Harry sighed and shoved his Transfiguration textbook away with both hands. He could do the spells, sort of, so why did he have to learn so much blasted theory? And what good had theory ever done him, anyway?

Harry groaned out loud and flopped his head down onto his arms.

"You read it, huh? Was it so bad, after all?"

Looking up, he saw Ron just stepping through the portrait hole. "Oh no, it's not that." A scowl twisted his lips as he'd thought of how close he'd come to reading the letter. He'd actually opened the stupid envelope before he'd chickened out and shoved the whole thing back into his bag. Now why was it that he could face down Voldemort, but he was afraid of one lousy, measly little letter? Ron was right: the Dursleys couldn't really hurt him, not any more. He wasn't small, and helpless, and friendless, now. But still, that letter in his bag was unnerving him more than anything he thought he'd ever faced.

"It's just the extra reading McGonagall assigned," Harry went back to his previous line of thought. "Honestly, we just need to learn to do the transfigurations, don't you think, not be able to explain every last element of each swish and flick..." Harry glanced to the side and barked a pre-emptive, "Don't say it, Hermione!"

She closed her mouth, but her eyes said it for her.

"How about a game of Wizard Chess?" Ron suggested, plunking himself down on the opposite side of the table from Harry. "That'll get your mind off things."

That was just too much for Hermione. "He doesn't need to get his mind off things, Ron!" she sharply rebuked. "He needs to get his mind on them. Or do you think that Potions test is going to just go away? When have you ever known Snape to threaten a test and not give one? Honestly!"

"You all right there, Harry?" Ron prompted, elbows on his knees as he leaned close.

"I was just remembering that I'd forgotten all about the Potions test," Harry sighed, leaning back in his chair. "And here it is Thursday night. Ugh. Maybe I could skive off my morning classes and study. What do you think? Hagrid wouldn't mind. Well, not much."

"You are not skipping classes in order to get study time!" Hermione erupted. "You have to get better organized than this, Harry! Start with that bag of yours. I've never seen a messier assortment of quills and texts and extra sheets of parchment. Honestly, how can you even find anything in there?"

"Has anybody ever mentioned how irritating you can be?" Harry shot back.

Hermione only smiled. "That's why you love me."

"Yeah, guess so," Harry admitted with a sheepish smile of his own. Then he glanced at Ron. "Not like that, mate. You know. Friends."

"Yeah," Ron echoed, glancing between the pair of them. "Well, Wizard Chess is off, then. I suppose we have to cram for Potions." Flipping open a book, he groaned. "Okay, who knows the ten most common uses for dragonfly wings in potions with a base of flobberworm fat?"

"There's seventeen primary uses," Hermione pointed out.

"Snape's not going to ask us for all seventeen!"

"Want to bet?" she challenged.

Harry just sighed, and fished his own Potions text out of his disorganized bag.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The next afternoon in Potions, as Harry read the first question on the test, he had to repress a strong desire to chuckle.

Actually, the question wasn't all that funny. By the time Harry had finished reading it, he was scowling instead of smiling. Who was Snape kidding? Nobody could answer this, although no doubt Hermione would give it a stab. Oh yeah, and that twit Malfoy. At least Hermione honestly didn't know when she was showing off. She was just enthusiastic about learning, and it sort of bubbled out the top of her head and spilled all over the place. She honestly didn't understand that when it came to some subjects, her enthusiasm wasn't catching.

"Is there a problem, Mr Potter? Is there a reason you've yet to so much as touch quill to parchment?"

The ominous voice boomed from the front of the classroom, startling him so much that he almost upset his ink pot. He righted it with one hand while the other one clutched his quill so hard it threatened to snap.

"Is the content of my lectures too much for your hero's brain to absorb? Perhaps we need to send you back to Remedial Potions again, this year?"

The reference to Remedial Potions made Harry see red, but it also reminded him that what he should do to keep from getting so angry was to Occlude his mind as Snape had taught him. Trouble was, the Potions Master never had really taught him. He'd just yelled at him and demanded he do it, without once so much as explaining what it was he was supposed to do, never mind how. Occluding his mind wasn't much of a choice, in the circumstances, and realizing that fact just made Harry even madder.

Clenching his eyes shut to keep from glaring at the insufferable git, he spoke through gritting teeth. No choice, if he properly opened his mouth, he'd say what he really felt like saying, and if he did that, he'd be every bit as stupid as Snape liked to claim. He'd learned his lesson from Umbridge. With teachers who hated the very air you breathed, you limited your comments to what was strictly necessary.

"No, sir," Harry replied, his eyes shut so tight that he could see stars at the back of his vision.

"Then get to work!" Snape shouted. "Now, Mr Potter! Or do you think yourself above the rest of your classmates, whom I might point out are ignoring the spectacle you present and working, something you've never had the slightest inclination to do? I will say you come by it honestly, though. Your father was the same way, not to mention your sainted godfather--"

Harry suddenly screamed, but not because he'd lost control of his tongue. By the end there, he was biting his tongue to keep from replying. But those last insults had been too much, Snape having the nerve, the unmitigated gall to ridicule Sirius when Harry knew that Snape was responsible for his death, when that same ridicule had driven Sirius out of Grimmauld Place and into danger! It was too much for Harry to take.

