Five o’clock Monday evening found Harry trudging down to the dungeons after a hurried meal in the Great Hall. Ron had sent him off with a sympathetic pat on the back, knowing that something bad had to be in store for him, since he was serving detention with Snape. Hermione only shook her head in a way that said, you’ll live Harry, and as unfortunate as it was, Harry had to agree. He had spent four days out in the middle of nowhere with the man; he could surely survive one detention.

Although he wasn’t worried about whatever work he would be given to do… cleaning out slimy potions jars, or writing lines, or scrubbing the Slytherin bathrooms floor to ceiling, he was worried about something else… something that had been bothering him since Snape had gotten the Headmaster to let him stay at Hogwarts instead of going back to Privet drive. Snape now knew something about him that he could use against him. Harry didn’t like that vulnerable feeling he got just by thinking about it. Harry had a sinking feeling that he had survived all of Snape’s classes so far because Snape hadn’t really had anything to hurt Harry with, aside from grades. Now things were different. He hadn’t yet had a potions class with Snape, because Friday and Monday were double Charms and Transfiguration. Potions would come Tuesday after Care of Magical Creatures, which the Gryffindors still unfortunately had both with the Slytherins. Harry didn’t think he was going to be able to stand three straight hours with the Slytherins. He had already heard bad things from Ron and Hermione, like how Draco had “rescued,” a biting Willy Toad from Care of Magical Creatures the week before, only to take it to Potions the next class to set it down the back of Neville’s pants. Luckily, there had been a substitute in Potions, since Snape was lost in the woods with Harry, and Slytherin had lost ten points for Draco’s stunt.

Harry didn’t look at his watch as he made the higher dungeons, but knew it had to be at least five after five. He was late, and knew he was going to catch hell for it. Instead of running to get there quicker though, Harry let his legs carry him just a little slower to prolong what he knew was coming. At five ten, Harry pushed the door to their dungeon classroom open, and found no sign of Snape.

Harry frowned. The detention slip had told him to meet in the potions classroom… maybe Snape had forgotten. Harry thought about going to his office to see, but then discarded the notion, thinking he might be able to get out of it. Harry dropped his bag on the floor and took a seat on one of the tables the Slytherin’s usually sat at up front to wait. Another few minutes passed, and Harry sighed as he thought about being in even more trouble if the slip had written the wrong location. He reached down and picked up his bag as he slid off the table, and exited down the hallway towards Snape’s office.

The door was creaked open when he reached it, and light spilled out into the dark hallway. Harry sighed, and gave the door a knock to let Snape know he was there.

“Come,” was the annoyed response he received. Harry knew if Snape was in a bad mood, the detention was only going to be worse. He pushed the door open anyway, and took half a step inside, so that he was still only on the threshold of the office. Snape looked up from the papers he was grading, but only for a second to see that it was Harry. “Was there something you wanted Potter?”

Harry frowned slightly before he let the expression leave his face, and said, “Um… I was supposed to serve detention with you tonight.”

Snape looked up at him again and considered him for a moment, and then his watch. “It’s five fifteen Potter, you’re late.”

Harry desperately wanted to snap at him that he hadn’t been late, when he remembered that he was. Instead, he held his temper the best he could, and said, “You didn’t even remember that I was doing detention, sir.” He knew he had better add that sir to the end if he had any hope of getting out of his detention altogether.

Snape frowned for a second as he considered the boy standing before him again. “You were in the Dungeon at five o’clock?” he asked him.

Harry matched his frown for a moment and looked at his shoes, “No.” Maybe Snape hadn’t forgotten. Harry hadn’t considered that he might have waited in the Dungeon, and just considered him a no show.

“No?” Snape asked in a tone Harry couldn’t figure as anything but mocking, because it was so light.

Harry shook his head once, and looked back up. “I showed up at ten after.”

