the easy acceptance of his cabinmates. He did, however, still stuff his cap back on once he was dressed, not yet ready to show his ears to the rest of the camp.

On their way to breakfast, Harry told them what Snape had said that morning, and they explained what their respective punishments meant. As it turned out, pranks were pretty common at camp, and were mostly tolerated, usually just earning the culprits something like meal duty. David decided that Harry must have gone too far with his shoes-up-the-pole trick, although none of the boys would have thought so if he had not been punished so harshly for it. Grounding, they told him, meant that he was to report to classroom one for all fun activities and free times, and would be spending his time likely sitting in a corner while a counselor watched him. And since he had been grounded on a weekend, he would be spending the entire day until just an hour before curfew, except for meals, holed up there. Meal duty, which he would at least have company for, meant helping to serve for and clean up after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Meal duty tended to be a sort of catch-all punishment, while grounding was usually reserved for much more serious offenses.

xxXxx

After breakfast, Harry waved goodbye to his friends, who were heading to the quidditch pitch for a pick-up game, and trudged slowly to the building by the lake. When he reached classroom one, he stopped short in the doorway, dread beginning to creep into his belly.

“Well, are you coming in?” Snape signed and spoke from behind the teacher’s desk.

Without saying a word, Harry moved inside and took a seat in the back of the classroom, slumping in his chair. He pulled out the little bit of written homework he had, having been told by Sean that he was only allowed to engage in academic activities during the grounding, and set to work on an essay.

By noon, he had finished all of his written work. He twirled his quill absentmindedly for a few minutes until he saw the lights flash, signalling lunch, and left the classroom without so much as a cursory glance at Snape.

He enjoyed the banter of his cabinmates through serving lunch and then eating their own rushed meal. He let their good humor wash over him and tried to allow it to ease the tension he seemed to constantly be feeling this whole summer, not worrying overmuch about catching only about half of their jokes.

By the time lunch was over, he felt marginally better as he shuffled back to classroom one in the building by the lake. He glanced at Snape as he slouched back into his seat, noting that the man looked as though he had not even moved from his position or looked up from his marking, though he knew he must have attended lunch. Harry sighed, bored now that he had nothing left to do, and felt the tension begin to seep back in as he restlessly shifted. Eventually, he pulled out his wand and began attempting to wordlessly cast a lumos, sweat beading on his forehead as he poured more and more effort into the activity.

After a few hours of fruitless attempts, he caught a glimpse of movement in front of him and looked up to see Snape watching him with a hint of… was that amusement?... on his face.

When he met his eyes, Snape signed, “You look…”

Harry frowned, then signed, “I don’t understand,” and mimicked the last sign Snape had made.

Snape’s lip curled, then he made the sign again, exaggerating the movements and the facial expression and looking pointedly at Harry. And then Harry understood.

Had Snape just said he looked… constipated?

Harry glared at him but was saved from trying to find a retort by the flashing of the lights that signalled dinner. He stalked out of the room and to the cafeteria, angrily taking his place behind the buffet tables. When he returned after dinner for the last two hours, he only sullenly stared out the window with his arms crossed in front of his chest, refusing to do more than glance at Snape, who was now reading a book.

Harry made a concerted effort to avoid looking at Snape in the cabin that evening, though to be fair this was not really a huge deviation from his usual behavior. However, this was made annoyingly difficult by the cabin bonding time scheduled for that night, for which Harry’s cabinmates had voted that they play Truth or Dare. And of course, since this was the magical world, the game was complicated by the addition of a mild truth serum (nowhere near the potency of Veritaserum, but still rather difficult to resist a direct question while under its influence, although a mouthful only lasted for a couple of minutes) and wizard’s oaths (promising to perform any dares put to them unless deemed inappropriate or dangerous by their counselor).

Harry picked Dare nearly every time, too wary of what he might be forced to admit to pick Truth. Fortunately, nobody complained about his lack of variety, since most of them had the same strategy themselves. His cabinmates apparently were not too creative, since most of them simply took turns doing things like eating nasty Bertie Bott’s flavors or dancing naked to the beat the rest of the cabin pounded out on the floor. Occasionally, someone shook things up slightly. Rudy dared David to go the entire next day without any coffee, to some serious grumblings from not only David but also the rest of the cabin, who claimed he would be impossible to be around without caffeine. David, in turn, dared the always meticulously-groomed Gio to spend the following day with bright yellow hair, and to forego brushing it in the morning. When Gio passed on this, he was forced to admit he had a crush on Adèle from the girls cabin in their age group.

The night was particularly warm and the cabin became quite stuffy with the lamps on (which Harry had learned were somewhat like magic oil lamps), so as Harry grew more relaxed, laughing at his friends’ antics, he eventually pulled off his sweaty cap. He regretted this only minutes later when it became his turn to be asked Truth or Dare again.

