“Harry, are you okay?” Hermione asked worriedly for about the thousandth time as they all sat down to breakfast at the Gryffindor table.

“I’m fine, Hermione,” Harry lied, making himself sound exasperated at the repetition of the same question so maybe she wouldn’t notice the deception. Apparently it worked because she made that huffy sound Hermione made when she was offended and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like it included the word ‘boys.’

Of course, Hermione was right and Harry was in no way okay. At breakfast the previous morning, a bright red envelope called a Howler had arrived from Ron’s mum, and her voice had screamed out of it for the entire Hall to hear about how irresponsible and stupid taking the car had been. Stupid—that was the same thing Severus had called it, Harry realized as he stabbed a sausage with far more malice than was technically necessary. No, that was what Snape had called it, he amended mentally. If Harry was back to being ‘Potter,’ any right he had gained over the summer to using the Potions master’s first name had obviously been revoked, as well.

“At least you didn’t get a Howler,” Ron said consolingly. When actual empathy failed, he grinned and tried to joke instead, “Although, a couple of the girls in class might send you one now after you got another photo taken with Lockhart yesterday…”

“Lockhart can bugger off,” Harry grumbled moodily. But it was hard for even Lockhart to distract him from the fact that Ron’s dad was facing an inquiry at work, in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office of the Ministry of Magic, because they had taken the car. It was stupid, Harry had to admit it, especially with Severus’s voice in his head repeating all the more logical options they could have tried before doing something so rash and un-thought-out as stealing an enchanted car. Then again, thinking things out before doing them was Hermione’s department, and she hadn’t been there or she probably would have stopped them.

“Well, you’re in a fit state for potions today,” Ron muttered, shoving half a waffle into his mouth.

“Oh,” Hermione said, looking at Harry with the air of someone who had just realized why two and two made four. “Snape was angry, wasn’t he?”

“Pretty much as angry as Mum, only in that quiet way that makes you think he might poison your pumpkin juice,” Ron managed to get out in a muffled voice.

“Ron!” Hermione hissed, glancing at Harry as if to gauge his reaction.

“What?” Ron asked, oblivious. “It’s not like he wouldn’t know how…”

“Let’s just get this over with,” Harry said, shoving the last sausage in his mouth and grabbing his bag off the floor, then heading off toward the dungeons without another word. Ron looked at Hermione in confusion, and she just made an exasperated sound that sounded like she wondered just how thick he could be before hurrying to catch up with Harry.

Harry led the way toward the far corner of the room, where he put down his things by the very last cauldron. Ron joined him, and Hermione hovered nearby looking as if she still wasn’t really convinced nothing was wrong, but that she wasn’t about to let that interfere with her schoolwork.

Naturally, the next person into the dungeon was Malfoy.

“Well, well; look who didn’t realize over the summer they were in over their heads and decided to show up again this year anyway,” he drawled as he took a seat in the middle of the room, Crabbe and Goyle flanking him on either side.

“Shut up, Malfoy,” Ron snapped, pulling his book out of his bag and slamming it down on the table. You could almost see him picturing Malfoy’s face underneath it.

“Have a good summer then, Potter?” Malfoy leered as if he hadn’t even noticed Ron. “Spend some quality time with Mummy and D—ohh…”

Ron started to stand up. “You little…”

“Quiet,” a voice warned impatiently as Severus emerged from the shadows by his office and swept his gaze across the still half-empty dungeon. His eyes locked with Harry’s last, but they were as black and fathomless as ever. Harry could take a little comfort in that, he decided; at least they weren’t full of spite. For some reason he didn’t quite understand, it hit him at that moment that emotionlessness was far better than hatred. He was all too used to the looks of enmity, but he realized suddenly that over the summer, he had come to hope that they wouldn’t be aimed at him again.

“I had thought that bickering like petulant children should be behind you by your second year at this school,” Severus continued, looking daggers at Ron as he did so. “If not, perhaps you should get back on the train until you learn to act like wizards and not quarreling kelpies. Now, assuming you have not destroyed your textbooks over the summer, turn to page one hundred and twelve and someone do tell me the properties of valerian sprigs and their subsequent use in a basic sleeping draught… You.”

