Hermione pursed her lips over her breakfast, staring around the buzzing Great Hall with an air of annoyance. In her hand she gripped the Daily Prophet, while in the other she gripped her Potions essay. Harry couldn’t tell which was annoying her.

The students, the paper, or the essay. Possibly all three? Maybe none? Whichever it was, it was resulting in Colin Creevy being glared at by a very annoyed looking Hermione Granger. Wisely the little fifth year moved away, tugging his brother’s collar of the neck.

“’Mione,” Harry groaned as the said ‘Prefect’ stared yet another second year. “What the hell is the matter? Or do you just feel like being an imitation of Snape today? ‘Cause I have enough of him coming up in tonight’s detention.”

“No,” the girl growled before looking at him and instantly letting her face soften up. “It’s just,” she flipped the Prophet over. Ah, so it was the paper. “You see, Harry? V-Vo-Voldemort’s dead,” she sighed somewhat. “But it’s not ending.”

The scarred boy looked over the front cover, seeing the headlines to read: SERIAL KILLER MURDERS 15! Then, underneath, it went into a detailed description of the serial killer being a known follower of Voldemort and how it was believed it was continuing with ‘his old master’s game’ despite his master’s death.

“Dumbledore didn’t think it would, not this time at least,” Harry rubbed his face, pushing his glasses up and down. “Said there was a good chance that, that many of the Death Eaters that escaped might continue this time. Too rallied up they were or somethin’ and they won’t stop this time. Not until something stops them.”

“At least it’s not you this time, right?” Hermione peered closely at him. He gave her a weak smile and nodded.

“Yeah, not me,” he hoped it wasn’t him that was. Not this time. He didn’t want to get involved this time. Rubbing his hands on his robes, something that was becoming almost habitual, he picked up his fork again.

The school had finally settled down from Dobby’s little ‘Desire Spell’, though amazingly enough only a select few knew it was that particular house elf. Though the whole school did know that it was a house elf. Though the chatter about all the substances they had to wade through, or the fact that all their ruined clothing had been saved from the house elves splendid efforts hadn’t ceased.

And Harry feared it never would.

“When’s your detention with Professor Snape anyway?” Hermione asked, chewing over some eggs thoughtfully.

“Tonight, nine o’clock.” The boy shrugged helplessly. “He’s the only Professor I know that’ll assign them on Sundays.”

“Hmm…” was all the girl responded in saying before eating some more. Rubbing his face again, tired, Harry fought to not look at his hands, wondering if he would never actually escape it, before giving up on eating all together.

Nodding a goodbye to the girl, who was now glaring at the prophet, Harry walked off, mindlessly rubbing his palms against his robes. Dobby had been a nice distraction really, which was his only desire at the moment to make him happy, but without the ability to play Quidditch to distract himself, and his running past time hidden, he was at a lost of what to do.

God forbid he should read something though.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get into it. Not like Hermione. Not like all the charming fifth years, who all had new vocabulary words. Which, Harry was sure, were supplied by none other then Ginny Weasley.

“What’s going on here?” Madam Hooch’s voice suddenly called out, breaking the chaos like the Red Sea. Startled, Harry looked up, jerking himself from his stupor, and stared around the corridor, barely noting the crying girls, some of whom were screaming in soft moans, and the panicking forms of other house students.

“Someone has to get Madame Pomfrey!” a seventh year Slytherin shouted, jerking a Ravenclaw by the robe and more or less throwing him in the direction of the Hospital Wing.

Intrigued, for curiosity killed the cat and Harry had very few of his nine lives left, the boy walked forward, just as Madam Hooch reached the scene and cringed at the same time the woman did.

Laying on the ground, splayed out like a fallen body, was a four year Hufflepuff with slashes across her chest, three giant ones—almost like a cat with massive claws had appeared and had clawed her down. She was breathing, but only mildly, and her eyes weren’t even closed.