“I Dare you to go without your cap for the day tomorrow,” Rudy signed to him, a mischievous glint sparkling in his eyes as it had for most of the night.

Harry froze while he considered his options. After a minute of deliberation, his face flushed with embarrassment as he shook his head, passing on the Dare which meant that he had to take whatever Truth Rudy asked of him.

Rudy looked only slightly disappointed, but he began conferring with the other three on the best question to ask Harry. Harry had a difficult time following their rapid conversation, but it did not take very long for Rudy to smile at him and motion Snape to hand him the truth serum they were using.

Harry accepted the bottle without meeting Snape’s eyes, and took the prescribed mouthful without complaint, though his stomach was in knots over what he might be forced to admit to. He did not think there were any secrets left that would be dangerous to reveal, and Snape would surely stop him before he could answer if there were. However, he certainly had his fair share of secrets that he would rather did not get out to the general public.

“What is your … ?” Rudy asked him.

Harry shot him a questioning look as he repeated the unfamiliar sign Rudy had used, and Rudy fingerspelled it out for him.

“B-O-G-G-A-R-T.”

Harry shivered slightly as he thought of the tall cloaked figure the boggart always became when it faced him, the clammy feeling in the air and rattling breaths that accompanied it, and the memories that followed… He involuntarily closed his eyes as he remembered the green light and his mother’s screams, then the image of his godfather falling through the veil which haunted his most recent nightmares.

“D-E-M-E-N-T-O-R,” he fingerspelled, opening his eyes and sucking in a fortifying breath. The boys looked slightly surprised, but seemed to accept the answer, although Harry noticed that Sean seemed to be giving him a searching look. Harry smiled reassuringly at him, and Sean smiled back before returning his focus to the game, but Harry wondered what had caused Sean to look at him that way.

Overall, he reflected as he lay in bed later that night, it could have been much worse. He had stubbornly attempted to cling to his bad mood at first, but soon found that he was actually enjoying himself, the knot of anxiety and frustration that had formed in his gut from spending the day alone in Snape’s presence slowly unwinding. He had been nervous at first when he had taken Rudy’s Truth that someone might keep asking questions before the serum wore off, but overall the boys were quite honorable about the rules of the game, perhaps because they were all really in the same boat.

Harry felt surprisingly relaxed as he waited for sleep to claim him. Despite the language barrier, which he still chafed at, he was feeling more and more comfortable with the boys in his cabin. He was not nearly as close to Sean as he was to Ron and Hermione, but he felt almost as at ease around him as he did around his best friends. And he was beginning to build an easy acquaintanceship with Rudy, David, and Gio not unlike that which he had with Dean, Seamus, and Neville. Reflecting on the past couple of weeks, he realized that if it were not for Finn and having to live in such close quarters with Snape, he might feel almost at-home, although he did not think he could ever truly view anywhere as his home as much as he did Hogwarts. He did have to admit that Finn really was not any worse than Malfoy generally was, it just seemed a bit different dealing with a bully who was two years older than him and who he hardly spoke the same language as (it was rather difficult to retort to taunts you barely understood, especially in a language you barely knew). Plus, his cabinmates, and even Sean, did not stand up for him the same way that Ron and Hermione always did, and he could only imagine that it was because he was not yet enough a part of their group. Still, Egbert’s was pretty cool, even with Snape and Finn, and with being grounded.

xxXxx

However, it did not take long on Sunday for his good feelings to disappear again. He sat restlessly through a morning with Snape once again guarding him, staring longingly out the window in the direction of the quidditch pitch and getting an occasional glimpse of some action above the treeline. He was already in a somewhat foul mood when Finn started on him at lunch, and by the time he had returned to the classroom where Snape awaited him, he was storming. He stomped to his usual desk in the back corner, slammed his bag down on it, noting with some pleasure that he could hear the satisfying thud, and then threw himself into his chair and resumed staring outside but without really seeing anything.

He looked up when he felt a shadow looming over him and saw Snape standing before him with his arms crossed. Once he had Harry’s attention, he signed something to him, a hard expression on his face. Harry shook his head, trying to clear it enough to focus and understand the signs, but Snape rolled his eyes to the ceiling and then thrust a piece of paper at him before returning to his desk and his potions book.

Harry looked back at the note in his hand and read to himself,

If you come in here with such an attitude again, your grounding will be extended. And I will find some particularly nasty cauldrons for you to clean.

Harry’s anger flared brighter for just a moment, and then fizzled out as his heart sank. He could not even understand Snape’s threats anymore, not without resorting to writing. He rested his forearms on the desk before him and then buried his face in them, shutting off the world.

