Shaun woke early the following morning. It took him a while to remember where he was, but when the memories of the previous day rolled through his mind, he smiled brightly and snuggled more deeply into the covers.

Life had taken a drastic turn for Shaun, but it was the chance he had been waiting for. He understood that Mr. Snape had only taken them for a week or two, but something about the man warned Shaun not to take things at face value. There was something else going on here, and he was determined to find out what it was.

He could hear Terry and Henry roughhousing in the next room, and a long forgotten feeling reared its head. Shaun had never had friends before; while living with his aunt and uncle, his cousin had made it his personal mission in life to scare away any potential friends of Shaun. When they’d left him at the orphanage, he’d thought that maybe things would change. They had not. At first, some of the younger kids had tried to make friends with him, but because he was older, they found it difficult to play with him. For the most part, Shaun found their games entertaining, but he could never relax enough to actually play along because of things drilled into his head by his relatives.

The older kids at the orphanage thought him something of a ‘freak’. He was much smaller than the other boys his age, and he usually kept to himself. At first, Terry had sought him out, wanting to get to know him, but after Shaun started talking about schoolwork – mathematics, no less! – Terry decided that Shaun was just no fun to be with.

After years without friends, Shaun had finally come to terms with the fact that he would never have any.

Stretching languidly on the bed, Shaun sighed a bit before standing up and getting dressed. He would go down to the kitchen and begin the breakfast preparations. Terry and Henry were never any good at making breakfast, usually ending up cleaning after everyone instead.

The hallways were a bit spooky so early in the morning, but Shaun squashed the anxiety that tried to rear its head. He was no sissy or wimp; he would show Mr. Snape just what he was capable of!

After several minutes of walking, searching, and opening doors with a building sense of frustration, Shaun finally found the kitchen, but before he got two steps into the room, he stopped dead.

The funniest, ugliest creature stood in the middle of the kitchen chopping a block of cheese into smaller pieces. What surprised Shaun the most – even more than the creature and its strange appearance – was the way various knifes, forks and spoons were swirling in the air and doing various tasks.

As he watched, a whisk floated over to a bowl that Shaun could see held some eggs, beating them to a yellowish froth as a large jug poured some milk into the bowl.

“Are you just going to stand there the whole day, or are you going to take a seat?”

The menacing voice coming from behind him shocked Shaun out of his stupor, and he quickly moved forward, intent on helping the strange, short creature with breakfast.

********

Severus grumbled to himself as the boy stepped up to the table and reached for a fork. The morning was not going well. After waking with a crick in his neck, Severus had showered and dressed before going to find the boys. The other two little menaces had taken it upon themselves to rearrange one of the bedrooms – Terry’s if he wasn’t mistaken – and had moved the bed to a corner and the couches right next to it to form some type of barrier, then taken bed sheets to form some makeshift tents.

Well, he did say the rooms would be theirs, so he supposed they had taken that to mean that they could do whatever they wanted.

He had moved with some trepidation from there to Shaun’s room, only to find the room clean and neatly ordered. The boy, he’d seen, was nowhere to be found, and so Severus had gone ahead down to the kitchens.

Severus watched with confusion, uncertainty, and some small measure of amusement as the boy reached for a fork and moved over to the gas stovetop. Severus really hated the contraption, and he watched as Shaun then proceeded to make scrambled eggs with the proficiency one would expect from a mother of five or a house elf but certainly not a short, ratty orphan.

The boy seemed confident of what he was doing, and Severus just watched him for a while. Even though the boy was small for his age, he was tall enough to see into the pan he was using. After a few minutes of mixing and stirring, the boy looked around for something – what the something was, Severus had no idea.

The boy stepped away from the stove and took one of the kitchen towels in hand before returning to his work.

Severus finally understood what the idiot was about to do and quickly stepped up to stop him.

“Drop that towel right now you little brat! Do you want to end up with burns on your hands or the rest of your body? What if you should drop the pan? What if your hand slips and you burn yourself?”

