Severus Snape was not looking forward to his evening any longer.  It was Friday night and instead of getting work done, a glass of Firewhiskey and an early night, he was spending a few miserable hours with the Potter brat, supervising cauldron scrubbing.  Why hadn’t he just taken a couple hundred points and kept his evening?  That’s right; because he’d seen a weakness and exploited it.  He sighed.  He really had to learn the difference between spying and teaching otherwise he’d never get his evenings back.  Now he had a week of them to spend with Potter.  Damn.

With a slight frown he sat down at his desk and began organising his work into piles, finding the seventh years’ essays for marking first.  If he had to work this evening he’d make use of the time properly and get the most time consuming stuff done over with before the weekend.

It was slow going and he only had three rolls of parchment in his ‘marked’ pile when there was a knock at the door.  A quick check of the time told him Potter was ten minutes early.  He smirked.  Clearly his ability to teach even his most thick-headed student something was still in top form.

“Enter.”

Potter looked a little pale as he stepped into the room, hovering by the door nervously with his head lowered, his mop of messy black hair almost all Severus could make out of him above his chest.  Severus’s smirk stayed where it was at this show of penitence; maybe he was beginning to get through to the boy after all.  Either that or this was a new ploy or display of inherited arrogance.  Knowing it was undoubtedly likely to be the latter; Severus lowered his gaze back to his marking after jabbing his quill towards the large stack of cauldrons to one side of the room.  

“You’ll be scrubbing those.  You know where everything is.”

“Yes sir.”

As the boy shuffled to the cupboard housing the various needed cleaning supplies, his shoulders hunching a little more before moving to the large pile of potions-encrusted cauldrons, Severus once more lamented his lost evening.  He could only hope it ended quickly.

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As Harry contemplated the large – frankly, massive – pile of cauldrons to his left covered in various noxious, viscous and completely unappetizing globs of spoiled, exploded and very, very rarely adequate potions of all kinds, he wondered if what he would have to do had been worth earning this detention.  Then he remembered that unlike several past detentions with Professor Snape he hadn’t actually earned this one.  This one was courtesy of Umbridge.  How kind of her.

The thought – inconceivable as it was – of Umbridge’s kindness... an oxymoron if ever there was one, prompted the memory of the ‘r’ word that had been buzzing persistently around his mind all afternoon and as much as he’d try to brush it away it would simply dodge and return, closer and more annoying than ever.  Much like a fly irritating the toad despite the high fatality rate of such actions.  Fly.  Toad.  And he was back to Umbridge.

Sighing, Harry lifted various cleaning detergents and a cloth from the cupboard – conspicuously lacking the ‘Harry’s Room’ sign that he was so used to seeing in cupboards of this size – and, ignoring the shiver of perception as other persistent and disturbing memories tried to assault him, he knelt beside the largest of the cauldrons which, from his new position as he rested back on his calves, reached his chin. 

Harry expertly poured a measure of bright green detergent smelling strongly of artificial apples whilst musing on whether a person could truly be an expert at such things before rolling up his sleeves, straightening his legs and back to reach inside the cauldron and beginning to scrub the inside of the large, black metal, wondering idly if it was ‘later’ yet.  His mind responded with a firm no and he automatically pushed the thought aside in favour of focusing on his work.

After fifteen mind-numbing minutes and two very sore knees however, he was desperate for a distraction and decided that ‘later’ could indeed be now.  He wouldn’t get any peace and quiet once he got back to the common room anyway and once he went to bed he knew he’d be out like a light.  He was so tired.  Besides the fumes from the combined potion remnants and bubbling, steaming detergents eating away at said potions remnants were stinging his hand and he wondered if that was part of Umbridge’s plan. 

If she couldn’t make the appendage hurt enough by making him cut into himself every night, she’d allow Snape to burn the words into it instead.  Every time any of the detergent spilled over his hand – which was disappointingly often – fresh waves of agony assaulted him and he couldn’t have cared less if contemplating Umbridge’s words left him tired or distracted anymore.  He needed the distraction so badly.   