By the time he was allowed to return to the cabin that night, he felt as though a dark and heavy cloud was surrounding him, sapping his energy and weighing his mood down. With barely a good night to his cabinmates, he went straight to his bed and rolled over to face the wall, staring unseeingly at the seams in the wood.

xxXxx

Harry alternated between feeling listless and frustrated all through his classes the next morning. He barely listened or contributed to the conversation as Sean chattered on, but he reasoned that given his current language skills this probably did not seem too rude or very unusual. He could still hardly perform signed magic, and although he was picking up new verbal incantations slightly faster as he grew mored used to the techniques and spells the teachers used to help them feel the mouth movements, it still felt annoyingly slow. His mood improved ever so slightly in BSL, where he was beginning to gain momentum in learning the language, likely due to his current immersion in it and his determination to communicate. However, he quickly grew discouraged again when he headed to his speechreading class. He had been holding out hope that perhaps by the time he returned to Hogwarts in a few weeks he would be proficient enough at speechreading to get by with as few people knowing of his hearing loss as possible. However, this goal was seeming more and more impossibly far-fetched as time went on, and he despaired at the thought of people’s reactions once word got out. It seemed that not a year could go by without some kind of rumors and drama centered around him.

His mood swung back towards frustration in wordless magic as he once again failed at so much as lighting his wand tip. He nearly reached his boiling point towards the end of class, when Finn succeeded in a wordless summoning charm and, in celebration, summoned Snape’s little black notebook from his robes while his back was turned and then quickly banished it to Harry’s desk.

Obviously noticing his notebook fly out of his pocket, Snape slowly turned with a fearsome glare, roving over the room with his eyes as he searched for his notebook. Before Harry could react, Snape’s eyes landed on his desk, and he gulped as the anger in the Professor’s gaze tripled.

Just then, the lights flashed signalling the end of the class, and Harry jumped up and raced for the door, joining the crowds beginning to form out in the hallway. He breathed a sigh of relief at his apparent escape, then remembered he was still grounded. He groaned at this realization, then crossed his fingers that someone else would be on duty as he approached the classroom and took his usual seat.

Five minutes later, Snape stormed into the room, strides long, robes billowing, and eyes flashing in his cold face. He strode immediately to Harry’s desk and began speaking and signing quickly and too low to be audible, again. Harry felt a sense of deja vu when he interrupted him, feeling angry and embarrassed and ashamed.

“I can’t understand you,” Harry signed and spoke, and then his anger surged up in a cresting wave. He pushed his chair back and stood up, setting his palms on the desk and leaning forward, abandoning attempts at signing. “I can hardly understand anyone!” He began gripping at his hair in frustration as he shouted, “I feel like a flipping moron, just trying to communicate with people, and it’s so slow! I can’t understand you or my cabinmates or Finn’s insults, and how will I understand Ron and Hermione or the professor when I get back to Hogwarts? I am constantly on edge and trying so hard just to hear or understand!” And then the anger had crashed over him and he slumped back in his chair, drained. “I’m so tired. It’s so tiring.” He was not even really sure what he was saying anymore, and he put his face in his hands, his elbows on the desk.

After a few moments, he felt his desk vibrate slightly. He raised his head slightly and saw Snape tapping the desk with a finger. He looked up, meeting Snape’s eyes, and his face flushed slightly in embarrassment. He had just said all of that in front of Snape, his most hated professor, the man who loved to make his life miserable. He was such an idiot. He resisted the urge to bury his face back in his hands or at least glance away, knowing that would be considered rude.

As he calmed down slightly, he realized that Snape looked… vaguely uncomfortable. He looked like he was about to speak, but then he paused and pulled out his notebook. He met Harry’s eyes again and then looked down and began writing. After a bit, he tore off the page and handed it to Harry.

It is difficult, I know, but that is why you are here. You are not the only one to have lost their hearing postlingually (after having learned to speak), nor are you the only one to experience communication issues. In fact, the extent of the hearing you have maintained likely greatly helps your transition. It will eventually get easier. You will become accustomed to it.

But perhaps you are still trying to rely too heavily on your hearing. The amount you have left can be a useful tool, but you are no longer completely a hearing person. Perhaps you need to let go of that aspect of your identity to an extent. If you do not, you may continue to feel isolated and as though you belong to neither community.

As he finished reading the note, Harry looked up at Snape, surprised. He had thought Snape resented his connection to the Deaf community; he had been quite resistant to welcoming him into it, even if he had grudgingly allowed him to stay for the summer. Not only was he now encouraging him to become more a part of the community, but the note was almost… comforting.

Snape, however, was bent over his notebook and writing again. Not long after Harry had looked back up, Snape tore off the new sheet and handed it to Harry, then whirled around and swept to the desk at the front of the room, settling in it with parchments to grade before him.

Harry looked back at the paper in his hand and read,

There are teachers here who would be willing to help you with the transition, if you only would alert the staff to the difficulties you are having. Even I would be willing to help if only to cease your tantrums.