The fingers holding his quill tightened, snapping it clean in half, and a shard of brittle feather stalk speared his right palm. So of course Harry screamed, though it was more a yelp of surprise than a full-throated scream of pain. He'd endured the Cruciatus Curse at the hands of Voldemort himself, so a little accident with his quill was hardly going to make him cry.

Well, Snape was wrong about one thing, Harry thought. One thing more, that was. His classmates weren't ignoring him now. They were staring, and not even trying to hide it, and Hermione was mouthing something at him, but he couldn't catch it.

"Are you quite through with today's demonstration of your colossal carelessness, Mr Potter?" Snape sneered. "Shall I have the class thank you, one by one, that at least today you have endangered no one but yourself?"

"Professor, he's bleeding!" Hermione called out.

"I am well aware of the fact, Miss Granger," Snape rebuked her, coming down the aisle in a flurry of billowing robes. "Five points from Gryffindor for speaking out of turn." Glaring down from his imposing height, he watched without comment as Harry yanked the quill out of his flesh and flexed his fingers. Harry tried his best not to so much as wince, not with Snape's beady eyes watching his every move, but a small gasp as it slid out did cross his tightly clenched lips.

Hermione was wrong, he thought as he stared at the wound. He really hadn't been bleeding before, but now the wound was gushing. Fumbling, Harry fetched a handkerchief from his overflowing school bag and wound it tightly around the injury.

"Shall I owl the hospital wing to have your favourite bed made ready, Mr Potter?" Snape sniped.

"I'll just get on with my test, sir," Harry calmly replied, though he felt anything but calm inside. Hmm, maybe he wasn't as bad at Occluding his mind as he'd though. Still, if he was really Occluding it, should he still feel a raging boil of anger just begging to spill out?

"Do that, Mr Potter," Snape sneered, and when Harry didn't so much as move, he continued, "Well?"

Harry ignored him as best he could, and bent down again to fish through his bag for a new quill. Everyone else got back to work when it seemed the confrontation was over. Truth to tell, Harry was almost relieved that Snape had had his say. After all, the Potions Master basically attacked him in every class session. At least this time, he'd got it out of the way straight away. Now Harry could relax somewhat, and just do his best on his test, for what that was worth.

Relaxing, he soon realised, wasn't going to be an option, but not because of Snape.

As Harry dragged a fresh quill from the tangled contents of his bag, he dragged something else out, too. An envelope, one he'd been trying to forget existed. Unfortunately, he wasn't the only one who saw it. Draco Malfoy, sitting right across the aisle, glanced down, probably to make some snide remark of his own about Harry's mishap.

He said nothing though, his gaze merely resting on the odd Muggle envelope.

Then he looked at Harry, and raised an eyebrow.

Horrified, it suddenly occurred to Harry that Malfoy had just seen his summer address.

Harry snatched the letter up onto his desk and began to smear ink all across the numbers and letters on the envelope. 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.... He covered it all up, and then sat back with a silent sigh, and tried to remember what he was supposed to be doing. Oh yeah, the test, that was it.

Harry shoved the letter underneath his exam paper, and with his injured hand began to scratch out an answer about dragonfly wings, but before he'd even got to the fact that it made a difference whether you harvested them off dead or live insects, a harsh voice was accosting him.

Again.

And this time, it wasn't coming from across the classroom; it was coming from directly in front of his desk.

"What you have slipped beneath your exam paper, Mr Potter?"

Harry glanced up, a bit disoriented from the sudden shift from dragonfly wings. Then he remembered, and flushed. "Nothing, sir."

"Nothing, Mr Potter?"

Somehow, Harry thought, Snape could manage to make any three words in a row sound sarcastic.

"Nothing important, Professor," he clarified.

"Allow me to be the judge of what might be important, Potter. Hand it over."

Harry blanched. "I'll just put it away sir," he said, the words coming out coherently although it felt just like he was babbling.

Draco Malfoy chose that moment to pipe up, "I saw him taking it out after the test began, Professor Snape. I bet it's some sort of cheat sheet--"

"It's not!" Harry erupted, turning a fierce glare on Malfoy.

"Ten points from Gryffindor for yelling during class," Snape calmly intoned.

"What about him?" Harry spat. "He accused me--"

"Ten points from Gryffindor for arguing with a staff member," Snape interrupted. "Ten points from Gryffindor for not doing as I requested, at once. Now, will you hand it over, or shall I spend the remainder of the class period taking points from Gryffindor?"

"I wasn't cheating," Harry mumbled as he slid a hand beneath his exam paper and drew out the envelope. It was sticky with ink, as was the back of his test, Harry realised. Grimacing, he handed it to Snape.

"Can't even keep your secret notes clean?" Snape sniped when he saw the item. "And why conceal them in an envelope at all, let alone one such as this? Haven't you heard of parchment by now, or is that too big a leap for your Muggle-raised mind to manage?"

"It's a letter!" Harry shouted, out of patience. "Haven't you heard of them, you great big--"

"Harry!" Hermione cut him off.

"Twenty points from Gryffindor for insolence," Snape snapped. "And twenty more for speaking out of turn again, Miss Granger." He turned the envelope over in his hands, the smirk on his face growing more evil the longer he stared at the letter.

"So it's a missive, is it? Passing notes in class now, are we, Mr Potter? Well, as you've chosen to disrupt my entire class with it, I think it only fitting that the entire class hear what it has to say, don't you?"

Without waiting for an answer, he drew a piece of plain paper out of the envelope and began to read it out loud.