A stunned Dean Thomas stopped dead in the entranceway so quickly that Seamus Finnigan walked into him and both nearly stumbled into Pansy Parkinson, who shot them a poisonous look but continued haughtily to her seat. Dean cleared his throat and managed, “Me, sir?”

“Yes, you, Thomas,” Severus said impatiently, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. “I’m waiting.”

Dean coughed again. “I—I didn’t hear the question, sir.”

“I thought not,” Severus seemed to muse, one long finger tapping his desk as if in deep thought. “Now, which of you decided that an extra pastry was worth being late to class?” An arched brow elicited no response aside from an exchanged glance between Dean and Seamus, and finally Severus concluded, “Well then, take your seats and decide between yourselves which of you it was who lost five points for Gryffindor.”

Seamus visibly bit back a response as Dean shoved him toward the last cauldron, and Harry found himself grinding his own teeth, as well. Startlingly, it wasn’t just anger at the injustice of Gryffindor being punished when Pansy Parkinson had been just as late, he realized; something about the situation stung more than that. Had he actually come to think of Severus Snape as just in these past three weeks? Certainly, that was an adjective he never would have applied to the Potions master before…

“Potter,” Severus’s voice snapped into his thoughts, and Harry looked up in surprise. Did he imagine the expectant look half hidden behind that curtain of black hair as the professor prodded, “Valerian sprigs?”

Harry swallowed hard and found his voice. He knew this; it had been part of his summer essay, and he wasn’t going to let this new attitude Severus had taken up erase that from his mind. “Valerian relaxes the mind,” he explained, his voice starting off quiet but gaining in confidence as he went on uninterrupted. “It’s commonly mistaken as a sedative because it’s used in all kinds of sleeping potions, even Draught of the Living Death. But it’s also used in forgetfulness potions, to put the mind at ease and allow memories to seep out.”

“Very good, Potter,” Severus said, before turning back to the class without another word. He hadn’t awarded any points to Gryffindor of course, like he would have to Slytherin if Malfoy or Blaise had answered, but was Harry imagining the look on the Slytherin House head’s face just as he had turned away? Because the twelve-year-old could have sworn, just for a split second, that there were traces of pride in Severus Snape’s black eyes.

As if on cue, Ron nudged him and muttered, “I think that’s the first time a Gryffindor has spoken in Snape’s class and not gotten points docked and detention.”

Hermione gave him an encouraging smile from where she stood at the next cauldron with Neville, who was in turn staring at Harry like he had just leapt off the Astronomy Tower and landed without a scratch. The Slytherins, on the other hand, were looking outraged. Draco Malfoy in particular had a look on his face that suggested only foul and devious things were going through his mind. Harry had the sudden inkling that his day was not getting any better.

His suspicions were confirmed perhaps ten minutes later when, as he was crushing lavender in his mortar, a paper airplane floated across the room and landed directly inside with a wet sort of plop. He barely had time to recognize the words, “Think you’re hot stuff? BANG!” scripted across it; then he recognized what had caused the wet sound. Infusion of wormwood oozed off one wing, a single drop teetering on the edge, and Harry had just enough time to gasp and shove Ron toward Hermione and Neville before a mushroom cloud of sickly green-and-purple smoke erupted directly in his face.

The effect was immediate. Whatever these two ingredients were used for, Harry imagined they were never meant to be mixed at this stage, because the stars that erupted behind his eyes were nothing to the lightning bolts of pain that shot up his spine. Yet the pain was not the most frightening part, for it only lasted a second; the next thing he knew, he couldn’t feel his legs at all, and they were giving away beneath him. He tried to command his arm to reach for the table to steady himself, but it seemed that they weren’t obeying him anymore, either. Only his eyes reflected his look of panic as he started to fall, because he couldn’t even convince his mouth to form a cry.

That one moment seemed to stretch on forever. He could just make out the Slytherins nearly climbing over each other for a better view in the background, behind Ron and Neville, who had fallen into a tangled sprawl on the floor. Hermione’s hand was over her mouth and her eyes were wide, but she seemed too wise to step forward and try to catch him and risk falling victim to the cloud of toxin herself. The last thing he saw before crashing down to the stone floor was Severus’s widening eyes as the Potions master reached out a hand, as if to catch him from across the dungeon.