Rehabilitation.

An hour passed before Harry was willing to give up his train of thought to the pain in his hand.  He hadn’t gotten far anyway.  Rehabilitation.  How had she meant it?  Rehabilitating him from what?  Why?  He had plenty of half-crazy ideas that he wouldn’t have put past her regardless of how unrealistic they sounded in his head but he knew that nothing he suspected was likely to even be close.  And being prepared probably wouldn’t help him any regardless.

Snape, it seemed, had had enough of his presence and the occasional sharp exhalation when various acidic substances sunk into the angry red and sluggishly bleeding cuts on his hand and the man took far less time than usual to dismiss him.   He hadn’t finished all of the cauldrons and when he stood to leave on growled command – “Enough.  Leave.  Now.” – and looked quizzically back at the small stack of still potion-spattered equipment, Snape had gotten that little smile on his face that on anyone else might have been mischievousness and on Snape made first years cry and Harry want to groan. 

“Do not concern yourself Potter, they will be there upon your return; accompanied by many more I don’t doubt.  Monday night at eight.”

“Um, sir?  Could we perhaps make it earlier?”  Snape smirked and Harry wondered why the hell he’d bothered asking.

“And why would that be Mr Potter?  Surely your legions of fans would be amenable to the later audience with yourself?  Or do your many other... important activities require so much of your no doubt valuable time so as to need the readjustment of my own timetable?  Should I have booked ahead?”  Ooh, but Snape was pissed.  Harry should have just left.  Nevertheless, he made one last attempt.

“No sir, I... I have-”

“Speak up Potter.”  Harry sighed.  Damn.  Why did he have to ask?  Then again thinking of how Umbridge would have reacted to a rescheduling, Snape and his familiar ire suddenly seemed more appealing by far.  The thought made his back straighten and forced the words past his reticent lips.

“I have detention with Umbr- Professor Umbridge at nine.”  Soft snickers.  Well, if that’s the worst he got-

“Haven’t been able to convert her yet either Potter?  Fame really isn’t everything, or perhaps you’re simply losing your touch.”  Sarcasm, mocking; he could take it.  Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.  “Well I suggest you take it up with Professor Umbridge,” the heavy sarcasm in the term ‘professor’ wasn’t imagined but was far outweighed in Harry’s mind by the sinking feeling in his stomach, “I have more important things to do with my time than slot your detention in at your convenience and if you were dunderheaded enough to have double-booked us that is hardly my problem.  Monday.  Eight o’clock.  Do not be late; we may break you of your habitually atrocious punctuality yet.”

“Yes sir.”  He tried to sound sincere.  He really did.  Snape seemed to be a little more forgiving due to the mental image of Harry facing Umbridge – and coming out the worse for it – as he failed to point out the disrespect in the way Harry’s words had floated out on a sigh of defeat.  It was probably the fact that it was defeat.

“Good.  Out.”

Closing the heavy wooden door behind him Harry couldn’t stop the thought of I hate my life before it registered.  Ruthlessly, he squashed it down.  Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. 

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Severus sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly.  Potter had grown increasingly pale and after an hour had looked completely exhausted with his little gasps every few minutes becoming increasingly frequent.  And loud.  And distracting.

Unable to put up with it and already despairing how behind he was on his marking due to the detention – deciding to ignore that it was he who had assigned the detention in the first place – he had dismissed him.  Hardly an adequate punishment but he had a week of detentions in which he would sufficiently intimidate the boy into submission and he really didn’t want him to pass out in his dungeons.  Let him do it in the halls where it wouldn’t be Severus’s problem.  Hopefully the weekend would grant the golden boy some sleep and the following week’s detentions could be served quietly and fully awake. 

Another week of detentions.  Merlin, what had he been thinking?