They were rolled into the back of her head.

Harry jolted.

Eyes weren’t closed…his world swam, he felt like a detached object, sitting across a dead body. He was staring down at the girl, but it wasn’t the girl anymore, it was Voldemort, his eyes were open.

They were lifeless…they were red…they were murdered…

“Who did this?” Madam Hooch finally gasped, her hand on her chest for her throbbing heart. “Who did this?” she rounded in a wild horror on everyone.

“We don’t know,” piped up a distraught, bawling second year. “We just…we just…we just found her like this,” she broke into renewed sobs.

“Gods,” Hooch breathed before shaking herself out of it.

Harry couldn’t. All he could see were the murdered eyes, all he could feel was the blood dripping from his hands. Horrified, he turned and fled, running before anyone even registered that he had been there, and he stumbled into the nearest bathroom, uncaring if it was boy or girl.

Stumbling into the nearest stall, he smashed it open, fell over the toilet and lost all his breakfast with a painful gasp. His breath wouldn’t come, it constricted in his throat and with each attempt to breath, he lost his meal until there was nothing left, and he was only dry heaving. Closing his eyes briefly, he brought his hands up to steady himself, then slowly he opened them, still feeling queasy.

Red. Dripping, milky red liquid, oozing from his fingertips, streaming down every single one, staining them. Hurriedly, he wiped at the blood stain, smearing it away, but it didn’t move, it didn’t smear, it just remained there, trickling down.

Breath panicking in his chest, Harry crashed backwards, out of the stall, feeling his stomach threatening to dry heave again. Gasping, rubbing his hands with renewed vigor, he stumbled over to the stall and flushed his face under the water.

Slowly, his panic slowed, and he felt himself slump down, his knees touching the cool school floor, and his eyes threatening to water. Dropping his forehead against the rim of the sink, he sucked in his breath.

“Make it go away…” he whispered in despair.

888

“Good of you to show up on time, Potter,” Snape sneered as the boy entered the classroom. “I was afraid certain things had gotten to your head…”

“Haven’t forgotten how to read a clock,” Harry snapped, annoyance tickling him.

The man narrowed his eyes to slits, before he stood up. “I told you, Potter,” he hissed in a seething tone. “You better watch how you speak to me. You and Miss Weasley seemed to have a problem if controlling your tongue around adults.” He stalked over to Harry, until his breath was fanning over his face. “Is this understood Potter?” the man continued, his eye twitching somewhat.

“Yes sir,” Harry grated out, his breath hitching in his throat.

“Good,” the man stepped back. “Your detention is simple enough,” he gestured to the far wall that was always lined with cauldrons. There was a good stack of them before the wall now, all gleaming with grim and crusty with who knew what. “Clean those.”

Taking a slow breath, Harry nodded mutely before walking over to the cauldrons. Taking a sprawled seat on the ground, the boy grabbed the rag, the cleaning fluid that Snape had so ‘nicely’ set out for him, and set to cleaning.

The silence between them was pounding.

One just grading essays, the other just cleaning without really thinking about it. It was like both had just drifted off into their own little havens of their minds, which actually, at the moment in time, might not have been very good havens, without a care to the things around them.

The attack on the Hufflepuff was still unexplained, beyond that of it not being a magical attack, and that was that. She was in a coma, at St. Mungo’s, and whoever the attacker was hadn’t been caught and wouldn’t until she woke up. The school was very near to the brink of panic until Dumbledore assured them that they were quite safe.

Harry really hoped no one else was attacked—if just for the old wizard’s sake of mind.

Finally, getting half way through the cauldrons, he heard Snape shift in his seat and looked up to see the man grabbing a new pile of essays.

That was one job Harry wasn’t going to do. Teaching. Never, ever. He couldn’t stand watching someone grade essays, let alone actually grade them himself.