Harry thought Snape would get angry, but he didn’t. He gave him one of those piercing stares instead, that Harry was only used to receiving from Dumbledore. Harry always felt Dumbledore was trying to look right into his soul when he did that. He knew that Snape could look right into his mind if he wanted to, being an accomplished Legilimens, but he didn’t feel that happening to his mind at the moment.

Snape thought a moment more as Harry continued to look him straight in the eye, something most Slytherins could not even bear to do. “I was not there, and instead of skipping detention altogether, you came to my office?” Snape asked more to himself than to Harry.

Harry didn’t nod because it was obvious that that was what he had done.

Snape frowned again, looking down at the stack of papers in front of him, and he looked to Harry to be a little confused. The next second though, and Snape was looking back up at him.

“Sit in the chair,” he instructed him.

Snape was a little wary of what he was about to do, assigning the Gryffindor who had always lacked in Potions such a task, but he had no other task that he felt like assigning him, and felt the help would be welcome in grading the papers.

Harry watched as Snape dived the stack of papers in two, and set the top half of the stack in front of him as he sat in the only other chair in the office, and pulled it up to the desk.

“When you’re done grading those you can go,” Snape informed him.

Harry frowned… he was grading papers? “The assignment is written on the top of every parchment,” Snape told him. Harry looked down and found the assignment on the top of the first page. He thumbed through the stack, and saw that the next twenty pages were the same. They looked like second year potions assignments. “The criteria for which they are being graded is here.” With this, Snape pushed over another piece of parchment, this one aging slightly, as though it had been used for a few years. There was a small water stain along one edge near the top, and a tear near the bottom left corner, but other than that, it was still in good shape.

Harry pulled the grading parchment over, and pulled out a quill from his bag. He was just about to reach for the top assignment on his stack, when Snape looked over at him again, and said, “Do not, make any mistakes Potter, or you will be serving another detention tomorrow correcting them.” Harry gave him a small glare that Snape didn’t notice, because he was already on to grading another stack of assignments, and took up the grading parchment again. This assignment was asking for a detailed description of each of the twelve uses of the Hargon root, and also for a small essay on where and how you could find Hargon root, and how you could distinguish it from it’s close relatives, the Hergion and Tragon plants. This was going to be a long night, but at least Harry felt it wouldn’t be as bad as some of the other detentions he’d had to serve through his years there at Hogwarts.

Halfway through the third essay, Harry was gaining a deep dislike for grading papers, and at the same time, some appreciation for the teachers because they had to do it all the time. Already Harry had marked five points off from Henry Tritus’ essay, because he had missed three of the Hargon root’s uses, and another three points because he had gotten the root mixed up with Tragon. At first he had felt sorry about marking points off, but he was now getting annoyed with each subsequent paper he graded, because all of the information was in the text book the second years had, and could be found if they only read it. Harry even remembered the text from his second year. On Bernice Prichardson’s paper, Harry decided that she had gotten so many things wrong, that she was probably going to end up brewing some toxic potion in the very near future, and not survive it’s test. He took a few minutes to write out the correct answers and other things he could think of that were not written on the grading parchment so that she would know why her paper was coming back looking murdered, since Harry was grading with red ink.

Snape looked over at Harry so many times while he was grading the first few papers, that Harry was done with six by the time Snape was done with his first new one. Finally deciding that he would need to look over the papers the boy graded in the end anyhow, he went back to his own stack, and didn’t look up at Potter again until he started to chuckle ten minutes later.

Snape’s head snapped up, and he frowned across the desk at him. “What Potter?”

Harry looked up, and tried to wipe the grin off of his face. “Um… just something somebody wrote sir.”

“Who and what?” Snape demanded, setting the essay on the uses of Dragon’s blood he had been grading down.