The ungrateful boy actually had the audacity to look insulted by what Severus had said, but before he could reply, Severus took the towel out of his hand and quickly moved the pan of eggs over to a cooling rack.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, halting any further argument between the two of them.

Brats number one and two came crashing into the kitchen just then, and only Severus’s swift reaction time saved them from tumbling into chairs and onto the floor.

Both boys quickly apologized before moving sedately to the table and sitting down.

“I see we are going to need some ground rules if I’m to let the three of you run loose in my house.”

The three boys looked at him with varying degrees of dread.

“There will be no running, no shouting, no fist fighting, no arguing, no taunting, no belittling, no criticizing, and – most important of all! – no back chatting. Is. That. Clear?”

Terry and Henry looked suitably chagrined, muttering a soft “Yes, sir.” Shaun, on the other hand, looked at Severus with a curiously blank face. What the boy was thinking right at that moment was anyone’s guess, as his face betrayed nothing. Severus toyed with the idea of using Legilimency on the boy but disregarded the idea quickly. Not only was it dangerous to use mind magic on one so young, it also went against Severus’s own morals – he would not lower his own standards just for the sake of a passing curiosity.

“First things first, then. We will all eat breakfast here together every morning at eight. We will discuss the day and what you would like to do after breakfast and then go from there.”

The boys all nodded their heads in agreement.

“This morning, the first thing we will do is get each of you a decent haircut. Those bangs hanging in your faces are not good for your eyes.”

Terry and Henry once again nodded, but Shaun for some reason looked panicked.

“What is the matter now Shaun?” Severus asked impatiently. He did not want to deal with stubborn brats who refused to get a haircut.

“N…nothing, sir. It’s fine. I’ll, er… I’ll just go wash my hair, then.”

Before Severus could say anything else, the boy was up and running out of the room.

********

Shaun paced his room restlessly. He didn’t want to get a haircut today – not while they stayed with Mr. Snape. There would be too many questions, and Shaun really did not want to go into that again.

He had taken to wearing a bandanna to hide the scar on his forehead, because someone always commented on it, but that was not what bothered him the most.

His lightning bolt scar he could explain as part of the accident where his parents died when he was little – that was the truth, after all. No, what truly bothered him was that if he got a haircut, the hairdresser would surely see all the other cuts on his head and ask even more questions.

The cuts on his head were all healed up, but if someone knew what they were doing, the scars could tell them approximately how old the wound was. He did not want to go into what had happened every time he got a cut on the head!

Some of them he would be able to explain away as falling down on the pavement or cutting his head on the table when tripping over a chair.

Other scars, however, he would not be able to explain away as easily, as they ran deeper or in certain patterns.

Shaun came to an abrupt stop in front of the mirror. Mr. Snape had just yesterday explained to them about magic and what he could do and everything. Shaun now understood that the things that used to happen to and around him could also possibly be magic. What if he tried to use magic now? What if he tried to use it deliberately and for something specific? Would it work?

He would never know if he didn’t try, so Shaun started pacing again. He thought of what he wanted, what he needed. The scars on his head would have to disappear. He needed the scars on his head to disappear, but Shaun had absolutely no idea how he would make the scars on his head disappear! Should he ask Mr. Snape to help him? That would require him to do some explaining – something he really did not want to do!

Sighing in frustration, Shaun stepped back in front of the mirror and looked himself over. Something looked a bit different, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Just as he was about to shrug it off as his imagination, he realized something. He wasn’t wearing his bandanna at the moment, but the lightning bolt scar that usually hid behind the bandanna wasn’t there either! He rubbed lightly on his forehead, and to his shock he could feel the scar on his forehead. But he still couldn’t see it!

Shaun leaned a bit forward and parted his hair on the right side of his head where he knew the deepest, most noticeable scar was. Seeing nothing there, Shaun lightly traced his finger over his scalp. Again, he could feel the scar exactly where it should be, but he couldn’t see it.

So this was magic!!!