“Potter, kindly stop watching me and get back to work,” Snape suddenly snapped and jerking out his mindless thoughts the boy tinted a bit as he set to working again. Ruddy luck. “Actually,” Snape said, startling the boy.

Actually? When the hell has the man ever said ‘actually’ after ordering someone back to work? Harry forced himself not to reach out and touch the floor, to see if Hell had frozen over.

“On Dumbledore’s account.” Ah, now that explained a bit more. Like why his eye was twitching. “He wants to know if you feel your mind defenses are up enough.”

“What?” Harry asked, genuinely startled.

Sighing, the man pinched the bridge of his nose. “In simple terms Potter, he wants to know if you’re having nightmares.”

“Oh,” Harry shrugged. “No, not really.” Though a nagging, dry voice in the back of his mind echoed ‘not yet’.

The man nodded and waved him back to work. Effing strange that was. “And what about your—keep working boy!—what about your hands?” Harry tensed. “You can’t pretend that they’re not stained, Potter, I know they are. You’re not still rubbing them raw, are you?”

“Why do you care?” Harry couldn’t help but snap.

Snape snapped his eyes onto Harry, the onyx orbs glinting dangerously. “Because, Potter, as loathe as I am to admit it—I can’t, when I have the knowledge—let a student destroy himself or herself. Despite their house, or status,” he sneered his lip.

Harry clenched his hands darkly around the rim of the cauldron. “Can you get off that!” he snarled. “I did nothing for my status as you so elegantly put it! I don’t want it! I don’t need it! I would love for it to rot in hell! So. GET. OFF. IT!”

Snape stood up darkly. “What did I say about how you talked to me?”

“I’ll talk how I bloody well want when it concerns my character!” Harry retorted heatedly. “I can’t stand it! I can’t stand the way you flaunt it in my face all the time! I HATE IT! Do you not get that! Can you not understand something so simple. YET ALL YOU DO IS HARP ON ME ABOUT IT! I never asked for it, I never wanted it. If it was up to me, I would’ve never had it!”

He was on his feet now, but he wasn’t sure when he gotten up. Snape opened his mouth angrily, to say something, but Harry cut him off. “No! It’s my turn! For five, nearly six years I dealt with it from you! And I can’t—not after all this, I can’t take it anymore. GET OFF OF IT! Leave me the hell alone about it. I don’t want to be famous and if I had to punch Dumbledore in the effing face to get people to hate me, you know what? I’d DO IT!”

Breathing heavily, he clenched his teeth again. “So just leave me the hell alone,” he muttered weakly, falling backwards onto his arse once again, and staring at his hands mutely.

Red. Always red.

Why did he have to do it?

There was a movement, and he looked up to see Snape standing over him, his face so unreadable that it was actually scarier then when he was openly glaring and sneering. Harry didn’t like it. He didn’t want to see the man like that. He liked knowing some of the man’s emotions.

Crouching down, the man grabbed the front of Harry’s robes. “Don’t ever talk to me like that again, understood Mr. Potter?” he snarled and Harry mutely nodded. Instantly the man let go of his robes and stood up.

Reaching into his pockets, Harry fought the instinct to recoil in fear the man was reaching for his wand, Snape pulled out a set of black gloves. “When it gets real bad,” Snape said indifferently. “When you feel you can’t see anything beyond the red, put this one.”

He threw them into Harry’s lap. “They’ll cover it, somewhat. They’ll help, somewhat. Don’t become dependent on them, however.”

“W-why?” Harry breathed, shocked.

“People, namely the Headmaster, frown upon willingly allowing a student to go insane—which stains will do.” The man shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe it. “Though I do suggest, Mr. Potter, that you don’t punch Albus, he might take personal offense.”

With that the man stalked off completely, leaving the classroom which Harry dully noted had gone cold with his icy temper. Rubbing his head, somewhat confused about the man, he stared down at the gloves and sighed somewhat.

“Thank you,” he said the air before tucking them away in his robes and setting to work on the cauldrons.