Harry looked uncertainly back down at his own half graded essay, and then back up at Snape, before looking down and reading, “I lost my book sir, and nobody would loan me theirs because they were all working hard on their essays for your class, so I had to resort to other means to find out the differences between Hargon root and it’s relatives, and where you can find them. First, you can find Hargon root in the apothecary in Diagonalley, and Hogsmead. You can tell the difference between Hargon root and Tragon and Hergion, because each has a label at the apothecary, and Hargon costs less because it’s so easy to find in the wilderness because of it’s orange leaves… we even have some in our back yard at home. Tragon is usually the most expensive since it has to be imported from China, and Hergion isn’t usually in stores because it has uses for more dangerous potions.”

Harry bit his lip. He knew Snape was going to probably fail this student, who just happened to be a Gryffindor, which was the reason for Harry holding back the student’s name.

Snape looked thoughtful, and said, “He is only being difficult.”

Harry felt some need to stick up for the student, and said lightly, still half grinning, “He did point out one way to tell the differences, and two places you can find them.”

Snape looked over at the Gryffindor, and said, “Subtract five points for losing his book and tell him he should order another immediately.” He went back to his stack of papers, and Harry sat there, honestly confused.

“That’s it sir? You’re not going to take away more points?” Five points from forty wasn’t bad… that was still almost full marks.

“As annoying as Gryffindors can be both in and out of class, and in writing their papers, Mr. Cranson did fulfill the essay requirement, though not as I would have liked him to. He constantly shows me new ways through his work to revise the assignment so that other students do not write their observations as he does. He is also not a troublemaker in class I have found, if he expresses his… opinions, in his papers. Five points off Potter, no more.”

Harry was still frowning in his confusion as he watched his professor move from one paper to another. So he did know who’s paper it was, and still only took five points off. He was so sure it would have worked out different. Harry did as he was told though, and took the five points off, then writing that he needed to pick up another book, and perhaps to borrow one from Hermione or another older student who no longer used their old Potion’s book.

After another quarter of an hour, Harry had moved on to a stack of fourth year essays about a series of difficult and dangerous potions. He spotted the grading key on a parchment across the desk, but didn’t grab for it because Snape was still using it. He looked down at the essay in front of him, and remembered the right answers from his fourth year though, and so set to work as before, marking points off, and explaining about the right answer whenever he did. He came across two essays with the exact same handwriting, even though the words were changed around, and the names were different, and took full points off for cheating on both papers. He wrote a note across the top that says that if they are going to cheat, they should at least take the effort to write their paper in their own handwriting, and that they should re-do the essay by themselves so that they don’t end up failing whatever test was coming up. Harry was glad that it hadn’t been two Gryffindors that had cheated, but was deeply surprised to find that it had been two Ravenclaws.

Finally Harry was at the bottom of his stack. He put the grade on top of the last essay, a first year one about Wolf’sbane and it’s uses, and placed it on top of the finished pile. He looked down at his watch, seven o’clock. Two hours wasn’t a bad detention. Harry thought back to the five or six hour long detentions that he had served with Filch or even Hagrid out in the Forbidden forest.

Snape looked up when he hadn’t heard the scratching of quill on parchment for a minute, and saw Harry going back over a few of the papers from the bottom of the stack. “Potter?” he asked.

Harry looked up. “Oh… I’m done Professor.”

Snape looked at Harry’s finished pile, which was the same size as his own, and noticed that he still had at least ten papers from his own to grade. “You’re detention is done then Potter, go back to your common room.”

Harry picked up his bag happily, and headed for the door. Snape’s voice stopped him though before he made it out. “Potter.”

Harry turned around, a curious look on his face.

“What did you do to get detention on your first day back?”

Harry frowned now as he remembered McGonagall coming up on him walking out of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom with Jason Higreteus in tow.

“I had to go into a girls toilet to save a first year from Draco… he put a binding curse on Jason Higreteus so he couldn’t get out of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.”

Snape thought about it for a moment, and asked, “Professor McGonagall gave you detention for that?”

Harry nodded, “She never gave me the time to explain.” Harry grew silent for a moment, and then said, “Most people usually don’t.”

Harry turned to leave and this time Snape didn’t stop him.