At the very last second, a large cushion appeared out of nowhere, breaking what would surely have been a nasty fall and preventing Harry’s head from slamming into the cauldron behind him. Sound came rushing back in an explosion of noise; a couple of girls were screaming, more than a couple of Slytherins were making disappointed sounds that Harry hadn’t at least cracked his head open, the sounds of Ron and Neville’s struggle to disentangle themselves provided background noise, and Hermione shrieked her friend’s name over all of the others.

“Granger,” Severus’s voice rang out authoritatively, his wand snapping out to point at one of the cabinets behind his desk. It unlatched immediately and opened, revealing a store of at least thirty tiny bottles inside. “Second row, third vial from the left. Now,” he added with a scowl when she just continued to look at Harry.

As Hermione rushed off after the potion bottle he had indicated, Severus turned his attention to the mushroom cloud that was slowly dispersing across the classroom. Sharply drawing with his wand three neat crescent-shaped arcs, he hissed an incantation under his breath, and the venomous mist drew in on itself, then disappeared in a puff of gray. Hermione hurried forward with the vial Severus had indicated, and he instructed, “That reaction created a paralytic nerve toxin. You’ll have to pour it down his throat.”

By the time she had pulled Harry’s head onto her lap and was trying to get the antitoxin past his lips with shaking hands, a crowd of Gryffindors had gathered around their fallen Housemate. Then, something happened that had never occurred in the decade Severus Snape had been teaching Potions: he whirled on the Slytherins on the other side of the dungeon with venom in his voice.

“Which one of you insolent fools just tried to poison us all?”

For the most part, everyone was too stunned to speak. Even over at the little circle around Harry, a few Gryffindors turned with wide eyes as if they thought they must be delusional, because Professor Snape would never in a thousand years use that tone against his own House.

Severus’s black eyes narrowed, scanning each face and fighting back the urge to use Legilimency on them all. “None of you saw anything?” he continued, his tone dangerously soft. “Nott? Draco? No one?” His nostrils flared, a sign of anger none of the Slytherins had ever stared down. “Ten points from Slytherin.”

None of the second years standing before him could have looked more stunned had they, well, actually been Stunned. Draco Malfoy’s mouth fell open, his gray eyes wide with shock. “Professor Snape! You—but you must be joking!”

Severus’s obsidian eyes were cold as he stared back at the Malfoy heir, his voice coming out in a growl from between his teeth: “You or one of your Housemates just set off a toxic explosion with the potential to cause permanent nerve damage to every wizard in this room, had I not acted quickly. Does that sound like a joke to you?”

Draco swallowed hard, unable to tear his gaze away from his House Head’s. “No, sir.”

“Good.” Severus took two steps backward, seeming to regain a little composure. “Then all of you get out.”

The Slytherins didn’t have to be told twice; they grabbed their bags and bolted like the cloud of toxin was still spreading, all except for Malfoy, who backed away slowly, never taking his eyes off Severus until he reached the doorframe as if he suddenly no longer knew what to make of his favorite instructor.

Once they were cleared out, Severus turned his attention to the Gryffindors. “You too, all except Granger and Weasley,” he snapped, and they all followed suit. By this point, Harry was sitting up, but didn’t quite look up to the task of walking to his next class yet.

Severus seemed to pause a moment to consider his next move before asking in a slightly less venomous inflection, “Can you two get him to the hospital wing?”

“Of course,” Hermione said, nodding and pulling one of Harry’s arms over her shoulders. Ron followed suit on Harry’s other side, and between them, they managed to pull their friend to his feet.

“I will write a note for Professor Binns, though I doubt he will notice your absence,” Severus informed them. He half expected Granger to argue that they would be missing an important lecture on Blodgharm the Brute, but she merely blinked her surprise and said slowly, “Thank you.”

Only after Granger and Weasley had helped Harry out of the classroom did Severus allow himself to collapse into his seat, cup a long hand over the lower half of his face, and force his breaths to even out again.